The Ariel Helwani Show - Inside Tom Aspinall's 108-day nightmare, state of UFC's heavyweight division, more | The Craic

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

On this week’s Craic, Petesy Carroll returns alongside Chuck Mindenhall and Ben Fowlkes as usual.To kick things off, Petesy discusses his latest Uncrowned feature, offering an inside look at Tom Aspinall’s recent eye surgery, which he attended (2:52).With Aspinall sidelined and news of Jailton Almeida’s recent release, the UFC heavyweight division suddenly looks thin. The trio assess just how shaky the state of what was once the promotion’s premier division has become (28:02).Then, fresh from the 2026 Combat Sports Officials Summit, Ben Fowlkes shares what officials are working on to help prevent incidents like Aspinall’s eye poke and how they’re approaching MMA scoring moving forward (43:22).To round out the show, Petesy and the gang answer your Super Chats (1:07:18).

The crack is back, ladies and gentlemen. How are you all doing? Not a lot of MMA action this weekend. So we're just going to do a five-minute show today. Not much to speak about. Of course, I'm joking. I have been in Manchester this week. I went to Tom Aspinall's double eye surgery.

Now, they didn't let me in the room. A sterile place, believe it or not, when you're doing operations on eye. But we released a big article about it today. A lot of new information has come to the first. about Tom, about his situation. And it's pretty harrowing, if I'm going to be honest with you. Obviously, there's been a lot of skepticism about Tom's situation. Pretty crazy amount of the skepticism being honest,

especially now that I've been there and I've talked to everyone around him, I've talked to a doctor who has spoke about his visual defects. People saying this is a lay sex surgery. That does not happen for defects of the eye. It is to correct your vision. This is a very, very different thing. He is in a very, very serious situation and he has been for 108 days, as the article explains. It's not even about Tom Aspinall's fighting life at the moment.

It's about him trying to find some semblance of normality in his everyday life. That is the reality of the situation I saw in Manchester. That is the reality of situation I heard when I visited his gym and I spoke to his father, his padman, and of course as well, when I went to the eye hospital with him and spoke to the doctor who confirmed all of these things that is happening to Tom Aspinall, the reigning UFC heavyweight champion of the world. Of course, there is not just that.

We have had a huge rollout this week for the official summit. Ben Folks has wrote about 56 articles about it and featured in a film. Not enough Ben's face. You know, I got a few bits and I was like, surely we've got to get this moneymaker up front. funnily enough, both the great Chuck Mendenhall and Ben folks have had articles out this week about the heavyweight division. I don't know if some of you heard, Jelton Almeida no longer with the UFC. And then, of course, we have this bomb that dropped today with the Tom Aspinall thing.

So there is much to get into. Fear not. I know there's no apex. Sorry, there is no meta apex card. I know we are legally bound to call it by its full title, but we do have a lot to speak about. let's bring in the lads. It's my two faves. Those two lovely, lovely boys.

It's Chuck Mendenhall and Ben folks. Chuck, what are you getting on, buddy? How are you? Pete, did you get the impression that all of this was a big charade when you're with Aspinol and you're going over to the hospital, that he was just doing this to he didn't want to be in that fight with gone? Did that occur to you at all? Like, I mean, this is the thing.

I was going to wait to be on the show before I revealed my true feelings. But I mean, honestly, that is so fucking crazy now that I've been there and I've been over there. And to see how it's just affecting, like this guy's been, most of his time has been just spent in a dark room since October. You know, like, honest to God, like this guy, like right now, he's in, he's in the kind of throws of after surgery. And remember, this is both eyes. He's elected to do both eyes in an effort to speed up the process. while all these people are like, you can't do it. There's also a story about a pad session he tried to do in his depleted state,

which is another nod to him trying to find some kind of form to get back in. And, you know, it's just not happening. But I do want to say thank you to those people because there is no way I would have been brought on this adventure had it not been for those people who were all saying, this is bullshit, blah, blah, blah. That was my bitch to the Aspinels. And they weren't immediately like, yeah, okay, come on, Beatsy. Like, they were like, I don't know about this. What the fuck?

Like, what's the fuck? Eventually, uh, we, we got it over the line. And I'm, I'm glad I was there because it's, it's more, it is so bad, you know, like, the padman saying, if I move my arm slightly to the left or right, he can't see it. He has to move his body like it's some type of cannon from the 1700s to be able to explode. Um, he can't drive his kids to school. He has three kids.

One of his sons is autistic. You know, schedules, routines, very important. It's all been taken away from him. You know, the idea as well, like, just before we get into the eyes, lads, the idea that this guy who started training when he was six years old, and his identity since he was six years old is martial arts, in a place where, you know, he lives in the northwest of England, big rugby place.

You see a big guy walking around with cauliflower ears. It's usually a rugby player. Since Tom has probably developed cauliflower ears at the age of like 12 probably, he's had to tell everyone he meets,

no, I'm not a rugby player, I'm a fighter. He is boxed as a professional. He is spired with Tyson Fury. He has obviously gone on to win the UFC Heavyweight Championship. He pursued a fight with John Jones for 15 months that didn't happen.

And then suddenly people are like, he's just, just avoiding fighting. This guy whose whole life is fighting, more so than a lot of fighters. The vast majority of fighters have not been training since their six years of age. The idea that this guy is suddenly like, oh no, don't fancy it anymore. It's fucking crazy. But as I said, the real takeaway from being over there is this is not, this is far graver than like, will this guy fight again? It's like, will this guy's life be normal again? And, um, That's my big takeaway.

Sorry, it just launched into it there. Lads got a bit carried away. Apologies for that. You know, I want to point out one of my favorite parts of this story. It's when you go back to the gym where Andy Aspinall, his father is, you know, running his gym, coaching people, everything. And you're talking about how Andy Aspinall being like both his coach and his dad is worried about his son's just well-being over his future of his fighting career. And then this most British of quotes, it's eyes, isn't it? who knows, we're just going to have to wait and see if this works.

And I was just like, yes, there it is. It is eyes. You are correct. It is a big deal. It's like, it made me imagine like going to a British cardiologist and you walk in there and he goes, well, it's your heart, isn't it? Yeah. I should be worried about it. Yeah, absolutely.

But you know what? The thing that I was curious about, like, you mentioned this. And MMA fans have a habit, a pattern of doing this. And I think it must just be them projecting their own psychology onto people who are very different from them. Because MMA fans love to accuse MMA fighters of being scared to fight. Because for most people, they would be scared to fight Cyril Gahn. They would want out of there if they found themselves in a cage with Cyril Gond punching them in the face. That is a reality that is much easier for them to understand.

than a guy who thinks, I can't wait to go in there and get my hands on this guy. That, most of us cannot really understand that. And so I think where it comes from is it's like people are feeling like I would want out of a fight. Therefore, if I see somebody doing something that I might consider faking in order to get out of a fight, that must be why he's doing it. Something like this is helpful, though, just to let you know, like these eye pokes, we talk about it as a problem.

And when we talk about it as a problem in the sport, what we really mean is, come on, man, it's screwing up these fights we want to see. It's selfish of us because we're going, man, we wanted to see a conclusion to the heavyweight title fight. And the I pox thing denied us that it has messed up other fights. We get annoyed at having to deal with it and having to see a fight paused and maybe stopped because of it. It is just a selfish entertainment thing for us. really the reason that we should be wanting to see more done about the eye pokes is stuff like this. In fact, it's surprising we don't see this stuff more.

Somebody goes out there, sticks both fingers, knuckle deep, just straight up bowling balls you right in your eyeballs. And it's not surprising that you might deal with ongoing eye issues. The eye is one of the most delicate organs in the body. And so it's kind of surprising we don't have more fighters talking about like ongoing. eye issues as a result of high pox. That should be the reason first and foremost that we want to see more done about this. It's, you mentioned the eye issues. It's such a, I think I saw a lot of people like, oh, well, why isn't he doing anything?

Why did it take this, so long for this to happen? Oh, we finally found a doctor. The doctor, by the way, 25 years with the NHS, a thousand surgeries a year, this guy. Like this is, this is a top of the food chain. I, Doctor, he is seen. It wasn't some back alley. No, we tried the back alley on there. And they were like, I saw somebody in the comments suggesting that, you know.

And that one, they probably would have let you in the operating room, peep. Yeah. I mean, did you at least ask? Did you at least just, just like, hey, Doc, would it be cool if, uh, sure. You probably need somebody to hold an instrument or something. I could do that. There's a beer in there, I think, if you want to check that. It's, uh, well, the reason why he couldn't deal with lads has always keep

changing. He's had three different pairs of prescription glasses in three months. His eyes keep changing in different ways. So the muscles are kind of coming back and changing the way it is. But then he'll go, he'll go for a test and they'll be like, oh, no, this is positive. Next test is like, oh, you've actually, they've degraded a bit again. So his eyes are just constantly changing. The doctor told me, until your eyes stabilize, we can't do surgery. So this was the countdown for aspirin like from that day he's been waiting to just get the same results twice in an eye test and you know there was part of him that was like if it's improving that's great but the pattern is it improves and then it gets worse and improves and then it gets worse so then the wish that it would improve was just like

please stop changing so we can get this so we can do something with this and in terms of this eye surgery the doctor told me this as well there there is a strong chance this might not stimulate his peripheral vision. We reference the tracking issues he's having. He can't shake people's hands. He can, but he often misses. Like, he is a tall guy, so he's looking down. It is a challenge to his peripheral when he's shaking hands.

It is not every time, but this is a running joke in the gym. You know, it is the north of England. They do take the piss over the most tragic shit. Believe me, I was there for an hour and I was like, Jesus Christ. No wonder Tom's not going to the gym that much anymore. But that is like a real thing that's happening. So the hope is that this surgery will stimulate his forward vision. He has a black spot on one side of his eye that never goes away.

It's there all day. Every day it's just there. And the other side is the peripheral issues where it blurs and he gets double vision. So the hope is that by this first double eye surgery will, you know, it will work. the forward vision, but as that's fixed, it will somehow kick the peripheral into gear. If that does not work, it's another double-eye surgery. And it doesn't sound like he's exactly looking forward to that prospect. He said something, and he's quoted in your article saying where he came out of the procedure

going, I don't know if I could do that again, which that tells you how bad it was, you know? He's in searing pain today as well. I can tell you that much because I talked to. You have the UFC checked in on him just to make sure that all the procedure went as should. Do we have permission? I don't have much. I know they were aware it was happening on Tuesday. Okay. I do not know. I did check in, funnily enough, just this morning because we have this

big article coming out. And there was a tweet going around by one Ruben Carter. That is not the hurricane. It is Ruben, like the sandwich Carter. Yeah. And he put out like, it's a great sandwich. I love a Rubin. We're not down. Nobody is here is saying anything about a Rubin sandwich, right? Pistrami is really good. good. Everyone loves a when I, I just can't wait

for a Rubin sandwich. If it's on the menu, I'm getting it every time. It doesn't matter what else is there. But this guy tweeted, he's vacated.

There's a mutual agreement between the UFC and Tom that he's going to, he's being exiled from the roster. You know, so I was like, this article's going out. Yeah.

I need to know this. He came back too, Chuck. He came back to a couple of times. I was like, I need to hear, like, I need to make sure that this hasn't happened.

I felt very ridiculous doing it. but I was like, for the sake of this article, I probably should. And they were like, no, we haven't heard from the UFC at all. So, you know, there's a good chance, honestly, that the UFC might find out more information about what Tom Aspinall's road back looks like by reading this article. That's, you know, Chuck and I have talked about this before, like how we've both been in a situation where you write an article on some guy and then you hear that information referenced on a UFC broadcast later. They very rarely will say where they got it from, but you'll be like, I know where you got this from. You read my article and I could see a situation where the UFC reads this and goes, okay, this is looking like we could be without our heavyweight champ for a while.

You know, I don't know exactly what they've talked about with him in terms of like what timelines might look like. But you read this, you do not come away thinking, hey, he can maybe come back in time for the White House card to fight zero gone. that does not seem like a possibility at all. I will be curious to know if maybe the UFC decides to start considering other options once realizing like, hey, he just came out of this surgery. And even that is no guarantee to fix it. Even that's going to require a lot of time to see what the realistic next steps could be. Because this is like, you know, I understand it too.

When he was saying, I'm not even thinking about fighting right now, I'm thinking about I would like to be able to drive a car again. I would like to just not be constantly bothered by defects in my vision all the time so I can get back to living a normal life. And then, you know, you'll think about fighting. One thing I wondered is if I was sitting around all this time dealing with all of this because another guy broke the rules and stuck his fingers in my eyes, I could see maybe getting increasingly angry at that guy. Even if you think Cyril gone didn't mean to do it, even if you think it was just a pure accident, I could see maybe sitting around. and being like, that son of a bitch,

if I ever get back in there and get another shot at this guy, I'm going to make him pay for this. Did that ever come up? He, no, you know, his dad talked about the gun fight as in the perception of the gun fight. And I don't even think this is where it was in Manchester. I've talked to him about it before. I think they're just like, how does no one think this was a competitive fight? Why are people talking like, you know, this was a,

because they were expecting a runaway. That's why. Because it's like the expectations where Tom is going to go out there and just flatline this guy immediately. And so if anything else happens, then it seems like it's way different than what you expect and therefore a shock. It's no, yeah, okay. Like here's a thing. I liked your play on words you're about to say. You're about to say a foregone conclusion, weren't you?

That's pretty good. That could have been a headline. It's, uh, the thing with the, the gonfoy is they're nearly, they wanted to do something different. And you could see it in that. blog they released. Remember we had all that footage and Habib's there beforehand? And like Andy, you can tell Andy's like, no, we're going to go deep waters. Like, we want to show people that we can do this for a bit. And then that happens and like, ah, but I mean, look, it really isn't, we're selfish. Like, the fight, the fight community is selfish. Like, we're, that's all we're

thinking about. But it's like, it doesn't feel like that's the priority right now. As he says himself, like, I'm sure it isn't, man. Like, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, his, I mean, the telling thing within that, too, is just that, that end quote that you use where he's like, you know, I love mixed martial arts, but I can't understand the business, which I'm sure extends then to the fan base questioning him and all of the doubts and all the people who are like, you wanted a way out, you're quitter or whatever it is. That would be very difficult when you're dealing with something like your eyesight like that and affecting your daily life outside of the cage. I mean, that's just, that's a lot to be dealing with for a guy like that, especially kind of in the, like you mentioned, it kind of. It was supposed to be a coronation for him going into this fight. This was supposed to be the moment when we really acknowledge him as the heavyweight king and all this. And to kind of come out of it after that 15 months.

And then to be in this situation is just, we talk about the fight game being cruel. But I mean, this is like the greatest example of it right here, isn't it? Yeah, and that has to be a pretty stark reminder for him that these people don't care about you. You know, they are their fans. They want to get behind you if you're winning. They get excited about it and everything. But the minute you mess up to schedule and keep the heavyweight title out of circulation, they're going to turn on you. And that would be probably a hard thing to deal with.

And I've heard other fighters say this before. I remember Josh Barnett once when it was a tricky time for him professionally. And I was asking him some about this stuff. And I could tell he was uninterested. And I was like, do you just not like it? And he was like, I love fighting. But what you're talking about is the business of fighting. And the business of fighting is completely different.

than what actual fighting is. And, you know, I can see that he would feel the same way here. I also think, you know, Dana White definitely didn't help with the way he phrased some of the stuff. It wasn't quite like Dana White saying it. He wasn't quite saying, like, I think he wanted out of there. You know, we've definitely heard Dana White say way harsher stuff about people. But there was something about the way he phrased it that was just sort of like, well, hey, you know, that's how it went.

whatever. You know, we'll see when he's ready to come back. And that's, I think that that would probably be tough to take if you, because you expect the fans to be assholes a little bit, don't you? Especially because you can't take for granted they're your fans. They might be, you know, Cyril gone fans. They might be fans of somebody else more than you. Gambling fans, a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But when, you know, you're the heavyweight champion and the president of the organization is just kind of like, well, sort of flippant about it when you're dealing with this, I could see how that, that would get a little tough to take. Do you think, Chuck that, like, add to Ben's points, like, do you think that's where this

kind of skepticism about the procedures undergone comes from when he kind of said, oh, he means injections or something like that. He was like, oh, he's going to get surgery. Injections. Right. And also just, and also just the kind of like side swipe of saying, like, you know, you know what, don't, don't ask me this stuff. Go ask Tom. Go ask Tom. Like he's sensitive to, you know, the response and you're putting it on Tom, right? The burden on Tom. There's been a lot of that, man, and I'm positive. We've been around the sport, man. The people who are like Dana files, they're going to always be the guys who take everything as gospel. They're going to read into everything. And so that doesn't help, man. When the president is basically, you know, the UFC, the face of the UFC is basically not coming to your defense. Let's put it that.

way. He's not defending you. That's going to hurt this situation. Just even looking at the comments today, you have a definitive piece that comes out and you look at the comments. There's still a healthy mix of people in there like, strip them. What are we doing? Like, this is ridiculous, you know? And you're like, man, did you even look at the, like, are you looking at the article? Are you reading like what's going on here? So no, man, it doesn't help. I was going to ask you, though, from a writerly perspective, obviously like when when dana's kind of

voliing back and forth and saying like hey sensitive go ask him you know blah blah you're approaching tom for this kind of piece how sensitive was he and I guess like guarded in the sense of like man I don't want to be I don't want to be stirring shit up with the UFC beyond what are you know was he was he thinking of this was he conscious of this type of thing absolutely you know like it wasn't they didn't want to get in they didn't want me and look I've done those articles

but Andy asked me before yeah I've done that piece where he says, I don't like this. I don't like that they've done this. I don't like that they've done this. I think that would have taken away from the, like, you know, the goal, like me going in and being like, well, what is your life like? What is your situation here? Like, I think that was always the goal for me.

I've been in touch with the team ever since this. And it got kind of awkward, you know, when you're asking for updates or progress checks and there isn't any. And you're like, you're seeing these comments and you're like, every time this dude put something out there, these people and they're saying, this is bullshit,

you know, you aren't doing this. I think they kind of dictated what the article would be about. You know, I think it's, it's because the UFC thing isn't really the issue right now.

That's not the game he's playing right now. It's like everyday stuff. I don't think they were interested in having any Tiff tat with the UFC again. I don't think like as is abundantly clear throughout this is very much about like

what's this guy's life like now? You know? Like this guy's life is very different than what it once was. And even like if you saw Tom Aspinall right now guys he is in an incredible shape. That's the craziest thing about this right? All he can work is basically a stationary bike and weights. And he has gotten himself

obviously because he's just just losing his mind, just on this bike all day and doing weights. He's got himself in ridiculous, Nick, but he can't do anything. Isn't that crazy? He was eating at McDonald's, though, though. It's probably the part of the article that was... Man, that's... I really...

When you mentioned the post-surgery McDonald's, I was like, man, I bet that is some good McDonald's. When you come out of a harrowing medical procedure and somebody can put some McDonald's fries and an orange soda in your hand, and you go. go, whew. I'll tell you what. I had. I could do a break today. Yeah. You just, I had flashbacks to when I got a staff infection from Jiu-Jitsu mats and I had to go to the urgent care in the mall to get them to cut it open and drain it. And naturally, because I'm an idiot, I waited way too long to go in. It's like, just like a hugely infected abscess. Terrible procedure having them just cut it open, drain it, stuff it with gauze. I walked out of there pale as a ghost, went and sat down in the

food court and ate a soft pretzel just to collect myself. And I was just like, you know what? I'm going to deal with the rest of my life. I'm going to deal with everything else here in a minute. For right now, I'm going to eat this soft pretzel. I'm going to dip it in spicy nacho cheese. I'm just going to take him out. And it's just like, man, you come out of there and somebody has that McDonald's for you. And you're probably like, this is, this is all I want to focus on for right now. Yeah, he has, uh, Charlie Moose there. He was basically become his driver. right? Like this guy used to be his medium.

He's just his driver and just everything now. He's like a PA because Tom can't, Tom can't do all this shit. He used to be able to do. And he's like in there. He's like, we're going before he gets in. He's like,

we'll get some food for you. So when you come out, you know, wait for you're in there, but we'll order some food. And he's like, yeah, get me a double chicken wrap from subway.

And then the McDonald's comes instead because they can't order it for whatever reason. I'm like, I don't know if he's going to like this. We want this sudden change. he did not give a shit. As you say, Ben, I think he was just like, give me something. I just want to center myself

for a volunteer. Well, you know and the thing is, like, you mentioned up the top that Chuck and I had both written about the state of the heavyweight division this week. And if you are the UFC looking at this and going, man, this looks like a long timeline and it's still uncertain if he's going to come back.

Is it time to either move on in terms of like an interim champion or do something else entirely? Like, what are we going to do? the thing that is a complicating factor here is you look at the rest of the heavyweight division and you basically have Cyril Gahn knocking around there and you know guys like Sergei Pavlovich or whatever and and then 40 feet of shit and you know and you got like the it's it's bleak for heavy weights right like there's just not a whole lot of exciting talent

existing in there and so what the UFC did look at it and go all right let's set up an interim title. What would you even do? How would you get people to care about that? You know, it's like, yeah, like, you look right there at the rankings. You got Cyril gone at the top and people will obviously. Al-Meda from the 80s gone. Yeah.

He's gone. You, you got-crank and still have my date. We still have him a day. Cyril, Cyril gone would come in there and people would be like, oh, wait, so this guy gets rewarded for Pocent Tom Aspinol in the eyes, you know? You got Alexander Volkov who won. one of the fights that Jelton-al... that you have to think was part of Jelton-Almeida getting cut

because it was just an awful fight to watch. Nobody seemed to want to win it. Good enough to get him in the second spot there. Then you got Sergey Pabell. There's just not anything there that jumps out at you is like, hey, this is what you could move to as an interim title fight in the meantime, and people would be excited about it.

What a look it would be for John Jones to slide back in there on the interim in his place? Wouldn't this be like the most ridiculous thing? That would be so very John Jones. It would be so of John Jones, man. Because you imagine, like, if he was just like to put it in the USC's ear, like, I know I said that thing about arthritis in my hip. But if you needed, Tom was fighting. I know.

I feel a lot better. If you needed me to come back and beat Cyril Gaon again, I could absolutely do it just saying. It's got to be crossing their mind. I mean, what else are you going to do? Yeah. It's, you know, that's the one thing. Just the final word on the kind of the critics of us. he was objectively fucking amazing.

Like this guy was just going through people. Like it was no one's business. He blows out his knee. He shows up in the same arena a year later and goes through someone. Then he goes through Pavlovich, who looked like an absolute murder before Aspinall fought him. And he took his biggest shot and then caoed him. Then he waits 15 months.

He shows up in Manchester. He beats the guy who he had a nightmare situation with where he just blew out his the any fought him. Like, I don't think you're a fight fan if you're giving out shit. Why is there the hate for him then, man? Like, seriously, the guy had to wait 15 months. It wasn't like he wanted to wait this amount of time, right? Like, he wanted to fight. John Jones, he was the one out on this, you know, moped in Thailand. It wasn't like he was going to come back and fight. So why is there this hate for Aspen? I feel like these people had just been lying in wait. Like, you read the kind of, I don't know, just that nasty toxic tone.

Yeah, vitriol, like they just, they've been waiting to kind of comment on this. And I'm like, where did that come from? Like, he's not a hateable character, is he? No, I don't. But don't you think some of it comes from the more he tries to explain or show people that this is actually like a serious thing, kind of the angrier it makes some people. I think because of that same thing where they don't really like being reminded of that reality of this sport. They're just like, damn it, I just want to watch the fights. There's something to that, to be honest, man.

You're getting in the way of me watching the fights, and then you're asking me to derive some form of empathy that I have heretofore not managed to find within myself. There's a lot of fight fans, frankly, who do not care about fighters, who just do not care about their well-being. Some of them hate fighters. I don't know what that is. But the minute they're asked to think of these people as people, they get angry and they take it out on the person who asks them. And so I don't know what that's about.

Yeah, it's a bizarre one. It's a bizarre one. Yeah, well, we're talking about the heavyweight division. What is like, the quality of fights, right, is. You said it all with that with that side. That was like, it's where we're at. Well, you know, I believe it was, Ben, you wrote the article about, like, we're just basically saying we don't care anymore, right? Like, in terms of sports, it's like how excited.

can you be. But didn't we already know that with Martin Boudet when he got putting it? Yeah. Do you remember, I think it was maybe even like Laura Sanko saying this at the end of last year? I want to say it was Laura Sanko. It could have been somebody else. Kind of saying something along the lines of the UFC is shifting its attitude a little bit toward these people where it's making it clear, we want you to come out here and put

on exciting fights. And if you come out here, even if you're winning and the first. The fights suck and nobody wants to watch them and nobody enjoyed watching them afterwards, that's not going to save you anymore. And, you know, there's, it's arguable that that's been an ongoing conversation, that it, it's always been somewhat a factor. And maybe now we're just like, maybe it's a question of degree. We're just increasing it.

Because it's the same conversation we had back when the UFC was just like not interested in Ben Ascgren at all. It was like, uh, he can go somewhere else. And that was at a time when everybody was going, he's undefeated. He might be the best welter way. in the world and they were going, we still don't care. And so maybe it's, and, you know, I think that this was framed at the time is like, this is what we're doing in the Paramount era.

We're going over there to Paramount. We're going to give people what they want, which is exciting fights. We don't care how good you are. If your fights aren't exciting, we're not going to keep you around. And the Jel-Madeau thing, though, I think that it is surprising because it feels like we're pulling the rip cord on that one pretty quickly. He lost two fights. those fights were bad the second one especially you're just like do you even like this sport do you even want to be here

tweet was great for that. That summed it up perfectly. You see a look on his face in some of those moments in the fight and you're just like, you seem bored. You seem like you would rather be doing anything else. So how the hell are we supposed to feel watching you? And I think it's more frustrating with a guy like him because you look at him and you're like, physically you seem to have all the tools.

You seem like you could just decide to get up and go and you could really do something and you're just not deciding to. And so that is more frustrating. but to cut that guy after, you know, two losses, he's a ranked heavyweight. He's a ranked fighter in the thinest division you have. Right. You remember there was a time where like it almost felt like the UFC's policy, we do not get rid of heavyweights. Heavy weights can be bad for years.

You can be a 50-year-old heavyweight basically. Just because they didn't want to give Bellator or somebody else a chance to pick them up. Now maybe that's less of a concern. But it was just like, hey, if you got a heavyweight. I remember Frank Mear saying this where he was, his wife was watching fights with him and saw these two heavyweights. And she was like, oh, my God, they're so bad. And he was like, yeah, that's heavyweight. Like the competition is pretty thin.

And she realized with horror, oh, my God, you could do this until you're 50. And he was like, yeah, yeah, I could. Yeah, he's all happy. Yeah. Yeah. And she was not that, she was not saying it like that was good news. The oh my God was a bad, oh my God. But it's like, if that's the state of the heavyweight division and you're, you're not.

you're still willing to get rid of this guy, I think it does say that you have shifted your perspective and you want other people to see that. You want them to be like, hey, you've got to really go out there and deliver. Otherwise, as soon as you'll lose one or two, the UFC's going to get rid of you. Do you guys, do you wonder if like, because he kind of made it public too. Like I'm thinking about going to light heavyweight. Do you think that factors in?

Because they're like, well, we definitely don't want you in that division. You know, like, well, don't you think like, even three or four years ago, they would have given them a chance to either go to light heavyweight or to give him one more chance. I think so. I mean, Tai Tuivasa has lost six straight and we keep him around. Number 12, relax now, okay, the man's ranked. But he had backed up to 15th. He fell out of the rankings when Res dang Cuiy.

With no Almeida, right? Like, that was going to default back to 15. We were pretty excited about Jalden Amayla. We were pretty excited about him when he came along. Exactly. But clearly they're looking at somebody like Tai Tui Vasa and being like, yeah, he's not winning many lately. but he brings some form of excitement. He's going to go out there and brawl.

He's going to throw a hard. He's a fan favor a little bit. He has an exciting fighting style up until the point that he gets too tired to do anything. But like people like him, he puts on a good show. We'll keep him around even if he loses. And Jelton Almeida loses two and neither one of them was very fun. Get out of here. And the fact that they're willing to do that even when they know they don't have many people to choose from to replace him,

I think that does signal like a little bit of even an informal policy shift for the UFC. Well, like, here's the thing. Like, there's loads of various opinions on this, Ben. You might feel that way about it. But Chuk wrote a great article and it was full of positivity about the heavyweight division. It was called UFC's Heavyweight Division has turned into a god-awful thing called Chuck. Well, I mean, it's for the same reasons we just keep outlining here. But the last couple of fights didn't have come.

I mean, it was pounded home in a way that you're just like, man, what are we watching here? You know, you have the one that's in, and I get it, man, with Toyavasa and like the crowd was trying to cheer him on. But to watch a guy who, and especially Talas and Tashira, too, like, who basically is like, I can't. I take it, man. It's your fight. Go ahead, beat me. But then he can't, like, you can't even get up to deliver the final blow. There's something about that that you're like, man, I don't really need to see that, you know?

I don't need to see that kind of fight. But then you get this, this follow. fight a week later and you get a disinterested elmada you know what I mean and you get uh what's his name Cooney up like he's the one like posting him up and just there's no threat to anything and I was like man it turns existential to somebody like this sucks like you you think about like just being in there you start daydreaming about other stuff you're not even like concentrated in fight at some point man it's just it just looks bad so and then you kind of look over it

all the things we're talking about you look at the division the guys that they could have brought in, even Rico, you know, you could bring in a guy like that and just kind of spice things up. They can't reach a deal. They're not reaching their pockets deep enough to do that. They, uh, you know, the, the Francis and Ganu thing that is hovered out there and there's kind of like a lot of vendetta step in the way of them doing business with him. And it's just, it's very bleak.

I mean, I've just, there's been times where it's kind of an age. Like we look at it like, oh, man, everybody in that division is 40 years old, you know, like, but, but they were all names, carryovers from like pride and stuff. And like you just mentioned, they could keep fighting. because they're all kind of in that same grouping. They can keep going. But dude, where it stands right now, man, just the names. I mentioned the, like, five or six guys who, like, don't move the needle at all within

the top ten space. And you're like, what do you do with this division? You know, it's just it's really turned into that type of thing. I know even in talking to Luke Thomas, he was basically suggesting shuttering it up, getting rid of it all together, like they were trying to do with the flyweights. That might be extreme, but I don't know how many people would miss it in the short term. Like, right now, it's just it's not. good. I mean, don't you think that there's got to be somebody at the UFC is sitting around and being like,

so how is Gable Steven's progress coming? Because it can't, we can't get this guy to that level soon enough. Like, athletically, he seems to have all those pieces. He's exciting. It seems like all the things that you would hope that a heavy would have. And especially if the rest of the vision is in kind of the doldrums, you could bring that guy. And like, honestly, it seems like the big risk now would be you brought him in too soon because because you needed somebody, you rushed him into an opportunity. Because somebody like that is one of the only people I could think of that at heavyweight right now that you could get excited about. You could do one of them, Joe Lewis kind of four fights in one night, the boom of the week thing. You could just get him to go through four fights in a month. You know, remember we had the Ashemoi have to do that kind of shit?

Yeah. I think Gabe would be. Even Bo Nickel, like, had a couple boom, boom, boom, right? Like, to just start as he started rolling. And we thought it was going. We thought we were getting another Shemaiah, bloodletting, you know, a super bloodlet. We were campaigning for him to fight Shemeyov right away.

Remember, we're like, just book it. Let's just do it. What do you do it, all right? Like, say, you know, everyone, do you know what? I'm just like about that, like, that misery farming that people are doing about aspirin, like, you know, this guy knows it's going to get a big reaction

if he says he's vacated the toilet. It's kind of fucked up. You know, like, when that clearly hasn't happened, you're just like, I'm going to put this out here. Like, as this guy struggles to find his vision again, that he's vacated the title. But look, it's not an impossible situation. That is, that is one thing that we have to acknowledge here.

Like, it, Tom, gosh. You know, Tom, Tom is, he says it himself in the piece. Like, it is not the priority. I have to get my health right first. We don't know how long that's going to take. Yeah, there could be another double surgery here. You know, let's, let's avoid, given that, though, given that though, I mean, it feels somewhat inevitable that the UFC will.

Yeah. If they, I mean, if they, I mean, unless they just feel like we're talking about like there's just no good match to make. It's pointless to strip him or to like do an interim final. But it does feel like it feels inevitable if he has no timeline, right? Like it feels inevitable if they can find the right combination that they'll do that at some point. Like in the near future, right? Like I feel like that's what they're going to do.

I think they'll give him like the recovery time for this, whatever that might be. And obviously as we know so far with the eyes, it is, it's always in it, Ben. You know what I mean? It is. It's a size, isn't it? Yeah. So I don't know how long they give them. Do we, what, like, let's avoid the, the Luke, the Luke Thomas nuclear option here.

What do you do? What is the fight? Is a Waldo Cortez-A-Costovie Cyril gone? Oh, man. It might very well be. See, everyone's buzzing for this one. Everyone's excited for this one. I was looking at my needle and it just was sitting still.

It wasn't doing anything. I don't, no, I could see how you could get, and style-wise and everything. I could see how you could get a decent fight out of that. And the problem that you'd have is getting anybody who actually knows the state of this sport to believe that these are the two best heavyweights in the world. Yeah. But, you know, you managed to, you didn't let that stop you when it came to Justin Gaichi and Patty Pimlet. So I could see that you put together an interim title fight and you say, here we go. I think also one of the things that has to play some kind of a role is right now there is not a single title fight.

on the books, right? We got the BMF title with Charles Olivera and Max Holloway. UFC 327, I think it is, one that's in April in Miami, has no title fight yet announced, no main event yet announced. You've got to think they'll find some title fight to put on that one. And then you got the White House card where we're told, you know, all the titles, all the time, it'll be nothing but title fights, whatever we end up seeing there. But if that is the reason why you don't have title fights books now because we've got to save some to make that White House card as big as we've promised, then you're also looking at a few months on the other side of that where you won't have title fights book because everybody will be recovering from the fights they just had.

And so that's a long time to go without having a whole lot of title fights. You probably don't feel in that environment like we can just shelve heavyweight and think about everything else because you're already hurting for bel. some gold to put on the poster. What do you think, Chuck? Do you agree? Do they continue to stimulate this heavyweight division that, of course, can we just get that quote again from Chuck? The division has turned into a god-awful single.

That was being nice, PZ, I was being with tonight. Unless they've got something up their sleeve. And I mean, I guess this is more old thinking because we were doing this for UFC 300, like, what do they have up their sleeve, man? they're going to do something crazy. You know, remember this? And then they kind of roll out a card. They're like, oh, that's pretty good.

But it's just, you know, you're expecting some kind of wild card in this. But I'm kind of still expecting something like that. Like if it's a John Jones moment, I mean, this would be it. If they're going to do that, it's got to be it right now. So unless they've got something like that, it's, I don't know. I think that they're creating a vortex, though, with this card. The more information we can get about the White House at this point, The more you can start to speculate around it.

But, like, right now you can't really do anything because you have no idea who they're still in that card. We're always just about to sit down and get into the matchmaking. It's always, like, just about to happen. It's been there for a while. We're just about to figure it out. You had some new details come out recently in an interview Dana did, didn't he? Like, there was some use. Go ahead.

Go ahead. Tell us. Tell us what details you left. It was in the info, I took. Oh, man. No, he appeared It was a Paramount Post. It was like a CBS platform

And he was labeled as having more details But the only real detail that they said Is they'll know exactly where the sun will be Which is good? That's good to know During that event. So that's something. That is a knowable thing.

People could know where the sun will be on June 15. I've been worried sick about the sun's placements in this fucking thing. I've been thinking about that too. Oh my God. They know where it'll be. They have consulted the meteorologist. The king has called forth all the realm's greatest scientists. They have told him where the sun will be.

And now we can begin matchmaking now that we know where the sun is going to be. Sounds like something of a pagan ritual is going to go down to the way else with the sun. It might very well, Pee, it might very well end up being that by the time we're done with this. Don't threaten me with a good time, Ben, folks. Obviously, we had a huge rollout this week. Hasn't all just been Tom Aspinall's eyes. There was a big officiating summit, and one of our esteemed panel was there and featured in the latest uncrowel film. We're going to roll you a bit of a ball tickler, and then we're going to come back and talk about it.

First fight, and I go, ended in like 30 seconds. I was like, well, that was easy. And then I had the second one, and it ended about in a minute and a half ago, well, that was easy. Well, this is easy. And from that moment, my life was a living hell. I always tell all referees, let me make this as clear as I can for you. You will never make a bad fight good, but you definitely can make a good fight bad. Don't sit there and stand in one place.

I told you to go 10-9 or 10-8, you should know where you're at. Some cumulative damage, definitely damage to the ego, too. There was nothing that Comzat did, although he was unbelievably dominant. DDP needs to be hurt. Dana White. So that's a 10-8. You are not reading our criteria, are you? This side is right.

We've got to bring you guys over to this side based upon there was not enough damage under our current criteria. The people that are judging right now are doing a better job at this moment in sport that has ever been done. They're doing an outstanding job. And it is a difficult, difficult job. Make sure you get over to YouTube and check that out. It's an absolutely brilliant, brilliant watch E. Casey Lloyden doing his thing as usual, even a glimpse of Esther Lynn there in the background. And as I said, it's like the old days.

Wait, you see though, you're in the 108 side? 108 or 109? No, I was standing on the 109 side, but you can see Casey is visible on the 108 side. He's a whole debate. Such a rabble rouser. He still will argue with you about it. He thinks he ought to be able to, that's where he wants the half point to be, so it could be 10, 8.5. He did also, though, cut out at one point where,

toward the end of the I only asked Right in the middle of that That 8.5 I only spoke up during this thing to ask too because I didn't want to get in the way of them having the officiating something

I was there to listen and kind of be a fly on the wall I only said two things like one at the end of the first day One at the end of the second day But at the end of the second day I was just trying to ask like Okay

You know he did a really good job explaining how the scoring criteria is written how it's supposed to work all that stuff And I was saying you know We have situations a lot where one guy comes out and wins a round by a lot. You know, very clear he won that round. He was in control the entire round.

Won it very clearly. Didn't do maybe, didn't meet the damage threshold for a 10-8 as it's currently written. And then the other guy comes out and wins the next two rounds just barely. Each one, he wins by just a sliver, you know, 10-9. But we're basically doing 10-9 because, as also became clear during this thing, they really don't want you to turn in a 10-10 scorecard. They want you to pick a winner. And in that situation, in a three-round fight,

the guy who won two rounds by a sliver gets the nod over the guy who won one round by a whole lot. And I was just kind of like, is the scoring criteria in that situation, is that the judging metric working the way it's supposed to? And Big John's answer to that was essentially like, no scoring system is perfect. And that is one potential defect in our current. scoring system and why he has said he advocated for half point rounds or, you know, the possibility to score a half point in some of these rounds just to reflect that. Now, the point I made, which I don't

think showed up in the video, was several times when we were all turning in our scorecards over the course of a couple of days, the math of just the straight up 10-9 had stymied some of us at times, you know? So you had the half points. You had a decimal point in there, we're going to screw it up at some point. So that is a little bit of a concern. But it is, it was very illuminating to see the refs and the judges have these conversations amongst themselves, especially because honestly, I came away going, if I was an MMA fighter, I would want this information. And I would at least want to have my coach in some of these sessions so that he can turn around and explain it to me. Because there are some of these where we're looking at it, you know, when it's

a close round, the things that might make a difference isn't just like volume. It's like, well, here's an instance where this guy was coming forward. The other guy landed a right hand, and now the dude's not coming forward anymore. He's backing up now. That's an indicator they're looking at. That's something because damage is not just blood and bruises. Damage is, you know, you got hit and you got wobbled. You got hit and you started moving backwards. Something happened that made you start doing something differently than what you clearly wanted to do. That's an indicator of damage. I would want to know all that as a fighter. I'd want my coach to be able to give me that. And it really made me look at fights afterwards, like very shortly after this, I was watching

that Arnold Allen and John Silva fight where, you know, Jean Silva kind of took it over later, surfed on the guy's back, which I think that, yeah, that'll work on the judges a lot of times. But that first round, you know, that first round was close. Arnold Allen seemed to be doing more in that first round. One judge still gave that round to Jean Silva, because when he was fire him back, especially late in that round, you saw Arnold Allen react a lot. Like he was getting hit, even when he had his guard up and he was blocking, his body was reacting to these shots. And just that could be enough to show people these punches are having damaging effect that the other guy's punches did not have, even if he landed more of them. That's the kind of little differences that you'd

want to make sure you know, because if that's what the judges are looking for, then you need to at least somewhat tailor your approach around that. Isn't it nerve-wracking when they're like, they ask you straight up, like, was that a 10-8 or 10-9? Like, you choose right now. Isn't that nerve-wracking? Because a long time ago, I went to a seminar, but it was one-on-one. It was just, you remember Doc Hamilton?

He was the- Oh, yeah. So, Doc Hamilton, he had a chiropractic office, whatever, in Burbank or someplace, and I went and talked to him, and he had the videos all set up just the same thing. And he played, like, a couple of different fights. but one of them was Hanado Burrisimo, remember Sheruto? Yeah. He was fighting Matt Hughes at you like UFC 48 a long time ago. And he's like, so who's doing what here?

And it's like Hughes has him on the ground. And he's asking him. He's like, he's not going to tell you anything. He's not tipping off anything. He's like, who's winning this round? Who wins this round? And I'm like sweating at that point. You're like, man, I, I, Matt Hughes because of the control.

He's like, no, watch it. Watch it here. You know, he's like going through it. it's so, and this was before, like, damage became like the big, you know, where they were, they made damage, uh, the bigger issues. Yeah, yeah. So like, but this was before all of that, but being put on the spot, like, I like that they do it the way because it's like, here's just a glimpse of what this is like to be a judge because you're put on the spot, man. What is what is your verdict here? Remember what was it, uh, was it Miguel Torres versus was it Demetrius Johnson?

They had a fight like that. Is that the one? thinking of something else. I know it was Miguel Torres and he fought off his back a lot and it was like, but he was doing the, he creating more damage and like he was way more active. He had the submissions, like threats

and that stuff, but he ends up losing this fight. And if he went back and watched it again now, I think with the education of what you, like, you just went through been, probably that result is different. You know, like, I think people would see that fight a whole different way than they did back then. You know, I... Round a little bit on Rutan one as well, Roy, Roy,

right? That's a great example of it. And also I think that the understanding of how we should be judging and what we actually want to look for in scoring and MMA has changed over the years because there was a time for a while there where, hey, if the round was at all close and you got a takedown in the last 30 seconds. Exactly. They would do it. That's your wrap. Stull the round. You see the wrestlers just basically like, oh, 10 seconds. There's the claps. I better take them down.

Yeah. Or they'd have their corner shout at them when we're under a minute, when we're at 30 seconds, whatever, so that they can look for that take down to steal the. round. And it took a while for people to move away from that and to be like, hey, taking somebody down and controlling them doesn't mean anything. Control. And Big John said it several times while doing the judging portion of this, that control doesn't mean anything. And that took us a long time to get ourselves to believe. And for a while, I feel like there was like a feedback loop sort of thing happening where it was like, fighters are saying, okay, the judges will reward it if you get to take down in the last 30 seconds. So while working into my game plan, take down the last. 30 seconds. That means I won the round, right? And the judges are going, okay. And so like, it took, it took a lot of effort and like an intentional effort on people's part to sort of break some of those old ways of thinking. And the same way you're talking about where for a long time, we thought you can't win around off your back. If you're on top, if you're laying on the guy's

guard, but he's on his back and you're on top, you're winning. And it took us a long time to kind of get away from that and think, you know, maybe not necessarily. Is that the case? But I also think one of the things that I came away with from this, and it sounds just sort of very basic, but it's very easy for us as media and as fans to, we pay attention when we think the judges got it wrong or when we think the refs screwed it up. We don't pay attention to it when it all goes right. When it goes right. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, that's why like, especially judging is such a thankless task, because it's like, if there was a perfect judge who did everything exactly right, you'd never know his name. That's just like, that's just like,

like the offensive line and football, right? Like it's the same thing. It's like you're their name at something bad. If you heard their name a lot that night. And so you have this thing where it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking like, they don't care. They're not even trying hard. The athletic commissions are being lazy.

They're just using the same people over and over again. I think there's at least a case to be made that for some time at some commissions. That was the case. But you see all these people showing up. This is one of the rare recans. where there was not any real MMA or combat sports happening and people made the trip to Las Vegas sat there for three days in these like,

you know, all day long sessions to try. And these are not people who are like trying to break into refereeing and judging. These are people who are already referees and judges. You can see the face there. Yeah, they're trying to get better at it. And when you come away from that and you go, all right, they do care, they are trying. It's harder than it looks.

It's harder than you think it is, but they are trying to get better. There are people out there who are trying to get better. there are people out there who are trying to make that aspect of the sport better. And they actually really give way more of a damn about it than you think they do. Especially when you're hearing them all talk about how the people who are judges, they're all in group chats. They're all on like different apps or texting each other.

And when there are fights happening at the end of a round, you know, of a UFC prelim, they're all texting each other 10, 9, 10. You know, like, and then when they disagree, they're having those arguments so that they can just sort of like sharpen their own understanding. and their own arguments of it and seeing like does my belief in who won that round does it stand up to like this conversation the fact that they're doing all that when they're not being paid and we all know there's a ton of fights happening all the time so it's a lot to pay attention to that they're spending every saturday night doing that shows you that they actually do care about this and they're trying to do the best job they can't you see a guy with a false nose and mustache and like it look like Douglas Crosby underneath the like he in there jokes chasing them that sequel I tell you he's starting to do you're not a single I tell you he's starting a false nose and mustache and I look for it. You know. I heard I might make an appearance.

That's all it was. I will say one thing. Big John has a way of talking to you, like, where you're like, he's kind of bullying me, but in an ultimately positive way. Like, he wouldn't have to have to admit up that one. I was like, oh. Well, you saw it in that, in that clip where he's just like telling people, like, don't try to just stand where you are and think that you could not make a choice.

Like, get over here. If you think 10-8, get over here. Like, he's doing that. And he's doing that to people who are peers, basically. basically, and they're very used to it, and especially like Mike Beltran was there. And, you know, whenever John needed to just make a quick joke at somebody's expense, he's going to pick on Mike Beltran. And just sort of like, you know, there's like a gentle ribbing that's going on there. But it's also you can tell like, he made the point where he was like, Mike and I have said hurtful things to each other.

Like basically just like, you've got to have somebody around that can be like, no, you're absolutely wrong about this or no, you screwed that one up. you've got to have somebody who can do that and like we have a like a relationship where we can do that for each other. And if you don't have that, then you don't ever have anybody that can tell you what you need to hear. And you're not going to get it from the internet. You're not going to get it. Like if you go on Twitter and you're listening to people who tell you when you screw it up, you're going to go crazy and you're going to want to quit. Not to mention and the film does a good job of showing this too, but John turns it on himself, right, with that whole Tim Kennedy. I mean, if you do that, if you're willing to be the same guy towards yourself as you're going to be to your room, it's going to translate a.

lot better. So he was, he wasn't even free from his own criticisms and, you know, like, and that sort of thing, which, uh, it would look like, I mean, honestly, it looked like a very effective seminar for those reasons, you know, it looked like it was very informative. Yeah, I, I'd love the, the kind of part where you can stand up and move to different sides. So I'd be very excited about that. I'd get it wrong too. And then he starts shouting on me. I start crying. And then everyone would be like, who brought here? This is track suit, 12 year old pizza you have in memories of like, like, oh, he'd be fine. He'd be like, yeah. Um, I will say, um, I will say,

Chuck just talked about the, the, the, the, Y'all Romero, Tim Kennedy. One of my

favorite moments of any fight I've watched live at the MGM Grand, one of the best arena's ever. And the great

Garrettee Davies was there and he stood up and he was like, someone was shouting, Ranger up, Tim! Ranger up! Garaday Davies got up

and he just goes, fucking Americans. And so back down again. And I thought it was the funniest shit I've ever seen. Dude, he was my comedy, man.

Oh, my God. I'm sure wearing a pinstripe three piece suit like he's Al Sweringen. Like he's just robbed Austin Powers like on the way into the arena or whatever. Just your three piece suit up top and my shorts on the bottom. Yeah. He says, he has his own way, but what a legend.

I will say I got a message from a world class official about this and I thought I'd keep it as a little surprise because I thought Shaheen Al Shadi as he did with more article on Tom and then the stuff that Ben was doing, absolutely brilliant. all of the stuff they did covering this official summer. Of course, we mentioned D. Casey Lloyden, but I'll just read a bit of this because I think a lot of times we have to react to judges, as Ben mentioned at the top,

and it's, you know, it can be quite cutting because these guys are all the way in. Like any official I know referee judge, this is their life. Like they are very, very serious about it. And it's cutting for them. It is part of the business. Part of our jobs is, of course, to talk about these things and react to them. But I thought this was a really nice message. it's nice to be able to read a balanced view on what we do as judges.

I frequently say to people that this is the best job in the world. It's all consuming for us. It has to be though. Every fight has to be the most important fight you've ever done. And every time you judge fights, it has to be 100% of all your mental capacity, locked solely on what is happening in front of you. It's akin to driving a long distance,

that constant unwavering mental focus. There's such a small group of us doing this at the highest levels that we inevitably gravitate together. doing 30, 35, 40 shows a year and more sometimes. A lot of travel, a lot of time, a lot of friendships and a lot of decisions. However, trust me when I say this, there truly is nothing like the act of judging fights. There's very few things we can do in this life where we're solely focused on a single thing. The distractions of modern life drag us away in so many different directions.

When you're judging a fight, nothing else exists. It's like being plugged into the matrix. It's hard to describe, but there's truly nothing else like it. Trust me when I say this, we care about this more than a lot of people. ever comprehend. And there is a bit more there, but I just thought it was a noise message because it is true, right? Ben, like these people are very affected when Dick Hadsley goes up to get on here and say, this isn't a dead ain't around you, motherfucker.

Yeah, well, and especially, you know, I talked to one of the judges who was there, Darren Furs, who he works with the Utah Commission and has been doing it, you know, for over 20 years at this point, fought a couple times himself, shout out to Basco Dan. And he was saying, you know, he's like, you're doing the best you can. And if you screw it up, people are looking up your name on mommaddecisions.com. And they'll even, they'll highlight it in yellow when you're the outlier, when there's a split decision and you were the one guy who disagreed with the other two judges.

And so there's all these ways for people when they're mad to go seek you out. And he's like, you know, you figure out how to turn off the message requests on Instagram real quick. He also said that Mark Goddard, when Mark Godard will get somebody sending a mean message on Instagram, they don't realize that there is a calling function on Instagram and he will call them. He will call them up and be like, let's talk about it. You know, you think I was wrong? You think I did something wrong there? Let's talk about it.

But, you know, there are all those ways. And especially, I got to think the prevalence of sports gambling probably only makes that problem worse. Because if you're out there and, you know, somebody's like, you screwed up my parlay because you scored this guy for the, you know, I lost money because of you. Like people are going to get mad. People are going to be jerks about it. And so you got to be able to deal with that. And more than anything, you've got to care enough about it to be willing to deal with that, to want to deal with that. Because it's not like it's a super lucrative job or anything.

You know, it is, these are just people who really care about the sport and really care about doing a good job. And yeah, like that guy said, like when you're sitting there where we're scoring these kind of sample rounds, you're paying such close attention. You're watching a fight very differently than you watch it when you're a fan. and you're sitting there with, you know, chips and beer. You are watching every single second. You don't want to miss anything. And paying that level of attention for an extended period of time is exhausting.

It's mentally, like, really exhausting. And it's a completely different way. And, you know, Big John said something where he's like, I see Dana White come out and criticizing the judges at times, but I also see him in the background of some of these shots on his phone during a round. Which is how most of us will do. Like, most of us, you know, we're watching, but we're also, like, allowing.

ourselves to be at least a little distracted. They're not allowing themselves to be distracted. Like they're watching it in a different way than we are. PC, did you say, and I apologize if you did, who that was from, that you just read this? Yeah, yeah. No, I did not say it was from. Okay, was that on purpose? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. But it's just somebody who's like an official, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I just want to make sure I got the, all, everything straight. It was very poignant. Thank you for reading that. It's, um, and look, they're great educators as well. They love talking about officiating.

Mark got out for me every fuck he'll he'll see me at an event they'll be like Pety what about this what I should have done like oh oh god I don't know if I know the exact thing we're talking about here but they are incredible I always wanted to do a piece on Keith Peterson

you know no nonsense guy who has no nonsense yeah he uh he was in some kind of punk band or something like that and I was like I was very interested in this but they're tough to pin down man those guys they a lot of just don't want to talk Well, and it's one of the things that came up several times in this seminar or this summit was, don't talk to the media, you know, especially for refs.

It was just like, don't talk to the media unless you get clearance from your commission. And the judge I talked to from Utah, he had to get permission from the head of his commission in order to be able to do it. And they're just saying, like, you know, you don't want to throw open that door to start arguing with people after the fact about this stuff. because you'll just never stop. And also a point Andy Foster, the head of the California State Athletic Commission made, where he was just like, you know, how to judge backstage, get into an argument with a fighter, trying to explain to him why he lost and people are taking out their phones, filming this encounter and put it on YouTube.

And then the next thing you know, he has to talk to the state attorney general about this whole situation. And it's not going to make him look kindly on you as judge. You know, like those kinds of things, like they're told explicitly. I think that they could stand to have a little bit more, not necessarily like a public facing sort of thing where everybody can get to them. But I don't think it's a bad thing for them to do more work explaining why we did this,

owning up to it when they made a mistake, telling us, like, educating us on like what they're thinking was, why it works this way. Because if you don't, then you just sort of leave us to argue about it and form our own conclusions. And those conclusions, And those conclusions will often be negative.

You know, they'll often, we are way more comfortable just being like, these judges and refs screwed this up than we are being like, well, maybe they understand it on a way we don't. Now you know why it took me like six months to get Douglas Crosby. And even then it was like one of those things were like, hey, go see the guy on the bench over there. I'll hold on his paper. Is it a Russian spa at Coney Island? I mean, that's like this is, they operate very differently. You were going to be at that Russian spa anyway.

Don't. I just happen to be there. The whole thing was coincidence. He just happened to be there, too. That has to be a part too. Yeah. You need to want them.

You need to do it. Just to bring a full circle, there was conversations about the aspirational situation, right? The gouges. I read it in one of your pieces, Ben. That is something that is very to the forefront of the conversation,

the officiating world right now, right? Yeah, Big John, straight up said at one point during the refereeing portion of the MMA day where he was like, This is the biggest issue our sport faces is the I poax. And he put it on the referees. He's like, it's your fault. You are not doing enough about this.

Now, he also, the, you know, there's like a slide show going on as he's talking. And the slide he showed during that time was just a montage of John Jones. Just John Jones with his fingers extended in various fights. But he, you know, he made the point where he was like, listen, when you go in the locker room to give pre-fight instructions, that's when you start setting the base. line of expectations where that's where you want you don't want to be out there when the guy pokes somebody in the eye given the warning then you don't want to be out there like when he has his fingers extended trying to tell him to stop tell him when you're backstage with him when you're having the pre-fight instruction meeting like in the locker room go in there and let

him know like hey if i see it with your fingers extended that's a foul even before you poke him in the eye that's a foul and if i tell you about that and you poke him in the eye anyway you know don't be surprised if you lose a point and he he asked at some point where where he was like, how many of you have deducted a point just for people having their fingers outstretched, which is a foul under the rules? You know, and only a couple of people raised their hands. And he was just like, it needs to be more. We need to be doing more about this before that happens. You can't just give people a free poke in the eye and say, like, we're going to warn you.

Meanwhile, the other guy's vision is blurry and you might have just greatly increased your odds winning this fight. Like, why wouldn't you do it at that point? And once you got him blurry-eyed, you take that nutshot, right? Like, you just kick him right in the groin once. They're not expecting it when they go for the eyes forest. They can't really see that. They don't see it. Yeah.

Grab the fence to them. And then you go, of course. Of course. Lads, we must check if there are any super chats among us today. Proud of you, Pizzi. Thank you. Super chats. Yeah.

Pizzi, thank you for doing all that you do. I don't do a lot. And for all the sacrifices you make, Not that much. We all greatly appreciate you. Thank you, Bill. We're just incidental. A little Bill.

We just. Yeah. I mean, you two guys, you know what I mean? My back is killing me and carrying the crack. Nice little Bill. I appreciate it, mate. I have your Las Vegas police badge here somewhere. I don't know what I've done with it.

What the hell? Oh, it's behind the football. I'm going to sort that out for you, Bill. Don't you worry about that. Anything else, Jordan? Zufu doesn't want active U.S. Fights competing for them. Can't, Zufa doesn't want active UFC fights.

I think it means fighters. Okay. Okay. Zufu don't want active U.S.C. fighters competing for them. Zufa boxing, I think is what we were talking about. Okay, okay, okay, all right. Okay.

Who, Zufa boxing doesn't want active UFC fighters competing for them. Can you guys see former fighters compete like Tony Ferguson, Aldo, Anderson, and Woodley? Hmm. I mean, it doesn't really depend what kind of a thing are they trying to do here. True. Because if you're trying to just get attention, get views, then yeah, I think that's a good idea. I mean, that's essentially like the BKFC model, right, is to go find guys who had good striking in MMA and had a name through MMA, bring them over to your promotion and get MMA fans to tune in. But if you're trying to just run a straight up boxing promotion, which it kind of seems like what Zufa boxing is more interested in doing, it doesn't seem like they're at least at this stage really that concern with we got to get a ton more viewers.

then maybe it doesn't make sense for you. Makes sense. I'd like, just for a card. I mean, just let them in. I bet at some point we do see some of that crossover. It's just a matter of,

do they dust off these guys who we've seen in the, you know, like these relics, the guys who are already done with their UFC careers, I don't know if they'll go that route. They seem like they're trying to, Zupa boxing is trying to pick up younger, up and coming talent.

It would be like a shift in their thinking, I think, at this point. I think now would be a good time for Chuck to preview Zufo Boxing 3, which is happening in two days. Thank you, Pizzi. So Zootvo Box, I'm kidding, I know nothing about it. You got on the Lestay, Jordan?

That's it. Well, look, look, lads, there's no fights on this weekend, but you can read all the articles we talked about. You can read Chuk's sinkhole piece. You can read Ben's officiating summer pieces, which there are a lot of, and you can watch the film, and you can read

Tom Aspin's 1808-day nightmare. It's all there. with Uncrowned. Shout out to Casey Leiden, shout out to Sheen Al Shady. Shout out to all of you. Have a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Monday and then all throughout the week because we love you so much. We'll see you next week on Pizza Carol. M-Mah.