The Ariel Helwani Show - Conor & Nigel Benn, Kyle Daukaus and Frank Smith in studio, David Otunga, Fatima Kline, Kamaru Usman doesn't deserve title shot

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Ariel Helwani kicks off the show by celebrating the anniversaries of Dan Henderson vs. Shogun Rua and Michael Chandler vs. Eddie Alvarez, two epic fights that took place on the same night in 2011 (02:30).UFC strawweight contender Fatima Kline makes her show debut on the heels of her victory over Angela Hill at UFC 322, breaking down the win, reflecting on being able to fight at Madison Square Garden as a native New Yorker, expressing her desire to face Tabatha Ricci, and more (10:29).Matchroom Boxing CEO Frank Smith joins Ariel in-studio to discuss Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua, including the risk Paul is taking, the pressure on Joshua to knock out Paul, doing business with Most Valuable Promotions, his war of words with Simon Jordan, TKO Boxing and their efforts to pass the Ali Revival Act, the aftermath of Conor Benn’s win over Chris Eubank Jr., what’s next for Benn, and more (39:38).Former WWE star David Otunga stops by to talk wrestling and legal topics, starting with Raja Jackson’s arrest for felony assault, then touching on the controversy surrounding Andrade’s non-complete clause and the restrictions within WWE contracts, his start in reality TV, and John Cena’s retirement tour (1:25:33).Kyle Daukaus is in-studio following his big UFC 322 win, discussing his journey back to the UFC after being cut, the incredible success he’s had since returning, his propensity for the D'Arce choke and his 'D'Arce Knight' nickname, wanting to fight Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya, and more (2:01:34).Conor Benn is our final guest of the day, recapping his win over Chris Eubank Jr., giving his review of Eubank’s performance, explaining where their families’ rivalry now stands, and revealing who he wants to fight next, including mention of both Ryan Garcia and Mario Barrios (2:49:51). Conor’s father, Nigel Benn, also jumps in to discuss the rivalry and what he wants next for Conor (3:13:14).The show ends with your Super Chats (3:24:02).

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Eri-A-Rawadie show. Back in your life on this Wednesday, November 19, 2000. And 25, hello again, everyone. I hope you're doing well. It is great to be here on a lovely Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon in the greatest city in the world, that is New York City. And you know, about 30 or so minutes before every show, we like to run through things, make sure the audio levels are good, make sure we have the graphics and all this stuff.

And I have to be honest, usually these things occur to me a little earlier in the day. Usually wake up, look at the schedule, see where the kids have to be. Are there dentist appointments to be at, doctor's appointments? Is there basketball, soccer after school? Yada yada. But as I said in our rehearsal, if you will, November 19, 2025, I was instantly taken back 14 years ago today. Yes, one of the greatest days in the history of MMA happened 14 years ago today. 14 years ago tonight, to be exact, it was UFC 139 at the Shark Tank in beautiful San Jose, California, the UFC's first foray to the Shark Tank,

a.k.a. the H.P. Pavilion, you'll recall in March of 2011, the UFC, Zufa in particular, parent company, purchased Strikeforce. Strikeforce had a stranglehold on the San Jose slash Bay Area. Shark Tank, HP Pavilion, was their home arena. Once they purchased it, they kind of got the end. you know strike force was owned in large part by the then owners of the san Jose sharks they may still be the owners to be honest you know i'm still kind of just like new to the nchel senior interviewed sidney crosbie like but still like you know a nob anyway it was a great night and uh that was the night that dan henderson and bernelie sylva had their all-time classic um did i say van der lye sylva no dan henderson and marcio shogun hua had their

all-time classic. Van der Lees Silva knocked out Kung Lee. And that was a really big deal because Kung Lee was a strike force guy. And there's the axe murder doing his thing. Shogun and Hendo eventually won by Hendo and they had a rematch a couple years later, but it was never, it was never going to be as good. It was an amazing fight, main event, no title on the line, the first five-round main event with no title on the line. Very significant. Uriah Faire Oh, there it is, yeah Uriah Fabor

beat Brian Bowles on that night a nice little WEC bantamweight affair Martin Kampman the hitman beat Rick Story and the late great

Stefan Bonner beat Kyle Kingsbury in the opener on the pay per view Ryan Bader beat Jason Brills via knockout in just 77 seconds

Michael McDonald remember him Mayday beat Alex Soto in 56 seconds Chris Wideman Tom Lawler Weidman picking up the Darschoke win

in just two minutes and seven seconds Glycen Tebow beat RDA Miguel Torres beat Nick Pace Seth Bazinsky beat Matt Brown and Danny Castillo beat Shamar Bailey We had a TKO, a sub A sub

A KO, a KO, a KO I mean the prelims were lit as they say But across the country In Hollywood Florida A guy by the name of Michael Chandler fought a legend in the making by the name of Eddie Alvarez in what ended up being the greatest Belator fight of all time.

There's no questions about that. Chandler wins, and this was happening at the same time as the main card. This all-time classic on, I think, MTV2, was happening at the exact same time as UFC 139, which was rare because the Belator card used to be like on Thursdays, Fridays, they would rarely go head to head. With the UFC, my rice cakes are stuck in my. my throat.

And then I remember that next day, I was in the, I feel like I tell the story every time I was in the airport watching Fyodor beat Jeff Munson in Russia. So November 19 takes me back. I always love those fight weeks in San Jose. Great city. Hard to get there. Hard to get there from New York. You'd have to either get a connector or maybe go to San Francisco and then drive to San Jose.

Haven't been there in a minute. I think the last time I was there was when I did that E-60 on Daniel Cormier, went to Gilroy close enough. But anyway, happy November 19th to all of yous. Yesterday was a great day. Valentina Shevchenko in studio. I was thinking, that might have been the first time

that I've touched a new UFC title. I've definitely touched an old one. But to have the new one in studio was a pretty big deal. It was a great chat, got to learn more about her backstory. And then, of course, the much talked about,

much anticipated interview with Tony Con, which I think, I think, I think the internet liked. Some have said I'm now baby-faced Wani. Some have said I'm now no longer public enemy number one of the freakazoids. And maybe I should stop calling them that. I say it as a term of endearment, but I feel like there's a turn. I feel like if anything, now the WWE fans are mad at me.

You can't win with these people. Oh, why didn't you ask about this? Why didn't you ask about that? We had an hour and a half, went half an hour longer than we were told we could, tried to get as many topics in. I was pleased everyone else, for the most part, seem pleased. I'm sure there's going to be long breakdowns of this, then, and the other, that follow-up, this follow-up, that follow-up,

but it was infinitely better, I thought, than the first one, a 180. Nice to be in person, nice to chat. In case you missed it, it's up on the channel right now. Today's show is going to be another classic. At approximately 4 o'clock, The Destroyer, Connor Ben, is going to join us to talk about his big win over Chris Eubank, Jr., this past weekend. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The rivalry is apparently over, done and dusted, as they say, over in the UK. And so now we set our sights for Team Ben on perhaps

Devin Haney, a Brian Norman, Ryan Garcia, who else is being discussed? Mario Barrios. And the list goes on and on, Raleigh Romero. We'll talk to Connor Ben. Looking forward to that, Chad, very much at 4 o'clock. At 3 o'clock, the Dars Knight himself, Kyle Dawkes, who is now two no since returning to the UFC. Great story was released a few years back, had to build himself back up, gets a short-notice fight on that Shanghai card in late August, wins that one, and then comes back and wins again in New York City on Saturday. Wife is 36 or so weeks pregnant. Seems like a great guy driving in from Philly, from the Illadelf, as they say. Going to join us in studio, looking forward to that chat very, very much. David O'Tunga is a former

W.W.E. Star was in the company for a long time than an on-air talent left at the very beginning of the pandemic. Also a Harvard graduate, a lawyer, a reality show star, a budding YouTuber now. He's got a great channel where he focuses on the legal side of WWE. Very, very interesting guy. He's going to join us at 2.30. Looking forward to that chat. Also, dare I say, a very good looking fellow, and dare I say, a very fit fellow. And I don't mean like fit, like, I mean like he's fit. You know what I mean? Like, I don't mean like he's, like I mean like he's fit. Do you guys get what I'm saying? Like he's fit. Yeah, man, I get what you said. The CEO of Matrum, Frank Smith, always loved chatting, you know, the business side of things. He's going to join us

in studio at about 1.30. Looking forward to that big week for them with the Ben Eubank fight. Of course, the AJ News. I'm off to Miami tomorrow to go host that presser. I'm going to get to be on the stage on the dais with Femi She don't listen to UK rap If it ain't Dave a Sensch I hope he walks out to that song That's going to be incredible So there's a lot to be excited

I mean it's a real Where else do you get this type of line up You know like where else do you get this type of This type of eclecticness Is that a word A little bit of this a little bit of that Some boxing some wrestling some MMA Yesterday was a great day

very proud of everything we're doing here at Uncrown. Little Barry H. Barry H? Everyone. Everyone in the back. Give yourself to the old Barry H. You deserve it. And then there's some news and notes we have to get to the stuff over in Qatar,

some interesting interactions between the top dogs there. Looking forward to that very much. Great card, by the way. Kioji Horaguchi buried on the prelims for goodness sakes. It's Sergei Spivak, buried on the prelims. So lots to get into, a lot to dissect, lots to digest on our final, my final show of the week, and then, of course, I passed the baton over to the boys in the back. All right.

I am being told that we do have some breaking news, though. This came together rather quickly. We've been talking about UFC 322. We've been dissecting it. We've been digesting the aftermath. We've been talking about all the different angles. And as you may have noticed leading up to the card and postcard in the aftermath, In the aftermath of the card, we all had our favorite angles, whether it was the JDM, Islam

fight, Islam moving up, or, you know, Zhang and Valentina, a big fight, the Walterweight sweepstakes, if you will, Sean Brady and Michael Morales, Leon Edwards, Carlos Prachas, the return of Boe Nickel. We all had our things, myself, Rick, G.C., PT, we all had our angles. And for whatever reason, it seemed like Frank's, you know, his PME, if you will, his people's main event was the Fatima Klein versus Angela Hill fight. He was talking about it. And if we're being honest, he was a little biased. And I'm being kind towards Fatima. He was saying that she was the one, that she's the next quote. And then she wins and gets the most significant strikes on the entire card, a card filled with a who's who. And she seemed to have delivered. And since then, he's been gloating

a lot. And so we tried to make it happen. We tried to move mountains to get her on the program. And so here she is. Fatima Klein coming off that big win over Angela Hill on Saturday. And you New York City. Hello, Fatima. How are you? Nice to meet you. I'm good. I'm good. Nice to meet you too. It's great to have you on the show. We've been trying hard to get you on the program because I don't know if you know this, but a member of our team has been binging you up. He's been really like flying the Fatima flag. And so we wanted to make this happen. Yes, I heard Mysterious Frank were showing me a lot of love. So I'm glad we were able to make it work. Wow, wow. So you're aware of Mysterious Frank? I am. I am. Oh my dear. Frank. Frankie?

I've heard it. Frankie, can you believe this? She knows the ball. Wow. She knows of you bigging her up, of you flying the flag. This is a big deal. Huge. I am very honored.

So am I. You know, Frank used to fly the flag for someone named Amanda Serrano, but she sort of like rebuffed him. Are you willing to accept him as part of the Fatima Hive? Can he be like, you know, the head of the fan club? Yeah, I mean, New York's on, right? So we got to stick together. Oh, Frankie, what do you have to say for yourself? Again, I'm just so honored.

You're the quote, Latima. Thank you. Lost for words, perhaps, Frank? Absolutely. Anything you want to ask Fatima? Are you enjoying this interview so far? He's very nervous. He's usually a lot more talkative than this.

Best interview to date. Yes. Well, let's do it. Okay, well, amazing stuff. Congratulations. By the way, where are you joining us from? Is that a library? Yeah, I'm actually, I don't read, but I'm at Barnes and Nobles. I'm having like a family day. I'm with like my

old sister and my nephew. So, oh my God. I'm sitting in a book store that I don't really read books. Okay. Well, first of all, I thought it was just a flex. You were going to tell us that you're at the public library because that's where you like to hang out on your spare time. You could have, you could have gone with that. And I think Frank would have, you know, fallen in love with you right here and now. The other thing is, thank you so much for taking some time out during your family day. I didn't know. So. now I appreciate it and I think we all do appreciate it that you would take some time out so thank you for that of course yeah thank you thank you for the opportunity I've been I've been uh hoping that one of my performance was going to speak well enough to to get on your show so I'm honored to be here so what is it like for a a New York gal to win at Madison Square Garden to fight in the big city in manhattan at the world's most famous arena and then have a performance like that how are you processing all of this. Well, man, I'm just super, I was super grateful for the opportunity and I'm really grateful

for such a tough fight that Angela gave me. I mean, you know, it takes two to, two to tango. And so, you know, half of it's me and all the training that I put into it and, man, half of it's her being able to take all those strikes. But I'm, I'm just so glad to now be home. I took the drive home from the city on, I believe it was Monday I left. And just on like my hour and a half, two hour drive home, I feel like I was really just soaking it in, just being like, wow, man, this is, this is crazy. I'm driving home from the biggest arena in the world. And just after being able to fight in front of so many family and friends, I mean, what's better than that, driving home celebrating with my family and, man, every day is a family day right now.

Were you super nervous because of all of those reasons? Because you had to so much family because it was a home game, if you will, for you. Yeah, honestly, no. I feel like it really gave me so much motivation to go out and perform the way I did. I mean, I knew there was so much on the line for me with this one, being my first pay-per-view, my first ranked opponent, being in the, obviously Madison Square Garden, you know, pressure makes diamonds. And so I feel like the more pressure there is on me, the more I'm willing to shine.

By the way, can I ask about the hair? What's the inspiration behind the hair? the half shave. Oh, and also the braids. Oh, the braids. Oh, the braids. I thought you're talking about the braids. Both. So the half shave came from, I think I, I think I shaved it when I was like 16.

There's not really, I guess it's kind of a lame story. There's not much behind it. I feel like Jiu-Jitsu had me losing so much hair on the sides of my head that I was like, I just got to get rid of it. And I think I just wanted something that like stood out for me. And so I asked my mom and my mom's a hairdresser. So she's obviously the one that that shaved my head. I've never gone to a barbershop.

Like maybe I've gone once, but like, no, I'm too scared. My mom's done my hair since I was a child. So she'll continue doing it. And then the braids are like, I did it last time for Nashville. And so I thought it was going to give me an extra 50 grand. I was like a good luck. But, yeah, I feel like after it gave me like good juju last time in Nashville, that I was hoping I was going to do it again.

And in a way, it definitely did. By the way, does your mom braid your hair as well? No, my mom, she used to braid my hair. But since I started going with like the crazy designs, I thought I'd give her a break because she gets too excited and too nervous about me fighting in general. I don't want to give her a whole job to do besides watching me. I totally get it.

You said that this was a big fight for you because it was your first pay-per-view, but you were on a two-fight winning streak. You did lose your debut, but it was at 125. short notice to finally get the call to be in the UFC, but not in the right way class and not to go your way. You fought Jasmine, tough opponent. Was that a hard pill to swallow? Yeah, fighting Jasmine was, honestly, I feel like I'm, you know, for as young as I am, I feel like I have some life experience and some ups and downs in my life. And, man, I was by far, probably the hardest thing I've ever had to go through.

You know, you look to being in the UFC since I was 10. I was like dreamed of what my debut would look like and, you know, the bright lights and who would be and all the above. And for it to go down the way I did it, man, it was such like a Debbie Downer. And obviously that being my first career loss, but then, you know, my debut loss, it's like nobody looks to for their debut and they think they're, going to lose it's almost like that fighter's mindset where it's like no i can't lose you know um and so in a way it was very humbling to me it was very very much an eye-opener uh i felt like i learned a lot

about myself that i can overcome adversity um i mean i lost to jasmine the next thing i did was i tk o due to cov in the second round um and now being on a three-fight win street um but it i mean every part of that fight was worth it you know i got a contract with the ufc i learned a lot about myself. I was able to obviously skip contender series and, you know, jump right into kind of like the Lionsden in a sense. And I think for me it was almost a way of showing to everybody that I'll never back down from a fight.

I'll never be scared to fight anybody and I'll fight anybody anywhere anytime. Okay, Frank has another question for you. Go ahead, Frank. Fatima, thanks for answering my question. But what is the reason behind going with the nickname Archangel? Oh, so I love what people ask me in this question. So I had an old coach that gave me this nickname. I'm a big Bible believer, believe in Jesus Christ.

He has my life. And so an archangel in the Bible is like a warrior of like a messenger of Christ. And so that's what I feel like I am. And man, it's cool, you know, like Michael the Archangel. He was always like a simple of like strength and a border. Oh, no, we're going to cry. So that's where it comes from. That's awesome.

Did you give it to yourself or did someone give it to you? No, an old coach of mine actually gave it to me. Okay. Yeah. And I also noticed that you have on your bio, Exodus 1414. Yes. What does that mean? Yeah, that is like my verse.

My dad actually gave me that verse. Oh, my God. Like maybe like 13 years old, I started like really getting deep into Jiu-Jitsu. Exodus 14 says Stay calm for the Lord your God will fight for you I had it on my mouthpiece I read it every time I go to fight That's like

Almost like you know Katie Taylor She's got like Psalm 18 Exodus 14 first 14 It's like that's that for me Okay I love it By the way Is it true that you almost went with The Butcher No no

I think that was just kind of like a joke Because when Previous to like the UFC and like fighting. I worked at a nearby grocery store and I was like a butcher. And so everybody kind of started going with that. But yeah, I think Archangel is a little more unique to me. Wow. So you were actually a butcher at the grocery store? Yeah. I worked a handful of jobs. I used to be a butcher at the grocery store. I would be chopping up the meat at the meat department. I used to be like a barista at a coffee bar. I worked with my dad doing like commercial

flooring in the city. Yeah, I've been a working handful of jobs before I got to where I am right now. Worst one. What's the worst job? I know. I feel like in a sense it's the best and the worst was probably working with my dad because it was so like physically taxing. But then it was in a way, it was the best one because I got to spend so much time from him and learn from him. And really, you know, who I am and how hard I work comes from my dad. So I'd say that was the of the worth it. I think he would agree with me too. Do you ever look down on people like he's being shy now, but like Frank likes like almond, macchiato, you know, like the sort of fancy drinks?

You're not like that? Are you more of like, you respect someone who walks up and is like, give me just a black coffee. Like that's what. As a barista, former barista, how do you view people who like like the sort of fancy drinks? Honestly, like I thought people who just like the fancy drinks just kind of like missed lunch and now they're like trying to get their lunch through their coffee. But in a way, that's kind of me too. Like, man, I'll go, I, I just finished drinking like a caramel macchiato. Okay, so you don't judge.

So, no, I don't judge. I'm probably on Frank's path on that one. Okay, Frank, this is good. I feel like people who are doing black coffee, like, they kind of scare me a little bit. I'm like, man, it's like black like your soul. It's like, oh, damn, that is deep. That is deep. And what about now?

Is it full-time MMA? Oh, yeah, yeah. I kind of, I quit everything when I got to the U.S. I told myself, I was like, when I get there, I want to really pour everything I had into it. And obviously, for me, specifically, I know everybody's different, but it's really hard to prioritize and almost like become the best in like multiple careers. So for me, I really just wanted to focus on fighting. So as soon as I signed with the UFC, I quit everything.

I also noticed, by the way, I'm looking at your tapology. There's an amazing amount of grappling matches here. I think there's like 21 on here. Was that the original? Yeah, just because there's like a stretch there at the beginning where it's all grappling matches. Yeah, so for me,

I feel like I maybe had a different route than maybe other fighters. Like I did jujitsu. I started jujitsu when I was 10. I didn't get into like striking to like 15. And I mean, at the time I was like 18. I knew I wanted to be in the UFC. I didn't really know how to get there

besides just, you know, taking MMA fights. And I had a really hard time finding MMA fights. So I was doing as much Jiu-Jitsu as I could. I competed that, Eddie Bravo's Medusa for the first time. And I won that. And I feel like that really skyrocketed me as somebody to kind of look out for. But I guess at first, that was my thought, was like, oh, how far can I get in, like, the Jiu-Jitsu realm? But as soon as I started, like, throwing hands at M.A fights, I got pulled right in.

By the way, what was it like sharing the card? I believe a good friend of yours is Aaron Blanchfield, right? Being on the same card as her, what was that like? Oh, it was pretty crazy. I mean, I feel like it was chaotic, exciting, nervousness all at the same time. We both have the same corner. So, like, as soon as my fight was done, my corner, like, ran to hers. It was super, it was super special for, like, all of us and Aaron and our whole team to experience two wins together.

and you know she obviously finished her fight so that was amazing um now i'm ranked number 12 and so oh my god that we've been we've been training since we were like 18 19 so for two young people to be able to experience um a pay-per-view card that big i mean that speaks for it so i did i did happen to see uh aaron's mom say that she was a fan of angela's like that she liked you but was a fan so that that might have gotten a little bit awkward yeah i mean in in a way like i feel like everybody was a fan at Angela when I was fighting. When I was going to fight her, I mean, everybody but me was like a fan of her. And so it didn't bother me at all.

I was just like, well, you're going to have to see your favorite fighter lose this time. Yes. And it was a great performance. How quickly do we want to return and against two? Yeah. I mean, I'd love to return against Tabitha Ritchie sometime in March. I'd really like to get myself into the top 10 or as close to top five as I can. but we'll see what the UFC has in store for me

but I think that's an exciting fight that it sounds like a lot of people want to hear I'm hearing it from a couple different angles so yeah I'd love to get another one over her okay Frank any book recommendations for Fatima at Barnes & Noble anything she should pick up she said she doesn't read so I know but

why would I make a recommendation? Maybe you can recommend something You just do your thing Comic book I'll like... Comic book Frank Frank you love comic books I have been reading a lot of Red Sonia lately so. Okay. Okay. Yeah, she has no idea. No one knows what that is. I have no idea what that is. It's like the Conan stuff, yeah. Okay, okay. Do you like tabletop games? I like tabletop.

Okay. We can find common ground somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this has been wonderful. Enjoy your day with your family. Thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate you. Congratulations. Good luck on your journey and thanks for jumping on on short notice. Really, really great of you. Yeah, thanks for having me. All the best. We'll talk to you soon. There she is. Fatima Klein of New York representing at the world's most famous arena. Taking that button away from you? Yeah, this is big, Frank. You will that into existence. I mean, what can I say? Thanks for doing it. He manifested this. That was incredible for Frankie. He believed achieved and conceived? Not in that order. He was nervous. He was nervous.

Is it that how it goes conceived? I think it's... Conceive, believe, achieve. I felt like we were going to get... That's true. I feel like we were going to get more questions from you there, Frank. Yeah, maybe next time. Can you get her again next week?

There might be something there. The coffee, tabletop games. You know what broke me? Shout out to the chat. The chat was on fire during that. Shout out to the chat. Thumbs up to the chat. What broke me was someone...

Someone said, ask her how she feels about trim, cocktail and ice coffee. I didn't even see that one. My favorite was the she says she doesn't read and Frank can't read. That was my favorite one. Oh my God. Oh my God.

That was, that's actually like one of my favorite segments in the history of the show. Also, she's great. Yeah, no, she's very cool. Very cool. New York's own. New York, I mean, I think Frank has an affinity for the New York based fighters. The New York based. Definitely.

well based uh frank i know your wife's a big fan of the show she wasn't watching right oh she was yeah i got a few text messages oh she's all of which were positive she's nothing about we love tracy don't bother coming home okay perfect perfect tabletop like what the hell is a red sonia what that is true that is true i don't know never told me that about you no one will ever know what a red sonya Tracy's the best we love tracy we're just having a bit of fun around This woman who doesn't read it all. Yeah, I'm into the Red Sonia lately. I love how you were like a macchiato.

Come on, I drink tonic espresso. Come at me. I try. I've had a tonic espresso. It is dog shit. The fact that Frank drinks it on a daily basis, he loves, like, motor oil. What is it? What is it? What is it? It's literally a shot of espresso dumped into tonic water. Dumped on top.

It's disgusting. That is so bad. How much water, by the way? A lot. So is it like totally watered down? Oh, yeah. How many shots of it? espresso. One? Oh, that's awful. It looks disgusting. So it's like fizzy espresso. Hey, you put your

olives on your pizza? Yeah, you're right. I put my espresso on my tonic. Although, I did have the olives on the pizza with the pineapple the other day. Uh-uh. I fucking liked it, man. Bro. Yeah, I would do it again in a heartbeat. Actually, Frank sent me a picture and I was so jealous. Can you, some things are done in confidence. What? You sent it to you individually, not to the group for a reason. Why, why is this a secret? The fucking pizza with olives on, man, calm down. Do you see how they He was just floating with another woman. Now I've been outed. Oh, no.

Now we're talking about the olives. I didn't realize this was confidential. Oh, wow. It was off the record. Oh, my bad. You know the other drink that Frank pushed on me was the, what's it called, the OJ and an espresso? Yeah, I've done that once or twice.

Yeah, I've heard about that. It's horrific. Yeah, I've heard about that. I don't like, give me an espresso. By the way, the reason I said the macchiato thing was because I was making fun of myself. Yeah, I didn't want to go almond cappuccino too obvious. She probably would know. So I tried to swear.

Oh, you thought you was going to say, wait, wait, wait, no, isn't that your drinker? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That was the, you know, that was the giveaway. But that was fun. I'm happy that you were down, you know, I was going to not, I was going to see something else, but I think it would have been taken the wrong way that you were like, you know. No, you were going to use the DTF line again. Oh, God.

No, I wasn't. I promise. You got the wrong guy, I promise. Thank you very much to Fatima. Congratulations to her. She's a force to be reckoned with right now in the, 115 pound division. We have a lot more to get to.

Back into the program, we are going to be joined by Connor Ben. I'm looking forward to that very much. We might be joined by another guest at the very end of the show, but that's still TBD, so stay tuned. Kyle Dawkes in studio, that'll be at around 3 o'clock.

David O'Tunga at 2.30. But in a matter of seconds, my friends, we're going to be joined by another in studio guest, and this man has had a very busy few days. No truth to the rumor that he has flown in just to be here today. just at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday to watch his guy, Connor Ben, defeat Chris Eubank, Jr.

And in the midst of all of that, we get the news that Anthony Joshua, his guy is going to be fighting Jake Paul on December 19th. And oh, by the way, there's a massive card in Riyadh this weekend. And oh, by the way, next weekend we've got the promotional debut of one Ben Whitaker. It is never a dull time over at Matchroom. And now we have the CEO of Matchroom boxing right here and now on the proxion. The great Frank Smith is here. There he is. Hello Frank. How are you? How are you? How are you? Yes, yes, yes. Please have a seat. I heard about Eric. Yeah, I saw I heard about Frank's crush. Oh, you go. I'll just heard about that. Okay, very nice. I thought it was on me.

Yeah, well, you know, different strokes, different folks. Welcome back. How are you? Last time Eddie was on, he gave me stick for having you on. He was like, you've watered, he said, I watered down the whole thing by having you on. Yeah. I didn't tell him this time that you were coming. I was hoping to. I was hoping to. squeeze a by him. It'll be very upset. It's not good for the eager. Yes, no, I know. I think, you know, he wanted me to build my way up and now I'm getting to the point where I'm on your show. Yes. And he's upset about it. As a regular now. Exactly. Second appearance. I know. I know. It's going to become the goods. I know. You might soon, like, beat him in the numbers. Maybe. I'll probably do bigger numbers. Yes, yes, yes. One day. What brings you to New York, by the way, other than being in studio? I had some, I've got some meetings here this week for some events next year. And then I'm flying

out to Miami for the Anthony Joshua. You're going to be there. Yes. Okay. I look forward to seeing you there. I know. I hear you're up on stage. I will be hosting it. I'm going to teach you guys how to host a press conference. This is how it's done. Jamie Ward won't be out. I like Jamie. Jamie's great. Aday is great. They're all great. I saw yesterday on your Instagram. You had a nice little sushi dinner. It was amazing. Where was that? Because I'm a, I'm a sushi, like, snob if you will. If I can go on my phone, I'll tell you what it's. Are you okay with giving them a plug? Yeah, I will. Because I have to say, I was salivating looking at it. It was called Shuko. Shuko. Shuko. On 12th.

okay I've not been amazing amazing amazing top notch very good okay you recommend it yes I would definitely go there so Shuko get down there yes I'd get a free dinner yeah free plug wow look at that okay lots to talk to you about I actually want to start with the the new news if you will and then we'll go back to this weekend Connor will be joining us Connor Ben's later in the program so looking forward to that Anthony Joshua Jake Paul when did this come on your radar on matchroom's radar when did you guys really start because obviously it was supposed to be tank yeah and then that got cancelled around two weeks ago. So how did it all come together? There was a talk. There was talk obviously a while back about it and then they did the tank fight. You know, there was a lot of

discussion about it potentially happening in 2026, early part of 2026. Then the tank fight fell out and I think then they were looking at opportunities and the Kesa got on to Eddie about it. And then those discussions started. It all moved very quickly, to be honest with you. They had a number of options they were looking at, of course. We didn't really think he'd be mad enough to take the Anthony Joshua fight, but fair play to him. He did it. But yeah, very quickly, it was done within a week or so of it happening. So, yeah, a big move. So initially, did you guys think, because I heard Eddie say somewhere, it might have been talks about where he was like, look, I told these guys, like, you're not going to use Anthony to like, you know, say, hey, we tried and it didn't work out.

Did you guys think initially, like, this is all just games? Not sure whether it was game. It was just more, was he actually mad enough to do it? You know, it's huge. It's going to be a huge event, but was Jake Paul deluded enough to think it was a good option to get in the ring with Anthony Joshua? A.J's up for anything, you know, there's lots of people who have a view on him taking this fight and everyone's got a view and everyone's right to have their own view on it, but, you know, he was always going to have a warm-up fight, a comeback fight, so why not do it against Jake Paul for a load of money? If you were the CEO of MVP, if you were looking after Jake Paul's career, would you be okay with him fighting Anthony Joshua? I wouldn't push it myself.

You know, I think AJ is on a whole other level. The reality is Jake Paul has done amazing things in the sports. I would never disrespect him for what he's done in such a short space of time. The truth is, though, Anthony Joshua is on a whole other level. You know, Tommy Fury beat Jake Paul. Yeah. And people forget that. You know, and again, Jake's done an amazing job of...

He's better, though, now, Ray. Would you see he's better? Yeah, he's definitely improved. And you have to give him credit because he's given his life to it. He's not like an influencer who's come in for an eight-week camp and said, I'm going to come and become a boxer. He is a boxer, and, you know, he's just not at the level of Anthony Joshua. But because of the names he's been in there with, you know, he's now pressured himself to get a big fight

because everyone's saying, when's this guy going to actually fight someone? And he can't win because everyone's saying, when's he going to fight someone? He picks Anthony Joshua and they will go, you're crazy. Right. You know, maybe he's gone a step too far. That's probably the reality. Well, I've heard some people, like everyone has a take on this, as you said. I saw David Hay say this. Tony Bellew as well, like, he could die. And so you alluded to the fact that, like, is he diluted enough to do this? Do you think this is a mistake for him? Forget the business. You know, people can die in boxing. And there have been some awful, you know, scenes. Do you think that he is making a huge mistake from a health standpoint or a safety standpoint to fight someone? We saw what he did to Francis Inganu. It was shocking. He's not Francis Inganu. He doesn't have that size and that experience. So what do you think? It looks a dangerous sport. We have to accept. Obviously, it's a dangerous sport. And every.

everyone has to put the measures in place to make it as safe as they possibly can. It's a huge risk. You know, it's a huge risk. You can't, you can't look away from that. But then I think as well, Jake Paul fighting Mike Tyson was a huge risk for Mike Tyson at his age, you know, was a dangerous thing to do. You know, and it's part and parcel of it, the reality is, and this is the world we live in, people are going to tune in. People are going to tune in because they either want to see Jake Paul knocked out or some people are deluded enough to think that Jake Paul can beat Anthony Joshua. But, you know, if I was in the position representing Jake Paul, would I say get in the ring with Anthony Joshua? Hell no. You know, maybe if he'd gone, stepped up in the right steps, he's never really been in there with anyone of any sort of boxing troub.

You know, he thought Chavez, obviously, but Chavez way beyond his best, not, you know, he's not an active fighter that's lived a life. But he's always got in there and done what he had to do, you know, Jake has, but it's just that step too far. And I think he's got people around him who truly believe that Jake can beat Anthony Joshua. Now, I've seen clips of Jake Paul saying he's slow, he's got a bad chint. Like, what are you talking about? But or if they believe it, well, fair play to him. I'd like to be as delusional as that. What do you see to the people who say Anthony is ruining his legacy just by taking this fight?

Forget how it goes just by being involved in this fight. I don't think he can win in truth. You know, because fans, again, everyone's entitled to their opinion. But fans don't respect what he's done in the sport already. He's an Olympic gold medalist, two-time unified heavyweight champion. of the world. And I don't think he's ever really got the credit for it. And he was never going to get the credit for it until, you know, many, many years down the line. So if I said to you, Ariel, you can go and do your job, but you can do a really easy version of your job for a load of money.

You, I would think, like I would, if someone said the same to me, would go and do that easy version for a load of money. So Anthony's doing, you know, he's out there, he's a career, he's got a career to, he's the biggest commercial style or one of the biggest commercial stars in the sport, he's going out there to make money. That's part and parcel of it. So, you know, people will write him off and say he shouldn't be doing this, but, you know, anyone else in his shoes would do the exact same thing. It is a tough spot for him. I, I sort of sympathize with him because I feel like if he doesn't beat him quicker than he beat Francis, people are just going to write it off. They're going to say, oh, he's carrying him or it's script, all the stuff that you hear when Jake fights.

And so I'll ask you bluntly, have there been any discussions about, oh, because you see what everyone's saying it's an exhibition there's an agreement there's a secret contract it's the same story every time every time he fights and i don't believe it for a second but now you're on the opposite side of that table have any of those discussions happened regarding this fight it's an eight round professional fight you know no no different to a normal professional fight a jay wouldn't have taken it if that was the stance it had to be if it was an exhibition if it was you've got to hold him up for eight rounds you know that's not he it wouldn't suit anthony joshua anthony joshra is going in there to knock out jake pool and that's what you'll see on the 19th

of December. Any particular reason why it's eight rounds, not 10? I mean, it doesn't really matter. It could be two rounds because he's not going to go past the first one. That's a good point. That's a good point. What about the DeZone component? I did see that he tweeted, I'll be back. He's a DeZone fighter. They're heavily invested in him. How hard was it to get them to say, okay, we're okay with this? Yeah, it was a commercial agreement to make it happen and, you know, and respect to DeZone as well for being pragmatic, working through it in a, you know, it was a quick, as I say, quick negotiation to make it happen, you know, he'll be back on DeZone in 2026 in big fights. They've stood by him for many years now. They've been involved in massive fights with Anthony

Joshua. And it made sense for everyone to make this happen. And that's why we're seeing it. But yeah, big thank you for DeZone for allowing it to happen. What about the Riyadh season component? Because on the broadcast on Saturday, Turkey Al-Shake said in an interview, like we had big plans for him, February, and then later in the year. And I kind of took that as, all right, a December fight isn't going to happen. That's a quick turnaround. Was that hard? And we know about the history between them and Jake. And so was it hard to get them on board? He's a Riyadh season ambassador, Anthony. He's got a relationship with them as well. And, you know, they've done his excellence. He's done amazing things with Anthony over the last few years. He's been involved in mega fights, both in Saudi and in London as

well. And they, you know, we're excited about what the future holds with them. We've got big opportunities as Turkey said in 2026 big fights to be made and big big nights. AJ as I said was always going to have a warm-up fight. It's just the fact that the warm-up fight is now Jake Paul, but we'll be back with big shows with his excellency next year. The warm-up fight was supposed to be in Ghana in December? No, it wasn't Ghana. We were talking, we had discussions about different options. We've obviously got, I think, seven shows in six weeks in five countries. You know, so it was never, it was always just the case of getting him out there and getting him active. It wasn't done, but that was always the plan that he'd get out this side of the year.

Which one was it? It could have been any show. I have the list here. It's an insane list. So you have, you have Jesse Rodriguez on this weekend, November 22nd. Then you have Birmingham, Ben Whitaker. Then you have Queensland, Gio, Pataya, Justice Hooney on there. Monaco on December 6 as well, same day.

Stockton, California, Home of the Diaz brothers, December 13th. London, December 17th. This card is on the 19th. Ghana on the 20th, and then re-ed for the big, in a way, fight against David Picasso, 27th. so you think it wouldn't be the Ghana one because that's what everyone no we're we're co-promoting the show with Anthony in Ghana okay five eight are our co-promoters on the show there was always discussion about a.J. fight in there possibly at some point but it wasn't the plan for him to

go on that show who was the opponent going to be a top 100 heavyweight you know someone's really like a tune up yeah exactly so now he's just got a tune up against Jake pool yeah and probably for a fraction of the money yeah of course you know and this was this was a no-brainer to do this because the key was him getting back in the ring, you know, getting the gloves on, going through the process. And that's what he's going to do on December 19th. You know, he's been out of the ring since September of 24, you know, and I think that breaks done him well, because throughout his career since he turned professional with us in 2013, he's never stopped. He's never had a break. He's never had time to himself. And I think that breaks really helped get him, you know, ready to go for

a big, because this is really the last chapter of his career and everything he does now has to be the right decision. You know, so what's so interesting, interesting about this is like all the different opinions all the different takes to me when you lay it out it's it's the ultimate no-brainer and then I've heard and maybe you can confirm is this the biggest payday of his career he's up a little he's done very well he's done very well in many of fights but it would be maybe top five it'd be up there yeah it's a big it's a big fight on the biggest platform in the world against arguably like the easiest opponent that he could face exactly the easiest option he could have faced so so it's like who in their

right mind unless money doesn't motivate you know for some people money obviously doesn't but for a lot of people in a dangerous sport as well we're in a dangerous sport and you you know you want to go out there and you want to make money and you want to earn what you deserve so why wouldn't you do it i'd do it was he on board right away or did he have to be convinced no i think he you know he was he was he was bang up for it okay okay i asked that because i remember when like tyson fought um enganu the first time he was like oh this is in my cup of tea and then obviously he ended up fighting in ganu and so i didn't know if this was a bridge too far for him no i think for a j it was just he's done everything in the sport he's big like i say he's a two-time unified champion he's fought the best the elite fighters in

you know alexander usick twice um and for him it's just right i want to do things that interested me motivate me and obviously if you can go and do that for a load of money against someone you know fair but i think me and jake pool might be more competitive than jake pool and Anthony Joshua. Oh, my dear. I actually want to make as the comeback fight of Jake Paul, Eddie Hearn, Jake Paul. Wow. Yeah. Don't you think that would be big? Um, as the comeback fight. Yeah, like, meaning after he loses this one. Yeah, for Jake's comeback fight. You think Eddie would be down for money. Could you imagine? I know. I'd, I'd happily negotiate with Nikisa. Really? Yeah, yeah. Has Eddie ever done any sort of like amateur smoker or something?

I think he had two, two or three fights when he was very young. And I change his name to Eddie Hills from Eddie Hearn. Is that true? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, this is this pre you meeting him? Yeah, this was when he was a kid. Okay, got it. When I think he was 17, 18 years old. But that's the fight I want to make next. Okay. And is Eddie okay with this? I don't know. Okay, we'll find out. Yeah, I guess you know, but I'm going to take my cut from him. So, you know, I'm going to speak to Nikisa when I see him tomorrow. By the way, how did that go in the Kesa? Like, you know, obviously it's been up and down. How were the negotiations with them? I think very good. I wasn't too close with it. You know, there was a lot going on over the last couple of weeks. Eddie. dealt with Nekisa, you know, obviously we've had our differences in the past, but, you know, we're sensible people. If a deal's there to be made and it makes sense, you know, we'll make it, you know. So we haven't always seen eye to eye with him, but, you know, it was a very easy process. And you also have to, I've said this before, even when we've had our differences, respect what Nekisa's done, you know, over the last few years, because he's built a tremendous business. It is interesting considering your history and how this is like the third time in a row, you know,

like the two Katie Serrano fights and then obviously there was the one way back in the day but like in the span of a year you guys have had to work together yeah yeah multiple times yeah again we we're not always going to see eye to eye that's the reality of it and we're also we're representing two different opinions and two different views he's got his job to do we've got ours to do so you're not always going to see eye to eye but you know it was good it was a good process it got done very quickly on the original um tank j card there were a couple of pbc fights sprinkled. I doubt those guys are remaining on this. Someone asked me this yesterday

and we haven't heard much about the rest of the card. Will there be any matchroom fighters, other match room fighters on this card? No, no, no. I mean, I'm not sure what the undercard is for the event. I think AJ and Jake Paul's enough to maybe they'll just do that. Maybe it'll be a two minute broadcast. Well, no, I was

thinking like a Pat Brown, you know, you guys have a litany of... Pat's actually at an unbelievable performance a few weeks back. He's going to take a break now. We've got so many shows coming up. They actually all of our fighters are active and busy okay um so you know we we won't really have anyone spare okay um and so when when this gets all finalized and everything like that um do you have any sort of do you have any sort of read as to like where i think you would know where a j is at because my

concern was maybe he's not fit maybe he wasn't training the the elbow surgery i think it was like how seriously is he taking this training camp we we saw tyson fury not take the francis fight seriously what could you tell us about like how he's viewing this as far as a test as normal as normal like i say everything he's always done he's always training anyway apart from when he had the injuries he's always training in some sense you know he's in full camp and no different here you know he knows what he needs to go because look the pressure is on him in a sense of he has to go and knock him out in the first round or so and that's what he'll do so he's not taking it any differently any lighter than he would a normal or what we call a normal in his in his mind i love to

the idea of Ben Davison and Lee Wiley breaking down Jake Paul footage, you know, because I think they will take it seriously. That's the way they conduct themselves and that's how they treated the Francis fight, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you see what he did to Francis in Ghana, yes. I mean, it is quite wild as to what's going to happen against Jake Paul. That is a scary thought. Are you scared of that? Uh, I'm not going to be there. You're not even going. I'm going to Ghana. I'm doing our first show in Accra in Ghana, so I'm not going to be there, but I will be tuning in. How do you guys decide that, by the way? Who goes where? We, like the press conference this way, Eddie's in Saudi, obviously the big show on Saturday night in Saudi. He's there. We've got

Jesse Bam Rodriguez, as you say, fighting for the unified world titles. So Eddie's there. We just mix it up, you know, wherever, or maybe he's trying to help me build my profile now and sending me to things. Are you going to be on the dais? I don't know. Okay. It's up to Nekisa. Okay, okay. If Nekisa's up there, I'll be up there with him. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. What has been the reaction back home to this?

As you, as expected, people will have their view going about the legacy piece and this, that the other. But again, you know, people didn't really respect what he'd done in the sport. A lot of people didn't really respect what he done. You feel that way. I feel. From a media standpoint. Yeah. I think a lot of people write him off.

And I don't think, you know, I know we've worked with him for a long time and he's a friend. But actually, when you look at what he's a friend. created, the Knights is created, and what he did for British boxing at a time when it needed a boost as well. You know, it's unrivaled really, you know, and, but yeah, the reaction is a lot of people saying Jake Paul is crazy. A lot of people talking about the legacy, but he shouldn't be doing this, Anthony, but, you know, again, put yourself in his position, as we all would, we'd all do it. There's a lot of sanctimonious takes when it comes to boxing. It's one thing to be like, oh, if you lose to this guy, all right, I'll view you differently, but to suggest that just by taking

the fight, when we talked about it on Monday, in 1976, Muhammad Ali was the heavyweight champion of the world, he fought in a mixed rules bout against a pro wrestler in Japan. No one said that his legacy was ruined. In 1975, coming off the rumble in the jungle, George Foreman fought five guys on the same night in Toronto, coming off the Ali fight. No one said his legacy was ruined. And so, like, actually, Jake is more accomplished than those guys when it comes to boxing. one of the biggest, you know, figures in the sport. And so I see this stuff, like I get, I get these clips. I look at these clips of the guys back home on, on, on talk sport in these places. And they're going crazy over it. I'm like, this is, this is silliness. This is all performative. You almost feel

like you have to, I feel like if you're in the boxing community in the UK, you feel like you have to poo this. Yeah. Just to like, save face. Just to say like, I was the one. I was the one going against. Yes, yes. But also it's because all of these people, it's their livelihood is to say things. that get people talking, you know, whether it's, and I haven't seen too much of, I had a busy end of the week last week, so I didn't see too many of the interviews when it was being spoken about. I haven't watched much this week, but I can imagine, you know, I've seen on Twitter what people are saying, you know, everyone's got to do their thing to get people talking. What's up with you and Simon Jordan? What's happening over there?

Well, he's my, I bumped into him the other day. Look, he, for whatever reason. Seems disrespectful, though. It seems like he's trying to belittle you. Yeah, he calls me a T-boy, which I don't have any care about. He says, I'm a bag carrier. You know, look, I'm sure I've said things in response to things he has said over the years. We're all guilty of responding, you know, in a certain way. I don't know why he doesn't like me too much, you know, because he, as far as I've said in an interview the other day, he came from nothing, as far as I know, built his way up into a position, was very successful. So for me, I've done the same thing. I haven't got rise to the heights he has got to, or he got to in his

career. But he's not a big fan. He's a big fan of Eddie now. I think he's moving from Eddie to me. Okay. You know, maybe that's a compliment. Maybe. Maybe I've got, yeah, I know, maybe in time there'll be someone else he can move on to and he'll like me. What's weird to me is that you're the CEO of the company and that wasn't handed to you. Your story well documented. We talked about you've talked about. And so like when he when he like tries to son you as they say here and insult you to me is just a you would never really see that here. Like he like no one really talks. to the CEO of a sports company the way he talks about you. And I consume all of this stuff and I enjoy it for the most part. But I'm like, it just seems like a little too personal. Yeah, he's very personal

with him. For whatever reason, he has some deep rooted issues for me, which I don't know why. But maybe again, like I say, I've said somewhere I've reacted in a way and I've said things detrimental to him in response. So maybe that's my fault in part. But, you know, for me, I think because I'm quite a quiet character for the most part when you compare me to eddie you know i'm in the background a lot of people have a view of i don't know what i'm talking about i don't know what i'm doing you know i'm just there because i was eddie's mate right that that's that's what a lot of people think with me obviously my job i run the day to day of the business you know i'd put on huge events eddie is an integral part of course of our business and he's the face of our business but i

think people because eddie does so much talking just think i'm just in the background as his mate just sitting there going like this you know just along for the ride um so maybe that's part of the reason why he just thinks i'm i'm still the t-boy bag carrier you ever speak to him like off-camera be like yo man like what's the deal here i saw when i saw him the other day he was perfectly fine okay i said hey how are you you look off camera yeah yeah i said lovely jacket and he went oh try but he was perfectly fine didn't say a word interesting and then he he thinks you know i I had a thing where I said something about Ben Whittaker. A big thing or a bad thing?

No, I said about the matching when Ben Whittaker was with Boxer wasn't very good, which I don't think it was. You know, I don't think they did a great job for his career. And he was like, why do you have to stick the knife into Ben Shalom? Like that, I was like, no, I'm just, I'm responding to a question of where I think things can improve. He's very close with Ben Shalom, someone I'm very outspoken about because I don't, I'll be honest with you, he's not, I'm not his biggest fan.

And I think he doesn't like the fact. that I say things about Ben, for whatever reason. You've suggested that they're kind of in cahoots. Yeah, yeah, I think so. You think he has a financial arrangement to be propping him up? Yeah, because it's very strange. He doesn't have the same behavior with Ben as he does with other promoters. So that's part of, I feel that's part of the reason is because it's a reason to come

at me from Simon. Why don't you like Ben or why don't you respect Ben? I've said before, I think he's a pathological liar. Oh, I think he, you know, He says things which are just untrue. He's done things on a personal level, which I don't agree with. And it's not, I have no dislike really for anyone. You know, there's a lot of people I don't get on with in the sport, but I stomach and I, you know, you have to.

It's business. Just like, I'm sure there's people you don't align your views with, but you have to get on with them. But I'm not the kind of person who's just going to sit back and play along if I don't agree with something. So, yeah, there's been, there's a number of reasons. I don't really go into too much detail of it. People think it's, I'm picking up, like, he's the same, he's basically, he's two years younger than me. But I feel he plays the victim in a lot of things he does.

You know, and he comes into sport. He says, I'm going to change this sport. And it's like, well, you're actually worse, you know. So, part and parcel, but I don't, I don't spend too much time thinking about it. The problem I have is I get asked questions about it. Yeah. I respond to it. People say, why do you keep going on about it?

It's like, because I'm just responding to my answer to, to a question but I don't spend too much time thinking about anything but our business really you know away from these interviews when you guys were able to sign ben Whitaker from them was that like a nice little personal victory for you yeah it wasn't but I said in interviews it was never about getting one over them it was because I believe ben Whitaker can be and he can be one of the biggest superstars in boxing he has the character he has the ability and I think with us telling the story I think him and eddie as a partnership together will be unrivaled you know and you'll see that at the press conference in a in a week or so so it was never about getting one over them you know nothing we do there's too many people in boxing who make

decisions rash decisions and based off emotion and based off the fact oh if we do this we get one over here it's like no we make decisions because it's for the right of our business and the long term uh for our business and everything we do is around that so a lot of people asked me that but it was always going to happen you know we we were supposed to sign him in 2020. We filmed a promo with him. It didn't happen. He signed with a boxer at that point. I always knew we'd get there at some point. They invested a lot of money in him and now he's with us and I'm excited about what the future holds. How's that show looking from a fan interest, ticket sale standpoint, the one in bringing in next weekend? Yeah, good. I think we went on sale very late. We went

on sale four or five weeks out. It was a rush to get everything together. We signed him. We moved very quickly with it. It's going to be sold out in there next week. You know, it's, it's a small venue. We had a date from DeZone, which we had to basically build a venue in. Okay. So we're in a, we're in an event space that we're building up, you know, a venue that we wouldn't traditionally go to. So it's about making the date work. You know, it's going to be a big walkout as well for Ben Whittaker. Okay. I love his entrances. He's great, you know, but he gets it. He's an entertainer. 100%. You know, inside the ring, he's a, he's a brilliant fighter. I think him and Andy Lee together is a tremendous pairing. And then outside the ring, he understands what he needs to do. And that's why

we made such a big investment and push for him, because we truly believe where he can get to in the sport. And I think he's going to fit, you know, the zone, the global homer box in. It's the place to be for him. I notice when Eddie is asked about you and Simon, he's always like, yeah, I wanted to keep going. I like it. I'm wondering if you feel the same about him and Dana White. Do you like the friction there? Yeah, I think, I think, Dane has never had anyone like Eddie in, in M. M. Look, I'm not an MMA. You know much more than me. But they're the powerhouse, aren't they?

And they've been a powerhouse for many years. So he's never really had to answer to this little group here because I'm Dana Wyatt and I'm the man. In boxing, he's coming in where it's a market with a number of promoters that have been in the sport for a long time. And I don't think, it's just Eddie being Eddie. You know, Eddie's being no different. He's just responding to questions.

So when Dana says, I'm going to take over boxing, I'm going to run all the promoters out, etc. Eddie's not just going to sit there and go, okay, thanks Dana. You know, like that's not his character. So, and Eddie's a, you know, I think he's British humor as well. You know, he's very sarcastic. He's very dry as a, as a Maya. And I think it's only going to carry on.

We're going to be competitors. You know, I don't think they're going to recreate what they've done in UFC in boxing. I think it's a think they are, you know. I don't know, why don't you think? I think it's a, look, it's a sport that's got hundreds of years of heritage. It's had huge investment. years after year, you know, whether it was Waddell and Reid with PBC, whether it was the Triller guys pumping a few hundred million in, you know,

DeZone obviously invested huge in it, you know, you've got his excellency right now, investing massive money into the sport of boxing. But there's been people come and go in the sport over the years, because boxing is this sexy sport with the history. I think they'll create a tremendous brand because that's what they do. They've done it with PowerSlapp, whether you like it or not. You know, people are talking about it. So they'll create a tremendous brand, but I don't believe they'll be able to take over the sport

because you've got so many people already in the sport and who are successful, who have got huge brands, who have got rights deals, broadcasters behind them. And I think the fighter, sort of the fighter relationship is very different. Now, in UFC, they're essentially, the brand is bigger than the athletes. That's the truth of it, for the most part, outside of maybe a Connor McGregor or, you know, one or two. in boxing without the athletes your brand doesn't mean too much you can have a right still you can have all of this but you need the athletes to be on side and i think that's going to be hard for them to transition the power you know from in ufc being able to say you're fighting on this date

you're wearing these gloves these are your sponsors yadio the other to actually i'm in i'm in charge here i'm the fighter and i'm in charge and that's what it is in boxing you know with all of our clients. We're, you know, we're their promoter, we invest in them, but they're the boss. And I feel that's completely different, the complete opposite to the UFC. I know this is a very American-centric question, but what do you make of them trying to amend the Muhammad Ali Act? Yeah, I mean, it's in favor of them, isn't it? You know, it's in favor of the, the, or TKO group, not in favor of the fighters. The Mohammed Ali Act was put there to protect the fighters. And there's certain things they want out there because it suits them but it doesn't suit the fighters you know and fighters aren't

stupid fighters are going to look at that and go well why would i go across here you know all of these things that will put in place to protect me and now being taken away something doesn't quite add up um so i look i i think it's an interesting move i don't i think they have to they're going to have to look at what type of fighters they bring in as well you know they're not going to go in at the highest level, you know, with the kind of fighters they're signing. You know, they want to build a brand, again, that is bigger than the athletes themselves, whereas our whole business is built on something completely different, the complete opposite of that. Do you think that, um, ultimately like this idea that, you know, we're not going to work with the WBCs, the WB, like, we're going

to have our own belt. Do you think any fighter, I would imagine maybe like a youngster is going to be like, you know what, I'll, I'll, I'll believe in these guys. Do you think any of the mid-tier to top-tier fighters are going to be like, okay, I'm, you know what I mean? Because most of the ones that I've talked to have said, like, no, I grew up wanting to be the WBC champion because that's the belt Mohammed Ali held and all these guys. So what do you think about this idea of saying like, because even yesterday Dana was doing an interview and he's like, he literally said like fuck those other guys. I don't care what they're doing. I don't care what they're about. We're going to do it our way. How do you think this is going to actually be received? I think it adds more confusion into an already confusing sport. There's already confusion as to how many belts there are, how many world champions there are. So you add another layer into that. Like you say, maybe in, I think if you're looking at a 25, 30 year game plan and changing the mindset of fighters, yeah, but like when you talk about young fighters coming through now, I want to be the WBC world champion, WBO, IBF, WBO, that's what they've, that's what they've worked their whole life to be. It would be different if they were driven by huge amounts of money, but I don't think they're going to invest huge amounts of money to bring the fighters over. You know, if you were going in with the idea of we're going to go and overpay everyone to come across to this new league. or whatever the format is, you know, obviously money is a driving force, but I don't think

that's what they're looking to do. They're looking to transition young fighters, you know, who come through, but that's going to be a long, long game. And I don't think that's even 25 years is long enough. I think you're talking so far down the line because it's just, we're in a sport with so much history and heritage. To the best of your knowledge, have they talked to any fighters that were approaching the end of their matchroom deals or free aid? Because I hear about the hundreds of fighters that they want to sign, but I have yet to hear about who these fighters are. I don't believe any fighters. We, you know, I've heard some of the fighters they've signed, which are sort of lower level fighters. I haven't heard of any match room fighters

they've approached to sign or, you know, fighters out of their contract. But it's come very quiet. I think they start in 2026, don't know they've got their paramount contract. So I'm sure they'll be making move soon. Look, it's going to be an interesting period. And as I say, you can't sit back and go, they're not going to create a brand. Of course they are. It's what they do. tremendous at it. But I don't think it's just going to wipe out what's been built for, you know, in our business, 43 years of boxing. You know, they're not going to just walk in and take over like they may expect to do. What do you make of the fact that top rank doesn't have a deal, four months after their deal expired? Yeah, I think part of it is because of the way, when you look at the last

eight years of their ESPN deal, I think they had a $90 million rights for a year, were they delivering for that in truth no you know if you're if you're asking my opinion you know as a as a fan if i was a fan they weren't delivering and i think they they obviously made a lot of money in that period but they weren't necessarily thinking about the longevity of the sport and their business you know and i think it's interesting because they're a powerhouse you know it's amazing what bob barram has done when you look at the fights he's been involved in over the last what 70 years he's 94 years old um and i don't think they've got a character to lead the business this now we you know as bob gets into those latter years like how much longer is bob going to want

to do be traveling the globe for the fact he's doing it at 94 i don't want to be doing it at 44 let me know 90s so um it's interesting times for the for the whole sport you know look at pbc you've got not really a huge deal with amazon amazon now you know de zone is the home of boxing we're in a great place we we are the leading i would say u.s boxing promoter and it's exciting for us but you match him as that yeah yeah More than Golden Boy, or top rank. 100%. Your deal is up at the end of 26 with DeZone.

When does that start? When do those talks start? Yeah, already started. You know, look, we believe in the DeZone vision. You know, we made a decision many years ago, especially in the UK, to leave our long-term broadcaster in Sky back in 2021, who we've been with for 30 years because we believe where the zone was going. You know, for us, we're excited about the future.

They're in a great place as a business, not just in boxing, but on a, on a global vision across all the sports they're involved in. So, yeah, we're looking forward to the future with DeZone. We're very close with them. We've got a great relationship with all of the teams throughout. And, yeah, hopefully we'll have news soon. Is there a period where you will talk to other people, or is the focus just on resigning? I think for us, we believe in the DeZone vision.

It's the home of boxing, as I've said so many times. You know, when you look at what they're doing, if you want to be involved in big fights, they're all on DeZone now. So for us, that really is the focus. and we're 100% invested in that. Do you think Sky will get back into boxing? I think personally, boxing is a very frustrating sport to be involved in. And I think for someone like Sky is such a huge corporate business,

the aggravation is attached to boxing sometimes isn't worth, you know, on a higher corporate level, isn't worth, you know, being involved in it. I'm sure they'll be in and out of the sport in some way. I'm not sure they will have as much of an investment in it as they've had in the past. It's also very difficult, I feel, when you leave the sport for a period to come back in. You know, it's a hard move. It's interesting. As far as linear television is concerned, it's not on sky.

It's not on TNT anymore. I guess there's the BBC deal, but that's BBC two, right? Yeah. And that's it. Like as far as UK and even here in the States, it's not on linear. That's a sign of the times, right? That's kind of wild. Yeah, 100%.

But that's what we saw many years ago, and we probably made the move early with the zone, is the way people digest content is very different now. You know, it's not, we were saying out here before, you know, you used to go on Tuesday at 7 o'clock. I'm going to watch this show that's on whatever channel it was on, you know, for us in the UK, it was BBC, I, TV, whatever. You don't do that anymore.

You know, we live in a world where we're on our phones. We're on our iPads, on our laptops, or we've got our smart TVs. And that's the way people digest things now, and it's changing, and we have to move with the times with that. Okay, now this past weekend, it's done and dusted. Is that it? Are we done with the rivalry? I hope so.

I mean, I feel, by the way, when you said it, I saw you say it somewhere. I think I read it on your Instagram and you were like, hopefully that's it. I feel like you're saying it from a different place because you were kind of caught in in the middle of a weird thing. We talked about it with your misses and whatnot. You probably, your reasons for wanting it to be over are maybe different than others. But I'm sure you feel like that's it, right? Yeah. And look, it's something that had gone on for close to four years.

when you look back to when the first fight was made um and it was the best thing for both of those guys to do those two fights they were two huge moments and respect for both of them for doing what they did you know the first fight was tremendous the second fight unbelievable performance from connor ben um and respect to chris as well you know but i'm just i'm glad it's over you know it consumed me in many ways more than just business yeah you know so exhausting yeah i can't imagine how awkward this was for you. Yeah and it was also the years even when the fight wasn't made it was those years in between where every interview you get asked questions about it and you couldn't escape it. The drug tests and all that. Yeah and then obviously for most part I could go home and talk about

most things. This I didn't you know it wasn't an easy thing to go home and talk about. So for me as an individual I'm delighted it's over. It's given us two amazing nights you know for the sport of boxing and two nights I'm very proud to have been involved in and played a part of But yeah, I don't want to see it again. It was such a different fight than the first one. And the big question is, was that because of what Chris didn't do or what Connor did? Now, I know you're Conner's guy and you promoted him and I was blown away by the performance. But I was equally a little bit surprised by how lethargic Chris looked and the lack of activity.

What did you make of it? Yeah, I think you saw in Chris's press conference afterwards to take nothing away from Connor Ben. I think Connor Ben went in there and did exactly what he was supposed to do and stuck to a game plan the whole way. through. You know, I think in the first fight, there was a lot of aggression in that first fight from Conner that he'd openly spoken about. It had been, as I say, three years of build-up in the first one. I think this time round, he followed a game plan. It was without anger. It was based on boxing and following what he needed to do. So you can't take anything away from Connor Ben's performance. You know, not every night, is it going to be your best night?

You know, April wasn't the best night for Conor Ben, but it was the best night for him in November. and it was a great win for him and he will now look to go to 147 what Chris chooses to do now let's see I think the the first fight took a lot out of Chris you know Connor had never experienced anything quite like that Chris had been in hard fights but that was

probably the hardest fight of his career and you know I think that took a lot out of him in that well Chris coming back you know the 160 of rehydration all that do you think he made a mistake by coming back so soon under the same rules I know those had to be these stipulations if they fought again

but to do it so soon, do you think that affected him? I think the older you get, the tougher it obviously gets. You know, he made 159.1. It wasn't easy. I think the difference is compared to, you know, in MMA, you see fighters make weight all the time. You see the way they make weight. In boxing, it's frowned upon to show fighters making weight. Why is that? I don't know.

Look, there's obviously a lot of restrictions from the commissions as to the way fighters make weight. And I think it's just two very, very different worlds. has net you've never seen it Chris is obviously one of the few to show that but a lot of fighters go through very tough times to make the weight they fight at and then rehydrate from there you know Chris made 159.1 obviously the 160 well under the 160 weight limit that is his natural weight again I go back to the point gets harder as you get older I think any long if he left it longer the older you get the tougher it gets you know and it was supposed to be in September it obviously got postponed from September to November

I think it was always going to be difficult coming back after a fight like that it was always going to take a lot whether the fight was a year down the line or when it was seven months down the line. So you mentioned 147 for Connor it will be that right? No 154 will be 147. Yeah, that's the plan. That's the plan. Back at 147

you know he's not huge. When you saw him I think he weighed in at the start camp at 156 you know it's only nine pound over the limit obviously his body's changed a lot. He's put on a lot muscle for the fight at 160. But 147's the plan. There's big fights to be made out there. And you know, for Connor, he's in a position where when you take out the AJs and the furies who are towards the latter parts of their career, he's probably the biggest name in British boxing. Is he a stadium dry now, in your opinion? Yeah, in a hundred percent. You know, look,

you see the fights he's getting called out for, Ryan Garcia. Yeah. Could you imagine that fight? Okay, so they were going back and forth today. Is this the one that you guys are targeting? It's a great fight. You know, I think Ryan Garcia will have his own plans of what he wants to do as well. Conner's in a great position because he does huge numbers. He's a great character and he's got the fan base behind him. So, you know, whether it's Ryan Garcia, whether it's someone else at 147, there's huge fights to be made for him. We will now look at that. I think March time, I'm seeing Keith Connolly who manages Connor later today to discuss next step. So I'm excited about what the future holds with him. What would be your pick? Who would be your

pick? Because he's got, he mentioned Romero. There was Barrio. There's Romero. There's Romero. Look, Romero's got a mandatory against Chakram Giyos of, with the WBA, one of our guys from Uzbekistan, Mario Barrios, I think he's working on a fight now as well. But the biggest one for this one, yeah, Ryan Goss is the biggest one. You saw the talk about Shakur as well. Yeah. Shikor saying, I've got my fight. You see when they were on there on my show together. They were magic. They were like a buddy cop movie. They were amazing. Yeah, but that's what any fight Conner goes into is going to draw interest. Yeah. And that 147, 154, you know, they're so. many fights out there for him to be involved in you know he wants to become a world champion so that's the job for us to go and deliver i know he was sort of vilified in the uk do you feel like

now they are you know he's one of their own do you feel like they're embracing him yeah i think the fans definitely got behind him in the stadium on saturday i think the reality is you're not going to be loved by everyone you know and his his character can be defa divisive just like anyone's like people can have a view on me or you you know and that's the world we live in um he he's a real guy you know everything you see is real pure emotion you know you look at him at the press conference afterwards he's an emotional guy and he's very open and he's about everything he does and i don't think people are always going to be his biggest fan because of maybe people will say the way he dealt with the situation but put yourself in his shoes at 26 27 years old going through

what he went through at that part of his life and i you know i think it's credit to him what he's gone on to do and how he's pushed his way back through and, you know, fought his case and his side. And, uh, yeah, I think he's in a great place in it in British boxing. So now you can move on from this. Yeah. Um, I'm sure there are,

how many stadium shows in the UK this year? There have been, there's been probably three, I think, which is crazy because here we get nothing. I mean, we got Canelo Crawford, which is great. Um,

I would suspect there would be a stadium show if AJ looks good on December 19th. Can we like forego the tune up? like if all goes well why don't we just do fury now why do we have to wait till september all this stuff like isn't now the time just do it now what do we i'm sure fury will look at after a long time out of the ring fury has that long it's been december yeah but by the time if he was to fight next year um i feel like we're more confident than ever that we will see that fight you are you know but but we've done so much talking yes but the problem is we boxing we do so much talking things don't come to fruition and then everyone complains and moans that it hasn't happened

but I think now more than ever we're confident we'll see that fight it's the fight that needs to be made but it wouldn't be the next one it would be there would be a middle one I think so yeah I believe so but lots ongoing right now did you see um Tyson say that he thinks Jake is gonna knock him out Tyson's an entertainer you know you don't think he believes that uh I don't I don't know you'll have to ask Tyson yeah maybe Tyson's looking for the Jake Paul money Maybe he thinks AJ gets knocked out and then he can fight him. But, you know, yeah, I think, I think Jake, like I said earlier, I was a better chance of a more competitive fight with me than Anthony Joshua.

Or Eddie? Well, that's his comeback for now. He beats Eddie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He beats Eddie. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Sorry.

Wow. Sorry. But, but it's a big payday for Eddie. Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. I'm happy to make it happen. He could probably use it. Yeah, look, he needs it.

We'll get him training. Yeah. I see him already. He's flexing out there. He's doing the 5K. You do the 5Ks too, right? Try to. I'm very, I'm not, I'm not competitive.

Okay. So that's his edge. Why does it have to be competitive? The 5K. Oh, I say that. Yeah. Yeah, I know, I'm more of a commute. Just do that your pace.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But everything's a race with him. Okay, okay, okay, interesting. I think it's great that you guys do that, by the way. It's nice for the community, fans come out. It's a nice little thing that you guys do. As far as this weekend is concerned, is Bam Rodriguez the only matchroom fighter? Yeah, Bam's the only fighter on it.

But look, what a show on there. What a card. Devin Haney going to become a three-weight world champion against Brian Norman. Bam against Martinez is an incredible incredible fight. Benevides against Yards, a great fight as well. Abdullah Mason against Sam as well. So many great fights on the card. And these, we're spoilt really now.

Oh my God. We're really spoiled on these shows now. I actually think this lineup here, this might be the best one so far. I know there were a couple of, you know, the Better B.F. ones were great, but like, Davy, Benavides, Bam, Abdullah Mason, who I think the world of, even Milnecchi over. there is a great guy actually from New Jersey. This is a tremendous card. And I kind of feel like it's flying into the radar a little bit. Maybe the AJ stuff stole a little bit of shine last week. I think it's part of there's so much going on in the sport. We're in such a great place in the

school. You know, and that's where I say we're sport now. You know, where this, but by the time this comes around and you see the fight week progressing, you know, it's going to be a big night on Saturday. And it sets up some big fights down the line as well. By the way, your CEO of Matchroom Boxing, right? obviously the company was in focus on the Netflix series which was great would you ever be interested in any of the other parts of the business I'd love to be the CEO of Darts Matt Porter is the CEO of Darts yeah and I'm not trying to say you to replace any no do you ever look at them and be like yeah every board meeting yeah every ball meeting I see in you know look

darts is a tremendous business yeah see the snooker's great the the nine ball pool which Emily Fraser runs you know those businesses are amazing but Darts is just unlike anything else we do you know it's been built into a business i kind of compare it to ufc in a sense of the brand is so big now they sell 120 000 tickets for the world championships at ali pally you don't even know you're going to watch play it's unbelievable the product is you know amazing so would i like to be the the the CEO of darts yes i would love to be the ceo of darts a lot less stressful i'm sure it has its own stresses yeah but boxing is i've said it so many times boxing is unlike anything else in the world. I've never worked in other things, but I've seen the other

sport we're involved in. Boxing, the people in boxing, they don't make it easy, but the highs of boxing, walking out on Saturday night at Tottenham Stadium, looking around 65,000 people in that stadium singing Sweet Caroline, and you think, wow, we did this. And that's what motivates me and drives me every week. How involved at this point is Barry? Barry's retired, really, but it's his life you know he loves it is he there every day is he around you know he's always like what's going on with this what's going on with that why'd you do this why'd you do that

he rang me the other day actually we had a fighter and we were talking about signing a deal he said why did he do that and he gets involved in certain things he goes I can't stand boxing I'll leave it up to you and Eddie so he still is his world you know he created something 43 years ago and to see where it is now I don't think he can

quite believe it and he can never let go of it, but he lets go of it to let us run it and deliver it. But every detail, every number, he knows. And much was made of you guys changing your fight week press conferences and all that. Are you happy with the way it's being received? Do you like the way it looks, all that stuff? Because I know this was something that you were talking about the last time we spoke. Yeah, for sure. It's gone down really well. I think boxing is guilty of just being like, that's the way it's always been done with everything. You know, every area of the sport, whether it's the live broadcast, whether it's the buildup stuff.

that's the way it's been done so let's just leave it like that yeah but it's it's boring you know and i'm really happy with what we've done and for us it's about not getting complacent and continuing to develop it you know it's not just we've changed a load of things we're going to sit back now we're always looking at how we can improve it and listening to what people's views are of it i remember last time you were telling me like you had an insane amount of days in hotels last year yeah this we spoke in july what do you think it's going to end up for 25 probably about 300 again this yeah yeah yeah like when you came to new york for this Did you know you were going to Miami or does that get changed mid?

I didn't know. I wasn't coming to New York until Saturday morning. Okay. I was supposed to be in Riyadh. Okay. Right now. But I change. I've got to come here for three days.

Then I go to Miami for two days, which happened on Sunday. Yeah. So I don't really know what I'm doing where I'm doing. I'm just like, you know, how do you pack for that? Or do you buy things along the way? What do you do? I buy a lot. I get in trouble from my misses because I turn up at home with loads of random stuff.

Yeah. We've got this one. I mean, this isn't really Miami weather attire. true you know a bit of cashmere yeah yeah it doesn't really suit the miami sunshine so i'll have to go and get some new clothes there but i just you know it's it's it's a great life you know it has its it has its downsides in terms of 300 nights you know hotel takes it out of you but it's it's a good life i could never complain about at some point i would imagine not to get too personal but you want to have a family right yeah do you feel the need to do this all now yeah this is not

sustainable right no i i i've got i've got a uh note on my calendar for five or six years from now that says retired. Wow. Because I, you know, I will still be young, but I would have done 23 years in this business at a high pace. And although I was started young, you know, 23 years of traveling like this, it hasn't always been this crazy. Yeah, yeah.

But for the last seven, eight years has been quite wild. And in 300 nights, it's not sustainable. No. You know, and I don't think that necessarily means not being involved in any way, but I think it just means changing the way. And I look at it and go, there's always going to be someone better than you so you know maybe we'll find who the next best person is there another frank being groomed right now in the company no i need to need to find one really

okay you know because at this point there was you know when eddy was your age you were kind of in the mix at this point right yeah yeah but i think look i i think there's a lot of people that could get the opportunities to do it you have to give your life to it and not everyone wants to this is my life you know and that takes away from other areas of my life unfortunately by giving my time to it, but I accept that it's going to, you know, it's not forever. Like I said, Bob Aram, I couldn't imagine being a traveling round at 94 years old. I believe what he's showing up in Japan and stuff. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah. I might like huge respect to him for what he's done, but it's his life. It's a bit like Barry. Right, right. You know, when it's, they've created

something and they want to be there for the ride. You know, I look at it and go, we've done the biggest events in the world, you know, all over the world in boxing. And I sort of think, and, I sort of think how nice would it be to go out on top and go see you later yeah you know but you can't leave before eddie anything's possible all right i don't i don't see him ever leaving yeah he he's so and this isn't that i'm not passionate about the sport i love events i love as i said walking out of tock them and going wow yeah look at what we did here he is passionate about the sport he loves boxing he loves sitting and watching boxing all night and i'm not saying i don't like it but my thing is more shows yeah yeah this is in his DNA it's exactly how many you're

people on the boxing side now about 36 to 40 okay you know so most ever this is the most yeah yeah the most we've got but we're still a lean team when you think yeah that is lean we've got eight events in seven weeks in five countries you know and people flying all over the place and you know it's non-stop you know and then we start working and as soon as you finish a show like on friday we announced another four shows for 2026 yeah it's never ending you're consistent moving moving forward so the official pick for december 19th what is it the prediction on your end the prediction yeah for anthony against jake what's the official i'm going first round knock it there's not even a a shadow of a doubt or what if not

no nothing no is it a loss if it goes to distance if he just you know if he tips it maybe it may be an enduring process and he'll put him through seven rounds of body shots and then knock him out and I say I don't know no chance there's no there's no doubt in your mind no wow I think AJ knows what he needs to go in and do it's amazing how you're just like laughing it off yeah but but it's a it's an entertainment product no I know I know and I think like this is the world we live in people so many people are going to tune in oh yeah and it's huge for Anthony Joshua he goes and ends the influencer era for Jake Paul well he turn up with the the air pod in on on Friday I even have two

so he doesn't have to listen to Jake Paul. I'm going to ask him what he's listening to because I still don't know. I know. I still want to know the answer to that. This was great. Thank you so much. Appreciate you coming in.

Congrats on everything. Good luck on everything coming up and I'll see you in Miami. What are you wearing? You're wearing like one of those shirts with the palm trees? Yeah, probably a palm tree. It'll be like South Beach.

I'm going to out doing Nikis's look. All right. I look forward to that. He is Frank Smith. He's the CEO of Matchroom Boxing, doing big things. I'll see him in Miami. We'll take a quick break.

We'll be back with David Otunga, Kyle Dockis. anywhere. Okay, back on the program. That was our conversation with Tony Con from yesterday. Go check out the whole thing. It was a great chat. That was Frank Smith in there. Always great picking his brain. I enjoy those chats very, very much. I hope you do as well. It's going to be interesting in Miami. The Nikisa, Frank, Eddie, Jake, AJ Dynamic is interesting. It's something that we don't really get in MMA because everyone's under the same umbrella, but having these characters all together, these, what is it, strange bedfellows, would you call them that? Something like that. Makes for good content.

No. Still to come, Connor Ben, Kyle Dachus, the Dars Night's going to join us in studio at about three o'clock, kind enough to join us from Philadelphia, but I'm very excited to talk to our next guest. He's been doing some really fun things on YouTube as of late. Former two-time WWE Tag Team Champion, two-time Slammy Award winner, reality TV show star, actor, bodybuilder, graduate of Harvard Law School was a part of WWE from about 2008 to 2020 was on the I Love New York 2 program. which I believe Andy's a big fan of She-Hulk, Marvel's She-Hulk in 2022,

but he really, he knows the legal side of things. And there's some interesting things to talk about these days. So without further ado, let us say hello to the one and only David O'Tunga, who is kind enough to join us on this Wednesday. Hello, David. How are you? I'm great, Ariel. Thank you for having me on.

I forgot about my Slamia Awards. Oh, you did? Really? I just hear that intro. I guess I have so many accolades. I forgot about some. That's right. I have Slamby Awards.

I need to get some replicas and put up on my background. I was going to ask, because you have the belt right over there, and I guess that's a replica. Oh, two, you have the two belts. I didn't see the full shot. But they don't give you a Slammy award when you win one of those? No, they don't. You know, it's interesting, they never really bring that back up.

Like the Slamby Awards, I mean, they should have more weight to them, like the Grammys or something. I agree. It's prestigious. You put some more respect on the Slammy's name. I agree. I agree. By the way, what's the belt all the way to the right?

I see the two tag team titles. but what's the one all the way on the right? I'm glad you asked. It's an obscure one. It is the Jerk of the Month title. And if you remember from WW Magazine, you could win that. Like, it would usually be heels. And if you were the top heel for the month or whatever,

you would win Jerk of the Month. And there was a title that you would hold. So I got a replica of that. And I won it. And I was actually quite proud of that. I don't know why. Nobody else really made a big deal where they were Jerk of the Month,

but it was cool to be. And why did you win Jerk of the Month? I don't really know I guess it was my time It was my lawyer persona though That gimmick That one really just got over And annoyed people in the best way

And got the best heat with them So it was finally that character though Okay so as of late as I've said I've seen you pop up And this has become a thing Obviously Maven we spoke to him About his YouTube channel And other wrestlers

Ex wrestlers doing it This is a whole industry In the world of professional wrestling Why did you start doing this and how are you liking it so far? Man, that's a great question because if you had told me I'd be doing this two months ago, I wouldn't have believed you. I just, this honestly just started with the Rajah Jackson incident. Like I was watching people give their commentary on it and nobody quite understood

because, you know, the lay people didn't understand the wrestling terminology. And then the people who understood that don't understand the legal side of it. And I kind of realized I'm in a unique position to be able to comment on that, you know, being in both worlds. So I made a video breaking it down. And, man, it really caught on. And people really liked what I was saying and were asking for more. So I did some follow-ups.

And then just the feedback was amazing. And next thing you know, I'm getting booked here and there, podcast, TMZ, you name it. I'm here with you now because of this. And going back to what you were saying about having Maven on, I just watched that episode, and it was amazing. And I'll tell you what really solidified this for me was, you know, a few weeks ago, Maven actually reached out to me. And he reached out to me just to tell me he loved my channel and my content.

And this was, this is it. This was huge for me because I just was kind of doing this messing around. I wasn't intending on starting a channel and like, you know, putting a lot of effort into this. But then once Maven co-signed me, I mean, come on, man. This guy, you know, he's tops in this. Oh, my God. I didn't even know this was an industry, but he's tops in it. And for him to co-sign me and I've only been doing this like a month at that time,

oh, man, that's all I need. They've been done, pump my head up now, put a battery on my back. I love it. Okay. I'm leaning into this. I love it, as you should, because it's a really interesting angle that no one else can conquer other than you given your background, Harvard law, and all that stuff. I didn't realize that this started with the Raja case, which is like three months old. I didn't realize you were that new because I feel like I've seen

so many of your videos and content pop up. So could I ask you about that? Because obviously we talked about it here because of Rampage and him being a big figure in the world of MMA, my relationship with him. And it was such a big story. That one week, it was the biggest story in MMA and pro wrestling. And that doesn't always happen. I feel like now three months later, it's sort of fizzled where you don't hear much.

You don't, like, it is nowhere near as far as the attention that it's getting, where it was back in August. So do you have any idea where it stands and what ultimately can happen here to Russia as a result of what happened? Yeah, you're right. It's been quiet. I haven't heard anything about it. I haven't even heard any recent updates. The last thing I heard was that Raja was indeed arrested and he bonded out.

And that's it. It's been quiet. Nothing, right? Yeah. Yeah, which is probably good for Raja in his case in, you know, let people forget about a little bit, let the public pressure die down. Yeah, it's probably best for him. But yeah, it's interesting. It was the biggest thing dominating all the news and we haven't heard anything else about it.

Were you surprised that he ultimately got arrested? No, no, no, no, not at all. Because there were some people who were saying they didn't think it was going to happen because it was taking so long. It was taking a long time. But I think because this is such a unique case where you have pro wrestling where things are scripted, but unless you're part of the business, people don't really understand. They don't really understand that. okay, it's scripted, but are they really fighting?

Are they letting them do this? Like, what happens? So when you see that beat down, you know that it's vicious, and you can tell it's not acting, but at the same time, where's the line? And that's what was difficult for people. It would be difficult for police or, you know, a district attorney or somebody. They would have to understand that. So I feel like they did their due diligence and really took their time in trying to understand

what was going on, and then they made the appropriate charge. I understand probably a tough question to answer. but ultimately, what do you think happens to him? It's hard because as far as I know, he doesn't really have a record. So I don't know if he would see much jail time. I think the max he could get would be seven years. He could get four years,

but they could put on a great bodily harm enhancement, which would be another three years. So it could be seven max. But at the same time, I don't think he has a record. So he really could just take a plea bargain and possibly avoid jail time altogether. Who knows? And I've also been hearing, I've talked to a few people, and this is rumors as far as I know,

but they're saying that Psycho Stew isn't really looking to press charges. And so if he doesn't cooperate with the police, I mean, that makes it really tough to prosecute Raja. It really does. So it kind of hinges on him if he wants to be, you know, the star witness or not. I mean, you don't necessarily need it, but it would help prosecute him. So there's a lot of variables still that we don't know. yesterday on our program we had tony con in studio and one of the topics that i spoke to him about was this andrade story where he gets released from w he shows up for one night on a w and then reportedly

a w receives a cease and desist and he disappears nor to be found and and that was like really one of the few topics that tony seemed a little uncomfortable talking about and i can understand from a legal standpoint perhaps he doesn't want to you know get into any hot water what is your understanding of this and how did this, how did this happen and could it have been avoided if you were Andrade or AEW? Well, how did this happen? This is in all WW contracts. It's been in them at least since 2017, probably further back than that. And I would imagine it's in most wrestling companies contracts and it's a non-compete clause. And in WWs, it's been in there and it says it can go up to one year. That's in the contract. Although in practice, WWW typically releases talent

and there will be a 90-day non-compete, and it's usually paid. But in this situation, for whatever reason, this is the first time I ever recall, WWB wanted to enforce this against Andrade for an entire year without pay. Wow. And yeah, that's pretty stiff. And I think if Andrade wanted to challenge this in court, I think he'd likely be successful, to be honest with you. But that's quite a headache and an endeavor in it of.

itself. So I think the question is like, why, why is this happening now and it's never happened before? Like, what's the issue? And I mean, I could see it if they were trying to stop Andrade because he was, you know, the biggest thing at WW, he built up a ton of heat or whatever and then was going to take this over to AW. But that wasn't the case. It doesn't seem like WW was doing much with him. So it's not like he was taking a lot of heat or anything or goodwill from WWE over somewhere else. So I'm still kind of confused by this. I'd love to hear what Tony Kahn said about it, because I'm just trying to find out more information on this. Well, so I'm curious, why a year and not 90 days, like how do they even describe that,

classify that in the contract, and how do they determine if it's going to be? Because sometimes it's 30 days, 60, 90, right, depending on if your contract expires or you get released. But I've never heard of the one year. Where does the one year fall under? Well, the one year is what's actually in the contract. In the contract that I looked at when preparing for this, there's just a one year. It doesn't say anything about 90 days or anything like that. It's a one year non-compete. However, it's up to WW's discretion because it can be up to one year. So they never typically try to enforce all the way up to one year. It's just in practice been 90 days. So people just assume it's a 90-day non-compete, but you actually go look at the contract,

it doesn't say anything in there about 90 days. It says one year. And so you mentioned that it's It's usually 90 days with pay. That's like what it typically is. Why would it be one year without pay? How can you stop someone from getting paid for a year? Exactly, exactly. You're preventing somebody for making a living in their trade. You can't do that.

Because here's the thing, and we had to get into this. I made a whole video about this. So, WW says that wrestlers are independent contractors, which means they can work anywhere, right? if they're fired from WW, if a wrestler is fired from WW, they should be able to go work for AW. Now, if this was an employer-employee relationship, that's a different story. Because then there could be a non-compete. So, WW can't have it both ways. They're treating wrestlers like independent contractors, or no, they're saying wrestlers are independent contractors, but treating

them like employees. That's the issue here. Yeah. And easily be challenged at court and likely, you know, you would win. Why do you think no one has done that? Why has no one challenged them? I think, I'll be honest, I think most people don't know this. And, you know, forgive me, but like, in being a lawyer myself, like, I, I knew this from the time I signed, and I forgot most people aren't lawyers and they don't know what's in their WWB contract. And so, like, when I made a video about this, I'll be honest, I was shocked by the reaction that it blew up and people were really surprised by this. And I'm like, there's no way I'm the first person to have talked about this or mentioned this. But I guess it just wasn't widely known.

I guess a lot of talent, they signed that contract and never look at it again. But for me, I was always doing a lot of things outside of WWE, and the contract is very restrictive. So I was always asking for their permission to do something else, or sometimes I would go do something else, and then let them know after the fact or after I booked it and just beg for forgiveness. Did you review your own contracts, or did you have someone do that for you? both i mean i i reviewed it and i i knew what i was reading but i took it to an entertainment attorney as well just to make sure he saw the same thing i was seeing and it was it was funny because he told me he's like david you you can't sign this you're a lawyer this way too restrictive like you you can't sign this alone you and i said yes i i i understand but i i really want to be a

professional wrestler i really want to work here so i'm i'm going to sign this oh wow this isn't this is This is a good. This is totally their favorite. I said, yes, I understand, but if it's not me, there's a million other people who would take this opportunity. And I want this so bad, I will sign it, and then hopefully I can negotiate a better contract down the line. So that was my thinking. You originally signed with WW in 2008, right? Yeah. How long after you graduating from Harvard Law did that happen? How many years after? two i graduated um 2006 and i started working for the top law firm in chicago immediately i was there for about a year and then i went and did i love new york too and when i came back from doing that before the show had even aired um i knew how well i did on the show and i was already receiving a little bit of like buzz before it had aired like around hollywood so i wanted to strike while the iron was hot i left

the law firm and wanted to pursue professional wrestling, but had no idea how I would do that. This is back in 2007 at the time, and there wasn't the performance center. I didn't know of any wrestling schools. I was trying to find those. It was very hard to get into professional wrestling, very, very hard. You had to know somebody, and I didn't know anybody. So what'd you do? I started looking up schools.

I Googled wrestling schools, and I found one. in California, which I now am pretty sure I know the name. I pretty sure it was UPW run by a gentleman by the name of Rick Bassman. And I called there and nobody answered. I left the voicemail. Never heard back. Well, I guess this is done. I got to figure something else out. Fast forward, like a few months, I get a call from Rick Bassman. And he tells me that he's helping cast this Hulk Hogan reality show, teaching people to wrestle celebrities. And he wanted if I'd be interested in being honest. I was like, yes, this could be my way in, this is what I want, I'll do this, figure I can parlay this into WWE, and then he calls me back like a few days later and tells me that the spot got filled and, you know, I'm sorry. And so I'm crushed. Like, all right, well, well, now what do I do? And then he tells me, he's like, hey, have you ever considered trying out for WWE? Like, yeah, man, that's what I want to do. And he's like, oh, you don't need the show for that. He's like, I can get you an audition with them. And I said, well, hold

on. I don't have any wrestling experience. And he's like, yeah, don't worry about it. He goes, they'll be interested in you. With your look, Harvard Law, your story, they'll be interested. And sure enough, they were. They flew me to Smackdown. I met Johnny Ace. He decided to give me a tryout. They flew me to Tampa, Florida. I went there for a tryout for a week. And then about two weeks later, they offered me a developmental contract. Wow. And at that point, like, you had never worked a match, run the ropes, you knew nothing? No, no. It was just about, like your look. Yeah. My look and my story and it was and it was my passion too. And it was because like I really wanted to do this. And I remember Johnny Ace told me that one of the the big things was

especially coming from Vince was that he always said he respected me because out of all the rookies and the guys who were there, I didn't have to be there. Like I already had a career before. It's a dream job for most people. And I left that. That was making great money. But I left that because I wanted to do this. I wanted to do professional. wrestling and so he always really really respected that and respected my passion by the way how did you get on i love new york which kind of started this snowball how did that happen as you're a lawyer just kind of doing your thing uh that was kind of the universe just leading me down a path like i got i got a call one day from a casting director this is on my cell phone and um they said they wanted

to schedule my audition you know for i love new york too and i'm like whoa who who's this what and they said yeah you know is this david otunga and like yeah, like you're a lawyer from Harvard, you're a bodybuilder, all this. But yeah, it's true. I said, yeah, I have your application in front of me. It's like, nope, I didn't submit an application. I don't even know what you're talking about. Fast forward. Come to find out, my niece, who was 13 at the time, wow, submitted an application and somehow got this to a casting director, and they loved it and put my phone number on there and everything. So they were really high on me, but I turned it down, you know, two or three times and explained to them, look, I work at the most prestigious firm

in Chicago, I can't just leave and go do a reality show, especially this one. But they knew what to say to me. And, you know, they were like, well, look, the producers weren't necessarily happy with how the minority men were portrayed in the first season. And this year, we're looking for somebody who can be upstanding and a hero, basically a baby face for the show, and who's successful. And they're like, and that would be you and paint the guys in a great light. And I was like, hmm. Then they said, if you ever had any ambitions and entertainment, this would be a great first step. So I was like, man, you know, I always wanted to be an actor and professional wrestler. Because, hey, the Miz came from the real world. I knew that. Like, this could be done.

The blueprint was there. So figured I'd give it a shot. And I went, I did, it was, it was an awesome experience. It really was. I had so much fun on the show because I was a fan of it. And I treated it like that. But yeah, that's the wild story about how I got on there. That's amazing. If you're, if your 13-year-old niece doesn't do that behind your back, who knows if any of this happens to you, right? Yeah, oh, for real, for real. Like, that was the start of my entertainment career. And since then, like I've learned,

any time, you know, an opportunity just comes up or something keeps coming up, take it because you never know where it can lead. The Raja Jackson, you know, incident. I started with one video. Now, I'm sitting here talking to you. I never talked to you when I was wrestling, and I'm sitting here talking to you.

Like, this is wild. three months ago, I wouldn't have expected this. By the way, so now that you're out of wrestling, and I don't even know if you could have, while you were a wrestler, have you ever gone back to practicing law or did you stop when you took that reality show gig?

I pretty much stopped, obviously full time, but I would do more legal analysis. Like, I'm on court TV pretty frequently. I would do other news shows here and there. If it's an interesting case or something in pop culture that I'll talk about and give my opinion, But then I would do little things here and there, like for family or friends, like, represent them.

I actually have a funny story. I've never told. I have a cousin who's my best friend who just passed a couple weeks ago. I think was Brian. Thank you. And he had some little minor court case, a traffic case or something, but they were going to suspend his license or do something. And so, you know, he was asking me to help him out. And I said, all right.

So I went back to my hometown of Elton, Illinois. and I showed up in my suit to defend him in this case. I showed up, made, you know, made my appearance request, everything. And so you have to understand, this is where I grew up. So I'm pretty well known. And I'm still wrestling at this time. And so I walked in there. And I remember it didn't take long.

And the district attorney comes up to me and he's like, you're David Othunga. He's like, I just want to shake your hand. He's like, listen, between you and be. he's like honestly what do you want to do with this I'll I'll agree to anything he's like I just want to go home and tell my son hey David O'Tonga beat me in court like really so it was cool and he made the deal with me I was like I want nothing I want this dropped so I got my cousin out of it it it was minor anyway but it was just a really cool story like they didn't really expect me to show up I showed up and I was ready to go to trial I wanted to fight this I was about it about it but yeah it was a

cool story I love that I love that so a nice little for you and your cousin back home. Tag team champs with John Sina. We just mentioned there. His career is coming to an end. Last show at MSG this past Monday, last time on Raw. How do you feel this whole year-long retirement ceremony, if you will, has gone for John and the company?

Honestly, I wish it would have been a little bit more exciting. I don't think it was what people expected. Like, I wanted him to have a farewell tour like Kobe did. You know, remember, like Kobe's farewell tour was awesome. I feel like Sina deserves that because, let's be honest. You know, he comes out and says he's the greatest of all time. He's not necessarily wrong. I mean, the guy does deserve it.

And I know, like, you know, I talk about him a lot, but like, in all due respect, he is great. You know, I mess with him. This is how our relationship was. And, you know, my character, wrestling always hated John Cita. We always went against each other. But if I'm being honest, he really is one of the greatest of all time. And I just would like to see more. I don't even know what it would be, but I just want them to put more into it.

Like his last raw at MSG, the six-man tag, it was cool, but I would have preferred to see him have a one-on-one match that was just great. Like, show us what John Cena did. Leave us with what, you know, we know him for on Raw. Although, you know, the six-man was cool. What was he like towards you? You're a youngster at that point. He's an established star. What was it like teaming with him?

teaming with him it was cool it was it was brief it was 24 hours but um no john and i always had a good relationship he treated me like kind of like a little brother and he he would show me tough love a lot i see that like in hindsight because he wanted me to do well so he would always like try to rib me or like you know just uh i don't know break my balls or whatever it is just just tease me um haze me a little bit but he you know he always wanted the best for me. So I understand that. But it was great. You guys were cool. No, no, no, no, no heat. No heat at all.

Okay, because I heard you say that he kind of halted the nexus angle, that you blamed him for it. Yeah, but there's no heat at all. Okay. No, no, no. Not at all. It was, it was his decision. I don't think they made the right decision. If you ask John and he's being honest, I don't think he thinks it's the right decision. Okay. In hindsight. So, no, there's no

heat there at all. No animosity. Hey, man, this is, this is entertainment you know what I mean this is like to me this is like a movie or a TV show I can't get mad because another character who's the lead who's been there longer they want something to go a different way I'm a rookie I just showed up I'm happy to be here I'm happy to be in the main event you know what I mean I was happy they were gonna let us win so there's no animosity there but at the same time I am telling the truth like from living this situation that is what happened. You know, like, that is what happened. And you saw he did go over. Yes. You, you did

mention Hogan's reality show, and then I was thinking of your time in WWE and the timeline and whatnot. And I was just curious, were you there, so that whole incident with him happened, were you in the locker room for the infamous apology? Um, I wouldn't, no, no, I wasn't there that day, or I think I had, I had media or something. And I showed up, like, later. So I missed the actual apology, but I did see him in the hallway shortly after that. That was my first interaction with him, you know, since everything. And it was, it was brief and it was weird because, like, he didn't address it, but I could, I could tell, like, in his eyes, he seemed sad and he seemed like ashamed. And he seemed nervous. This is the first time I'm talking to

Hogue Hogan, and he's nervous talking to me, but obviously because I'm black, African-American. And so he He wants to know how I view him. And, you know, if I was disappointed in him, which obviously I was. You know, one of my heroes growing up, but I mean, I can't unhear what I heard. And then I didn't even hear the apology, but I never really, really got it. At the same time, my interactions with him were always positive. And so he didn't come across to me as, you know, overt racist or anything like that. I don't even know if he was.

but like I said, I cannot forget what I heard. Yeah. You got to be held accountable for things. When you saw him in the hallway, did he seem sincere? Did he seem like he was broken up over this? He did. He seemed like he was going through it. Like his eyes were red.

This was not the Hulk Hogan I had seen before. Like he was reserved. I would almost say like timid, which made me wonder what happened in that meeting because I had missed it. But like, yeah, he kind of was. was had in hand, you know, but it, but also it, it wasn't like he was showing like extreme remorse, but I'm, I'm just reading his body language. Like he definitely was not, you know, super up and happy and, and not like he usually is around me. Um, we were talking about the Cina

build and, and Monday and whatnot. The TKO WW, compared to the WWE that you were a part of, led by Vince McMahon from afar. I know you're not there now. Do you see major differences? and if so, do you like them or not like them? Yeah, there's a lot of differences. I, you know, spoke about this before, but like seeing all the sponsors on the ring, I don't know. That's too much. And I remember back when Vince was running it, you know, people would try to get sponsorships up. And I remember Vince always said no.

And he said, because it would end up looking like a NASCAR. It kind of does now. Like I see what he meant. But, you know, in terms of the way things are, do like that their schedule is reduced. That's much more manageable. I think a lot more people would, you know, stay in the business longer if that were the case. If that was the case and the schedule was like it is now, shoot. I might still be there because like when I was wrestling, like I was on the road five days a week at the height and I calculated so I was only home about

36 hours. And, you know, my son was an infant at the time. Like that was just a lot of time to be away from home and I mean even if it's something you love like that's that's a lot it's hard on the body it's hard emotionally it's hard on your relationships your family it's a wrestling is a very very big investment of time I know you tackle this on the channel as well and I urge everyone to go check it out but there's a lot of similarities between WW and UFC MMA and pro wrestling and one topic that we've talked about a lot on this show is whether the fighters will ever form some kind of association union something like that obviously it doesn't exist in MMA and it certainly doesn't exist in the world of wrestling slash WWE. Do you think it will ever happen

in our lifetime? You can see how it could happen and why it probably should happen. It would benefit the athletes, especially with all the money and the TV deals, the revenue sharing and whatnot, the collective bargaining that could happen would be tremendous. Do you think it ever does happen in our lifetime? I think it could. And I mean, if any time, I mean, it could be now. This is the closest I've ever seen just hearing the conversations around it and the thing of it is you need everybody on the same page you know everybody all the talent in the locker room from the top of the card to the bottom of the card and i kind of feel like now it's more spread out in w w where there's not just one super one major superstar and then everybody else now there's a

bunch of them who are all kind of on the same level like that in my opinion there's nobody like at the level of john sina or or stone cold or the rock or something like that like it's it's more evened out. So that and then there's more information available. For example, like the video I made talking about the possibility of a union, I was just making the video objectively, just for interesting content. And then, like, people were asking, so you're starting a union? Like, whoa, no, I'm not doing that. I can't tell you, I had a call yesterday. I can't tell you how many calls like I've had. And people like asking me about it or they want to join, they want to help. And the thing of it is, like, now I'm like, wow, I didn't. What have I got?

gotten myself into. I was just making content. Like, I didn't really think about trying to, you know, to be the figurehead for this. Um, but, hey, if I can help, I'm more than happy to. Would you be interested? Would you be interested in heading it up? You seem to be a prime candidate. Heading it up. Um, man, that's, you're heading it. Spearheading it. Yeah, that's a, that's a lot of work, but, um, maybe, maybe. I mean, I, I hadn't intended this. Again, like I said, I hadn't intended by YouTube channel, but here I am. I'm loving it. So it would take some more thought.

Possibly. I could be talked into it. Okay. What is your day job now other than the YouTube channel? Well, I'm an actor and a stay-at-home father, single dad. That's primarily what I do would still act. And then legal analysis from here and there. However, now with this YouTube channel, I'm really starting to focus on making this a priority.

So this is becoming kind of a part. job, and I'm going to start putting even more emphasis into it and making it closer to a full-time. Okay. And what about the reclassification of the way the wrestlers are viewed from independent contractor to employee, from 1099 to W2? Do you think that ever happens? And could that happen before a potential association? I think that could happen as well. And that could happen before a potential association. At the same time, though, I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't know. I don't know because they've been independent contractors so long. I think something needs to be figured out there. I think something eventually will because there's so many just

issues that keep coming up and with contracts and people keep pointing this out how, hey, this isn't right. I mean, I touched out it in my video. So I think something will happen there. Okay. Fascinating times. It's a good time for you to be involved in all of this. And shout out to Maven for spearheading it all. By the way, your last match, 2015, right? Yep. You've never had the itch

to put the tights back on? Oh, no, no, no. Sure, I have the itch. I have the itch all the time. But it would need to make sense. I mean, that's the thing. It's like I feel like I kind of did everything I wanted to do in wrestling

that, like, I needed to, where I'm comfortable. If I never wrestle again, I could be open. That's not true. I'd probably want to wrestle at least like one more time, but I'm, I'm content. Like, it's not like something I'm actively pursuing, but, you know, eventually, like when the right storyline or the right time comes along, yeah, I would love to. I mean, I love it. It's really hard not to do it.

And, you know, I think that's why it's hard sometimes for guys, like, watching the content because it's like, man, I want to get out there. I want to do that. Oh, I would have done this. I could have done that. But, like, I love watching all the young guys and stuff, you know, do it now. And I'm super happy for them. And they, they inspire me. That's the thing is like, when you see really good wrestling, it inspires you to be like, yeah, I want to get out there and do that

too. So every now and then, you know, I do feel like that. And, you know, like I always say, like, I people ask me like, why I retired or am I retired? No, I never said I was retired. I just haven't wrestled in a long time. They wanted me to do, you know, commentating. And I was doing that. And then just focused on more acting roles for a while. But, you know, I'm, I always love wrestling, will always be a part of it. And yeah, I'd love to get back in the ring. And I'm sure I will at some point. Okay, so if it's one more match, what's the dream scenario for you?

Who's the opponent? Where is it? Paint the picture? Well, you know, actually, I would probably say, like, my dream would be not even just one more match, but like a character. Like, I would love to come back as kind of like a manager. Okay. Imagine Paul Heyman.

Yes. But who can get in there and kick some ass when he needs to. I actually have a really, really dope pitch. That would be awesome, but I can't share it because somebody will steal my idea. WWs stolen so many of my ideas over the years, and they're legally allowed to contractually because they would own my IP, anything I'd come up with. But I'll say this. I have an awesome idea that would work at any wrestling promotion, a really, really good storyline

and for a faction, and I've never seen it in a wrestling before. Okay, wow. I'm keeping that tight-lipped. No, that's covered with, I got to be signed, an NDA, but I got something that would be great. Okay, that's a good tease. That's a good old-fashioned tease. I love that.

For now, we'll continue to check out the YouTube content. Well done with that. Keep it going. Great to meet you. Great to have you on the show. There may or may not be members of our team who are big fans of your work from the reality show TV days. So salute to you.

I'm more up to speed with your wrestling work, but I know you had a whole different chapter prior to all of that. So much respect. And again, great to have you on. And I love the contract stuff. I love the union stuff, all that. So I think you've owned that lane really well. And looking forward to what more stuff you put out as well.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. The only thing I'm disappointed about is I'm not there in studio. I was trying to get one of your coffee mugs. You know, I love my coffee. I've got to add it to the collection.

I put my ice coffee right here. Next time you're in the city. We'd love to have you in any time. Absolutely. Thank you for that. All right. We'll talk to you soon. And there he is. David Otanga, kind enough to join us.

Check out the YouTube channel. He's doing nice things over there. And again, it's a different side. And there's a lot of similarities. If you're an MMA fan, a lot of similarities between the world of pro wrestling and the world of MMA. So it is interesting stuff. And that Andrade story is an interesting one as well. Appreciate him coming on.

Still to come, Connor Ben, the Destroyer, 4 o'clock coming off that big win over the one and only Chris Eubank. But now we turn our attention to the world of mixed martial arts. this past weekend at Madison Square Garden. It was UFC 322. We did have Fatima Klein on earlier as well. Yeah, we did. And she was victorious. What was that, Frank?

What was that? I said. Yeah, we did. Oh, yeah, you know, I wasn't wearing. I didn't get the IFB. Yeah, I wonder why. Please stop. Kyle Dachis got a big win.

And what a comeback story. One of the candidates for comeback fighter of the year, I would say. certainly when it comes to the UFC because he was in the UFC between 2020 and 22, went two and four in that run. And then he was let go in 2022. And since then, he has won six fights in a row. And six of those fights came via stoppage, five, sorry, six fights in a row, five via stoppage. He went to CFFC, did his thing over there, became a middleweight champion. got an opportunity to return to the UFC in August, replaced Marco Tullio against Michelle Pajeda,

August 23rd in Shanghai. He Cahoehara in just 43 seconds in the first round. And you're like, oh my gosh, you know, Michelle Pallera, a big deal. Wow, he's back. What a way to return. Comes back on this card against Gerald Mirchart and wins in what? What was it exactly?

It was 90, no. Combined 93 seconds, the win on Saturday was 50 seconds. It was 50 seconds in the first round. The Dars Choke win against Gerald Mershardt. Tremendous story. The post-fight interview was great as well. Wanted to have him on to talk about all of this and more. And so without further ado, let us say hello to the Dars night.

There he is. Kyle Dachas here in studio. Hello, sir. How are you? Nice to meet. Great to have you. Please. Thank you for having me.

Have a seat. Oh, it's so great to have you. Thank you for coming in. Hello, guys. How are you? It's nice to have you here. You made the trek from Philly. Yes.

How long is... 40 minutes. Oh my gosh. Not bad. Not bad. I appreciate you doing that. Thank you so much. Definitely.

And you were just here. Yes. Did you go home? Yeah, yeah. I went home on Saturday night. I was home by about, I say, 12 o'clock. Okay, so I was listening to your Post-Py press conference, and you said that you were going to go home and, like, make it for the end of the main card.

I was going to try to, yeah. It didn't work out. It didn't work out. No, we had too much media, too many photos. Okay. We stopped to shake shack afterwards. It's got some food, so it was nice. Why are you in such a rush to leave?

My wife's pregnant. Okay. We're going to just kind of minimize the stress on her. I got that. I got that. How did she handle all of this? Man, like a trooper. She's good, though.

She's good for right now. She didn't have the baby yet. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, she's somebody who's when she has something set, she's going to do it. So she told me that she was going to be here at the fight. I was like talking to my family. I wasn't really sure if it was the best idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, she was good. She, she helped, did everything well, and it was all good. Rick? okay sorry sorry no in there yeah it's not straight now Rick it's not going to bother right get it they get a straight there don't be shy yeah a little straight oh yeah now it's covering his mouth yeah it's already running me Rick just gave me that good let's see let's see it on this camera here Andy oh that's perfect look how good you love yeah that's better that's yeah yeah I just I have three kids myself yeah and I know when it gets close any stressful incident could lead to you know

a trip to the hospital. Yes. Were you worried about this? I was, but I knew that I had to fight. We had a plan set and schedule that if she were to go in labor on Saturday, I wouldn't talk to her until afterwards because she knows that this is my career. Yeah. I kind of have to do my job.

But yeah, she's very supportive of it. How many weeks now? She's 36 weeks. Oh, dear. She'll be 37 weeks tomorrow, actually. Wow, wow. And closer and closer. And your second, right?

Yes, my second. Second son. Yes, sir. Okay. And you were explaining like K. because of your name. Yeah, so my initials are KAD. Her initials are now KAD since we got married.

My son's initials are KAD and so with my other sons. Okay, I love this. So that's what you're going to stick with with? Yeah, for as many kids as you guys have. Yeah, for as many kids right now. We were supposed to just stick with one, and then this one surprised us, but yeah. I loved on the broadcast when you were talking about her and they showed her on the broad.

Could you tell where she was sitting? Did you know where she was? Okay. But it was amazing on the UFC's part to have that moment. And your story has been so great. Thank you. And I'd love to go back. to 2022. You're in the UFC, you're living your dream. Where are you when you get the call

that they're going to part ways with you, that they're going to release you? Yeah, so that was after the Andrews fight, I lost. That was the last fight on my contract that I had with them, so I knew that it was kind of do or die. Obviously, didn't work out as planned. They had actually called me up to do a fight short notice in Australia. Okay. Unfortunately with my... After that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, after that one. So there was no release or anything like that until then. I couldn't do it just based off of my wife and I were trying to get pregnant at the time. So she was going through fertility and stuff like that.

But yeah, they just didn't renegotiate the contract off of that. And then I was back with CFFC after that. What did that feel like when you realize that? It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. Just to have a career like that in a sport like this is very unforgiving. It's very heartbreaking. You go into some very dark places at the time.

But I knew with my wife by my side and everything like that, that it would eventually work out in the end. Did you consider stopping the career? To be honest, no. I just wasn't sure what would lead next. So our kind of choices were like PFL, maybe Bellator at the time, was kind of still there, not really. I don't think the merger had happened at the time. So I was very curious as to where we were with my management and whatnot. But I knew I just had to kind of keep fighting, get a couple more wins, get the confidence back.

feel like something would have happened to it, whether it be with the UFC or with PFL or Balator. The confidence thing is interesting because now you have to build yourself back up. You've already graduated from the regional scene and that's not knocking CFFC. But, you know, they're the league that you try to go through to get to the UFC and now you have to go back and you're probably mixed with other guys who are hoping to get to where you were and haven't had that opportunity yet. And you may think like, oh, no, like are they going to give me another shot all this stuff? So how did you battle, for lack of a better word, the demons, right? Like the doubts, the whispers in your brain to say, like, no, this is worth continuing. You will get back

someday. Just like you just said right there. Just kind of beating the demons, really. Like I I read a couple books. I read a thinking body, dancing mind, which I got from Zach McCovsky. When I was first starting out, I met Zach. He joined up our gym at the time. And he helped me a lot. I haven't heard Zach's name in a while. He helped me a lot with that. Mr. Fun Size? Yeah, fun size. Yeah. Shout out to him. He helped me a lot mentally. Just like getting prepared for fighting and whatnot, told me a lot of books to read and whatnot. So I kind of went back to where I was regionally before I got signed and kind of, you know, was writing notes, writing everything that you could, journaling, stuff like that, just making sure that I was maintaining the confidence that I had back when I was regionally because regionally I've been undefeated. So I knew that there was a reason why I was undefeated regionally, and I knew after I had gotten released that I didn't deserve to be back in CFFC.

I was like, I need to show them that I deserve to be back to the UFC. So I knew that I just had to keep winning and just, you know, keep fighting. Was there something about the pressures of the UFC that? that you think was affecting your performance? I just took everything for granted, to be honest. I got there, and I was like, man, like, I'm here. I made it. But what I didn't realize was that it would be so short-term.

Like, I figured that I would be there and be there for a while. When you're undefeated regionally, it's good, and your confidence is high. But then you lose that first fight, and I've lost plenty of times in my amateur career. But dealing with it professionally is a lot different, especially with the bright lights of the UFC. Yeah, that was just something I battled. Okay, so then once you start. to get a couple wins on the regional scene are you now like getting antsy wins the call coming

when's the call coming you know what i mean because it was three years in between you know you leaving essentially three years between you leaving and and returning so did you think after a couple of those wins you'd be right back in there and no honestly no okay i figured i figured uh i had switched management at the time um and then i kind of was talking my new management team and uh we were confident that i would kind of like get back there because the other guys that he has are kind of on the up and up of the UFC. So I was very confident, like, if I just kept winning that the call would come, but, you know, you fight three times and you win,

and you fight four times and you're like, man, like, what's going to happen? Like, is this call ever going to come? I took almost a year off before my prayer call-up. Just because I knew that at the time when I thought to my manager, he was saying that we can just wait for something short notice. They said that we were kind of on the cusp of it before the fight in August, when I won by knockout. They told me I was on the list.

I wasn't on the list prior, but that win of me knocking the guy out in June that I would be on the list now. So I was like, all right, well, there's a little confidence there, like a little something good. So just get a fight schedule, try to stay busy,

because I know the UFC loves it when you're busy. So I wanted to do that, and then eventually my manager just called me and said, we got the call. Wow, wow. And by the way, shout out to Lloyd, right? Lloyd Pearson, your manager, Vayner Sports,

one of the best, I think, personally in the business. I was interested when I saw, like June 2024 was your last fight and then you get this call so were you turning things down were you just saying like I'm going to wait at this point to yeah I was just I was just waiting wow I'm going to tell you it was the toughest time that I could have possibly like that that gap of 10 months or whatever you were healthy yeah I was perfectly fine and I was just you know being patient I feel like with my story and everything like that I was never a patient person growing up

like whenever I wanted something I needed it now whenever I wanted to do something I would do it now Like if I wanted to go to a trip to like Florida or something, I would plan it now just for like tomorrow. Right, right. But I took a step back and I told myself like, I told my wife about it and I was like, I just kind of need to be patient. She's always been somebody who's kind of pressed me to be patient along with my family and stuff. But like I had to take a step back personally and just try to tell myself like if I stay patient for this a little bit of time, it'll eventually work out. Like we just have to stay patient and just be focused on the task at hand, just kind of get better every single day. and eventually, you know, good will come from it.

So what did you do to pass the time? That's a long time, 10 months being trained, dude. I really just trained, yeah. But with nothing in sight? No, it's tough. How do you earn a living? How do you, like, live off that? My wife supported us.

My wife supported us. Yeah, my wife's a school teacher. She does special ed in a school in Philadelphia, Maritime Academy, it's called. But yeah, we were living off of pretty much. She was supporting us for the time being. I made our promise that I would get back to the UFC and that, you know, I would make us money

and support us with my career. career as well. So it's good that this has finally happened. Wow. So where are you and you get the call that they want you back? I'm on my way to strengthening in New Jersey. I've trained that power bipolar. He used to train with Brady. He's trained with a couple fighters now. My brother as well, he trained with my brother. My manager called me. I had two missed calls from him as I was leaving the house. And I was like, this is where he never calls me. So I call him back. He doesn't answer. I call him back. He doesn't answer. He texts me. He's like, I'll call you back in five minutes. I was like, all right, cool. 45 minutes goes by. And then he calls me back. And he's like,

you know, I've been, this is something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time. And I'm like, all right, this is it. And he was like, we got the call back. And I was like, okay. And he was like, you're going to fight Michelle Pereira. And I was like, okay, that was great. I'm, like, I'm like, ecstatic, freaking out. And then he's like, it's in China. And I'm like, oh, my God. I hate flying. Oh, really? My biggest thing. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a fan of flying. Oh, wow. This is mad. I'm not controlling it. Yeah, yeah. So that happened. And I was like, man, I got to fly to China. So in my head, I'm blowing it up. I'm like, I'm going to be on the plane for 24 hours. It's going to be terrible. It's going to be a terrible flight, whatnot. But it turned up to be nice.

Wow. You get like anxiety or? Yeah, I just get anxious. As soon as I'm not in control of anything. Yeah. Any little bit of turbulence, I freak out. And I like, death grip the chair and everything. Yeah. How was it? It was a really smooth flight. It was. Yeah. I mean, when you're when you're, yeah, yeah. When you're in the plane for 15 hours, something just tells you in your head. I'm like, I'm going to be here for 15 hours. regardless of what happens I just have to just I'm going to be here for 15 hours so if it's a bad flight if it's a good flight I'll just deal with it I slept a majority no so I flew from Philadelphia to Dallas okay that was three hours and then we flew from Dallas to Shanghai which was 15 so I'm assuming you had never been to Shanghai no I never been out of the country honestly for real yeah yeah not even to

Canada not I went to I drove to Montreal but never flew yes okay my hometown did you like it awesome I went to try I saw I train a little bit okay okay okay okay so what did you think of China. It wasn't too bad. Okay. It wasn't too bad. People were telling me it was like, it's going to be rough. I was like, okay, but we weren't kind of a nice side of China. It was nice. Everything was super clean, super cool. My biggest concern was kind of figuring out what to pay for, like how to pay. I downloaded an app that down that was good for pay, so everything was cool. Yeah, it was really smooth. I mean, we did like a, I'd say like a three or four block radius of

the hotel. Yeah. We didn't veer out any further than that. Your only time leaving the country is to go to Shanghai. The fight. Yeah. Crazy. What a story. Yeah. I'm assuming your wife didn't come with you on that one. No, she did not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, how long did you have to prepare for that fight? 10 days, I think it was 10 days. Golly.

How much should you weigh? At the time, so at the time, I had a fight scheduled the week afterwards. It was August 30th was my fight for a CFFC. Oh, so you were going to come back? Yeah, yeah. At that point? Yeah, we were tired of waiting, so I was like, all right, I'm going to just get a fight, have a fight scheduled for August 30th.

And then the manager called on the 20th for the 24th or 23rd, whatever it was. But I think I was about 210, 205. I was already cut in wait for the fight a week after. I kind of just had to like move my weight cutting everything up a week. Okay. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. So once you get back in the mix, like it's fight week and you're going through the process, the posters, the check-in, the bag they give you all that. Now you're back, right? And you said you took it for granted the first time. What was it like just going through that whole process back as a UFC fighter? And it felt like home. I was like, this is where I need be this is where I'm supposed to be I knew that this is where I was you know

supposed to be in my life everything felt good everything was right everything went smooth and it was just you couldn't have written a better story for it were you very nervous because you have to make a big splash right yeah yeah so I'm not a very nervous person as far as like fighting and stuff that I keep my um excuse me that I keep my like emotions inside like for fight night but fight day my goodness my brother was like like he's I was most stress I've ever seen you I was like, I know, like, I don't know what it was. I was just so stressed out, just, I think, just based off of the situation at hand,

like, I'm in China, I'm fighting a guy on 10 days notice in the UFC, you know, like this guy's preparing, it has been preparing for a guy that was, I think, 13 and 1 at the time. So this guy's preparing for, so I'm getting the best Pereira that I've seen for a while now. And I'm like, man, like, this is going to be a tough fight. Like, just fighting in general is tough, but to fly 15 hours and fight in China on 10 days notice, it was tough, but, man, it was good. man I can't imagine that feeling right yeah you want water by the way no I'm good okay that feeling when you knocked him out yeah after everything you had been through

back in the UFC against like a really well-respected veteran yes I can't imagine like could you even describe what that emotion felt like man it felt like a weight was lifted off me forever like it felt like the biggest chip on my shoulder that I had is just lifted off and everything was kind of right in place all the stars were aligned everything was great dude amazing oh my gosh I mean like it just probably I would imagine like this time around, less nervous, right? At MSG? Ah, some more nervous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now you're a nervous guy?

Allegedly, yeah. Okay. Is it because you want this so bad? I think so, yeah. Okay. And you know what it's like to be on the outside looking in. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. It's, man, this last fight, obviously, it wasn't like as crazy as it was in China, but my brother told me afterwards, he was like, I can tell you were battling something. Like, you were sitting there in the locker room, battling something. I was like, yeah, dude, I was back in China again, stressing out. And you weren't like that before. No, not really. I mean, I would get nervous here and there, but it was never anything where I was, like, talking him about it when I'm like, dude, like, I'm nervous right now. Like, what, what's going on? What are we doing here? Yeah, yeah.

Am I ready for this? Like, what's going on here? And he was like, dude, like, you're fine. We've been training and everything's good. But the past two fights, I've been more nervous than usual, but I think it's just because I know that the risk that I have right now. Yeah, and also, I would imagine you're growing a family. Like, there's a lot more at stake, right? Yeah, definitely, definitely. And you're putting that on your shoulders. Yeah, I mean, you're the man of the house. You have to provide for the family. So, I mean, that's how I grew up. I should be the man in the house. I should be providing for everybody. So when you're, you know, I'd say a year ago when you're living off your wife's paycheck and you're like, man, like what's going on here? Like, should I get a job? Like just to just kind of pay a little bit, pay the mortgage or whatnot, pay electric bill or anything like that. And now I'm here, you know, getting bonuses. It's good. Oh, my God. Incredible. Did you get one in August? Yeah, I got one in my debut. Did you get one on?

I did not. I think Boe Neckle stole it, but yeah, as it should have, but yeah. By the way, did you stay in Shanghai, or did you go home? No, we flew right home. So, we flew home. So my fight was Saturday. We flew home Sunday, and then I got home on Monday. Okay.

So then for this one, for the Mearshaar fight, did you have a normal training camp? Yeah, everything was without. Yeah, full camp. When you found out it was New York, you must have been over the moon. Oh, my God. After my last flight, I heard that they were here at MSG, and I was like, man, it would be great for me to get. on this card. Like, I'm a local, I mean, I'm an hour and a half away, but still technically

local considered the fighters that are on the card. Yeah, I hit my manager up. I asked him, you can use any chance that I can get those MSG card. And he was like, I'll talk to him, but I won't be able to guarantee anything. I was like, yeah, it's just a, I'm just, it's just a feeler. I want to see what's going on. And he texted me back and he was like, Mick said that the card's full for right now. If anything changes, we'll let you know. I was like, okay, cool. The next day, he's like, yo, Mirashart. We're going to fight Mirashart. M.S. I was like, oh, my God. Unbelievable.

Yeah. Crazy. I think you went, did you go to 281, Pereira, Adesania? Yes, I was there alive on the floor, yeah, yeah, yeah. As just a fan? Yep. And now you're competing. And that was, what was that? That was 22, so how did you?

I was actually, I was, it was before the Andrews fight. Yeah, so I was in the UFC at the time. But you had never competed in MSG? No. This was your first time. Yeah. That was the first time I was just, like, there, in general with CNN fight, and then second time to me actually in the cage fighting.

I know you're a Philly guy, but like, did it feel special? this is the world's most famous arena there was an aura you felt it yeah definitely definitely i was telling my cornerman and stuff i was like man we're driving to msg right now for me to fight like this is crazy this is crazy like guys only wish like guys wish for this yeah like guys go their whole career and never have this and i'm here my second my second run in the ufc and i'm fighting msg like it's it's crazy so the question is like can you top the first fight in the return and you do in in many respects i mean a freaking beautiful darts truck against a guy who's really tough on the ground as well. I know he's been submitted and all that, but I would say it was

comparable, you know? Very much. What was it? 50 seconds? The last one? That's one. 43. Okay. So, I mean, pretty damn close. Were you expecting that? Was that something you were banking on, a quick submission? We knew the first round that he was kind of slow. He's like a slow starter and that he gets a lot of his momentum in the second and a third round. So we feel like if we attacked him early in the first, that it would have been an issue and I would have set the tone for the fight. Obviously, it worked in our favor. And I, put them down with a good shot with 50 seconds in there. Oh my gosh.

Brilliant. And who came up with the Dars Knight? So I awkwardly did in a interview after I fought Pickett. I had a very, very awkward interview, which is hilarious to watch now. What do you mean by awkward? It was just awkward. I was like, I have an announcement to make. Okay.

I'm going to call out Tony Ferguson because I want to be the Dars Night, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, a little awkward, but it's good to laugh out now. I don't go by the Dars Night, obviously. I mean, like, when... It's pretty a good name, by the way. introduces me, he's not like Kyle the Darth's night So I kind of keep it at that

Because I feel like it's too long to use I think it's pretty damn good How many Darstoke wins do you have? I think it's like eight or nine Yeah I mean I feel like you've You know there used to be a guy named Jason Von Flew

And they called the Von Flew And they called the Von Flew choke after him I mean I feel like This is your way of saying This is my thing This is my finishing move Like if you're a pro wrestler That's your thing

You're your signature I mean I can run with it I think I can run with it I think you're a little bit on the fence I am on the fence I am on the fence I'm not big on nicknames

If kind of everybody's pushing for it, I'll do it. Do you look for it specifically? Yeah, it's kind of like my go-to. I have long, lanky arms. So it's kind of just a submission that ever since I started to jit-zu, it's kind of always kind of been there and been easy for me to get. And what about the hair? What about it?

The bleaching of the hair. I mean, when did that start? Man, after I got cut from the UFC the first. Well, not cut. After I didn't get re-signed the first time. It was kind of the 2.0, me 2.0 kind of thing. I'm like, yeah, I want to show a different. me this time now I'm not here knocking guys out so it's not too bad so it works it works yeah

two degree how often do you have to bleach it so i only do it for fights so it's not like i'll ever do it like outside of a fight i usually do it like a week before a fight and it lasts for however long it kind of lasts but you've had some fighters uh there it is a blonde cloud has cast upon that's right and then direct brunson said you're welcome so oh yeah blonde brunson shout out by the you've had a couple of you've had a couple of bangor tweets as of late a little bit you had the one about all this fight fixing talk. Yeah, that was this guy. That was Jim right here. Oh, wait. You've got a ghostwriter? Yeah, he gave a

shout out, shout out, shut out. There it is. All this talk about fight fixing, I'm fixing to knock Gerald's block off at UFC 322. That's not a bad one. Nothing bigger, though, than the chess one. The chess one. This one. Oh, my God. Dude, a million views?

Yo, that's crazy. Crazy. That's this guy. That's him? That was this ghostwriter. Respect, respect, man. Respect. I mean, look at that. Crazy. Crazy. Dude, when this went off, I was like, all right, it's not too bad. Like, this is pretty cool. And then it hit, like, 100,000 views.

And I was like, what was going on here? And then it was like, next thing I know, it's at, like, 500,000. And I'm like, oh, my God. And the next day I was like, this is going to hit a million. And it did. So far, I hit a million. By the way, it is true. He did move the pawn forward to life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't do that. I mean, shout out to him for playing chess in between rounds. That was the BKFC fighter. I stick to the rules. Yeah, yeah. Are you a big chess guy? I try to be, but I'm not very good at it.

What's interesting is I saw that video. Everyone saw that video. It was like, wow, this is so great. You were actually analyzing. The move. Yeah. Yeah, you did it. Yeah.

Well done. Well done. That is amazing. We were going back to the blonde stuff. I've seen fighter, I've seen a, like Tank Davis talked about this. Amanda Serrano boxers where they said like stuff gets in their eyes after they put stuff in their hair. Has that ever happened with the blonde? No.

No. No, everything seems pretty good. I usually watch it a couple times and it's all good. Okay, okay, there's none of that, like, I don't know, peroxide or something. No, I had, like, toner in it that, like, kind of dyed up. It dies it, like, kind of purple when I first get it done, so it looks like very purply when I first get it done. Okay. A couple showers, and it's out.

So you win this fight on Saturday. Do you get to see your wife in the back, or... No, not in the back. I kind of waved to her. You can see me waving in the video, pointing to her before I get my hand raised, and then I saw her back at the hotel. Okay. And do you guys celebrate? Do you do anything, or do you literally just go in the car and go home?

Now, the group of us went the Shake Shack. Yeah. We went back to the hotel, ate the burgers, and then drove home. Wow, that is amazing, man. Did you even watch the rest of the card? No, I didn't get a chance, dude. Now, we drove home, so. Couldn't, like, you didn't even put it on the phone or something?

Nah, nah, we were too high on my fight, so. Yeah, you couldn't care less at that point. You probably just wanted, like, a break from MMA, I would imagine. A little bit, yeah. Yeah. It's very stressful. Have you seen, have you seen anything that transpired? From the one.

Like, the results? You're aware. Yeah. Yeah. Were you surprised Islam won so dominantly? Yeah, I thought J.M. was going to win. Oh, you thought he was going to win? Yeah, I had him winning the fight, but, I mean, Islam's just on another level, it seems.

Yeah. Yeah. What about the nickel head kick? It was good, man. Were you shocked? I saw the highlight of it. I didn't see the whole fight. I was shocked, but I heard that, like, his opponent was, like, a punching back the whole fight. Yeah.

I heard he was, like, a punching back kind of, the whole fight. I mean, I'm not really sure. That's also just kind of people talking. Meaning he didn't bring anything to the table? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, he did good. It looked good.

He looked good. Do you think he's in your weight class, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think he's, you know, do you think he has the ceiling of the potential, or do you think we kind of saw with the RDR fight that he has a ceiling? No, I mean, it just shows that, like, he's still kind of fresh in the sport. So it depends on who you fight, obviously, RDR was on a tear for a while. I think he'll be good in the sport.

It's just going to take them time. Does that fight make sense for you? For me? Yeah. I mean, I don't think so. No? No, I mean, I don't think so, no. Bo Nickel is a big name.

That other guy called him out. The other middle they called him out. Oh, yeah. Susser Kaya. Yeah, he called him out beforehand. Yeah. I'm not big on, like, calling guys out. But you don't think, you don't look at the rankings.

I mean, I look at the rankings. I see you guys. I think I have a higher Stockton than Bodo's right now, just based off of my two wins, my story as well. You know, he did lose the RDR. It is what it is for him. But, yeah, I mean, they're kind of, I think they're kind of trying to build him back up.

Yeah. Same thing for me, building me up as well. So, yeah. What do you think about the top of the division? Obviously, there's Hamzat. I mean, I think he's unbeatable right now. It's tough. You don't think any of those guys at the top?

I don't, I don't, you would like to see it, but I don't think a lot of guys will do. Yeah, I mean, Imov might have a good challenge, but I think he's just too dominant on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Were you surprised that he dominated DDP that, you know, that convincingly? Yeah, yeah.

Just based off of DDP's wild style. Yeah. I was very surprised at how that fight went. I mean, obviously, he kind of just grappled him and held him down the whole time. I would have liked to see more damage. Probably could have ended the fight in the first time. first round you think so first round a crucifix yeah when he was in that crucifix yeah I think so if he would have unleashed the elbows that would have been over by them but yeah why do you think he

didn't maybe then when I guess out if he was surviving okay that was kind of always his question right right was his conditioning yeah I feel like maybe he that got to his head a little bit or maybe he just wanted to dominate for five rounds to just show that he was just superior to him and so how far do you think you are away from like how many fights do you think in your mind you have to win before you get into the conversation with these guys for like a total conversation Not, like, just like the top dogs, you know? Like, you're building yourself back up, but you have two, like, these are name opponents that you have on your resume now. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised they'd give me somebody with a number next to their name next.

Okay. I mean, I'd hope so. Yeah, I mean, ideally for me, like a Whitaker maybe might be a good flight. Oh, damn. Yeah. I mean, what is he, number nine, ten? I'll tell you right now, because there's some talk about the UFC going to Australia in February. and one would think,

although that might be a problem for you, the Australia thing. Hey, would you turn down Australia? No, probably not, nah. But this is, when's your baby's gonna... He's doing the first week of December. So, I mean, he could be due,

he's due any minute. So February's okay. Yeah, yeah, it's enough time. My wife would be off from work and everything like that, so... Whitaker's nine, yeah? I guess you've been paying attention. Everybody else is pretty much taken up, right?

There's Gregory, well, Gregory Haudriguez just fought. Yeah, he just fought, so he'll take some time. That might work because you just fought, but you had a shorter night. Vitori Palo Costa Votori's fighting December 15th or something like that, right?

Costa doesn't have anything. I would love a match of a Costa. I think that would be good. That would be a fun one. Delizze, Canineer. I already lost the Delizze, but you know, I kind of have... Could run it back? Could run it back. MVP? Who? Michael Venipate? Oh, I don't know if you were talking smack. Okay, I never heard of that guy.

MVP? That'd be good, yeah. He'd be a tough fight. I didn't realize that they put him in the middle. I think that my best matchup, probably right now would be Whitaker. guys based in the rankings. I mean, it doesn't seem like against the fight right now. A lot of other guys do. So, I mean, I think it kind of makes sense.

Shoot your shot. Shit, why not? Did you ask Lloyd to... Not, not yet, not yet. Not yet. No? I might now. Yeah, I mean, this is it.

We're planting the seed right now. That's right. Is this a guy that you've looked at? I mean, it was champion. I followed his career for a while. I followed him and Anasanya for a while. I think they're both great fighters. I think I can, you know,

dominate both the guys. But I think as of right now, where I'm in my career and where Whitaker is in his career, I think that could be a good matchup. We were talking about confidence and when you're leaving the UFC, I feel the confidence radiating from you now.

I mean, we're talking about Whitaker, we're turning down bow-nickel fights, we're saying he's not on your level, all that stuff, not turning him down to fight. Have you ever been this confident? To be honest, no. I feel like it's just, I'm in my prime right now. I'm in my prime.

Between like 32 and 35 is your prime. I'm currently 32. I'll be 33 in February. And I feel like it's, this is, this is what I was put on earth to do. I was put on earth to be in the UFC and I was put on earth to be a champion one day. And, you know, I'm just trying to follow that story. How did you get into M.A.? I started out in high school.

I think it was like my freshman or sophomore year. My brother would drive to Abington, PA for college. He was going to Penn State, Abington. And he would just tell me he was driving by a gym every single day. I would drop by this gym. I'm going to join up. I said, okay, let me know how it is. And he does, like, one jihitsu class.

And he's like, dude, I threw the guy's legs one way. And next thing I knew he was, like, still in front of me, I couldn't get past his legs. And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I would go over. I mean, we obviously watched the UFC and whatnot. But the way he explained it, I was like, all right, I'm going to go over, try it out. Fell in love with it, and that's been it. Like, I mean, I watched the UFC.

It was always something I wanted to do. When I was really young, I remember watching UFC, like, at my dad's house, I watched Kemo versus Ken Chamrock. Oh, wow. Yeah. With the freaking, with the cross? the cross yeah yeah wow yeah I remember that and I was like man this is what I want to do and it's kind of stuck with me ever since and in the back of my head I've always I've always said

like I'm gonna be in the UFC I'm gonna be in the UFC I'm gonna be in the UFC I'm gonna be in you're you're how old when you're like introduced to that 15 yes did you do any martial arts oh I did a little bit karate but I was mainly a sports guy like I played lacrosse a ton I played pretty much all sports growing up soccer basketball baseball and then what about like striking like so you go from jiu-jitsu to the striking to then when you start thinking like i can actually do this as a career uh probably it i'm going to tell you i was a five-and-five amateur so my first like three fights i would think i was like oh in three or maybe like one and two or something and i was fighting like at heavyweight so i was just a fat kid yeah so i knew it wasn't

really it wasn't really something for me i was like man like i should be able to like lose weight and maybe i'll be a little bit better And I lost the weight. I dropped down the middle weight, and I was very, very successful as an amateur at middleweight. And I just kind of stuck with that. And I was like, if I'm going to go pro, I said, my goal was always been in the UFC. As soon as I went, as soon as I turned pro, I was like, this is real, like, this is what I'm going to do. And kind of just took off.

Wow. I was 9 and no, I believe. Yeah, 9 and no, and I got called to the UFC the first time. How did you lose the weight? How'd you go from heavyweight to middleweight? Just dieting, really. I found Mike Dolce had a bunch of books, so I used a couple of his stuff. You didn't work with him.

You just read his books. No, yeah, I just read his diet books pretty much. And it works. Yeah, eventually I went over to Vegas and did like the certification that he has. I did that. So it kind of helped a little bit with the whole weight cutting as well. Yeah, and everything worked out. Your brother Chris.

Yes. He's fought once, I think, right? Since the release, yeah. Yeah. What's up with him? Nothing right now. We just opened the gym, the forge MMA. So I have a charler. There it is.

Okay. Where is that? So it's in Parkwood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's a little neighborhood. that we live in. There's a little strip mall that we opened the gym up. But yeah, we're kind of running that gym right now. He's doing kind of the business side of it, running classes as always, and I'm teaching as well. Okay. Do you foresee him trying to get back into the UFC, or is he happy? I mean, it's been doing with a lot of injuries lately, so I'm going to say that probably the business and

the gym will kind of be his thing right now. He said he wants to fight like one or two more times and see where we go from there. But yeah, I'm always supportive of them, always behind him. was this a dream of your guy to open the gym yeah not at all not at all not i mean not for me at least um i was never somebody i was never somebody to that like i never felt like um i wanted the gym to open up i was like man like once i get done with fighting i think i just want to be done with it and kind of just ixnailing the whole thing yeah um and then recently within the past like two years my brother was like maybe we should like i think we should just like open up our own spot just kind of be good with with teaching people like and whatnot and i was like all right like i'll give it a shot and now we

started, man. I love it. You love it? Yeah. Is it for kids and stuff like that? Yeah, so we have kids classes as well. We have kids classes from six to 14 and then everybody else's adults classes. We do Jiu-Jitsu, striking MMA, kids classes. And are you back at the gym on Monday after winning at MSG? Yeah, I run an MMA class Monday night. Wow. What is that like? I mean, people, everybody's congratulating you and everything like that, but I told them, I was like, listen, like, this just shows what I want everybody else to see is that you can fight on Saturday and you can come in here and still help the guys on Monday. Like, there shouldn't be a reason why you're out of the gym for six weeks or, you know, two weeks after your fight, unless you took a, unless it was a war

and whatnot, I can see. But you can still come in and help out. And I just want to be a good example for these guys at the gym. And those guys are how old, the ones that you're talking to about this? They're grown men. They have kids and families, but there's also, there's also, like, 16, 17-year-old kids who are just starting out as well? Okay. And is it MMA and then Nogi juditu, yeah. And are you trying to create a team here, or is it more like for recreational for the public. I mean, we have a fight team of guys that participate with the public people that are doing it as well as hobbyists. But when guys have fights, they're always kind of to the side. We're always to the side over here doing our own thing. I love how people from Philadelphia say, you guys say

fight. You remind me of Eddie Alvarez. Fight. Yeah. The way you say fight, I hear Eddie. I hear his voice. To me, he's Philadelphia. He's like the first guy that I spoke, he's like the, you know, he's the godfather of Philadelphia MM. And you, Sean Brady, um, uh, Joe Piper. You You all kind of say it the same way, and I enjoy it very much. Did you have any interactions with Eddie coming up? Did you ever, like, cross past with him? Yeah, so my original, where the gym I started at, grew, like, was like buddies with him.

Like, they came up together as well. So it was a little bit here and there. He, once he kind of went to the, to the Black Zillians, I think it was at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was kind of like nothing. I haven't seen, I didn't see him for a while. I know he opened the gym up in Newtown near us, like, which is like 30 minutes north of us.

um we were up there a couple of times because we have two uh bkfc fighters at our gym oh wow go up and use their ring sometimes okay so that's kind of an only interaction yeah okay but you've met him yes legend great guy yeah underground king underground king that's right i mean Philadelphia through and through yep i went to kensington i went to his neighborhood yeah i saw that that was rough that's a spot man oh my gosh with him with him i feel safe yeah but still that's not where you live no no no i live in like the north east part of it i live in like that it's a little it's i mean depends on who you ask but it's a lot better than where you were walking around with Eddie okay you're trying to say like you

live in a boozy neighborhood it's not boozy no it's not boozy it's not what do you think about the bkFC stuff that's brutal dude I have two we have two guys that do it and I think it's like you have to be you have to be a certain kind of like sicko to do it yeah um watching it on tv is obviously one thing but you know being there cornering it's completely different like corner two yeah I cornered for the Wells Fargo fight yeah and they're coming back in in yeah we have this guy's gonna be fighting on it this year yeah which one This guy on the left. Okay, what's your name?

Lex Lola. The most hated man in combat sports, Lex Luglo. Okay. Why most hated? This is the guy that called out, Fador-Million Anko. Oh, that's right, that's right. You do know me. Well, I've heard of that, but I don't know if you're actually the most hated guy.

He's not. We're trying to be. Okay. All right. Yeah, but we have him and another guy, Pat Brady, a heavyweight. Oh, yes. Here. So, yeah, we have those guys, but it is brutal, dude.

Like, it's very brutal. The Wells Fargo, I can still remember the Rolls Fargo fight, the first fight of the night. two guys went to war one guy eats it he trains on Marquez fought and the guy that he fought was like guided by his girlfriend like had his hand on her shoulder and she's walking because his face is so swollen shut it's just I think it's brutal dude

but I mean hey you wouldn't do it never no you couldn't pay me enough to do that but the thing is like I went I went to one show and they all say I saw that video yeah cosmetic you know because of hands there's no padding punch less you're not I've had I have plates in my face and surgery on my face

as well so it's like I don't want to do that constantly. I feel like you have to do it more or more so than often. Which fight did that come from? So, well, it was two, two times. I had a, after my fight with Hawes, I got a severely bad staff infection in my eyelid. Really? Yeah, I can show your photos and stuff. Oh, my dear. Yeah, so I've never heard of my eyelid. Yeah, so I got neat. He needed me in the face, got a cut. Obviously, I think it got infected somehow. But yeah, I woke up the next morning, my face was swollen. And then kind of like three days later, it just got more and more swollen.

was like out to here it was huge so we went to the doctors and they as i was stitched up at the time i'm in the hospital and a lady walks in and she's like we're gonna take blood cultures just to see what it is and i'm like okay cool she's like just lean back and i feel a little bit of pain next day i know she just cut me open she cut she cut the stitches up him oh immediately start squeezing the blood out squeezing like i'm assuming it's like pus and blood it's coming out here i had strep and staff in my eye so the strep from what i from what i remember being told is that it's a fleshy disease. So instead of the flesh eating going backwards, towards my eye, went forward and ate my eyelid. So I actually have a skin graft from all my eyelid from my neck ear. Yeah. Really? Yeah.

Oh, now I can kind of see it. Yeah. When I blink, I don't like blink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holy smokes. Yeah. And then I got surgery from the delays if, like, need me. My cheek caved in on the knee. And I was, I've played better from that. You see, that's the crazy thing about you fighters. Like, if that happened to me, I'd be like, I'm done with the thing that led me to experience this. And a lot of people would, right? And you're, like, dying to get back in the UFC and you want... I can't sing and dance, so I got to keep fighting. No.

How long did it take for the eye to, like, fully heal? Man, uh, a long time. I have, uh, I have, like, photos in my phone of like, like, kind of like every month. It's about, I'd say it's about close to a year. A year? Yeah, yeah, with the skin. How did you train? During that time.

I didn't. You didn't? Road the, rode the assault bike, with the echo bike, lifted, and that was about it. Were you going crazy? Oh, yeah, yeah. especially with like with my like so I couldn't technically I couldn't really like I couldn't open my eyelid because everything was dead so I didn't like open my eye I'd say for maybe like two months my eye was just covered like like like this like with with the padding or just not being

able to see wow I just looked out of one eye for about two months that's awful and do you feel anything now no no it's not numb or anything like no no I mean my my teeth are kind of stone numb from the knee that the leads I hit me with but that's about it yeah everything's good that's all good yeah geez Louise what a life man right now I'm here we are unbelievable it's it's amazing and I loved your post-fight interview it was very heartfelt I feel like you're an inspiration to a lot of guys because you know people get let go from the UFC all the time yeah end up not wanting to fight back and and some I think hope that they'll get back in a year

yours is interesting it's three years yeah and a lot of people I think would lose hope you know yeah have you heard from people who have said like you've inspired me to keep going yeah dude you get emotional thinking about it but everybody's like very supportive of the whole like my whole back my whole story now um i i really tell a lot of people like i never had like a backstory like these guys have like abusive families these guys like i was living on the street i was doing this i was doing then i was just a kid who grew up doing what he loved like i was training i was i was playing sports like i had a great support system of my family and my mom and my dad um and i never had like anything tough

in my life happened. Like I've been in maybe like one or two scuffles, like no fist fights, nothing like that. And I never really had a story for people to kind of like follow and support me. And I feel like being released and then being resigned and now having this sex that I have, that it's something that like people can finally be like, man, I kind of, I go with this guy. Like I can understand this. And I just want to kind of use my story to just show that like no matter, like I posted, I posted on Twitter. I was like, I was like, I just my story to show that sometimes you have to take one step backwards takes two steps forward like sometimes you need to fail and realize you know what i got to pick myself up and just be confident and

just keep going and this is what i love nobody's going to stop me from doing that and yeah we just showed that tweet as you were talking so that was good producing on the team's part over there were you always of that mindset did you always feel that or is this something that you learned as a result of this experience like if someone would have told you the day you were told you're not coming back like it's okay you'll take two steps back and you'll take like we don't tell them f up right yeah yeah i do get lost i don't need to hear that but yeah i mean i again i've been somebody who's not been patient i'm you know uh i didn't really do a lot of things i i i prayed a lot i'd say uh i've been leaning more towards the religious side of of life

recently um so that's kind of something that's kind of you know new in my life and i feel like that's kind of you know made me on the up and up and kind of just you know brought my life together brought my eye to go a little bit all right so here we go you got the the baby coming sir and then you're hope to come back in the first quarter of 26 that we're in australia we're calling our shop pay-per-view i think that would be ufc 324 wow you know i know well actually no i think it'll be five because because no yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so So a new era? Yeah.

What do you think about that? You want my thoughts. Yeah. My thoughts. No, yeah. I think it's, okay, so I think ESPN is bigger than CBS slash Paramount. No doubt about it. So I think that the ESPN platform will be missed.

Okay. As a fan, I think it's good that you're not going to be asked to pay $70 for the pay-per-views anymore. Yeah, yeah. So now it will be, well, they said they're going to increase the prices. They haven't said how much. Yeah. But I think that's good. The main thing that I'm curious about on two fronts is number one, how does a champion

get his pay-per-view points now? You know, like if you're a champion... Do you think that they would, instead of doing that kind of just like increased pay? Yes, that is what they should do, but how do you offset it? So like, when McGregor comes, his pay-per-view is obviously a lot higher than some other guy. Yeah, of course. And so how do you factor that in, number one? And number two, I'm a big sports fan as well.

and I believe in the athletes and the fighters getting their piece of the pie and I don't think that you guys get your piece of the pie to be honest and so like when the NBA increases their TV deal the athletes get the salary cap goes up in the NBA and they get 50% of the revenue they share in that and so when the UFC signs a $7.7 billion deal with Paramount not to mention all the other territories that they have deals I want to I want to know how your pay is increasing

you know what I mean so Dana says like yeah don't worry it's going to increase but like okay I want to know yeah and and what I wish was I wish the fighters not to make this about me here but like I wish the fighters had a seat at the table and sit down and say like all right

you guys just increased your your TV deal by 50% you just doubled it in America alone let alone Canada and Brazil Australia Europe etc what does that mean for us is the base pay going up is the premium that goes along with the whole like unionization of fighters too right i just i just want the fighters to have a seat of the table and have

a voice yeah so right now the wnba is about their their their collective bargaining uh agreement is about to expire at the end of the month okay and and and their tv deal just went up and the the players are asking like the minimum pay for w nba i think no sorry the maximum pay for wmba is 220 000 maximum for the best player in the wmba they're trying to get it to 1.1 million and and and they're saying based on x y and z it is it is warranted yeah they will collectively bargaining this you guys don't have that voice yeah the ufc will just tell you what it is yeah and and i don't like that okay so so when i see 7.7 billion i'm like great who's getting it yeah yeah yeah but how much of that is going to the fighters i mean you ideally you would like it like a like a good amount of it too but

yeah we're not really sure the bonuses you know will that go up there was once a time that the bonuses were 70 k i thought there were 75k now there was 60 they once did 100 120 for UFC 129 but now it's 50 right as you know yeah that should go up too but that's discretionary you also I don't like the show and win yeah I don't like that either I think I mean are you on show and win uh yes I am right now yeah yeah yeah um I feel like once you hit a certain spot in the you should know yeah yeah I feel like once you hit a certain spot in the UFC like that the the show and win because you should kind of be done with you you should kind of just have like a set purse yeah um maybe maybe maybe when you hit the rankings is

should do that. I mean, this has always kind of been like a, like, it's like weird to talk about as the whole fighter pay thing, you know what I mean? It's always been something that's weird to talk about. But yeah, I feel like the UFC, obviously they do a great job and they do a great job of paying the fighters, but I feel like, you know, it should increase a little bit. People think that I'm being a hater when I bring this up. I'm just trying to look at this like sensitively and also compare it to the other major league

sports that they compare themselves to. Of course. They say we're on the level of the NBA, the NFL. So like, okay, so why aren't the fighters treated the same? Yeah, when does that start? When did what start? Oh, January. January.

Okay. Yeah, so we'll find out soon. Right in time for the February, I'll show you your card. Perfect. Has anyone ever come up to you and said, hey, here's a few bucks to throw this fight? No, not at all. And if they did, I'd call them out on it. But now, that's the thing I don't like about the fighters doing it, the fighters that were saying that.

Yeah. I feel like if they're going to joke about it, like, make a joke like I made. Yeah. I don't think they were joking, though. I don't think they were either. No, I think someone told them to say they were joking. joking after the fact. By the way, it's no indictment on them. Someone came up to them. So why say it was a joke? Yeah. And if it's, if it's somebody that like you don't know

anything like that, you can just put them on blasts. Just say yeah, the scumbag came up to me. And I told them to F off. Now a lot of people, those people are saying I told them dev off, but what about the ones that didn't? Yeah. Like did you see that fight? The Dahlgarian. Yes. It looked a little suspect. I mean, now that you watch it, it's a little weird. And you find out that everyone was betting on first round sub. Yeah. It's, it's suspicious. It's very suspicious, but I mean, I don't know. FBI's looking into it, aren't they? Yes, they are. Yeah, it's a bit much. They are. And they've been looking into the other case from three years ago. They're still looking into that. Cross thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Crazy sport. Very crazy. But you're happy to be

a part of it. Hey, I'm here for the ride. Amazing. Great to meet you, Kyle. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you for coming in. I really appreciate. You guys going right back to Philly? Yeah, we make it lunch or something like that. Okay. I always want to thank you as well, man. This has been a, this has been something that I've always envisioned, and I've envisioned having a middleweight belt right here. man so can we do that we will don't worry without i look forward to that and we'll remember this moment thank you and uh there it is august was the comeback november starts to climb 2026 i'll be ranked that's right and then 27 middleweight champ or is that a little sounds great to me okay perfect it doesn't sound too bad now you stay out of trouble over there okay

because this guy's like he's about to fight me i don't know i i see lex's like okay lex's character he's quite the character i look forward to i look forward to that too i look forward to that too this guy's about to he's about to throw he's like pacing back over it he's good he's good He's excited for me, man. This guy was more excited for me when I won than I was for myself. When he won, I was screaming to kill him. I could see it. Yeah, a little crazy, a little crazy.

The audience will find out about you soon. You're kind of in the shadows right now. But thank you so much. Good luck with the baby. Thank you so much. Grats on everything and thank you for coming in again. Thank you for having. Kyle Dawkins, the man, the team, man, thank you.

Shout out to Chris Dawkins as well, wherever he may be in. Forge, MMA. The Forge, MMA. Go check it out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Harcwood, Philadelphia, go check them out. Not a big fan of the Eagles or any of the Philly teams. Sorry, you're a bowl's guy, right? Yes, that's right.

That's right. That's right. We'll see you in the Super Bowl, hopefully. Definitely. We'll take a quick break. We'll be back. Say goodbye to Carl. Don't go anywhere. Okay, back on the program. That was my conversation with Tony Kahn from yesterday.

Kyle Dawkins was great. His whole crew was great. Very, very nice. And I enjoyed that very, very much. And especially the fact that they drove in from Philadelphia. I mean, golly, they were just here. Wonderful stuff. We're going to get to some news and notes in about 25, 30 minutes, so stay tuned for that.

But for now, very, very excited to say hello to our next guest. He had a night that I'm sure he has dreamed about for many years. I'm sure there was a time where he thought maybe it would never play out the way in which it did. But it really did play out like a dream on Saturday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. It was the rematch of the fight that I still think as of right now is the contender, the top contender for boxing fight of the year, boxing match of the year if we want to get super technical. They ran it back, as you know, Chris Eubank Jr., Connor Ben,

and this time the Ben's got one up on the Eubanks. This time, Connor Ben beat Chris Eubank Jr. And this time, it wasn't even close. I mean, you can make a very strong case that it was a complete shutout for the destroyer. He proved his point. He put the exclamation point. He's now apparently going to go right back down to 147 pounds.

There's a lot to talk to him about, and he is kind enough to join us on this Wednesday evening. He is joining us with his lawyer, Lee Mtej, who was here several months ago when Connor and Shakur had their little tete-a-tete in our very studio, gentlemen. Great to have you on. Connor. Congratulations. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure.

Great speaking to you again. And you're looking phenomenal. Lee, you're looking great. You were looking great in the ring next to Connor on Saturday night. So I see the smiles on your faces and I would imagine that the smiles haven't left. Have you come down from the high, Connor? Have you come down from what you accomplished on Saturday? Are you still feeling, you know, all the buzz that you accomplished on Saturday?

Yeah, I've just been on the phone to Keith and Lee looking at when we're getting back in the ring. You know, so for me, although it was a great win and probably the best night of my life and the greatest win in my career. I definitely want to push on and just keep the momentum going. You know, a lot has been made of

how he looked, how Chris looked, how you looked, and the debate is, we were just talking to Frank Smith about this around an hour and a half or so ago. The debate has been like, was the result of that fight, was that performance more about

what he didn't do or what you did? And when people focus, like they did on the broadcast and shows like this, focus on how lethargy. he looked and you know how he didn't he didn't throw as much as the first time is that taking away from what you accomplished how do you feel about this talk in the aftermath no because you look at the fight and you go I changed the fight completely

through discipline through faints for footwork using my youth my faints to keep him off guard didn't know what shot was coming and make him feel heavy on his feet in the first fight I played into his hands which was me falling in, lunging in, applying the pressure. You could see he had clearly trained for me to fight one way. And that was me attack, attack, attack, being reckless and wild and swinging and him countering. And the two, three times I did in the 12 round fight,

I come in for attack and lunged in. He called me with some good counter shots. But I had to stay disciplined. The fight would have been exactly the same first time around if I just used my boxing brain. I faint, my job, and stayed discipline, and kept calm and calculated. But ultimately, I know he couldn't live with his speed.

He couldn't live with the feints. He couldn't live with the youth. And that's the should have stuck to the tactics first time round. So you don't subscribe to the theory that he looked lethargic or different tire sunken in, any of that? He would have looked like that in the first fight. But I was there to be hit in the first fight. That's the difference.

I was there, reckless, wild, zero defense. It was a shootout from the start. So he didn't have to move his feet. He didn't have to use his boxing brain. He just had to be a middleweight standing there fighting me, whereas I took that away from him this time round. It kept my distance, made him fall short, and used my speed, my flexism, my explosiveness.

More importantly, use my boxing brain to get the wind and make it look easy. did you definitely did that i'm wondering because of the history because of what happened in april obviously what happened with your fathers and maybe this was going to be the last chance to write the wrongs did you feel that pressure this time where you put you didn't look like a guy who was feeling that pressure but just in the buildup on saturday on fight week were you placing that pressure on your shoulders on your family's shoulders yeah yeah of course yeah i felt the pressure for sure i didn't want to lose the fight but number one because i don't want to lose that's number one i don't i don't like

losing. I hate, I hate losing. It said we, I don't like losing. You know, so for me, that was like, I can't lose to the same guy twice. Because if I lose this time round, I really lost twice to this man. Whereas, because I lost the first fight, if I rectify it, make adaptions and changes and grow and show that I'm able to learn from the first fight, I don't really classify that as a loss. So I classify it as a lesson, you know, and I'm able to change and adapt and grow. You lose to a man twice. What did you learn? You know, what did you, you know, he is the better fighter.

And I strongly believed he wasn't the better fighter. I just played into his hand. And when I say, I lost the fire, not because of him, but because I didn't stay disciplined. Connor Ben lost the fight because of me. It was me versus me and I lost the fight. It wasn't necessarily anything he done. I was watching a lot of your interviews, and we even had a chance to speak in the aftermath of the first fight, and everyone was celebrating how great the first fight was, the war that it was, the entrances, the buildup, the fight week, the appearance of his father, and I could tell that you, and let me know if I'm completely misreading this. You were like, yeah, man, but I didn't win. So, like, I don't feel like celebrating this. I don't feel like reveling in how great of a scene it was in the theater and the magic of it all. Was that annoying in the aftermath? Everyone was trying to, like, have such a great chat about how great this was, but ultimately, from a sporting perspective,

you didn't accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. Yeah, it was like I felt a little bit disappointed because it was like, I don't know what you guys think of me. Like, oh, you've done really well. You've done really well. Oh, you've done good. Oh, it's a great fight. It's like, well, but that's not the point here.

Like, I don't know. It was a bit of a hard one because it was like, I'm so glad I could entertain it for you guys. And the reality is, would I have rather it been a boring fight and won? or an exciting fight the people will remember forever. You know, and I think to myself, if people have come away and gone, oh, I never want to see him fight again, or we wouldn't sell out tockham again,

then I'll probably be more disappointed in that. It's a lose, lose, really, in this situation, because ultimately, I'm glad I gave people a fight to remember. I'm glad that when people look back in my career, they go, yeah, you know, that was one hell of a fight, but it would have been nice to get the fight. win. It was mixed emotions. I mean, it was hard to lose to another man and have my first loss. And it was even harder that his name was Euban. Right. Lee, you've known, you've known Connor for a long

time. You're his mate, but you're also his lawyer. And so knowing what he's been through over the past few years with everything that went into this fight, how are you feeling going into Saturday? And what was it like for you to eventually start to see him rise to the occasion, the way in which he did? Well, I mean, firstly, thanks for having me on as well, Aaron. But, you know, we, we were so much more confident, you know, this time going in. You know, I think we all felt that, you know, as good as Connor was in the first fight, we, we, that his team and those of us, you know, who know him well, all knew he could be better than that. And it was totally understandable, you know, he went into that first fight wanting to take his head off.

there was so much animosity there but with a calm level head he was able to produce you know a fantastic performance I was talking to Frank about this Connor about like the way in stuff because you know in MMA we kind of show everything

the fighters show everything as far as the weight cuts are concerned and this was such a big you know narrative going into this fight in the aftermath of the second fight the first fight the second fight all this stuff and he says in boxing like you don't do the stuff that Chris does in terms of showing it and he did it again

and I'm wondering why you think he does this why do you think that he shows so much of the weight cutting process and if there's a specific reason that comes to mind as to why he does that sympathy that's all I mean it's a narrative this push you think for his

majority of his career he's made 160 and he's him and his team said let's put the 10 pound rehydration limit And if we said that, we can't go up to like any crazy amount. But that was the number they suggested to us, which is what they've suggested.

So I don't know why they went with a narrative. We stuck the rehydration clause there. But funnily enough, when we done the evening way, he was 165 in the evening. When we done the scales on the ceremonial way, and he was 165. and then the the following day the morning chip rate he was three pounds

under the 170 limit you know so so it doesn't make no sense to me but it doesn't have to make sense to me you know if he however he chooses to conduct himself whatever media

um now if he wants to push then you know that's so be it do you feel like the issue whatever it may be do you feel like it's squash now. Do you feel like it's over

between you two? Now that the dust has settled a little bit, he's not my type of guy. But he's a good fight. And he gave me two great fights. And we made history together. So, but on a personal level,

probably not my type of guy, no. I asked that because even when your father was speaking about senior in the aftermath, it's like, I actually think he hates him even more now. I think he's so annoyed with him. And so I feel like you guys will never just see eye to eye. Like the four of you will never be mates. We'll never see you at a convention shaking hands and signing autographs. Listen, how much?

Yeah, I guess. I guess. How much? But I would imagine you're probably happy to not be thinking about him anymore, right? that you can move on? Yeah, I'm done, yeah. I'm so happy because now I can just, I feel like I've, I feel like three years is done now.

I feel like that chapter's now closed. Because although I had won the case and everything was done and finished, I now feel like that chapter's closed. Where it's finished, it's completely done now. Like, this was the finale and I won this fight, the fight as well. Does the win allow you to erase, like to move on from the last three years, all the pain? or will that always stick with you?

No, no, no, that's closure. It's closure. For this last fight, it was a lot meant a lot more to me than anyone, anyone knows. I mean, I remember the first time we met and how much you were struggling and what you told us about everything you've been through. And so to hear that word closure, to hear it, you don't think it sticks with you at all. You don't think that will remain with you, that experience, you feel like you can fully move on now.

When you say fully move on, I feel like there'll always be a little stain there. But ultimately, it's given me strength, it's given me resilience, it's given me wisdom, it's given me knowledge, it's given me clarity, it's given me more than it's taken. At this stage now, while I was going through it, it was, it was the end of the world. There was no, like, what do I do? And it wasn't just me, it was my name, it was my finances, it was my family, it was the legacy, it was, the list went on of things that I felt like it had damaged.

but the things it's taught me and the principles and foundations it's given me it has it's definitely given me more than it's taken away by the way sometimes it's 1-1 there is a third

why do you have no interest in a third because I feel like it'd have to be at 168 which don't get to wrong I would do like I've got up to 168 I'm not bothered when I look like a man I don't look at another man and go oh he's a big guy I'd find

but 168 It's not what I'm saying though But what I'm saying is That's the only way Something like that would happen And I don't have any interest In going up to 168 Why is that?

You think he would never agree to it Unless it's at 168? No, he would Oh yeah, he wouldn't agree to unless it's 168 But then also there would be no benefits for me And people saying Oh, he's weight drained Or is this or is that

The reality is the Conner Turn up On Saturday is the kind of bend that would have beaten him in April and would have beaten him and would beat him again. You know, because he can't live with my speed, my youth,

my footwork, my boxing brain, my hands beat, my timing. He's just on the other side of the clock. And so is it back down to 47 or is there a chance 54? No, back down to 1-4-7, definitely. I don't know how long I've got to make 1-4-7. So, you know, ideally we go straight into the biggest one-four-seventh fight we can make. And what's that?

That's Barrios. Okay, that's Barrios, because I have to say, Connor, as I was on Twitter X all day today, I keep seeing you and Ryan Garcia going back and forth. We have a ton of evidence here of you guys going back and forth. And so why is it not Ryan Garcia? Because I know that Barrios is the WBC champion, but we all know. Ryan Garcia is one of the biggest stars in the sport that's an infinitely bigger fight.

Yeah, you're right, just seeing them tweets, yeah, no, definitely, Ryan. Wait, you've changed your mind. Was that not you writing those tweets? It was me, but yeah, just seeing it just infuriates me. Why does it infuriate you? Because I just think he's an idiot,

and I feel like he, I just feel like he's an idiot and I would love to knock him out in front of 65, 70,000 here in London. I feel like me and Ryan will make for a great fight. I feel like I'm at my most dangerous, so 147, especially mixing with the bigger guys, and I feel a lot stronger, and I feel like I would, I feel lucky being for a shot of for a while, you remember putting down. It was a great fighter as well.

I would definitely, I feel like I'm a lot more explosive than Rowley, a lot more accurate and reactive and very triggering, very sharp. I thought like I would do some damage. I mean, that's a proper stadium fight. You versus Ryan Garcia is a gigantic deal, especially in the UK. And he said in one of those tweets

that he'd be willing to go to the UK that he wants to go to the UK. So is that what you are pushing for now? Is that what you want? I've instructed Keith Connolly and Lee to make the Ryan Garcia fight. Wow. So, and if that don't materialize,

materialized and cool, no problem. Barrios, either one of them. Those are the two people on my hit list. Ryan Garcia will be a mega fight and, yeah, no doubt I will, yeah, I believe I knock him out. One four seven, I'm at my most dangerous for sure. That's where all my high highlight real knockouts have come. Lee, like I said, we just had Frank in studio and he told me that he was about to talk to Keith and I believe Connor about his future.

and you guys just mentioned about having a chat about the future, did this meeting happen yet? And if so, what can you tell us about it? I believe it actually happening potentially right now. Wait, right now? This is the meeting? Is this the meeting right here? No, sorry.

Keith and Frank are supposed to be speaking very shortly, if not already. But I think one thing is abundantly clear is that we have a verified star on our hands right now. Now, you know, in terms of commercial appeal, he is right up there. You know, he is, he is the money man. He is now who everybody wants to fight. Who was the last non-heavyweight other than Canelo to sell out, you know, two stadiums in a row? You know, he is still in his 20s, you know, coming off a massive, massive win, looked great.

in the process and I think really in terms of I mean you know Keith and I actually had a phone conversation last night where we did a funded exercise that you I'd like to have your input on actually who are the top five stars in boxing currently you know who in terms of eyeballs on screens, bums on seats, who, you know, who is in front of Connor

that isn't, you know, one or two fights away from retirement. It's a very short list, if anyone right now. That's a very fair point. So who are you pushing for, Lee?

I mean, I think, you know, those two names are absolutely the forefront. Barry Os Conner, you know, been very persistent for some time that he wants that WBC belt

his father had that so he's always been adamant that that's what he wants and Garcia you know there is the kind of enmity between them but they've always they've always been linked and it is just it's just a monster fight isn't it

is absolutely monstrous you know two two guys with huge commercial appeal one coming off a great way and one coming back off Ryan Garcia ain't even Spanish you don't miss speak Spanish I'm more Spanish than Ryan Garcia

but he is a big star you have to admit that and so what does matter more to you Connor because he is I think the box office matchup but Barrios the belt you've talked about it your father that's that's for legacy so what means more to you right now

it's a hard one that aerial because it's a hard one i can't really say it i can't really say it this present moment i feel like people remember how you made them feel when they watch you fight you know when people don't think about when my dad won the world title against dug to wit unless you're boxing pass and their fights they talk about the two you bank fights you know and the way the families get together and it's a sport that brings the whole family together brings their nation together and I feel like I've done that in my last two fights and it's very rewarding to know that I gave a family entertainment across the country across the world but ultimately I can't I can't really I can't really pick on that one if there's any world title belt it would have to be the

green and gold belt for me is the most prestigious horrific belt in um in in boxing um you know for me it's the best felt there is um but i'm not too sure i can't really i can't really say you're torn yeah i'm torn yeah i wouldn't if they get if they presented me both options yeah yeah i'd spend a bowl. You're not leaning one way or over the other. No, I'm 50, 50. I'm down the middle.

I'm down the middle. But ultimately, what a great position to be in. It's a beautiful position to be in considering the position that I was in three years ago. So ultimately, I would probably do a poll and see who wants what and the public can get whatever they want. What was that, Lee? I said that's a good idea. Yeah.

Can I weigh in? Ariel, do you remember when we first met in Riyadh, about 18 months ago now? Yes. And that was when Connor was being linked heavily with the Mani Pachiaf fight, which I think in hindsight, we're all really glad it didn't crystallize at the time. But the media attention in that potential fight was huge, if you recall. I think it was so huge that I think Queensbury were a bit miffed as for taking some of the attention away from the event

but that just showed his star power back then and subsequently he's now coming off as I said two sold out stadium fights and a great huge win so whatever he now chooses to do next is certainly going to be a huge deal.

Or leave. Or if they're able to fight, I'll fight the winner. You want to take some time? When do you want to return? When I don't want to return? Yeah. I was straight on the phone, straight after the fight, and when are we back out? When are we fighting? It has been blowing up our phones, I'm not even joking, I'm not even joking. I'm not even joking. No rest at all.

What do you think? Money don't sleep. I get it. What do you think? Summertime, realistically. Realistically. Realistically, oh, see, even that's so far away from me. Yeah.

What do I do? What do I do from now to then? Like, that's such a long time. Like, every, like, it's a long time. I mean, we'll see. I let the team do what they've got to do. I'll keep myself busy training, working over things, and getting my weight.

down as well. That's true. That's true. Can I weigh in? My choice, my vote. Yes. You didn't ask me, but I'll weigh in. It's a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer. Well, yeah, Garcia. Of course. Of course. Man, this is the fight business. This is the prize fighting business. And with all due respect to Mario Bowers, who's a great fighter, the reason why you're mentioning him is only because he has that title. And that means something. And I get it. And you'll have plenty of time to go for that title. Ryan Garcia in the UK coming off of that fight that you just had, and then the other fight in April is... Alright, done, done.

Keep, Lee, get this Garcia fire over the line. It's on you, like, if this fight don't happen, it's on you. Yeah, that's right. So make this fight up next. At any cost, we're doing in April, stadium in London. Ariel, you're getting what you wish, mate. I wanted to say, can I be in between you guys? Because I think the last time with you and Shakur, it was great magic, the three of us.

So can I do like the face off with you guys. Off flying. I'll fly in. Yes. We can do the face off there. How about that? Live on the set. Do an American tour.

Let's do it. Let's go. Hold on. I got it. So, I was saying he records we should the Garcia fights the fight to make.

Hello, sir. How are you? How are you? Well, congratulations to you and the whole family and your son. It's an honor to speak to you. Thank you very much, sir. Wow, wow, wow.

What do you think of that idea? Do you like this idea? Well, Garcia, 100%. I think you go, me personally, I want the WVC. man around the race like me you see this is the problem he's a true sportsman

he's a true sportsman he's a legend and he wants you to have what he once had but as you know sir with all due respect the prize fighting business we go for the biggest fights we go for the biggest bag right this window is this small right here for these fighters yeah I think me personally I would like to see

him fight for the WBC against Barrios win the WBC and he'll fight Ryan Garcia right next that's my dream. I mean, who am I to argue with the old man? Who am I to tell him that he's wrong? I just think these two guys are magic. I think the promotion, the buildup, the scenes, the face-off would be tremendous. It would be incredible. I think your son has now become, other than AJ and Fury, up there is the biggest star in UK boxing. And I feel like...

100%. I agree with that 100%. But he's always wanted the WBC. He's always wanted a WBC. So I don't think that money she's getting it. Money's always going to follow him. It's not going to go nowhere. Money's always going to follow him. So I think me, me personally, it might not make the same amount of money, but having that strap around your way,

so when he retires, you can always say, I've done it. Yeah. I wish he'd talk. He'll always make money. It's just the way he is. He's always going to make money. He's the money man now.

No, I get that. But can I ask Mr. Ben one last question before? This is a rare opportunity. we've never had a chance to speak. What does it feel like now in the aftermath of all of this? The history, this fight was made, this rivalry was made because of your rivalry with senior. Do you feel the same as your son? Do you feel like you can let it go now?

Can you move on? Is it over now, in your opinion? Yeah, because you know what it is? I'm glad it sounds like. Because you know what it is? I'm sorry, but when two get together, not being disrespectful, but when they get together, they suck. oxygen at the press conference.

It's just like, it's just, I don't know, I'm just glad it's over with. They don't have to have a rematch. Kind of one that's quite convincingly for now. He can move on to being better things. Are you happy that you don't have to worry about them anymore, talk about them anymore, be in the same presence? I'm glad to God, because we had a little disagreement.

He's still trying to play, like, you know, that we're still fighting. and he don't really want to play that with me because I'm not playing with him what's the disagreement what was the disagreement well what happened at the face off

he was dancing in front of me doing all this and then I put my hat to shake him and I thought I'm going to bring him in for a cuddle just being respectful and he put his elbow up his elbow in my chest and I actually felt like knocking him off the stage

and then afterwards then at the day of the fight in the ring he went to go and shake my hand I said I'm not playing with you I'm not doing that rubbish stay away from me go away go away

and I want to talk to him again because he's still playing this game he loves a limelight I'd rather just sit in the background let my son do the business and that's it I'm not I'm not here I've had a great career you know so I don't

I don't need to carry it on but he he's still living in that show life he's still not being the real Chris Eubanks he's got this image that he can't change no more so everyone thinks that that's not a real Chris Eubax that's just an image that

started back in the 90s when we fought and he hadn't let go of it he's still walking around thinking he's a man move on let our kids do the business but he's still living that life and I don't want to be a part of it

I don't really want I really don't want nothing to do with him to tell you the truth I'm that it's over now Connor can move on and I can move on go back to Australia by the way do you think he was paid to be there on Saturday and in April what's your what's your verdict on that well the first time well I believe I believe I'm from very good sources but it's all going to come out

that he got quarters of a million okay you know and that that's it and I just know because one day you can't start saying oh you're a disgrace

you're disgracing oh you're a disgrace the next minute he's at the fight he's at the fight just knowing that it's gonna get you know I believe he was paid

okay I believe he's paid and just by his comments on talk sport you can see that he was paid Okay. Well, wonderful to meet you. And congratulations on the win. It's an actual honor. I didn't expect this. Connor, every time we speak, there's like unexpected things that happen all the time. You and Shakur. Can I ask you just before I let you go, Connor? What about Shakur? We didn't mention him because I have to say you guys were magic together in here. I mean, it really made me want to see you fight. I know there's a weight difference there too, but is he on the hit list? I actually spoke with Shakur. Oh. Because I actually spoke with him because I'm not wanting to talk.

when I talk here, talk about, I mean it. I'm sorry, I've got to jump in here. I want Connup, not hanging none of these. I don't want them fired. I want guys that are going to stand there and have a fight, not jumping around the frigging ring. People don't want to watch that. It's boring.

You see what happened in New York? People don't want to watch that. They don't want to watch two people going there and have a fight. That's what people want to see. They don't want to see people running around the ring. They don't want to do that. No, you know, people just don't think two fighters get together and earn their money. Not jumping around, prancing around a river.

Oh, let me run, let me run, let me run. He's not good for my son. Bart. Sorry, he's not good for my son. Bart spoke of Shakur yesterday. Oh. To him, are you being serious? Like, because if you're being serious, we can do the fire in April and we can do it at a stadium here.

So I said, if you are, and he said, no. Like, listen, I'll get Tio out the way I'm going to get the win for sure. And 100% we can do the fight in April in England. So the reality is, Ariel, is, I don't, I'm not this, if, like, I'll make the fight happen. I'll make, I'll make them happen. I'll tell Eddie, this is what we're doing. Let's make the fight. The same with the Eubank thing.

I'll come up to 160. You've got to remember, I've built up to 160 now. but I was a 1-4-7 when I agreed the fight you know so it's I'm wanting to fight any man okay let's see

final final thing final final thing what is your advice to Chris now what does Chris do in your opinion does he retire does he I'm talking to Connor I'm talking to I'm talking to

oh okay yeah move it to 1 68 and you're fighting I said I just said that I won't fire but I literally just said the only way he'll do to fight

is at 168 and I said I'm not interested No more That's what I would advise him to do But then it's going to go up to 168 He's not big enough And then fight a hole I mean there was talks of him

Fighting the likes of Canello and whatnot But I don't think that's in the In the cards anymore What do you think, Ariel? In terms of if it's in the cards I think In terms of what you think he should do what got 168 and fight

Giannibech or Shiraz? I think he should move to 168 without a question. I think he should take a break. I think the two fights back to back took a toll on him. I thought that he was going to get the Canelo fight if he would have won because of the relationship with Turkey.

But yes, I don't know if those fights are good for him right now. Someone told me, Ford had eyes on the winner. I heard it from a source that he wanted the winner of me and you, that's what I heard. That'd be a big jump for you unless he comes down to maybe 54. I will do, I'm not doing 168 or 160 or, yeah.

Okay. Well, this has been wonderful. Guys, what a pleasure this is. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for your time. Mr. Nigel, Ben, and Connor Ben and Lee, look at this. Look at this scene right here. Look at us.

We're like one big happy family here. Congratulations. Enjoy the victory. I really appreciate. I know it's getting late over there. So thank you so much for the time. Always a pleasure, Connor. and congratulations so very happy for you you did it case closed we can now move on enjoy everything

that comes with the win thank you sir all right take care guys all that was amazing stuff Connor ben Nigel ben Lee amtage his lawyer that was wild that was wild that was a legend right there guys Nigel ben shout out to Nigel coming in self i mean golly he's just like hey one second uh let me uh let me bring an old man here i'm gonna go run and grab a snap yeah yeah brings in the pipes on pops man the man brings in dad but the best part is when nigel starts taking out the jacket he's like let me settle in let me get comfortable let me get comfortable to tell you was real let me take the jacket off legend legit legend you could tell he actually despises senior he said the turn after the fight has been interesting because yeah he really did not like how

senior handled himself in the buildup to this. It's funny because I feel like after this type of rivalry, these two fights and the history, you would think everyone would do the kumbaya? I think Chris and Connor, it's kumbaya. I don't feel like there's kumbaya. I asked him. He took a long-ass paused when I asked him that question. He's just

thinking of business. He's thinking, what if we did do the third one at 168? I don't think there's any animosity between them anymore, but I definitely think Nigel's still still upset with senior well what a day God what a rivalry though

oh my gosh what a day what a day guys um all right do we have any super chats Frankie by the way I should have told them

New York Rick over there was the number one proponent for this fight never lost hope oh you guys don't think there should be a third well New York Rick does yeah yeah guess what

who uses reasoning you know what Nigel proposed it by the way Nigel said it and you And you had the audacity to go against Nigel's wishes. You're like, respectfully, sir, I think Ryan Garcia, he's like, no, I want that title.

I want the belt on my boy. You disagree? No, Ryan Garcia is the fight. Of course. The Ryan Garcia fight would be magic. If he ends up doing Barrios and Garcia in either order, if those end up being his next two fights, I mean, that's fantastic. And if you slide Shakor somewhere, like, there's no bad options. Connor has really, like, unlocked a crazy number of options.

Yeah, but Ryan isn't tied to anyone right now. now and I think there's more interest in Ryan versus Connor right now than Ryan versus Haney if Haney wins. If Haney wins on Saturday. No, Haney I don't think is like... I mean, I still want to see that fight again. I'm fine with it, but it's like further down... Oh, we're talking about for Ryan?

Yeah, for Ryan. I'm saying if if Haney wins on Saturday, maybe that fight gets rekindled the rematch, but I still think because of how hot Connor is, I feel like there's more interest in that and you can do a legit like Connor versus Ryan is a

stadium show in the U.K. Haney versus Ryan is a T-Mobile main event. What? Ryan versus Haney is still a massive fight. Is a T-Mobile main event? Yeah, but you're

not a stadium show. But that's only because you're talking about two Americans and Connor gets the benefit of being a UK fighter. As far as like that rivalry, that's still massive to me. The question,

I mean, Nigel said it. I just want to see two guys go in there and box. A proper scratch. versus Ryan Garcia versus Connor Ben will be a dog fight would just be two dudes throwing and slinging leather in the middle of the of the rink. I love that fight.

All right, Frankie. Sorry about that. Sorry. It's all right, man. What charitable causes are near and dear to you? Oh, well, the first one that comes to mind is the colorectal cancer. Well, okay, so it's actually colorectal cancer Canada. It used to be called

the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada, the CCC. that is because my father-in-law runs it and he was diagnosed with colon cancer at a very young age, I believe it's 41, and it was stage four, and it did not look good. And this was when we were in maybe eighth grade, ninth grade. And yeah, it didn't look good, and there were multiple surgeries and scary moments. And he was a lawyer and completely changed his life. and left

law and headed up this charity and my wife has done events for them and I've done a little bit of stuff too like we sold shirt and gave all the proceeds and my substack and all that stuff so I would say I would say that

that is one that obviously comes to mind there's a kibbutz a kibbutz is like a community in Israel that is near and dear to my heart it's called near O's and it was one of the kibbutz is that was heavily affected by what happened on October 7th. Hundreds of people were murdered and kidnapped and the whole place was completely demolished.

And for my son's bar mitza project, you have to have like a cause. And so we chose that one and people donated in celebration of what transpired over there and to help you know to help build it up so that's one that's on my mind as well there's there's one I was trying to think of it the name of it there's one that actually is a is like an athletic charity that brings kids from from Palestine and kids from Israel to play sports together and to come together through the you know the love and the power of sports the name is escaping me right now but I love that one and I love what it stands for because I think that sports can unify even the most distant of people, to put it mildly.

So those are a few that come to mind. But I try to help out my local ambulance unit I donate to every year, because I think that's very important as well. So, you know, try to do our part. What else, Frankie? Which Ali fighter would you want to catch up with? Oh, I was thinking like Muhammad Ali. I would like to talk to Kamara Usman about why he thinks he should be next.

Let me just say something about Kamar Usman. I saw an interview that he did with ESPNMMA, and I don't know if he was talking smack about me. He did the usual, like, people in the media who've never fought before and who don't know anything about fighting, and I've been a loud proponent of him not deserving, if you want to use that word, a title shot next. Let me first just say, utmost respect for Kamar Uspen,

one of the greats, I don't think he's the greatest welterweight champion of all time, I think that's GSP and I can't even believe that anyone is saying otherwise. But certainly one of the best welterweight champions of all time and has had an incredible career and his bounce back win against Joaquin Buckley was great

and his performance against Hamza Chamaev on short notice was great and you can't take anything away from him. And I don't even think, by the way, if he got a title shot, I don't even think it would be one of the most egregious title shots in UFC history.

I always bring up the gusts of one. There have been others as well. Other people have gone title shots coming off of losses. I don't think, you know, he's coming off a win. So I don't think it would be egregious. I just think, Kamar U.S.man was champion in the welterweight division at a time. I remember arguing about this with Chale back in the day when the welterweight division was the most frustrating division in the UFC.

You guys remember when like all the top welterweight's like the top five. five or six welterates were all squatting on their spot. It was like, it was Camaro, it was Colby, it was Gilbert Burns, Jorge. Like I just felt like none of them wanted to fight. None of them wanted to like keep it moving. And there were guys like Leon, and that's where the Leon thing started, who couldn't break through. There were guys like Balal Muhammad who couldn't break through.

And it was very frustrating to watch. And so I feel like he comes from that era of the welterweight division where it's like, oh, win one fight and you're sitting on your spot and you're sitting on that win. and you're going to get a title shot as a result. And you compare that to the Walterweight division right now, Jack Della, Sean Brady, Michael Morales, Carlos Prakis, E. and Gary, like, these guys are active. These guys aren't squatting on their spot.

I mean, look at Brady. If Brady was a welterweight five years ago, he would have never taken this Morales fight. He would have sat there until the dominoes fell in his direction, and he would have taken that title shot and ran with them. it. Morales, Pratchez, Ian Garry, Ian Garry in Pratchez fighting each other and then, and then, you know, turning around and now he has to fight Jeff Neon, then he turns around and he takes the

Leon Edwards fight. Even Ian taking the short-notice fight against Shavkat and then taking the short-notice fight against Prochis, like this stuff wasn't happening back then. And so I feel like those guys should be rewarded. I feel like the active fighters should be rewarded. it. And I don't think, Kamar Usman has had one win, I believe it is, since 2021. One win. And yes, it's his most recent win. Let me just make sure I'm 100% right with this. He beat Joaquin Buckley via decision in June. He lost the Hamzat in 2020. It was almost two years in

between fights. And then it was Leon in March of 23, and then it was Leon in August of 22, and then it was Colby in November of 21. That was his last win. So it was almost four years, three and three quarters in between wins for him. And he has one win since that 2021 fight. I just don't think that title shots

should be rewarded based on participation in the sport. It's not a participation trophy. It's not a lifetime achievement award. And this has nothing to do with the Ali relationship, if you want to call it that. I said the exact same about Stipe Mietchich. The exact same.

And I have a great relationship with Stipei. Said the exact same about him. I think he was on like Fight Week or the week before that fight against Jones. And we talked to him a bunch over the years. No issues whatsoever. But I got to keep it real. Makes no sense. But, you know, he's in the news.

Who else? Well, I guess Islam would be one that would be cool to talk to, but we're good. As you can see, we have a lot of people to speak to. and I want to speak to people who want to be on the show who appreciate being on and people who are open to having a discussion and we don't always have to be the best of friends

but listen I was I was really impressed with Tony yesterday Tony we've been around this game a long time to know that people hold grudges and never release those grudges he had every reason to never want to come back on again and he came on I thought he did a great job and I want to talk to people like that what else? More Fatima equals more fun

I need a weekly segment This is from LazyBud. Is that from your burner? Yeah, this is LazyBud. Do you agree? Yeah, why not? That was a fun interview. I thought she was great.

Anything else? Guys, is D.C.'s M.A's... Anything else you want to say about the interview? That's confusing, you know. Guys, is D.C. MMA's shack? D.C. M.A. Shack. Post-retirement. Both are funny, likable, and are everywhere. Agree? Also, any other MBA to MMA.

Harrisons you can think of? Well, Shaq is on like 45 different commercials these days. I feel like he's on so many. I mean, it's Shaq and Josh Allen right now. Every time I turn on a sports telecast, I feel like I see them in a commercial. But I get that. I always compare DC to Michael Strayhan because I felt like Strayhan did a good job post-retirement of being friendly face, lovable, all that.

Nate Burleson has done a great job. with that as well transitioning over so i i would put dc in in um in their category because i actually think dc could do much more than combat i think he can excuse me branch out and do stuff out of combat but i get that one i fucks with it i hear you or what else for god creates dinosaurs god destroys dinosaurs god creates man man destroys god man creates boxing and feeds jake to a j lamb to a T-Rex. Man, we took a long route to get there, Jonah. But, all right, well, let's see.

I think what, you know, MVP and Jake and everyone involved, they're okay with you feeling that way. They just want you to watch him get slaughtered. What do you guys, is anyone willing, as of right this moment, and you may say, you know what, I want to see them side by side of the president, anyone willing to make a prediction, right now. On Jake versus A.J.? Yeah.

Jake Paul is... Jake Paul's dying. No, seriously. You can't say that. Because then... Anthony Joshua is going to separate his soul from his body. What are you saying? What's the call?

Like, what's the prediction? Knockout, Anthony Joshua, early, done, dusted... I want specifics. No, I can't tell you. Specifics. Round, round two. Late round two. I don't know what Anthony Joshua punches these...

By the way, but he's going to... I feel like... You guys are, like, dismissing it. I feel like for this. this fight, the specifics is actually going to be the thing that people are going to argue the most. I think some people are going to say he's going to knock him out with the first right hand.

No. I think some people are going to say he's going to knock about at the end of the first. Some people are going to say it's going to go two. How could they possibly know that? If Joshua throws three punches in the first round, you can't know that. I'm saying people are going to say the first time Anthony Joshua lands a power punch on Jake, he is

going to knock him out. No. But he will knock him out early in the fight. He's gone, busted. It was true. It was two rounds versus Francis, yeah? Yeah. That was second round? We could use that as a measuring stick. Okay.

He's not surviving. Francis is the line. You're taking the over or the under? The under. I don't know. I don't know. Wow. Wow.

I can't tell you that because there's no way to predict that. That part is unpredictable. It's just us talking. I'm not holding you to it. I know, but you're like, oh, that is the most important part. It's actually not. Like, it really has nothing. Listen, if Anthony wins via decision, that's a loss.

But what if, what if Jake, Paul comes in very defensively. Then it could take longer than Francis. No, that's like fighting. I wouldn't be shocked if it's round four around five. If it's four, then it's still early. But I feel confident he will knock him out. Moral victory?

First half of the fight. No, no moral victory. He will be slept. Yeah, if you get slept, there's no moral victory. All right, all right. Okay, let's see. What else? What else? Too much weight has diminishing returns. Ilya started his career at 135. There shouldn't be a world

where Morales and Ilya are in the same weight class. Why? We will await Jose's response. And by the way, is he talking about Michael Morales? Yeah, he's saying Ilya fighting Islam at 170 would be goofy because Michael Rallis is a middleweight who walks around it. I mean, it's Connor fought at 172. This is why the Ilya versus Islam thing doesn't need a weight class.

It's just like, yeah. let them fight at 158 you know what I mean I couldn't care less what weight that I only care because I don't I don't think it will be competitive as I've long said like that that's why I don't care but oh if they're gonna like you think this new news like what you think is some smokes ilia I've said this for wow wow wow wow I saw someone say 162.5 great I'm in whatever it is Islam wow you share this is not new you share that confidence what are the specifics Yeah, what are the...

I can't believe you guys are mocking me for this. People are actually debating. Is it going to take one round, one punch, two rounds? You can't know that. Of course you can't know that. That's the whole point of predictions. You can't know anything. I know that the bills are going to win.

I know that Anthony Joshua is going to knock out Jake Paul. I know that. I know in 21 to 20 or they're just going to win. Wait, are we pretending that no one makes picks that are that specific on television? They do, but those are often long shots, right? Like, that's not... We're having fun here. I know for a fact that Jake

Paul is not beating why is so serious Molly why are we getting into the semantics here two days ago we played tit for tat to get into the semit for tat it was great actually we played tit for tat

Monday and Tuesday people are still buzzing about it I do not share the same I hate the tip for that the same confidence as Rick when it comes to this salmonella yeah me neither

ultimately does you win yeah sure but I don't think he like wops the floor mops the floor with them I do I feel exactly the same way as this guy which is those two are not

equivalent in size and like it's going to be way too much to overcome for alia he is a small man and islam is not who do you favor islam or fatima cline frank no one could say right no one can say who's the check thank you thank you uh what else what george orwell 420 says seeing pictures of frank with an olive and pineapple pizza circulating on x what's the story yeah what is the story george orbel 420 is making this off also what's i sk 750 interstellar credits What the hell is that?

I just made that up. Oh, okay. What else, Frankie? What else? 5150 says, can we get a mashup of clips for each of Frank's drops were taken from? Perhaps a future pound for pound

best drops on bots in the basement. Shout out. Isk is Icelandic Krona, by the way. Shout out. To be used as interstellar credits in the future. Take note. Yeah, let's do like a whole like two-hour breakdown. We'll show the source video

and then show how it's used in the show. That would be great. No, but you know, I want to ask the chat, hey, chat, I want to do a video where I go around the whole studio and I'll tell you about all the chat chis, the stuff that you don't see. There's a whole wall over here, by the way, that you have never seen you're not privy to. Would you be interested?

Maybe like during the holiday season, we could post that. Would you guys be interested in that sort of thing? We don't care. All right. So sorry. All right. And lastly, hi, Ariel. As an upcoming college student, do you have any pieces of advice

for getting into the world of sports journalism. I'm going as a communications major, by the way. This question also goes for the boys in the back, obviously. Well, Adiv, I wish you the best. You're getting into school. So, like, you're just starting your journey. So no need to, like, worry too much. I think that's one thing that, you know, the youngsters worry, like,

oh, my God, I need a job. I need this. You're just starting. You have plenty of time. You have plenty, plenty time. One thing that I did was I got into the radio. I did actually when I was in Siegep. Sijp is sort of like our version of junior college.

We graduated in 11th grade. Then we go two years, Siegap, three years, university. I used to do some stuff for the newspaper. I just wanted to see what was out there and what I liked and what I didn't like. Ultimately, I really liked the radio show, which was a version of, I mean, almost exactly what we're doing here, but just way less cool. And so I would say, try to find your thing, try to find your voice, try to find the part of

communications, journalism, media that you like. and stick to that. And reps, reps, just like anything. Just like if you're a pipe fitter or a carpenter or an electrician or a quarterback or a point guard, the more you do anything, the better you'll be at it. And so the more I interview, the more I speak, the more I write, the more I talk, the more I debate, the more I do anything pertaining to all of this, I feel like I get better at it. And so I would suggest focusing on that.

and yeah shoot for the moon man like i wanted to do a show i would reach out to fighters i've told the story a million times but i really was focused on what i wanted to be what i wanted to do who i wanted to be what world i wanted to work in what i wanted to cover and and i became like obsessed with it and so try it all do it all find your your your path your voice your niche and just keep at Oh, what else? That was the last one. Oh, okay. I did want to mention real quickly.

I wanted to just play this quick clip, Ian Garry and Belal Muhammad in the hotel. Did you guys see this? I did, yeah. Those things. Good. Good. Enjoy your finish. I'm going to say hello.

How are you? You know, there's no amount of pensions. Have a great reason. Why do we love that so much? I kind of love it. I feel like, no? Do you not love it? It's fine.

I love it. He just goes up to him while he's eating dead. That's good, it's good. The only thing I liked is he puts the handshake right in his chest like that, and then Mal doesn't shake it, but Law stands up for it. I don't know if Bilal was saying what's happening? Like, what's going on, man, or if he's like, what is happening right now? Why are you over here?

No, no, no. I think it was. No malattention. It's fucking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he was saying like what's up like what's the crack no I know yeah it's fine um I think the four of them have done a great job this week you know fight nights tend to fly under the radar especially after a big pay-per-view and I think the four of them have really done a great job I'm hype I mean we

got to poury in the building for his brother Patty in the building for shimrock and Luke Riley uh armin is also there it's a lot going on a lot going on a lot going on. All the big dogs. Who knew Qatar would be the center of the MMA universe. And one last thing, breaking news, guys. I don't know if you guys saw this. El Kakuwee is back. How about this? Wow. Baring the lead. Yeah, I mean, come on. The mechanics back, baby. Warren Spencer versus El Kukui. Are you kidding me? For the MFB, which is the Misfits Boxing Interim Middleweight World Title December 20th. Dubai, the fight before Christmas.

Could we talk about 19th and 20th in the world of crazy combat sports? Do we know who the current middleweight, MFB middleweight world title holder is right now? It's a tremendous question. And does them getting interim get them the shot? Wait, are you asking because you know? Is it Danis? No, Dennis is an MMA champion. Oh yeah, this is MFB.

Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying, I thought you were asking because you knew. I thought you were asking because you know, too. Oh, no. I'm asking because I was hoping you guys know. It's interim, not vacant. I don't really keep up with the Misfits title picture, but I'm going to look it up now. What a turn around that. I'm going to say, is it slim? Hmm. A 10 second finished by Dylan Dennis, and then he gets Tony Ferguson in an interim title. No, but you see, that's the brilliance of it. The shooting on Dylan Dennis was calculated because he knew on the back end he would get a Tony Ferguson fight from it.

It was a, look, the mechanic does not make mistakes. Is it slim? Is it slim? Is it slim? Is it slim? is a Dean the Graeme? I'm not looking it up, but it is. So Tony is the interim already, apparently. Oh, what the hell? It is, what, how do you say this guy's name? It's the N-N-N-Sin-Gib guy, the Gib? Oh. How do you say, how do you say that handle?

An-on-Sin-Gib. An-onson-Sin-Gib. An Nissan-Gib. A Nissan-Gib. Wait, how did Dad know that? Dan knew it? How did that know that? Dan's cooking back here, all right? A Nissan Gib. A Nissan's boxing? Do you know what? Do you know why his name is that? Yeah, it's backwards something, right? Big nose.

Big nose backwards, yeah. Shout out to him. A Nissan Gibb is the current champion, and Tony is the intro. Wait, was that Dan's debut on the program, or was that all fair? It was off air. Dan, say it on air. Come on. Don't be shy. Yeah, Nissan Gibb, I grew up in this world. Yeah.

Wait, was that on air? That was on air. Yeah, welcome, Dan. Shout out, Dan. Shout out, Dan. That world. Wow, who knew Dan was a... Dan knows ball when it comes to...

The whole UK YouTube scene grew up into all that. What? Dad's been holding back on us? He drinks a prime every morning. What do you know about Dean the Great? You know about Dean the Great? He's saying, what do you know about Dean the Great?

I do not drink Prime anymore. Yeah, yeah, we're Celsius. We don't drink Prime anymore. We're Celsius, guys. What do you know about Slim? I know he beat up Salt Poppy. Wow! You pulled that out.

That's a shit talking at. That's a thing at Rick right there. I don't see Slim anywhere on these list of champions, by the hitman. I don't think Slims. My favorite thing about that scene was when we did the show in Manchester, the only one that I did. And I was, who was I talking to? I think it was like, was it Walid or one of these guys? And then do you remember someone, like, came into the ring and crashed the interview?

Yes. And I was like, I don't know who that is. I really do. And I thought a good producer would say, like, hey, by the way, that's, you know. That's why lead the great Yeah, no one told me Oh, Dean the Great Dean the Great

Yeah, no one told me anything So I'm like, oh Look who's here Wow What is And who did it end up being Or do we still not even know What's the Tennessee kid?

Oh, that's our boy What's B Dave? Yes, B Dave, what's B Dave ranked? Yeah, what is B Dave? I don't know about the ranking He just looking at their champions Yeah, he had the big win over Rod Stewart's son

last week It was Rod Stewart's son who came in the ring by the way Oh forget, don't sleep We were doing a whole breakdown of that And Dan knew all about it You could have come on as our correspondent Dan's the one that dropped the clip in

Damn He was the one person watching MF duel On a Sunday night in Tennessee Yeah Okay, but do you want to know Who the Bridgerweight champion is? Yes I actually think I know this

Who is it? No, you're Googling it No, I'm not, I promise Who is it? I do know this. Is it slim? Yeah, you've guessed slim. He's not a champion in any anything.

I think he's ill. It's Darren Till. Come on. How do you not know that? Yeah. He's the women's 125 champ. Slim? Is it slim?

Is it slim? You know yourself. Who the fuck is slim? Slim's actually one of the better ones of the Influencer boxes I'm tapped in, bro Some respect You know who the heavyweight

Obviously you know who the heavy weight Obviously you know who the heavy weight He's holding Dan back right now Because I made fun of slim Oh Heavyweight You know this You have to know this

He's got a huge fight Oh chase them more Chase them more Of course Yeah yeah yeah yeah Oh fuck that's for a title Who's okay Who's the number one

Pound for Pound crossover boxer right now Is that just him Missfitts What Tony Ferguson Who's number one pound for pound? I mean... No, like, it has to be Tony Ferguson, right?

You could have gone cheeky and said Jake? Oh, are we counting? That's cross-off? Jake's not a... Jake's a boxer. Okay, KSI? Nah. He didn't beat Tommy Fury.

Tommy Fury? Oh, no, he's a real boxer. Darren Till is the pound for pound. All right, there you go. Oh, they have a pound for pound rig? Yeah, Darren Till, Tommy Fury, KSI. Wait, if Darren Till counts, he's obvious. A Nissan Gip, Chase DeMore, Anthony Taylor.

Oh, wow. Dylan Dennis could be on the pound for pound list. If he wins, yeah. He will be. A little Cray, craye. What's that? That's a guy

Oh, that's his name? I thought you were trying to say that you just read something that's crazy. Jarvis? Oh, yeah. Dean the Great. What is this?

Andrew Tate is on the pound-for-pound list? He hasn't even fucking thought that. He's the CEO. He made it up. He's the number one contender, too. What the fuck is? He made it happen. I'm calling into question

the misfits ranking. Nah, they're legit. The disrespect. Carl Frotch is in the fucking Britcher weight rankings. No, he's not. He's in the number.

Number two, Bridgerweight. That is impossible. Oh, shit, I thought he was getting. I looked over it is. Oh, my God. That's a joke. Come on. Hey, Mams.

Get your rankings together. I think they need to go Carl Frosh, HS Tiki, Tiki for a shot at Darren, too. Tommy. That's two versus three. It's Darren, Tommy, Carl Frotch. In the,

H.S. Tiki, Tiki, Luke Rockhold, Wade, Plenn. Yo, the Missets Rackings are wild. That's your top file. five at Bridgerweight and Redible top five The cruiserweight

Wow Wait what's cruiserate Cruiserweight's vacant right now Oh KSI Nate Diaz Robbie Lawler Mike Perry Wait Robbie Lawler

He's done nothing in that world Robbie Loller Mike Perry Neither is Carl Frost by the way Mosvidal No Jorge on there Just Mazvedal

Tyrone Woodley Josh Bruckner Derek Brunson And then Poppy Lucy Derek Brunson on there What is he doing They're just throwing in random names I loved it

Anthony Taylor is the light heavyweight champ Is it possible that some Henderson fought in Misfit? Yeah, yeah. He fought the freaking Um, Dan,

you know who he fought? I know, I know he fought. Slim. He fought Chris Avila. Oh, shut out. Wenderson Nunez. He did it.

Is it possible some intern got the task of making these rankings and just put in stuff and nobody checked it? Honestly, I don't even know if they're rankings or if it's just a list of who's on it. Oh, B. Dave snuck into the

welterweight rankings. What is this? Warren the Mechanic is the number one Welterway? And he's fighting for middleweight? Does it say Warren the Mechanic? Yes, Warren the Mechanic Spencer. Yo, someone needs to sign that guy

who's here with Kyle. You guys didn't see him, but I swear this guy is perfect for that world. Isn't he signed a BKFC? Yeah, whatever. Go to that world. He looks like BKFC. He said he called feet or a Russian bum or something.

I understand, but he was pacing back and forth here the whole time and I was like, geez, this guy is going to come after me. He was pacing in the studio? Yes. No, yeah. Yeah, Brad confirmed. He's mad. Bro, this guy was ready to throw down, and not at me.

I just think he was just about that life. No, he was very happy to meet you. He was excited. He had some hot takes about MMA. Look, BKFC might be perfect for him. I didn't catch his name. Sorry, we'll know it soon enough. We'll hook in that.

All right, jents. I've had enough. Tomorrow, what do we got? What do we got? All right. All right, you had enough. Enough! It's over.

It's been a long week. We've gone, I mean, we've gone four plus hours all three shows this week. And last week as well too Our overtime stubs are going to reflect it It's great What's what's Tomorrow U.S.C. Cutter

Deep dive Breakdown What's on the line in the main and co-main No morning contenders title shots Hell yeah Pound for pound Joeji or Gucci Frank

Yeah Kiyoji Horaguchi Alashondi Taboria Pound for pound because Frank is not going to be here So we're going to do the worst lists He's ever made So that's going to be pound for pound Where's Frank? He's got places.

He's got plans. He's going to say. All right. And then voicemouth. Of course. Couple super chat. 415 SUP BITB is the place. And then you've got the crack on Friday post show on Saturday for UFC Qatar, aka Qatar.

And then we're back on Monday to do the whole damn thing all over again. Thanksgiving week. Yeah. Unlike most people, we work on Thanksgiving week around here, all right? Well, Monday, Tuesday action. Yeah, Wednesday, we're thinking of doing a special live roundtable on Thursday, so stay tuned for that. Around the Thanksgiving table. Sorry, what?

MMA edition. Hold on, I just caught that. What are we planning? No, no, no, we're not playing anything. Frank, you can get my music. I mean, it is time to go. It has been a great day. What about Netflix getting involved in the world of baseball?

Do you guys see that? Yeah, home run derby. Oh, yeah. They just want the big events? Also, not just home run derby. Opening day, right? Opening day, yeah. Oh, I just saw this tweet here.

Miami doors open at noon this Friday. Let's see what all the fuss is about from Big Paul. Tickets I'll tell then to Ticketmaster. So I guess the presser is open to the public. Ooh, that should be fun. Okay, okay. You think people are going to turn up? Yeah, definitely.

Okay, okay. I'm going to walk up there and be like, say that, be like, you're Miami turn up? Okay, okay. hands again. I'm just going to say, who's got the first question? That's all I want to do. What's up, everybody? Do we think Joshua engages with the Jake Paul antics or keeps it cool? I hope he doesn't do the Tank Davis thing where he's like too cool for school. I think he's going to play too cool for Todd. I think he does and I'm going to love it.

One AirPod. It doesn't work for Tank, but I do think it will work for Josh. A little bit of a limp in his step as he walks out there. Oh, great tweet here from Nikisa. Jake Paul is less of a betting underdog against Anthony Joshua than William Skull was against Canella Albrez. Let that marinate in your mind a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah, it just means I'm going to make more money. You know, when you bring it up like that, I mean... Anthony Joshua's still like a minus 2,000. It's not like a minus 150. It's going to be fun. Gents, tomorrow I look forward to the program. I'll see you all in Miami.

If you happen to be out there, please do say hello. Thank you for a great week. Thank you to Connor Ben, Nigel Ben, Kyle Dachis. Gosh, I always get stuck in these situations. David Otunga, Fatima Klein, and Frank Smick. Smith, back tomorrow. I'll say, have a piece of my here.