The Ariel Helwani Show - Khamzat Chimaev wants three belts, Dricus du Plessis is the boogeyman, ESPN x WWE rights deal | The Boys in the Back

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

The Boys in the Back kick off the show by reacting to breaking news that Charles Oliveira will return to action against Rafael Fiziev in October (1:22).Then, they launch into a deep dive on recent comments made by both Khamzat Chimaev and Dricus du Plessis ahead of their UFC 319 fight (09:30), including Khamzat's call to capture three UFC belts, Dricus being the division's boogeyman, and more.Next, they weigh in on ESPN's blockbuster deal with WWE and what it could mean for UFC's pending rights deal (36:51), before quickly touching on Conor Benn's callout of Ilia Topuria (54:57).After previewing UFC Vegas 109 (58:03), the Boys make picks (1:18:11), deliver their P4P social faux pas  (1:27:07), listen to your voicemails (1:58:43), and answer Super Chats (2:45:14).

But boys in the back. What is good? We are back with another episode of the Boys in the Back this time, August 7th, a beautiful Thursday afternoon here in New York City. I am one third, one humble third of the Boys in the Back, Connor Brooks, join alongside me. As always, my man, the myth, the legend, the executive is what they're now calling him. New York Rick Eric Jackman Frankie back there how we doing Frankie great man thanks for asking that may have been your longest answer

in the back history ever you sound excited man isn't a thing where like Frankie needs to warm up I don't know what it is but every time we like tossed to him and it's cold we get nothing we get absolutely zero it doesn't it doesn't bring anything to it he's got a red stand for the slander

you got to rev up okay I like this I like this man I'm buzzing today I'm buzzing we've got quite a bit to get into it's kind of a The week before. The week before everything goes down in in Chicago. I mean, it actually literally is the week before. It's just one week away. Next week we'll get UFC 319.

We'll get into all that big show, quite a bit to talk about. TV rights deal, you know, Hamzaa and DDP doing a little bit of a media tour. Connor Ben calling out earlier at the Boria, UFC Apex 109 going down this weekend. But before we get to any of that, we got some breaking news this morning out of Brazil. Charles Olavera will be returning to his home country of Brazil to take on Raphael Fazeve in a fight night on October 11th

1st. Ran out of breath there. Thanks, Frankie. Ran out of breath there. I thought I could do it on one gas. First reported by Lairta, Viana, MMA. So Charles O'Olavera, just 39 days after being knocked out by Ilya to Pore, gets his next fight announced.

You can see it right there. Charles Levera, Raphael Fiziv, in Rio. October 11th, a fight night, which is shaping up to be a completely stacked month. But this is going to be Olivares' first fight in Brazil since 2020 when he took on Kevin Lee right as the pandemic started. And this is also his first fight that isn't taking place on a pay-per-view since that fight night. Yeah. And it's a little bit of a, I get it. It's a little bit of like a returning to the roots of Charles Oliver. I get wanting to headline a fight night in Brazil.

you talked about that fight against Kevin Lee. That was the birth of the blonde Olivera that then went on to go on that magical run and become the champion. I like the idea of Charles kind of resetting with a fight night headliner and this fight is an incredible one for him to be able to do that with.

I think Viziv is an extremely exciting fighter. We talked about it ahead of the Gaetchi matchup like people were kind of sleeping on this guy for a long time. And I really think that they can have an exciting fight that will propel one of them back into title conversations now. It's kind of funny that on the heels of Fiziziz's loss, he was talking about 145, and now it's

just like 155, like he's not going to 145. Yeah, he gets a big win against the Inacio Bahamondez. And now he's fighting Charles. And now he's fighting Charles Oliver, which would propel him immediately into the top five of the division. I am with you. I mean, if you look at Charles Alvara's last few fights, Iliate Taboria, obviously, at International Fight Week, loses that one going for a title.

understandable, incredibly tough matchup. Michael Chandler gets the win there. Armin Sarukin, number one contender loses a split there. Benil Daryush gets a win there. And then before that, Islam Makashov, again, trying to get his title back after missing weight at UFC 274, unsuccessful there. So, like, we've had a couple shots at the title. Yep. Number one contender, we came up short, but we're still the upper echelon of this division. We can beat the Benal Daryushes, we can beat the Michael Chandler's. I like this. A physique fight, it's going to be a banger. I mean, Charles Lever is only in Bangor's Fazeve is down for the scrap as well.

And Charles Oliver released a video this morning announcing the fight and also saying this is what he requested. He wanted to go back to Brazil. It's important for him to fight in front of his home country. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, as I said, like this is a good opportunity for him to kind of write that course. As you've been talking about, it's been a little bit of mixed results against the highest, highest tier coming up short against that like next tier being successful.

It's important to kind of understand now at this point in his career. and he's been fighting for a very long time, where does he rank in this division and where does he stand? I think this is a perfect measuring stick. And for either man, whoever is victorious, it propels them right back

into that title conversation. So good matchmaking makes a lot of sense as a location. The coming back, you know, relatively soon after getting knocked out by Ilya, I don't know how to feel about that one. I guess it really depends on the fighter.

Sometimes we see people come back and they look fantastic. Sometimes we see people come back and they look like they probably should have taken more time off. Charles is going to be the one to know that. I think he will be energized for this one. I also don't think he's obviously at as greater risk of that knockout as he would be with Ilya. Certainly don't get me wrong, I think Fiziv can knock people out.

But Ilya, that is his main method of winning fights. He is putting people to sleep. So I think it's coming back to a good, hopefully and likely to be entertaining fight and one that has some stakes that could really put either of these guys back in the title picture. Last time he was knocked out before the Iliate Teporia fight, Paul Felder in 2017. Holy shit, yeah. And that was his last run before he started the title run. Yeah, wow. His last loss before the title run.

So yeah, that's incredibly exciting. I'm looking forward to that one. I, for one, well, also, I do love how I love how Fiziv's going from Baku gets the home crowd, and now he's going into enemy territory. He will not be the fan favorite in that one, I guarantee it. I did want Max versus Charles. Obviously, we're now getting that now, not getting that now. So I am curious as to what they do.

It's sort of like right now, it's like Patty, Gaichi, Armin, Max. What do they do with each guy? Hooker in that combo? And then Toporia is obviously the champion reigning over them. I'm very interested to see how they matchmake them because I never saw this one coming. So my guess is as good as anyone's of what they're going to do next. Yeah. You can't kind of go wrong with any of those permutations.

even if you end up doing Max versus Justin. I mean, the first one was fun enough. And look, don't get me wrong. I don't think there's a lot of people signing up and go and clamoring for it because of how definitive it kind of was. Max was cruising by the end of that fight and then had that incredible knockout. But it's a good fight. I don't necessarily think that Justin Gichi couldn't be better in a rematch. So I say all that to say, that might be like the least attractive option, but I'm fine with any of those permutations of how they shake out.

Eliah Orman, Max Paddy. Let's do it. I'm in. Justin Hooker, Cachy Hooker. Fucking great. All those sound fantastic. I think those are the three. I think that's it.

Ilya Armin. Yep. Max Patty. Sure. Gachy Hooker. Great. All great friends. All right.

It's done. Dana, you can take the day off, brother. My job here's Don't worry about it. Sean Shelby, it's all good. This is the war room. We just figured it out. Lightweight sorted. That is a bomb.

All of that, to say that October is absolutely stacked. It is coming together. You're going to start first week. UFC 320 in Vegas. You're getting Pereira Anka Live 2, Marab, Corey, Yeric Khalil. My favorite fighter, Abis Magamatov, taking on my other favorite fighter, Joe Pfeiffer. Then we're going, UFC Rio, obviously only Charles and Fiziv announced for that. I'm sure they will add a slew of other fights for that, including a lot of big-name Brazilians. UFC Vancouver, the week after that, another international fight night. Right now, only Jasmine Jasdovicius Manofioreau announced for that one. I'm sure they will add to that, but a fight night. in front of a crowd who will be clamoring for it in Vancouver and then we finish it off UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi, Aspenol gone, Volkov versus Jelton, Rackich versus Mersakhanov, Chris Barnett Hamdi, Iron Turtle versus I'm Alaskarov. That's the secondary fight of the night.

I think Chris Barnett versus Hamdi is the people's main event. Yeah. Iron Turtle versus Icromalaskarov is the Kaposa's people's main event. I think that is what that is. October shaping up like we had the hopes for June where we were like June can't miss it ended up being a little

mixed results the ending of June was The ending of June wiped everything I was like ah June was so sick But when you do like look back It was like it actually wasn't like that I have high expectations for October I think it's going to be fantastic And as you said like there's still some

things to fill out on the fight night cards Yeah it's going to be fantastic So the UFC cooking no pay-per-view in September You're getting Noce UFC and you're getting a Paris card and obviously TKO focusing heavily on Canelo Crawford in Las Vegas. But they're going to make up for it in October. Oh yeah. By the way, just like a weekend in November, we'll also get the MSG card, which right now is rumored to be Jack Delamadalana versus Islam Makashiv. No, Habib reported it. Habib report. M.M.A. Journalist, Habib Nurma Gameda broke that one last week. So yeah, the fall is looking mighty nice for the UFC right now. The second half of the year could be very, very successful. Kind of the demarcation point is probably that Ilya win during international fight week, and then you can cruise into a great second half of the year.

Yeah, because what I want to say is forget the fall. Fall will be there no matter what. My main focus is on the end of the summer. My main focus is on next week in Chicago. I've been biting my tongue all morning. We saw DDP on Ariel yesterday. A great interview. DDP was on point

Ariel was on point It was fantastic It was great DDP has the gift of gab Like no other man He really does And it was one of those things That he's always kind of had

But nobody really like Was paying too much attention to it Now that he has the title And the spotlight It is really like shown through I think the first time Where it really clicked I was like

This guy can talk Was when Izzy went into the cage And he's right in his grill And he's like Oh he's like Talking about like African And he's just like Oh I'm African

But you're no brother of mine I was like damn, this dude was just in a war. He's called him his African brother. And he was like, no, I'm African, but you're no brother of mine. And I was like, this guy was just in a war out here. And he's dropping bars. He had a lot to say, Hamzaa Shemayev did a 30-minute sit-down interview with Brett Okamoto

that came out on ESPN MMMA. And then he also did an open workout and did a scrum afterward. And like, they're starting to fire shots, man. Like, they're getting me excited. And now that we know we're not getting Aspinall Jones, I am fully in the camp with you. This is the fight. There is no other fight in the UFC right now. that I want more than this fight.

Let the record show, even if Aspinall Jones was on the table, this is my number one. I have been long saying it, and I will say it again here. I've said it behind the scenes. I feel like maybe this is the first time I'm saying it on air,

but this is my Super Bowl. This is the one of the year that I'm like, I need to see this no matter what. It is a cultural event. These two getting into the cage together means everything to me, and it is the fight that I've been

wanting and anticipating. I've just been dying to see Can Hamza Tshamaya be a champion? That was a storyline that I've been following from the beginning where I just felt like this guy has the combination of skills, tenacity, ruthlessness to kind of be this superstar for the UFC

but it's been these like starts and stops, starts and stops. The fact that he is finally going to have a title shot is its own story for me, but then combine that with the fact that he's fighting DDP, who is an absolute savage and what DDP has able to do

to this point resume-wise, It is a perfect fight. It's fantastic. It's two guys that are going to rise to the occasion. I can't be more excited for it. I think they're also going to build the fight really well next week. I think the press conference is going to be awesome. I think the media days are going to be awesome.

Then the fight itself, I just don't see it not being awesome. How could it be bad? Hamzaa Shemayev is a guy that just goes pedal to the metal from the jump, and then DDP is just the king of chaos. It's just like, I was talking to someone earlier today, and they were like, man, Hamzat's going to roll through DDP. I was like, he could. He could.

Or, like, something's going to have. happen. And they were like, well, like, if DDP wins, like, I'm just really curious as to how it's going to happen. I was like, I don't know. Like, it'll just happen. Like, I, I love the memes going around right now where it's just like, uh, DDP by accident, like, DDP by like cartoonish hammer. Like all these just like, DDP just like finds ways to win these life. He hits the secret box in Super Smash Brothers and gets a weapon. I saw one where it was like, DDP by, uh, handing the phone, answering the phone mid fight and saying it's for Hamzot and Hamzot taking the phone and then a comically large boxing glove comes out.

The Looney Tunes? Yeah, like the Looney Tunes. It's just like a fight that like, in my mind, I'm just like, yeah, what we've seen from Hamza Aschamaya, I think he's going to roll. But then in the back of my head, it's just like, but I've thought that with many DDP fights. Like, there is obviously a world where DDP wins this fight. He's an unbelievable fighter, undefeated in the UFC so far. And we'll get into the break. We'll get into the X's and O's and the technical break.

down next week. What is so exciting about this fight to me is, what happens if somebody blitz his Homsat? What happens if somebody is as fast a starter and an absolute bull in a China shop as him? And I don't think that's out of the question. A lot of the conversation is going to be, can DDP survive the first five minutes of Hamsat? But fuck, can you survive the first five minutes of DDP? Because some people can't. And if you're not ready for that, I don't know if it's just going to be this one-way traffic type thing. So I'm very excited about this fight. But we can get to the XZO as next week.

Well, you add on all that, how crazy it's going to be. And then you add on the fact that UFC's returning to Chicago for the first time in many, many years. A city that's been clamoring for it. I think they're going to be on tilt once this thing gets going. It's just going to be incredible. But Hamza Shemayev, in that interview with ESPN's Brett Akamoto yesterday, he had this to say, he's mentioned it several times throughout his career about becoming a triple champion. He said, I work with a new coach, and I talk to him about going down to 170.

I don't know who's the champ there. This Australian guy, obviously referring to Jack Della Madalena, that'd be a good fight for me. He continues, I go down, I fight with him, take the belt there. If I go up, there's Magamette Ancalaev and Alex Pereira, they're fighting now. Whoever's winning, I can fight for that belt as well. That easy. That's it. He's saying this sitting in a, if you watch the interview, sitting in a kitchen in Huntington Beach, California,

saying this with the calmness of like me planning out, I'm going to go get a coffee from Starbucks and then I'm going to swing by the grocery store and pick up some ingredients for dinner and then I'm going to go home and watch a movie. Yeah. But he's talking about I'm going to beat Trichyke's 2 plus C, go down, beat Jack Della Madalena or maybe just on Mokachev

and then whoever wins Ancolaev Pereira, I'll take care of them as well. What's so funny is I was just about to say as you said that, he didn't mention Drick is too plusy, which is the funniest part, because it's such a foregone conclusion in his head that he's already won this fight that it's just like,

okay, middleweight belts accounted for. I've already got the fight, I win the middleweight belt, it's done. Like, he's not even thinking about it. Now these other two belts, like I'll go collect them if I want. The casualness with which Hamzat

refers to things that are very extremely hard and require an extreme amount of dedication is quite funny to me, but it's also kind of like, if you were this guy like him who just smashes everything you see and has never kind of been stopped in your life, everything kind of just seems like a walk in the park, right? Obstacles are just there for you to break through or a step over. It's a very fascinating thing inside the mindset. It will one day, if he ever loses, be interesting to see how he comes back from that

because that is one of those guys who has just like always been forward, forward, forward. but the assuredness with which he operates is very both concerning from a like oh this guy doesn't think he could ever lose and that's kind of like scary because sometimes that sets you up for failure but also when you see him fight you're like oh I get why this guy thinks he will never lose

he also talked about potentially fighting Islam Makashev and he says well see who's going to be the champ at Wilter Wade I don't know in terms of Islam Makashv it's the fastest way if I win that fight it is the fastest way to get to the pound for pound number one.

So like the way he's talking and he talked about how I'm not going to retire like I need the money I have no plans of retiring he mentioned how he now has a visa to fight in the United States because of Donald Trump

he talked about how active he's going to be he says if there's no injuries he wants to fight in Abu Dhabi obviously he flies that flag now like the calmness with which he had the sureness of where his career is going to go.

It feels like, A, he wants to obviously win this fight and then remain active beyond that, which is an incredibly exciting prospect. I mean, Brad Okamoto at one point asked him about, like, have you been going out? You've been going to the beach or anything? Like, you know, what's it like being such a superstar? He's like, I'd rather just stay in the house, stay safe, stay healthy. He talked about, like, if fans come and rush me and some dude's sick, and he gets one of my team members sick and then I get sick, you know, like we're putting all

of this in jeopardy. It feels like there is a real seriousness and just the calmness to which he's speaking and the planning for the future is exciting for MMA fans. Yeah, he's seeing the right things and it seems to be all aligned, right? Like it seems like this idea of he was having trouble getting into the country. Now he's able to travel to the United States. Now granted, the UFC does a lot of international events now. So it's not a situation where he wouldn't have been able to fight. But it was a situation where everybody was concerned, oh, if Hamzaa becomes champion, we're only going to get him fighting once a year. It seems like he is trying to counter that narrative and also like in his life be able to compete more than once a year so he can continue to make money.

It is hard to remember now because the last few years have been very sparse. But Hamzaa Chamaa broke into the UFC by fighting on back-to-back week. Like, that is the story of Hamza Atchamayev is he was this guy who came in, smashed, and then was like, put me on the next card and I'm going to come smash somebody again. That was the genesis of how he became like this phenomenon. On back to back weeks and then fought six weeks later. Yeah. This is how he became that. So if that is in order, if his health is in order and his ability to navigate travel and be able to fight in different jurisdictions is in order, I believe that as long as he takes care of himself, it's going to be an exciting time for Hamza Chimae. Whether he wins this fight against DDP or not, right?

Because the next fight is still going to be against somebody who's a top contender, even if he comes up short here. So I'm excited about the idea of multiple Hamza Chamaia fights and him kind of getting rolling and back on track. I think the stilted, stunted kind of fighting infrequently has actually harmed him because I think he's probably better when he's getting reps. It's hard to just come in against the guy as good as a Kamaru Usman or anybody he's faced recently where even a Robert Whitaker where they are so good and have been training so regularly and you haven't and you just step into the cage with him. Now, he's found the success there, which I think speaks to how incredible he is as a fighter, but I think this activity would help him a great deal. Do you think there's any chance he could actually become a triple champion? Yes.

6-2, very, very strong. So, like, he could, if he can get back down to 170, I think he could also work his way up to 205. Like, he kind of falls in a decent size category for it. If you see him standing next to a light heavyweight, you'll understand that he could compete in that division. his biggest obstacle to that would be well one Drick's 2 plus C is an absolute brick shit house so he has to win the middleweight title first that's a big obstacle for me

because I think Drickus is as good as advertised Of course The other one is the weight I don't think 170 is easy now he's talked about training with this new coach And maybe with some more time and discipline You know the weight miss for the Nate Diaz fight Has been kind of talked about before and I think a lack of discipline was to blame there,

you would have to be extremely disciplined if you want to get back down to 170, and he seemed to kind of like laugh it off. He didn't seem to take that weight miss too seriously. If he was disciplined, I imagine that he could probably get himself down to 170, but that is not an easy way because, as you said, he's somebody who we could look at it as competing at 205

and feel like, yeah, he could do that. So his biggest obstacles to me at the moment are, you need to beat Drikas, who's a champion and a stud, And then that weight cut to 170. More likely, I think he could be a double champion. And even that, like, is not a guarantee. There is so much that needs to go right for this to happen. The first step starts next Saturday.

You say double champion potential. Like, do you think he would go down to 170 or do you think he would go up to go up? Yeah, because there were some pictures that came out when he was, when he was, like, getting beefy. I think we have a couple of them where he was, like, absolutely gigantic. Yes, that guy can. compete at light heavyweight. He can absolutely compete at light heavy weight. Though it was interesting with the

like I mean, my God. The conversation with Brett, like it did feel a lot of it was centered around like oh yeah, I'll go down and I'll fight JDM. I talked to my coach about going down to 170. Oh, yep, Islam Makashav is the fastest path to to pound for pound number one. He's obviously fought there several times.

It is just, can he get back down? If Islam becomes champion, I think that obviously becomes a more attractive option, right? Like respect to Jack Della Madalena, who I think had a fantastic performance against Bilal, he doesn't yet carry that name value that Islam Makachev carries. He is not the number one pound for pound fighter. So if Islam becomes champion, there are going to be a lot of people that are clamoring for that shot. Walter Wade is very busy, though.

Walter Wade is a division that has a lot of people like kind of in that queue and people that are sticking claims to title shots. For Hamza to then jump that line, I don't think it's impossible, but I do think it's unlikely. It seems like a path at 205 seems much more likely. I do feel like it's opponent dependent. I think if Islam wins, that's very intriguing to him. Pound per pound at one massive, massive fight. Yeah.

Imagine in Russia. Oh, my, one of the biggest fights that the UFC could possibly make. But say Alex Pereira gets the belt back at 205, another monster, monster fight. Hamzaa Shemaya versus Alex Pereira. And also, stylistically speaking, that is a matchup that favors Hamzaa Shamaev. Yeah. So, like, I feel like it is opponent dependent, and especially those fights could be taking place. Well, one, we know is going to be taking place at the beginning of October with Pereira and Ancalaev.

And then it's looking like Islam JDM is going to take place a month later. The other question is, if he becomes middleweight champion, the UFC's going to want him to drop that belt if he does that. And are we going through the same exercise that we just did with Islam and Ilya Teporia, where it's like, Ilya had one title defense and then is moving on to the next thing. Like, I don't know if we necessarily want Homsop bouncing around. They probably want him at middleweight. And so there's a lot that needs to happen for this to happen.

I think becoming middleweight champion is going to unlock a lot of it, though. Like, we have the lower third right here. It says missed weight and last scheduled welterweight fight in 2022. I'm pretty sure he missed weight by like eight and a half pounds. It was eight or nine pounds. Yeah, it was the, now, as I said, that to me is a discipline thing. That was not like, I can't make weight.

Maybe he could have made weight, or maybe he could have gotten a lot closer. That to me is he was undisciplined in his weight cut. And some of the stories say that. Yeah, I think of potential double championship on the line is going to be very disciplined for it. At the end of the day, like, it's very fun to fantasize about all this. It's a lot harder to do in practice. Sure is. I think my final statement on is, let's get one first.

Let's get the belt from DDP before we start talking about triple champion. Yeah, and as you say, it's a lot easier to set than done. Start talking about double championship. Before we start talking about championship, period, because you've got a very tough opponent ahead of you. The way we talk about Hamzat, seeing it as a foregone conclusion, I actually want to bring a video up from Drikas' interview with Ariel from yesterday, where he talked about whether Hamzad is overrated or not,

because you can see kind of the difference in how they're thinking about each other. So I want to play that clip now. He's worthy of all the praise. everything that he receives. Absolutely. I think Hamzad is a special fighter. You always believe. You never doubt it. From the first time I saw him fight, I knew this guy was going to be special. 100%. I knew he was going to be special. There was a stage where he didn't fight for like two years or something. And listen, he speaks a lot more than he fights. I can tell you that much too. But there was a long period of time. He was calling out every single person. That got that just

started getting annoying. It was annoying the shit out of me. Because he was calling out wild weights, middle weights, light, heavy weights, but he wasn't fighting anyone. But there was never ever a stage where I went, ah, this guy's overrated. No, he is as good as people think. I think he's as good as people think. I just think I'm a lot better than people think. You can watch that full interview, obviously, on this channel. Fantastic.

I can't recommend it enough. Like, is this guy taking lessons on the mic? Like, it feels like he just knows what to say every step of the way when it comes to this stuff. 100%. praising this dude who like people view as the boogeyman giving him that credit of like man no hamzat isn't overrated he's unbelievable but i think people are underrating me i'm just as good as this dude and and you get the sense that drickis is not the type to blow smoke right like if he thought hamzat wasn't that good he'd probably say it that he has his eye on the prize right he understands

the challenge that's ahead of him homzaa chamaev is not just a regular like title contender type guy he's not just the next guy up um and so the seriousness with which he's meeting this challenge is very impressive to me from dricketts his side but also necessary like this is going to be an absolute brutal fight to get through uh seemingly i i you know possibly there's a there's another possible outcome but i expect it to be and so the level of respect that he is granting to hamzat is very interesting to me can when you contrast that with the idea that hamzat thinks it's like a foregone conclusion that he is going to be champion. Yeah, I mean, the way he's talking about it, he's just like, oh, like Robert Whitaker was

able to take him down, so I'm going to be able to take him down. It's going to be easy work. It's very dismissive, whereas DDP is like, no, no, this guy's a bad motherfucker, and I want to show that I'm actually badder. In fact, forget bad motherfucker. He used the term boogeyman when he spoke about him. We actually have that clip as well from his chat with Ariel. I am going out there, and I'm going to shock the world once again, like every other

time and everybody said it's impossible not this guy not this guy and i'm going to go out there and i'm going you're going to see the boogey man you're going to see him break you're going to see him break in there and then realize there's only one boogeyman and that's me in the middleweight division there can be only one boogeman and that will be me another cold line by ddp it's just like whatever outcome of this fight happens i i love it like it's just like a star is born if i'm Shad Shemayev wins, the, like, the lore, the aura, the, the, like, story, the, the, the mythical creature that DDP is just continues to grow, the plot armor. Everyone says DDP's got plot armor. Like, if he beats Hamzad Shemaya, it's just like, this dude is unbelievable. Like, can you imagine,

like, an image of, like, him actually, like, breaking Hamzot, finishing him and, like, walking away, still champion. It's, it's, it's going to be incredible. I can't wait for it. And, like, Hamzad needs to show the respect to DDP because this is the shortest odds. He's still the favorite, but he's only like a minus 1.90. Like normally you're seeing him, he's on minus 350 against Camaro, a minus 1,000 against Nate.

That fight never came to fruition. Minus 1,000? God, there's still value on that line. Minus 6.10 against Kevin Holland, minus 550 against Gilbert Burns, minus 500 against the leech. Like, he's always a monster or months of every. This is the first time in his UFC career

that he's under a minus 200. And this is by far the highest level of competition. he's facing. DDP is a legitimate champion with an insanely stellar resume. And so the line makes sense to me. The fact that DDP is not a favorite at this point also is maybe speaks to what he's saying, which is like, you guys all think this guy's the boogeyman. I am actually the boogeyman and I don't care how many people I need to beat in order to show that to you. And the other thing I love about, you said it perfectly. There's no bad outcome here, especially for the UFC, right? If Hamzaa Shamaev wins, it's like the ceiling comes off, superstar born, you've got

Elliot Seporia coming up. You've got Hamzaat Shamaa coming up. You can really build something fantastic with some of these guys that Tom Aspinall's probably going to start a little bit of a run now. You've got some real opportunities ahead of you. And DDP wins. This guy's cleared out nearly everybody in the division that has a pulse that is worth fighting him. And he's sticking around to clear out the rest of them. Like his goal is not to move up and get a second belt. Not necessarily yet. His goal is like, if there's a middleweight alive that I haven't beaten yet, I want to beat the shit out of them. And that is a very admirable type of thing for a champion in the UFC because we typically don't. We hear Hamza before he's even won a belt talking about getting

two more. DDP is like, this is my belt. I'm going to hold it for as long as I can and I want to take out everybody along the way. Which, A, that goes one of two ways when you start talking about other belts before you even get one. It's either a disaster or it's like an Iliot Toporia style run, a Connolly Gregor style run where it all comes to fruition. You talked about DDP, he said it on a local Chicago news station being like, nah, man, I'm not going for 205. I need to clear out middleweight and it's an exciting division right now. I need to clear this thing out to the point where Ariel asked him yesterday about RDR and their past relationships and it's like, hey man, like would you be willing to fight him?

This is what DDP had to say. Given that relationship and that history, would you have any issues fighting RDR if you had to? No, not a dog. I would fight my brother from my time if I have to. And I would try to kill him. I promise you that. And he's my best friend. So the whole teammate thing, all that that doesn't,

That doesn't work in your world. No, it's, when we get in there, there are no friends. There are no relationships in a fight. Yeah, man. So there's, he's down to, he's down to, he's just a cold motherfucker. Yeah. Fucking out. He's, uh, he's down to scrap anybody at 185.

And so if he, if he reigns supreme over Hamzot Tremaya of next Saturday night in Chicago, uh, he will be staying there and looking to defend the side. Well, it seems like we've got Imovov and Kyle Bahalio lined up. And then it seems like RDR is kind of entering. that conversation as well, and he's ready for all of it. Fluffy your name is once this is. Hell yeah. That's eight in a row.

Yeah. That's eight in a row at Middleway. And DDP is like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yeah. Like, sign them all up. I love that. I love DDP. I love, like, I was one of those people who, as I said, when we were talking about RDR last two weeks ago, I was like, I doubted DDP at the beginning.

I really thought like, this run is going to come to an end and it's going to be this guy or this guy or this guy or this guy, but he has shown himself to be way above my expectations. And I think a lot of others, like, I think the right. a lot of people out there that didn't expect it. But I also just, like, I have come around to him so much in terms of how he carries himself and what he is as a champion and his mentality, the way he views the game, the way he handles it. He's one of the best that the UFC has, and it's a real benefit to them to have a guy like DDP as champion.

The only thing that could supersede that is potentially having a guy like Hamza Chamaa of his champion. And so that is why they're in a situation with zero bad options, because if you continue this DDP run, you're on a great track. and if you get Hamsat, you're on a great track too. There's so many people that DDP can fight, and like you said, like he's been growing on you. He really is just like a great champion. Fantastic champion.

He goes and he does interviews and he speaks well and he talks shit, but he's also respectful at the same time. He puts on exciting fights. He obviously wins the fights. He's undefeating the UFC and he's willing to fight anyone. It's just like, that's all the making. That's what you want. Yeah.

It's fantastic. And then on the Hamsat side, if he wins, there's many potential matchups for him as well. We saw him talking yesterday. during his media scrum after an open workout, someone asked him about Sean Strickland, who they've had words online in the past before. And he was essentially like, bro, I'm in L.A., man.

I'm not that far away from Las Vegas. If it's personal, if you really have beef with me, come on over. Yeah, he said, when I come back, I'm in L.A., bro. Come on. If it's something personal for you, just come. I'm here. Whenever he wants it. There's a part of that at the beginning of that quote that I didn't write out,

but basically he was like, I couldn't get a visa. He's like, I couldn't get a visa. but now I have a visa and I'm here and if you want the smoke come get it I'm in LA he's much like DDP is cut from a little bit of a different cloth and willing to scrap anybody at any time

I don't know if Sean Strickland is going to be somebody who immediately jumps into any like conversations about fighting him but I could definitely see that being a fight down the line I could definitely see that we also don't kind of know about Sean Strickland's status in terms of

brushing the cage of tough the suspension in terms of that suspension I mean they had one of the one of the most legendary

Twitter interactions of all time Hamzot tweeting at Cinesis Strickland the finger and then the

laughing emojis 5.3 million views and then Senes Strickland quote tweets it and says the fuck did I do

and then Hamza responds and says sorry bro I don't know how to use Twitter wrong guy so I mean Right there, that's enough to build a fight off of.

And then Humzad also has serious, serious beef with Paulo Costa. Paulo Costa has, like, hate in his heart when he talks about Shamiya. If Palo Costa, if Hamza at Shamaia wins, I would not be surprised if Paulo Costa is knocking on the door of a title shot already. Like, it is not going to take much to heat that one up to boil it up. And by the way, I feel the same way about the Strickland fight. Because if you give Sean Strickland the opportunity to kind of, like, throw jabs and barbs at Hamza at Shamaiv, I have a feeling that's going to escalate pretty quickly as well. So there's a, there's, there's, there's so many different permutations of how this could kind of go if it's Hamzot. Um, and there's also good options with DDP, but I mean,

I'm sitting here, what is it, 10, nine, how many days out are we, nine days out? I got goosebumps already. I'm like, I can't imagine what this is going to be like come Saturday. We've just talked about it for like the last 25 minutes and we're a week out. It's all, it's, it's, it's, we're just, we're just, we're just reacting to little press snippets, too. As we should. The other thing about Hamzad is he never speaks like on Twitter he's like talking shit doing a little bit of this but he is a guy who's been very careful about protecting like what he says and who he gives opportunities to speak to and things like that and he never speaks and so when you get even a 10 minute scrum where he clearly probably doesn't even want to be there um it produces this it produces

these interesting tidbits the ESPN interview really seems like his team was like you have to do this go out there and yeah and he's like all right all right I'll do it but I don't want to Yeah, like the way he answers all the questions is he's literally talking like this Triple champions here Whatever I guess I'm down So that's going to be fantastic

This is one of those like My skinny white ass will be Seated on Sunday night for UFC countdown Oh yeah for sure I might I might come out of countdown retirement for this one I mean when I hear Ron Perlman

It's time for UFC 319 Countdown It's going to be so good It's going to be so good I can't wait for it Yeah next week's going to be incredible Chicago You're getting a good one

But we will obviously talk Much much much Much more about that I said 25 minutes We'll probably spend an hour on it next week When we're just two days away from it It's going to be fantastic Enjoy this while you have it

Two guys seemingly in their primes Going out of it Definitely in their primes This is going to sit Both early 30s Yeah Oh, it's going to be so good. It's going to be so good.

All right, we continue to roll along. We saw that WWE, ESPN, massive deal. Someone said to me in our chat, when you guys threw it in the group chat, that's how I found out about it. And someone was like 320-milly. I thought that was total for the five years. That's per year. Five-year, $1.6 billion deal for WWE's PLE events,

the WrestleMania, the summer slimes, the Royal Rumbles of the World, to be aired on ESPN's new direct-to-consumer platform that launches two weeks from today on August 21st. If you have the cable packages, DirecTV, YouTube TV, you'll get it anyway. If not, it's $29.99. If part of your package includes ESPN, you will then be able to authenticate it and use the app and save use events. Exactly.

And that leaves a lot of fans wondering, man, especially with the relationship that the UFC and WWE have now both being owned by TKO. What does this mean for the UFC, man? Because the clock is ticking. They got about three and a half months before we're kicking this into a new gear. It kicks off right at the beginning of 2026. Yeah. For me, there were a few things that happened in that that were very interesting to me.

Number one. Most interesting to me, I'm going to rank these in terms of most interesting. Most interesting to me was the fact that Netflix did not get the, the, the, the, the, WWE PLEs. Interesting to me from the perspective that Netflix has PLEs raw smackdown all internationally. So anywhere but the United States,

all the global platforms, and by the way, brilliant moves by TKO, I'm sure Nick Con involved in this as well, he used to represent WWE in negotiations with broadcasters when he was an agent. They aligned all their deals

so that they could sign this massive international deal with Netflix that every territory has Smackdown, Raws, and PLEs on Netflix. So they're basically anywhere outside the United States. If you want to watch WWE, it's on Netflix. Interesting to me that inside the United States, Netflix has Raw, and SmackDown has its own rights that they could potentially negotiate for. And they could have gotten the PLEs, I imagine, if they were willing to pay for them.

But they did not. So that was fascinating to me just from the perspective of like, Hmm, it does not seem like Netflix is interested in a pay-per-view business, right? They are much more interested seemingly when it comes to combat sports in these like one-off mega events. Now, granted, WWE's events are mostly, like, those PLEs are mostly like major events. But out of the like 10 that they do, there's two that are two nights, which is SummerSlam and WrestleMania, those feel like the bigger, bigger ones. Maybe Netflix is making the calculation of like, yes, we're interested. in WWU product, obviously, we've got raw, but they might not necessarily be interested

in that like premium live event, pay-per-view previously model. So that was fascinating to me because then that made me think, well, what if the UFC wanted to come to Netflix and negotiate for their pay-per-views or for the whole bundle? Maybe that means that Netflix might not be as willing to go along with that, right? Because they're only, like, they don't necessarily want UFC 316, what was like a mid-paper view from earlier this year? I mean, the one that always sticks out to me, it wasn't earlier this year, but UFC 301 in Brazil. Perfect.

UFC 301. We don't want that. We're not interested in that product. No disrespect to Panthers. But we want UFC 318. Like, that's what we want. So I'm not sure that the model that the UFC is potentially pitching to all these different broadcasters would align with Netflix.

And I kind of got there by thinking about maybe they also had that same conversation in the WWE negotiations because everybody thought they would go to Netflix. it made a lot of sense for WW to go to Netflix. They do not end up going that way. They enter a deal with ESPN. Second most interesting thing to me was in part of the earnings call and the press release that they issued yesterday,

it talked about one of the big things that they outlined as reasons for profitability or for increased revenue for ESPN, not profitability, but increased revenue for ESPN was paying less to the UFC because the pay-per-views were making less money. Meaning, ESPN made more money than they anticipated. They spent less than they thought they were going to spend because the UFC paper views were down.

So that was another indicator that got me thinking, okay, ESPN is seeing the numbers from the UFC, and they are selling less pay-per-views than they anticipated less pay-per-viewed than last year. They are down year-over-year. Is the premium pay-per-view product now one that's even going to be interesting? I already kind of discounted now Netflix from what I said earlier. Is ESPN even going to be interested in a pay-per-view product moving forward?

Then I arrived at WWE made a very smart move a couple years ago, which was there is no more pay-per-view. We're calling them premium live events. They're not called pay-per-views anymore because they have not been pay-per-views for forever. They have been part of your subscription. If ESPN is coming out with this new package and has WWA events where you're not, you're do not have to pay an additional cost. You either pay your 30 for the app or if you have your cable service, you log in with that. Could the UFC come back to ESPN, but instead of being on

Paperview, be the same type of style as the WWE, be a premium live event. It does not call pay-per-view anymore, and it is offered as part of your $30 subscription because these events are hurting. These events are not doing the numbers necessarily that they anticipated that they would do, or at least ESPN is not paying the amount that they anticipated. that they would have to pay or were paying last year because those pay-per-views are not doing as well as they anticipated, do they just shift away from that model altogether and go, look, we'll pay a premium to get these pay-per-views on our service,

but you get them as a subscription. And that will completely change the game for fight fans. I mean, it's so fascinating to me for so many reasons. To be a fly on the wall in all these meetings and everything, not only with UFC and the broadcasters themselves, but also the UFC internally, TKO, everyone up at the top, because, like you said, WWE made the move to PLEs. And it's a beautiful thing, man.

Like, I am not a wrestling diehard, but knowing that all I had to do was just log on to Peacock, which is like $6.99 a month or whatever, and I can watch all those major events, has made me tune into them. It just makes it that easy. Like, I think it was a great move. And you have to wonder if the executives over at WWE, the people on the TKO board are like, this is the way to go. like this this is the way that we should do it obviously the numbers are down this is what we're

going to do moving forward which would be revolutionary for combat sports fans like we've already seen turkey ol shik over in boxing like they're going to do 20 we're going to do $20 pay reviews that's it like everybody's going to be able to buy it it's going to be very affordable what if this is the next wave of like now it's just you have to pay the premium for the subscription service which is ESPN directed consumer $30 a month or your or your cable provider and then you're just going to get the paper views included with it. That's fascinating to me. It's also fascinating to me because ESPN is obviously making a massive push right now.

They've been advertising it all summer. This ESPN, the new wave of being a sports fan is this ESPN DTC. They're throwing money around right now. They got Red Zone. They got NFL network. They got these WWE deals. It almost makes me wonder if Netflix was like, listen, man, we already. got raw. We're putting out a

WWE product every single week. We don't know how exactly it's going to do over the course of this deal because it's a lengthy deal that they have with raw. I think they'll still be in the raw deal when this PLE deal is up with ESPN. Yeah, it was like 10 years or something. They are heavily

invested in the WWE. So I wonder if there was a world where ESPN was like, we need shit. Like we need shit. Oh, that definitely happened. We are throwing money around and Netflix was just like, y'all got this one for now. Like we'll We'll concede on this bidding war. You guys take this one. And I wonder if Netflix will be thinking differently when it comes to the UFC. It's, it's so fascinating. I cannot wait until it finally comes out what happens because I'm going to eat that up like cake, man. I'm not going to be able to get enough articles of how this came to fruition. I don't know if Netflix was like a potential bidder in it. I have to assume they probably were. There had to be a conversation at least. But I know for a fact that ESPN had to be aggressive in trying to get this. You don't do that. NFL deal where now there's ownership stake that's that's involved in the deal and you don't

do this WWE deal unless you are 100% committed to upping the subscription numbers on that DTC product that is that must be their primary concern and we've seen ebbs and flows in the industry especially when it comes to sports rights where or actually not even sports rights when it comes to any kind of intellectual property rights we've seen this with Netflix we've this with Hulu. We've seen this with any kind of streaming platform. There's been these ebbs and flows where the number one thing is getting subscribers. And this typically happens when they first start. When you're first starting the app, the number one thing you need to do is make sure you get people to sign up. For one, you want to boost your numbers and say like,

hey, we've got a million, five million, 10 million people already. You also want to get those people that forget to cancel and recur. And then you've got those, that passive revenue. But that happens when you start up that app, this ESPN DTC app, this is an exact opportunity where you would be like, we have to invest a lot of money and we have to come out with a premium product that people want to sign up for. That definitely happened when it comes to this WWE deal, where they were like, we know that people tune in for these WWE events. These PLEs are going to be massive for us. Let's get in it. We also feel like we as ESPN can promote this in a major way that much like they did for UFC when UFC first started, it elevated them to a completely different level.

pandemic happened. They were the only thing on. Then they skyrocketed through the roof. So I think the combined powers here will be very, very successful. But there is no doubt that UFC is now in a better place right now because ESPN also needs some of that content. And they know they know the numbers. While I'm saying paper views are probably down to a certain degree and the average is not as high, they know that random fight night at the apex, how many people are watching that? And it's a hell of a lot of people. That ESPN app has been supported by the UFC product. for a very long time. And so they know what that audience is. If they then transfer that to being, okay, you come to the ESPN product, you're going to get the fight nights, potentially, right? Because USC could always split up this package. But if ESPN goes aggressively all in and says, hey, we've been great partners, you've been great partners, let's figure out how to make this work, fight nights,

maybe Dana White's contender series or maybe that goes somewhere else. Because even WW has like NXT and their series is somewhere else, there's always going to be a splitting exactly but the primary product whether it be pay-per-views plus fight nights or fight nights or paper views alone ESPN could potentially pay enough to buy that entire package in the same way that PLEs have kind of been priced out and the guys at TKO know exactly how to do this and can definitely figure out how to negotiate this and make it where you log into the app you see UFC paper views which would then maybe maybe they even call them premium live events at that point to kind of continue

the branding exercise of it, it would be a game changer for the subs because to your point, you're used to paying $70 bucks a month for the pay-per-view, which... 80. On top of your 1199. On top of your subscription fee, that can be a killer to the wallet.

Now I get $30 bucks a month? There's a month with two pay-per-views. You're now fucking loving that opportunity. Plus, maybe you get the fight nights. I don't know if they'll end up with that part of the package. It seems like if their primary objective is to bring in fans to this app right now, that would be a brilliant move and it would be incredible for the UFC to get rid of that

pay-per-view model because it's a double-edged sword for them it's great when you've got Connor McGregor fighting but when you've got a UFC 301 what does that actually look like yeah it's just like how many people are buying that and wwee brilliantly kind of made that calculation before too they're like let's let's eliminate the variable of this let's just make sure we get a great price a great package and offer our fans a premium experience ESPN or any partner YouFC could do this deal. It doesn't have to be with ESPN. UFC could do a deal if somebody pays enough money to get this off pay-per-view.

It will require a ton of money, but it will make sense if you're trying to provide a good fan experience. Typically, the apps that are launching are the ones that are most concerned with that. Once you get longer into the game, now you're concerned about profitability. Now you're concerned about how you kind of continue to increase your revenues and make money for your investors. But when you're first launching, you know you're going to be spending money. You know you're going to take a hit. and that's the opportunity to go, fuck it.

We're going to go all in. UFC pay-per-views are going to become premium live events. They're going to be on this DTC app and you're going to subscribe to it. And every combat sports fan is going to be watching WWE and UFC on the same app and having to pay nothing but the subscription price. It'll be massive.

It's a dream scenario for TKL in my opinion. I think if you can get someone to put the money up, then it's not only going to make it easier for your already fans, but I think it will be the best way to grow the audience. 100% like it's just like oh yeah man I pay 30 bucks a month but like dude I get all those UFC fights and like WWE and then like all the other shit that ESPN offers like they've got hockey rights baseball rights college as a college football fan they have the SEC now it's just like this app could be something that is a must have for sports fans yeah and ESPN for so long has been part of the cable package and then not anything else right the only way to watch ESPN has been through your cable package and you could obviously log into ESPN plus and watch it through there but you still have to have cable elsewhere Or a version of cable, YouTube TV counting or anybody that carries ESPN. I'm curious what the difference in that audience looks like where it's like the people who don't want to pay for cable, which can be quite high. You know, like what's YouTube TV per year?

Per year, I don't know. What's per month? I think it's like $79.99. Okay. So let's call that the bottom level, right? You're paying $80 a month. You go all the way up to the Time Warner Comcast, Optimum, where you're paying $120, $150, $200, whatever that is. I'm wondering what the size of the audience is, who are not willing to pay the 80 for the YouTube TV, but might pay the 30 to be like, oh, I really want all this ESPN product.

The way to get them is to provide them with something that they can't get elsewhere or that they're not willing to forego. And I feel like WWE and UFC have this kind of live watching virality that people still want to pay for. And that's a great way to bring those people in. I might not ever get cable, but I might pay 30 bucks a month to have all those combat events. Oh, plus I can watch all this ESPN programming because I feel like it can, you mentioned the backdooring of I buy ESPN and it's like, oh, I discover UFC and WWB. I wouldn't be surprised if it also happens the other way where combat fans get on the app

and they're like, yeah, fuck it. I'll watch an NBA game randomly in the middle of, in the middle of December. Fuck it. Like there's nothing else on. I'll turn on ESPN. I'll watch some programming. So I think it could be beneficial in both directions and makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the chat right now.

I just happen to peruse it and people are saying Winnipegger 456. No one is paying $80 for pay-reviews. Every single person with a brain streams it. The BMF, 80 bucks a month. Nah, no way. The only prospect, dude, I legit don't know anyone who pays for the pay per views. Yes, that's the point. That's what I'm saying.

I think it would be smart to you can now avoid. By the way, there are people. They have the numbers. There are hundreds of thousands of people that actually pay for them. every single time they come out, or like they would have just completely eliminated the pile by now if no one was buying them. But there has to be a massive, massive sector of people that don't buy them now, but to avoid having to go to the streaming sites, to being able to just throw it up on your TV, and all you have to do is just pay 30 bucks a month. And you're getting all the other stuff that the ESPN app is going to provide for you. There has to be a massive sector that that is willing to do that.

It's going to be fascinating, man. You have to work on the tech, though. Oh, my God. I pray this ESPN DTC app is better than ESPN Plus because there are going to be some angry people. Those WWE fans are going to be halacious towards them. It's going to be fascinating to watch, man. The DTC app launches on August 21st, so hopefully they've already got the tech all prepped with that. Going to be fascinating to see, man, about three months and some change.

And then we're at 2024 months and some change. And then we're at 2026. So time's running out. like these meetings are got to be getting into crunch mode very soon. I feel like they're probably relatively advanced. I think they're probably like closer to the goal line than anywhere else because that we were just talking about this on the show. Ariel has been kind of talking about this and harping on this quite a bit.

Top rank off ESPN, no landing spot yet. They have, they have, they do not have a broadcast partner lined up for their next event. That's an odd position and typically not one that an organization. will find themselves in. I do not expect that the UFC will be there. In fact, I can guarantee right now. There's no chance that the UFC will be there. So we have to be pretty close. Yeah, we have to be. It's going to be fascinating to watch. I'm very interested to see what happens. Last thing from the chat, Maysnow Ken says, I wish I had $5 to pay to ask GC what's the brand of the shirt he's wearing. You don't need $5. I'll just tell you right now. It's full violence. Uri Prahashka.

It's unbelievable. It's like meditate or something. Yeah, meditate and destroy. Shut up. Spend the five bucks on getting the shirt. Yeah, Full Violence still sells it. It was a specific drop of, man. They make some of the best fighter merch. It's fantastic, especially for my guy, Yeri, meditate.

And destroy. All right, that was the DTC talk. It'll be very interesting to see what happens with the UFC. One other bit of news before the UFC Apex 109 preview, the long-awaited. Well, it's not breaking, but it is just... No, I thought Frank was going to give us breaking news. Yeah, me too. Last night we saw Connor Ben drop a video.

uh obviously incredibly famous talented boxer Connor Ben calling out iliotoporia uh let's let's roll let's roll the clip here whoever these fucking UFC fighters I'm sure what filter he put on this doesn't look great yeah I'm not trying to take one oh when he's MMA lot want to come over to boxing if you fancy something but you can come and get here nasty bare knuckle anyone wants come over from the UFC bare knuckle I see a lot people All tagging me here that Illy, Etorah. Why can no one pronounce

Ilya to pour his name? Alia Tora. Toxas. Listen, I ain't stupid enough to go in the cage. I would never go in the cage. You would have to me dead get in the cage. Joe, I said I'd get my heart's handy to me. But for them thinking they can come over and do that to us,

that's a fucking liberty. It's a fucking liberty. A man with the gift of Gab as well. Yeah, I love that. Talks, all that shit. Throws in the bag work. And then, I'm not getting in the case. because I would get fucked up if I did that.

And it's always nice to hear, like, during the Connor McGregor Floyd Mayweather era of MMA, where everybody was calling out box, every MMA fighter was calling out boxers and every boxer was calling out MMA fighters. It was always this like, yeah, and I'll do it in the cage. Like, they would always bullshit,

especially Tyson Fury. Tyson Fury was the number one offender of this of being like, yeah, and we'll get in the cage and do it. And Connor Ben's not trying to pull any fucking tricks here. He knows that if he stepped into a cage with Ilya, his head's getting ripped off the shoulders in 40 seconds. But he's also

fairly confident that if Iliot Toporius stepped into a boxing ring with him, that he'd take his head off in there. I can't lie. I would watch it. I would watch it. Are you shitting me? Of course. I don't want it because we saw what happened with the con. I mean, the

parallels to the Connor McGregor like continue to be there because this is where the Floyd Mayweather fight. That's why I wanted to bring that up. I mean like the guy is becoming an absolute superstar. We saw video earlier this week, I think we have it, of him coming out, singing his walkout song in front of the crowd. I mean, look at this crowd. It's like a music festival, and they're singing his walkout song with him. Like, the dude is becoming a star. Now he's getting called out

Connor Ben, who's the one in a May fighter he thinks of, Ili Top Toro. It's like, it's at that point, man. He's got like 11.5 million followers on Instagram now. He's got brand deals. He's got his own protein yogurt. I've been itching to try. And then he's got Mucho Toporia, which is like his hydration drink. It's like he's really starting to come together. Like this dude is a superstar. So I thought it was interesting.

But Connor Ben, Elliot Toporia, I'm down. I'm down, but no thanks for now. No thanks for now. No thanks for now. Fight anybody who will fight you at 1505. Yeah, we've got challengers at 155. All right, let's look to this weekend. UFC Apex 109. We're back in the warehouse in the desert.

Roman DeLite taking on, I know, thank God, right? Like, I didn't want, we didn't want to get straight too far. No. Can't do too many fight nights outside of it. But we've got a middleweight clash, Roman DeLite's. My Georgian brother taking on Anthony Fluffy Hernandez, our Apex Tour guide. We ran into old, we ran an old Fluffy when we were at the Apex back in June.

Anytime Anthony Hernandez fights, I'm excited for it. Like the dude puts on scraps. Like he is aggressive. He is unbelievable. He's on a seven-fight win streak. And he's like taking the slow road, man. He's slowly working his way up. This would be his eighth win in a row if he's able to do that,

and he would still only be ranked like eighth or ninth. Yeah, and it is a little bit surprising, but I will say there's kind of like there was this clog of guys in this division that just like kind of kept fighting each other and nobody could kind of like come out of the pack. It feels like we're starting to get some of those guys to emerge. I think Anthony Hernandez will be one of those names that now starts getting serious talks in terms of title conversation or at least like number one. tendership and into that territory.

And as you said, like, there's not a boring fluffy fight. He's primarily a grappler, but he is tenacious. He is relentless. He is somebody who is, like, coming at all times to try to finish the fight, not necessarily somebody who's, like, so worried about holding and position and things like that. So Delizzi is going to have a very tough time, in my opinion. Well, it's going to be interesting because, like you just mentioned, Hernandez is just He relies so much on just like physicality and just being aggressive.

And like the lead say is similar in that fashion. Like he is he is a very physical fighter. And it looked like he was struggling, you know, lost a couple in a row. But they're aging kind of nicely, like the Vitori and then the Imov and he got the Votori back. He's on a three-fight win streak now. So like I feel like no matter what this is going to be an entertaining fight, especially if it goes long. I think it'll be fun. I do ultimately think, though, that fluffy style is going to be difficult.

for deletia. I think he's going to be quicker. I think he's going to be stronger. I think he's going to be more aggressive. And ultimately, like, I don't think of Delizia as like an A plus athlete. Whereas that grappling is just it's suffocated. He just puts him in the mix of man. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very, very tough guy to deal with.

And we've seen him against high level grapplers kind of do the same. Even like in that Brendan Allen fight, there were some moments for Allen there, but like once Hernandez kind of took over, it was rough. Like he is just, he's so crushing. That style is very difficult for anybody, I think DeLite is going to have a harder time.

If Fluffy wins. Yeah. It's going to be tough to match him up next, man. Everybody ahead of him is like waiting for a title shot or like top guy. That's the thing. If you're RDR, do you want to risk your title opportunity? If you feel like you're in line, do you want to risk that against Fluffy? That doesn't feel like a smart move to me.

Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be tough to match him because you got Jerry Cannonier fighting MVP next week. He's got less of a name than these guys, but he's just a. as good and the style is yeah and maybe better and the style is crushing he seems like the nightmare guy he's honestly he seems like the Marab guy right where it's like

he didn't have the name value to make you go yes I want to fight this guy no problem but the style knowing what you're in for was really fucking daunting for a lot of people and so I feel like he's gonna have a hard road I don't I if I was RDR look don't get me wrong RDR is a gangster and he has proven that like throughout his UFC run

and even before that I wouldn't be surprised if he took a fight against Fluffy but I don't know if tactically that's the right move when you feel like you have so much momentum right now that could really halt it very quickly just looking at Fluffy stats the Josh Friend fight eight takedowns

yeah unanimous decision the Mark Andre Barrio fight eight takedowns subs them in the third Edmund six takedowns chaos him in the third elbows just raining them down copy love three takedowns subs them in the second Michelle Pereira

10 takedowns, elbow, K.O. in the fifth. Then the Brendan Allen, four takedowns, unanimous decision. Average is 6.27 takedowns per 15 minutes. He really is like the Marab of middleweight. And at cardio, he just doesn't go away. No. And beyond that, extremely tough too, right? It's like, it is insanely hard to get him out of there.

So you're dealing with a guy who's, A, not going to quit. So even if you hit him with your best stuff, he's not going to give up, he's not going to quit. He's probably going to still be there. And then when you start to fade, he's coming on. You're kind of fucked. Like, it's a very bad style to deal with. Look, don't get me wrong. He's not, I, I'm comparing into Marab just based on the basis of like what you're looking at in terms of name versus skill level, right?

That's my comparison to Marab. I don't think he's quite as well-rounded and as good as Marab overall. Of course, yeah. There are some ways to beat him. There are holes. There are opportunities there. But you have to be, you have to be a very special. fighter and you have to be able to capitalize on those holes while defending against what he

brings and defending against what he brings is the hardest part. Yeah, man, it's a tough task to deal with Roman Deleite. Best of luck, my friend, it should be a great fight. Co-main event, Steve Erseg, finally. Thank the gods. Thank the fighting God. Steve Erseg finally gets a little bit of a break. No disrespect to O'Day Osborne, but his last three fights, which he lost all of them. Alessandre Pantosha, title shot last year. He's pretty good. You all right, disrespect the UFC 3.01 enough today. Then goes Kaikara France. He's pretty good. Who just came off of a title shot.

He's knocked out on the first round. And then, oh yeah, Brandon Moreno, one of the best fly weights of all time, loses by decision back in March. Now he gets O'Day Osborne, five and six in the UFC, who I don't believe is ranked right now. It's definitely a step down in competition for it. A hundred percent,

but I don't think it's like to me, it feels like sometimes this could be viewed as like, oh, you're not as good as we thought you were. But if you look at the Steve Erseg fights, like, my takeaway is not that, like, I don't think Steve Irseg could, on his best night, beat those guys. Maybe not Pantosia, because I think Pantosia is in a different level. He was super close to Pantosia. I think Pantosia will probably do better in the rematch. To me, Pantosia is at a level up here, and he has proven to kind of be there. But even that, to that point, right? He's that close to beating

Pantosia. To me, this is like, Steve Erseg needs a win to get his confidence back more so than I think like Steve Irseg needs a step down in competition because I think if he was matched up with with Marino or Kai Kara France again there's worlds where those fights go his way and so I think this is more of that reset and you don't often kind of see that anymore like it used to be a lot more common where a guy would be on a rough skid and they'd be like let's get him one to kind of see where he's at this is one of those fights I think after this fight he can jump right back into higher level competition but I do think he needs to see the ball go through the net once you know he needs to see like oh shit yeah i'm still i'm still steve fucking ursig the guy who came

into the ufc and like set it on fire to get into that title opportunity i think he just needs to see it one time but by the way like for not being ranked oday osborne is not like some cakewalk in my opinion i know the betting odds have ersec is a massive favorite odie is pretty good man like the jamaican sensation uh yeah the books think that ersec's gonna see one oh i know minus 575 on draft kings right now well you just look at the level of competition and as you said, like nearly knocking on the door of beating Pantoja, I think the fifth round goes his way, and it's his.

It is certainly a step down in competition. I'm viewing this as like, he will win this fight. I think he will win this fight, but I don't think it's going to be like this performance where it's like, oh, the old Steve the old Steve Ersegg's back, he knocked them

out in one round, oh my God, I can't, but maybe it will. Actually, maybe it will. I could also see that happening, but I do think Ode deserves some respect and will probably be pretty game in this fight for as long as it lasts. We roll along Yasmin Lucindo taking on Angela Hill. Angela Hill making her 28th walk to the hockey team. He's already got the most fights in women's strawweight history, most wins in women's strawweight history as well. That is crazy. The one thing that sticks out to me here. Yeah. Yasmin Lucendo, 23 years old. Yep.

Angela Hill, 40. Yep. 17 year age difference? That's got to be one of the biggest in UFC history. I'm looking at a chart right now. I have no idea how up to date it is, but Randy Cortor was 16 years older than Gabriel Gonzaga. He was 15 years older than Josh Barnett, 14 than Rico Rodriguez, 14 then Brock Lesnar, 14 then Vittor. And then Joel Romero was 13 years older than Robert Whitaker. I don't know how up-to-date this is. It's got Glover and Yuri on there, 13-year age difference. But man, 17 years is, that is massive. I just want to point you to Lucinda's last fight in which she fought Amanda Limoche, who was 38 years old. So we were in this position just in the last fight where I was like, I mean, certainly the youth is going to favor her and she came out and kind of laid an egg and Amanda, like, Amanda didn't really do much in that fight if we're being completely honest and just did enough to win.

It was kind of an eye-opening performance for me. It was quite disappointing. like I thought that was the opportunity to really like stamp it and she blew that. Angela Hill is not somebody who's going to just let you kind of do that. And so I think she finds herself in a very similar position. This feels like a, this feels like a redo. This feels like, okay, you were supposed to like squash Amanda Limo. You were supposed to show like, I'm the new young up andcomer and I'm breaking into this division to show you like I'm here.

This feels like another opportunity to do that. But I have to admit, I am a little concerned based on the last performance. Yeah, I think those are proper concerns. That's a great call by you. I completely forgot about that fight. Yeah. It should be interesting, and the odds are showing that, minus 170, essentially the same she was against Amanda Lemoche. And like, Amanda Lemoche is much higher in the terms of competition and ranking than Angela Hill is. Yeah, and probably as a fighter as well, but it does, like, we do have to acknowledge that like Angela Hill kind of gets in these fights where, much like we're talking about with Steve Ursaig, where it's like, yeah, she. lost, but like, did she lose? Like, she looked pretty damn good. Maybe the judge is could have given her way, and she's kind of found herself in a thousand

of those over the course of her career. I think, I think she's better than her, is she ranked? Angela Hill? Yeah. I'll tell you right now. I feel like straw weight. Yeah, she's 12. I think she's better than 12th, but probably not much.

Like, I just think she's, like, a little bit better than that ranking. But I'm not, like, 40 years old doesn't concern me. because every time I watch Angela Hill, she kind of just like looks the same. Like, she does not look like she is losing a step. She does not look like it's wearing on her. She does not look like all the miles in the octagon have kind of added up. She kind of just like does the Angela Hill thing and does it pretty successfully. So I don't know. Like I, the age doesn't seem to a, it doesn't matter to me as much and doesn't seem to apply to her. Like she kind of just has this like high volume style, can kind of put people in in difficult positions, not like a super powerful finisher,

But she puts up in a volume that it's going to be hard to kind of like wade through what she's doing and has done it the same way for seeming her whole UFC career. I've not really seen like a degradation, even though she's got so many fights and is now 40 years old. And if she went, she'll be right back in the top 10 of, yeah, that's where she is. She's just like perennial top 10. Yeah, that one should be good. Another one that might, this one might be the people's main event, Andre Feely versus Christian Rodriguez. Yeah. This just feels like it's going to be entertaining.

some good scramble, some good striking. What feelie are we going to get? He's been on the win, lose, win, lose for like the last three or four years. But this is a fight that I'm looking forward to. Two guys that I've enjoyed their fights in the past, and they should put on a good scrap together. I really felt like after the Cubs Swanson win that we were going to get the, like, Feli run.

Like it felt like we've been so close to it so many times, and then the mix results, and I was like, damn, that's the swan. And he came on with Ariel and he was talking about it. like it felt like it was the time and then Melchicasta kind of stopped that this is a very tough fight like this is a super tough fight

I'm gonna make it easy for anyone no and and as we talked about enough for he's kind of like the undefeated record killer he's just this guy that like does not go away extremely talented I have now looked at the line

of this fight who is the favorite in this one can you guess it? Can you guess it? Oh fuck Seirot's small favorite minus one

50? Minus 245 C-Rod on draft feet right now. That's steep because, you know, even though he has had mixed results and we know kind of like what Andre Fili is, at his best, he's extremely talented. Yeah, I guess C-Rod does deserve that credit though. Like, I mean... He's nice and he's young. He's only getting better.

Yeah. Oh, shit. Are both their last fights against Malki Costa? It's a good call. Yes. Good shot. Holy shit. And Malky Costa won them both.

Mielke Costa beat them both. Yeah, I don't, that feel, honestly, just this gut reaction, that feels steep, but at the same time, like, it's hard for me to question. Like, if we're talking, like, who do I know is more consistently going to show up and be able to kind of, like, keep a pace and do what he does? It's probably C-Rod, but at his best, I feel like the ceiling is potentially higher on Philly. When he puts it all together, he has this very unique combination of, like, slick grappling and striking that is hard to deal with. It's probably C-Rod's fight, but I also feel like, Fili is live here, especially at that number. Yeah, it should be a good one. Miles John's taking on

Jean Matsumoto, Matsumoto trying to bounce back after getting his first loss. Got a big opportunity against my guy, Rob Fon. Great for the ball beer branch. Shout to... That was like a short notice, right? He stepped in? I believe so, but I think he was a sizable favorite in that one. Or did Fon step? Which is exactly what you don't want to be against John Matsumoto. Now, it looks like who was Rob supposed to fight on that?

that one. Dominic Cruz. I knew there was something with that one. Yeah, great call there. Yeah, and then he got undefeated John Mottomoto and came out victorious, man. Shout out to Robb. Shout out to fuck out. I am curious to see Matsumoto bounce back.

Gets his first loss of his career. He's only 25 years old. He can be a player at 135. And this is not an easy test against Miles John. So I want to see him perform here. Yeah, and I think he will. And I think it's one of those that like it would have been very easy for us to believe like Matsumoto steps in there and just like

destroy his font and we're just like he's the next guy. Got 10, 135, undisputed. Oh, he took the short notice. Oh my God, he's you know, let's, let's herald this guy. It did not go that way, but I'm not any less high on him. I feel like Rob Font is the guy who does that. Neil Magny, Rob Font, there's a few names that you

could just point out that it's like, it's supposed to go that way, but it never actually does because they don't let it. They're just like too tough, too savvy, too much of a veteran. I think that that's more what's at play there, the notice the opportunity. I feel like we will see the performance that we expected from Matsumoto this time. Major beef with the UFC here.

Last card we're going to talk about on the main card. First one that you're going to see, Eric Anders, former Alabama football player. Yeah. Taking on Christian Leroy Duncan. And how are you not going to put the Chris Duncan's on the same card? We just saw Chris Duncan in the co-main event of UFC Apex 108. And now we have Christian Leroy Duncan fighting on UFC Apex 109. How do you not put them on the same card?

Unless I'm mistaken, there was a card that they fought on together. I know they fought on one together. Okay. They definitely have. How do you not just do that every time? No, I like the back-to-back, Duncan. I don't have as much of a problem with it. Duncan one week and then Duncan the next week.

I like the- Which one is two and which one is one? In terms of who I think is better? No, which one is Chris Duncan one and which one is Chris Duncan, too? I think Christian Leroy is going to have to take second because of the third name aspect. Like you have to kind of like... And the Christian.

Yes, you have to cede it to Chris Duncan. Yeah. Either way. That should be fun. That's good. I mean, that's... It's a big boy scrap. Yeah. It's just like, it's just two big boys throwing. I know you cannot wait for the Jocelyn Edwards Priscilla Keshawara fight. We saw

Joshlin Edwards training at Extreme Cotor. You were like, you ready for the Sicilcatchewara fight. She was like, uh-huh. It was great. It was good banter. I wish we had gotten it on camera. And then Eros Medish, that's the one I got circled. This is the Capostas people's main event of this week. This is the one. Taking on Gilbert Arbina. If you don't know about Eros Mideesh, uh, never been to a decision. Only been to one third round in his career. He makes scraps fun. He's either icing people or he's getting ice. Yeah, he's fun. It's fantastic. Even on Air Jordan is excited to see the doctor. Also, his last name being Medish and him going by

The doctor. The doctor is fantastic wordplay. And then Big Cody Brundage. I just saw him fight at Yossey, Atlanta. Fitting. Fitting that he gets the curtain jerker. So we can see something else crazy happen. Because if you look at his last six fights,

Mansour Abdul Malik ends in a draw majority after he got finished in the third round. And then it was a no contest, but they took it to a decision. No, it was a win. It was a win for Mansour Abdul Malik originally. And then they adjusted it.

Because they sent it to the scorecard. That's right. Only like 90 seconds into the round and scored it for Mansoor. So that was one. And then Julian Marquez gets into a war, knocks him out in the first round. The one before that, the Abdulazak al-Hassin,

no contest, 37 seconds into the bout. Before that... Where he basically got in what seemed like knocked out, and then it became a no contest. Shout out. um and and then uh got rear naked choked by bow nickel on ufc 300 holy shit fought on fucking ufc 300 uh made it to the second round though look decent there ufc 300 yeah keep ball of fight

this motherfucker 14 months later going from the main card of ufc 300 to the hurt and jerker of ufx 109 uh and then got the slam knockout of zach rase oh yeah fuck uh in austin and then got the win over Jacob Malkoon because Jacob Malkoon elbowed him to the back of the head. It was getting bizarre resume. The last six fights for Cody Rondage are insane. I'm hoping it gets even more wild

as he takes on Eric Maconico in the opening fight of his EPEX 109. Checking it off. He's a favorite. Minus 155. Thanks to... Admittedly, I don't know who Eric McConnico is.

You fucking get me? You don't know EMC? Come on, bro. I'm not surprised that he's a favorite McConaughey's a legend Cody Broaddage is also Oh yes okay

Neurlston I remember Neurlston Nice them Yeah yeah yeah I think just like Very quickly into round one Now 30 seconds in round two If you want to look at the odds You can go on Tapology and just click odds It'll show you all of them

Against Mancerra You and Ariel You and Ariel on the Tapology Shout out to Tapology It's fantastic You want to know how I found found out so quickly about Charles Oliveira taking, having

not fought in Brazil since 2020? You check that. I clicked location on that ball. And they have the flag and everything. Plus 600 against Mansoor Abdul Malik, minus 105 against Julian Marquez, plus 145 to Abdul Razum, plus 850 against von Nichol, plus 185, Zachries, plus 450, Jacob Malcolm.

Guys, not a favorite often. No. But he's a favorite this weekend in the first fight of the night of UFC Apex 109. quickly go through my bets Parlay pals Big hitters, whatnot Last week I lost like

There's the card for you In case you needed to see it I feel exactly the same way As I feel of last week Same exact thing It's like there's some good scraps on here But no stakes really Other than the main event

Give me in the next week Yeah get me to fucking next week That's how I feel about this one Last week I like lost like a unit and a half on Apex 108 I guess the fact that I didn't lose my ass is enough of a win

Parley pals though They won We up Let's go Yeah we did Plus 3.71 units If you've been taking the bet For the last 33 weeks

You'd be up 3.71 units I don't think we even Sweated any of these huh These kind of all cash quick They were all pretty easy I guess Raphael Ostevan Didn't he go to a decision But all the other ones

Were early finishes And we're gonna get another win this week. I can tell you that much. Before we get to our parley palpit, I do have one big hitter. He's a regular occurrence, Mr. Artsy, Mr. Electrocutt. He hit this twice,

plus 8,000, and it's a parlay of significant strikes, and it's alt lines plus 180, or 185 or more significant strikes in Elvis Brenner Estevan Rivavix, plus 800, and

155 plus significant strikes in Any Silva, Kevin V.A. host, also plus 800. Hit this twice for 250 Canadian each time. One, 20,250 Canadian on each slip. You can tell by the timestamps at the bottom, 245 p.m. And 250 p.m. So he turns 500 Canadian into 40,500 Canadian. He also played them as singles. I played this one myself. Did not get nearly as good of a line. Got like plus 1900. But still, it's not bad. Plus 900 is not bad, but plus eight. Plus eight. And he hit it twice. God damn. I love how he hit it, and then he was like, yeah, five more than five minutes later, he's like, I'm going to hit it again. I just love a bet on like, yeah, they're putting up Max Holloway numbers.

Like, I love a bet on that. Okay, I'm also, that's fucking sick. The guy's the man, absolute man. Mr. Electrician on Twitter, give him a follow. Patreon is fantastic. Go subscribe to that. He is the man. He puts his research in and he wins.

A lot, a lot of money. But I've, I tailed this and the 155 plus had already hit, and all you needed was the Brenner Reevovix 185 plus, and it was such a joy to watch. It's like, yeah. They were just putting up numbers. I think they, I think they needed one strike going into the third round. Like they were just like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I was just like, I had the ESPN app of it and just like, the strikes are updating. I'm just like, yeah, I think we're going to hit this one.

I was like, I was with a bunch of my boys at a bar and, like, they actually had it on. So shout out. But I was like, yeah, I just need one significant strike to start round three and it's just boom. Yeah, they ended up landing like 250 plus. So yeah, shout out to Mr. Alex Schroot. All right, parley pals for this weekend. I've already gotten Pizzi's pick. We're going to keep this train rolling.

Woo! Let's go. Parley Pals, look at that graphic. Damn, the gravelly voice. I love it. He is going with Christian Leroy Duncan, CLD. He went last week with Chris Duncan and now he's going with CLD. It's on brand.

I think he went with Chris Duncan just as a dog. Oh, okay. Get Estevan. All right. Rick, you go first. I'll go second. Frank. You're last.

Yeah, I'm following what I did last week. I feel like there's something in the main event Give me money line Oh, the main event grappler I like it Anthony Hernandez's fluffy Shout out

Hard to pick against him when he's won seven in a row I'm gonna go with Stevie E Get it back on track Astro Boy Sends Ode Osborne to space With a big uppercut

I see what you did there I've been looking at the tea leaves And I'm going to Matsumoto Moneyline Why is Jordan giving a thumbs up right now What a deep explanation That was, Frankie Tea leaves are...

Looked at the tea leaves de Matsumoto. There it is. Respect the tea. All right, my picks very quickly. There it is. Look at the graphics team. Plus 132. Let's get to over five units.

Let's do it, guys. We're in a roll. I'm down. I'm down. I'm already spinning the winnings. Oh, easy there, Frankie. All right, I just got three bets. There's plenty of money to be made next week.

Fili Rodriguez, I think this will just be a competitive fight. I think we go all 15 minutes there. Where do you lean? What do you think? I don't like the money line I think it's going to be a close fuck I think it's going to go off 15 I think Philly's got a scrap for him

plus 240 I don't know I'm just going to take fight goes the decision and then I'm going to take Steve Erick fight does not go the distance I think he bounces back I think he takes him down I thinks he gets a submission shout out to Steve Erseg

and then a parley prop parley little violence Medici Shabina under two and a half Medici never been to a decision Smith Kazama under two and a half and then Walker Serqueira under two and a half as well that pays it minus 116 and those are the bets

nice and light money to be made next week money to be made next week no we're making money this week bro no I know but last pay-per-view was very profitable for me hopefully 319 will also be profitable before we get into the pound for pound you watch the challenge last night fuck yeah I did let's go did you Lou out she's gone

Lou's one of the characters she got bounced our guy Ben got a little sports broadcasting practice and he did he was commentating the elimination, which was fantastic. Yeah, that was great. Biggest takeaway, though, Will, tough look. Yeah, not good. Tough look.

If you didn't watch, this guy, Will, he hooked up with one of the girls in the pre-hotel beforehand, and then she started hooking up with bananas. Yeah, bananas was locked on to her from the very jump. Yeah, I think from the get-go, he was like, do you want to be my girlfriend? Yeah, and they all went out to a bar. Will had a little bit too much to drink, started getting emotional. They got on the bus. He's punching seats.

They get back. He's trying to creep on on bananas and D. Acting like they've been dating for a while. And then he punches a wall. His hand swells up. And then he sobs like a baby on national television. Not a great look for a boy. Can you imagine waking up like hung over his balls?

And it's like, man, what happened last night? It's like, let's just show you, man. And it's just like, D. And it's like, oh, can you guys cut that? It's like, no. This is going to be the full. focal point of the episode. No, this is going to be the entire episode.

National television. Yeah, it was a tough look, man. You could not, uh, yeah, you could not get me to do that on national TV. No. Uh, it was great to see our boy, Bain for the 15 seconds of screen time that he got again this week. Can we get the guy some screen time? At least they gave him the commentary moment right there.

I like that because that was like playing into his thing. People started arguing at a bar and like he ran over to break it up and then they went to commercial. Like it was like, Bain was like, and then it flashed off. I was like, there was one other moment where they're like talking about the bar situation

and then they cut to a Bain and you see like him do one dance move and then they cut away. Yeah, when they were walking to the bar they showed him for like three seconds

and he's like and then it cuts away. It's almost like the Leo DiCaprio. Yeah, I'm just like, oh, there's me! There you are you thinking so far? You're now,

you're now three weeks in. A lot of drama. A lot of drama. Challenges weren't as fun this time. Yeah. But yeah. Elimination was good, though. It was a good contest.

The other challengers who always watch from the side seem to be very into what they were doing. They were giving a lot of plaudits and showering them with praise. It's been a decent start to the season so far. That's what I'll say. These things definitely always escalate. This is like, yeah, this is early.

People start doing crazy shit. People that you think are going to win get knocked out. People double cross, more hookups, more drama. I mean, Will, starting early on the hookup drama, crying and this and whatnot. tough look for my guy Will Manna. I hope he was not watching with friends and family last night. If I was watching with friends and family

and they saw that? I'd be like, this isn't exactly how I remember. Is it really this bad? He doesn't remember it. Let's be real. They did like the pinky promise kiss in their hands. They're like, are you okay, Will? Are you okay? He's like a pinky promise. He's like tears are streaming down his eyes over a girl. He hooked up with

once. I was like, God, dude, this is a tough look. Yeah, it wasn't great. a lot of my friends who watched the challenge were texting me about it and yeah I'm in though I'm gonna watch the whole season thank you thank you shout out shout to Bain, shout to the challenge

shout out to Bain, shout to Bain, shout to the challenge. I think he's got big things coming that's our that's our weekly challenge breakdown all right pound for pound this week it's a little bit meta Rick not a huge fan of this one we're running we're running near the end of the well only kidding

Apex 109 you know this isn't top Chicago's but when we were in Las Vegas we went to the UFCI. Yes. And we had not only one but two run-ins with Anthony Fluffy Hernandez. First one is in like the hot tub area

and the door is open and we're like oh go ahead man and he's like you guys go ahead and we're like Anthony come on. We'd be angry if you didn't please. We'd be offended if you didn't and he's like all right, all right, all right. And then as we're leaving he's once again standing by the door and this time he's just like doesn't even offer it up hands in pockets he's like all right guys

have a good day see you like hit the hit the bricks man you guys go out the door first this time but acknowledges respectful oh incredibly nice nobody's saying anything everybody's walking in head down headphones on this that and anthony's just like see you guys later yeah see you guys thanks for coming to the ufc a pass i was just like thanks fluffy hernandez good luck in your next fight man it was like a this is sports center commercial it was bizarre but anyway it was because of how nice he was such a nice guy but it was just very funny like it got us thinking on just like

minor social faux pauses that create like I don't want to say full on awkward moments where you're like oh my god get me out of here but it's like these things where you're just kind of like yep I wish I wasn't here right now kind of wish I wasn't here kind of ready for this to be over

like not real awkward but just like little uncomfortabilities so that is our pound to pound rankings this week daily faux pauses Daily awkward interactions. You'll understand it more as we get into it. Frank, what's the order? The order is going to be Frank, then Connor, then Rick.

I'm last. I can't believe I'm last. Let it rip. All right. My number five, I refer to it as the double dab. So we know you go in for a dab. Someone offers you a handshake. That might be considered the awkward dab.

Yeah, that's bad. But I call it the double dab is when the two then change roles. Dapper is now handshake or handshaker. Shakers now dapper. But you're still fucking up. You're still fucking enough. They reverse, they flip. Finally, there's some sort of ending to it.

Oh, that's so bad. Oh, wow. Okay, so the way that I avoid this is I just completely acknowledge it. I'm like, man, we fucked that one up, huh? Yeah. Like, it's just like, dude, dude, dude, dude, ah, dude, dude, dude, dude, ah, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, then you, you have to call it out what you're going. Yeah, exactly.

100%. Yeah. Yeah. My neighbor has actually, because we always do this, has been like, all right, I'm going to do this and you do this every time we see each other, which we're just done, because it got too awkward. I've noticed something. Maybe I'm off base here, but I don't really see Frank giving a lot

of daps. No, he's a big, like, hey, or like a knuckles. Yeah, I haven't seen a lot of Frank Daps. I've got to be honest. I don't think I've ever given Frank a Dapp. I don't ever want to say hi to you. Okay, that's fair enough. My number four is enjoying a meal. And what I mean by this specifically is

your waiter or counter service, you know, they say enjoy your meal, and then you look at him and you say, you too. Oh, this is the you two. You too. Have a nice flight. You too. Yeah. And then it's like, shit. Why did I just

enjoy your movie? You too. God damn. I love Frank's use of the meme so far. Yeah, that was nice. I have no visuals. Do you have any visuals? No, no. Okay. No visuals. My number three is, well, who hangs up first? There's that awkwardness where you're sitting on the phone

and you thought the other person is going to hang up. They thought you were going to hang up. You can hear someone kind of breathing. and then it's like oh I thought you were going to hang up oh I thought you were going to hang up it's like so fucking weird especially if it was after like a heated conversation or something I'm a big hangar-upper

I'm putting that phone just hang it up yeah it's just like all right I'll see you later man for the audio listeners the illustration on that one was like a clay style animated man one day we're going to do yeah there it's shut out one day we're going to do pet peeves one of my pet peeves

and I call this out on anyone who does it is you're on the phone with them and you're clearly like chilling and then they're like all right man i'll let you go and it's oh i'll i don't have to go anywhere man i'm good i'm good you don't have to let me go uh i i always call people out on that my number two is what's their name when you know someone you need to talk to them you don't remember their name i've avoided talking to that person just because i don't want to so i've actually i've gotten to the point where i just tell people like oh i'm so bad with names what is your name what is your move

To be honest, I ask other people. Like, I'm a guy Nick can actually test them. I've been like, I'll describe them. Like, I was talking to so-and-so. I don't know their name. Do you know who they are? What about like a, what about like a buddy, a guy, a what's up chief? Oh, I'm big, big man, bro, brother.

What's up? My man. My man. They go. What's up? Just do that just to avoid calling them their name. And the worst is when they call you by your name. And then you're like, yeah, but they like clearly, they're like, oh, it's your birthday today.

Isn't it? Your phone number is and it's like, holy shit. Have you ever been in that scenario and tried to do the name and blowing it? No, I don't blow the name. I need to be like 90% sure, but when I'm 90% sure, there's a tight butt. A little bit tight butt, but I also say it's so fast. Like, like, say like Frank, if I didn't know your name, but I was like 90% sure it was Frank, I'd be like, yo, what's good, Frank? And they're like, did you say friend?

In their ear, they're like, oh, he said Frank. But if it's not your name, then you could be like, no, no, no, my name's Jim. I'd be like, that's what I said. I know it's fucking Jim. I know it's Jim. What's up, Big God? And then I go in for the dab and then they go in for the knuckles and it's like, and then you get the DDP phone call where they're like, his name is actually Frank.

Yeah, he just tricked you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a tough one, man. I have that written down to my honorable mentions. The, and, like, you, you pass a threshold where it's like, it would be insulting to ask. Like, what's your name again, man? Can I, can I make a confession? I'll just ask.

Wow. Yeah, if someone asked me after I'd, like, said what's up to them, like, 20 times, they were like, what you? I'd be like, ah, sorry. I know we've talked a hundred times. I forgot your name. There's some people in this office. Like, it gets so excited to, like, talk about someone that we all know. And I, for some reason, it just blank the name of the person at the time.

So I'll be like, oh, what's her name? And they mean Andy? I'm like, yes. There's some people in the office. For Andy? It happens with Connor all the time. I'm just like trying to say something really quick. Oh, the dude, though. What's his name?

George. You're like, oh, that George guy. That's just you getting old. That's just early onset Alzheimer's. Oh, stuff. There are a couple people in this office that I would actually consider to be my friends. Just ask them. And I don't know.

That's what I would do. I will sit down and have lengthy conversations with these people. And in the back of my mind the whole time, You have nicknames for these people. Yeah, we have nicknames for these people. So, yeah, I feel you, Frank. What's your number one? My number one is literally death.

Sorry? Yeah. Yeah, man, don't die. So what I actually mean by this is when you're telling a story and then you're like, oh, well, you know, they passed away a few years ago. And then the other person is like, whoa, I'm so sorry. And it's like, no, no, no, I was only mentioning that they were dead because of like, I needed to give you some context. Like, I'm not necessarily like trying to fixate on that. Or they're like, oh, what happened to so-and-so?

was like, oh, they died, and then it's like, oh, well, how? There's just that awkwardness of, like, do you say that you're sorry? Do you ask into how that person die? What do you say after it? Like, I think we've all agreed that the subject of death is taboo enough, where it's like, it's just awkward to bring it up and how you respond. The biggest thing is, like, the I'm sorry, especially when it's someone you don't know. And it's just like, dude, like, you're not responsible for their death or my feelings of it.

Super fucking awkward. I'm still not clear. Which side of the combo are you on? Both. Like, sometimes you don't even want to. mention that the person died because you know it's going to put the other person into a weird like uh well i'm sorry to hear that okay or if i ask like oh what happened to your girlfriend's like yeah she died it's like oh shit okay so learning from that lesson do you not say i'm sorry like what do you

say when somebody says oh they die man it just depends because it happens so quickly the worst i actually remember someone called me once and they were like uh my my father just died and i was like, are you for real? Then, like, are you for real? Later that day, I apologize, because it was like, obviously the feelings are really, you know, raw, and I was like, I'm sorry, I said, there's like, no, no, Frank, like, you're totally

fine. I was also surprised, so your reaction was genuine. Like, nobody expected this to happen. He was coming home from the hospital, blah, blah, blah. It was like, holy shit. So, just the foot and mouth, like, I guess, so now every conversation I go into, I expect that death might come up at some point, and I have

like a running list of things I should say, which is like, all right, next, and I'm sorry to hear that. What are you doing on Friday? You know, just a rolodex of things. Which one? Who died? So, but isn't it, to that point, isn't it like so routine now where it's like, this person died, I'm sorry, and then you just kind of move on from it?

It's kind of just like, oh, my bad. I didn't know, man, I'm sorry about that. But that's the thing is sometimes it's completely benign. Like, you don't need to be sorry, right? It's just telling a story. It's like, oh, it comes up more often. jump on like my grandpa died in 2014 and you're like

I'm so sorry he was 97 it was natural cause of thing yeah like you start to almost like justify it right but the worst is sorry I can understand actually I'm so sorry to this list I really did not understand where this is going now that he's describing it this has actually happened

to me where I was in class in high school and a teacher was like oh in front of everybody how's your grandma's like she died like four years ago oh fuck and she was like that was in the teacher's lounge I knew that

should I have said I'm sorry instead of laughing super I also laughed when he did it but you guys have never gotten the well how did they die it's like oh do we really want to fucking open that

I think that's weird I think that's an option how did they die is bizarre because it's like you volunteer that you don't ask somebody that one the hard way no that is actually the knee jerk

everyone always asks when someone dies I mean I only ask that if I have killed that person and I want to cover it up and don't want to do something you want to oh it's an accident

oh how did they die They never found the body. All right. Well, that's interesting. Okay. All right. I got to say, pretty impressive list by Frankie and the accompanying visuals. Yeah, the visuals were great there.

Trying out to die. All right. Number five, I call this like, I don't really have a name for it. Like, it's like a stuck conversation. So like you are talking to someone and then you are like in line or like you're in an elevator or like you're saying peace to them and then you guys walk the same way. But the conversation is completely dead. There's nothing left. There's nothing to say, but you're just, like, stuck in this, like, thick silence.

And, like, you're just, like, you're, like, both, like, thinking of something to say, and it's just, like, plans for the week. There's, like, anything to fill the silence. And, like, you're stuck there. Like, it's like, it's like you're at a bar, the open bar at the wedding, and it's, like, a guy you kind of know, and, like, you guys are conversing. And then, like, the line is not moving at all, and you're just done talking. And you just kind of have to stand there.

same thing elevator just like yeah uh huh just a stuck conversation has the phone mitigated this to an extent helps you pull out the phone and then you're just like all right that was it then you have the awkward

of like okay now he pulled out the phone now I have to pull out the phone and like the silence is still just ringing in your ears and you're just like fuck this I start playing magic immediately the worst yeah can't stand it number four it's like

I didn't really know how to put this It's essentially just farting. It's like someone farts in public and you're like, you don't want them to feel awkward, like when they're embarrassed. And you're just like, oh God, or you do it. And you didn't think anyone is around. And then you turn around and someone's there and you're like, mortified or like, you fart and it's like, oh, that was silent.

And then it's like, you're sitting there and we're having a conversation and you're just like, to yourself, you're like, oh my God. that smells like a demon was just inside me and you're like they have to smell this they have to smell this right now

okay you can see it you're like they have to smell this right now this is so uncomfortable this is so awkward what is the proper protocol do you acknowledge silent

and it smells terrible you don't acknowledge it and if they bring it up you're like I don't smell anything oh so you deny you deny you deny

and then if it's loud and they hear it I don't know what you do at that point you just kind of have to own it What if you're the smeller? What do you do? Oh man, I don't know.

Do you go, Hey, did you? It's so tough. And then another layer of this is like you're in the bathroom which is where you're supposed to do it but like you're in the bathroom and you're at the urinal

and it's some guy you don't know it all and you guys are just staying there and it's dead silent and they just rip it blow it out and you're just like you're just like all right man I guess like I guess like I guess that just happened like

okay cool like that actually happened to me yesterday in this office Frank what the fuck I was just at a year old head to just let out just like the loudest most offensively loud fart and now I see him walking around the office and I'm like what's up man like what's up

what's up farted face? What about when it's like a war zone in the bathroom like everyone is because like one person does it they think it's like permission to go ahead and all four stalls are just taken and it's just like it's almost oh god I've been in the position where I've smelled it and I've just been like all right somebody farted I don't really like get to I'm talking one on one some

people get offended by oh really oh you've never been around someone they're like if someone farts and someone's like are you serious man are you serious never been around that we're sitting in this car right now you're fucking serious oh my god makes me laugh even oh my god literally farts on me so I don't because I cannot take it seriously it's just too funny for me so like when people get offended i start laughing more but yeah like you're in an elevator and someone runs one and it's just like oh god that's it's like i had a situation the devil's ask boiled eggs um oh that's the word oh god i had some spinach oh man it wasn't good i was by myself someone comes in it must have been

a father and a son because the kid was like daddy what is that the guy in this like southern type accent it was like sounds like someone who smells like someone's got a case of the ruck gut that's the first time I heard that term. Oh, shit. Should we address whenever you're in the bathroom and you're sitting in there and then the stall next to you, the guy that you work with comes in and you can recognize him by his shoes. Yeah, but what are you going to do? We all got to go.

I just sit there. That happens to me and Frank all the time. It's like, kind of the point of a look at the shoes to see who I'm with. All right. This is way too unsurious. We're all, uh, we're all in our 30s. All right. Number three.

That's good. More professional workplace stuff. Zoom call interruptions. This even happens. sometimes like on the air with Petey because he's he's on Zoom. Let's circle back on that in a moment. You each say something at the same time, but because of the delay, it's like you're now talking over each other and then you both quit and now it's silent and then you both

start back up again and then you both have to quit and then it's silent or the inverse you're both like, I'm going to power through because they're going to stop and then you just keep talking and talking and then you're inevitably, you end up with just like silence for like five to ten seconds and it's like, okay, you go man. No, you go, okay, you go, it's just like, fucking hell, man, dude. It is, how much time is wasted on that? How much time is wasted? If he added it up at the end of the year, you probably have, like, a whole other work day.

Zoom call interruptions. Number two, and this has been happening me way too lately now that I'm, like, in my late 20s, early 30s, watering down the wrong pipe. You're sitting there drinking, and then you're just like, oh, like, you just start coughing your ass off, my eyes start watering. And then, of course, everyone's just like, you good, man, you're all right, you're dying back there, you're choking and it's like just fine the water went down the wrong pipe tears streaming down your face like cough and your ass off happens

to me all the time I'll just be sipping water and it happens just the other day I was eating my food and I had a spicy pepper and something went down the wrong tube and then Andy was like oh is it like really spicy I was like no I'm just dying I'm just a classic

I'm just thinking of this I just had a fucking seed go down my throat and I'm dying over here. It's the worst especially when you're with strangers and they're like you okay man it's like yeah I'm fine that's a fear of mine is because I'm always fucking around that when I'm actually choking to death the last thing I'm gonna hear is like Frank knock it off dude

that's gross more than feeling uncomfortable I'm just like will this ever end in my head I'm just like holy fuck can I just not be coughing for a second alright number one this is an easy one for me when you are telling a story and no one is listening and you slowly realize that and you're gonna just have to be like all right I'll just go fuck myself

and you sort of just let it tail off and then you just kind of go back into your own hole and it's just like you're with a big group of people with five, six people when you start telling a story and you're looking around like no one's listening song Yeah, it really is the worst. I do that too Frank. Oh yeah, all the time.

Rick playing magic all the time. One on one it's kind of like, okay, I get it, you're not listening, you can kind of call that person out. But when it's like a group of like six people, it's like, okay, I'll start to involve other people or the infamous, and then I found $20. And then I found $20. Mine is, I'll just go fuck myself.

you just eject you're just like fuck this just yeah I guess you have to come now you start without realizing it and then at some point halfway through you're like oh fuck they are not listening what do they do it like in the group setting what are just literally not making eye contact

they're just talking about they just checked out they're on the street on their phone yeah today I had a wave down Rick like I said something too on just just small talk and when because you so first thing this morning I made a comment about the chocolate it. You just stared at

the chocolate. No, no, no, no. Time, time, time. Time, time, time. Take all the time you need. Headphones were in on this. This was not just me ignoring. Headphones were in listening to voicemails. Could not hear you. Let me get this right then. So when I walked in, sorry to break the fourth wall on everyone here. I walked in, you said, good morning, Frank.

But you had no intention. No, I didn't want to continue the conversation. No, no need to continue. If you're busy, head down, that don't fucking acknowledge people when they come in. This should be on your list. Look, you came in, you know. They don't say anything. Later than everybody else, I thought it would be nice to just acknowledge your presence and just recognize that, hey, oh, my God, Frank's actually here. Holy fuck. And then just not continue the conversation. You didn't want to hear any rebuttal. No, no, not at all. Still don't, honestly. Wish you would stop talking. All right. Jesus.

Number five. How do you sleep at night? You're an animal. Quite well, actually. I sleep like a baby. Number five for me. Silent room. Everybody just doing their own thing. What's the only? way that this goes wrong. The bubble guts. The bubble guts. You get that rumble, you get that rumble in your tummy, but it's just a little too loud. That one's just a little too loud that everybody goes, oh, you're right? You're right, man? That's my favorite. I am fucking fine. I don't need you to ask. Yeah, just didn't eat this morning. I'm all right. We're going to be okay. With those bubble guts, when that happens, it does make, on all the things that we've done so far, I don't really get that uncomfortable with them because I really just don't give a shit about most things, this one does get me because I'm just like, I'm going to have to have an explanation

now. We are going to have to have a discourse about this. I can't just like eject. Like I'm sitting here and you're like, oh, you can't shit your pants or you didn't eat today or whatever. Like, there has to be a full on conversation that comes from this. Okay, number four, I'm calling this the stolen wave. We're walking. Somebody's like, hi, how you doing? Guess what? It was for the wave. It was for the person back there. That one a for you. I have this on my own mentions, this will never happen to me because I have to be so confident sure. You don't acknowledge.

Even if I'm like 90% sure they're waving at me, I still won't even acknowledge them until I'm 100% sure because that ain't happening to me. I will not allow me to someone be like, hey, and then me be like hey, how's it going? And then they're not looking at you all and you turn around and it's like oh fuck. It has

happened to me maybe like five or so times. Only one time did the person who was waving recognized that I was thinking that the wave was for me and be like, no, no, not you. That happened to me one time.

The other handful of times, it was just kind of like a, and then they didn't realize that I was like trying to, and then the person comes by and is like, oh, hi, and then it's there. But one time the person was like, no, no, not you. That's for them. And I was like, oh, fuck.

It's brutal. Yeah, that's uncomfortable. Brutal. That's uncomfortable. Number three, we're calling this the Phantom trip. You're walking along. You're walking along. everything's fine

nothing in your way nothing on the floor nothing going to stop you and you just do that little stumble you have to do the look back what did I trip over every time just that and I realize that at this point

there's that shit there the look back is for everybody else because I already knew there is nothing there is nothing to look back I'm just trying to show you if you saw me stumbling like a fucking idiot that I thought there was something there Oh, there's not anything there?

Does that make it better? You fucking idiot? Next time, just show, oh my God, the world is spinning? Something that actually happens in New York a decent amount is that sidewalks are like the slightest amount of uneven and you can get caught on that if you're not careful and that will happen and like you'll do the look back and people will be like, there's nothing there's like, no, the fuck the sidewalks uneven.

There's a little bit unevenness. I was, this was in my honorable way. I hate the phantom trip. It happens to me a bit. sometimes the foot just drags and you get fucked it is what it is number two uh you this is basically a variation of yours which is the goodbye not where you're together and it's like yeah this conversation's over and you're like bye but then you actually aren't going by you're not you're going either the same direction or you're stuck there and you can't escape oh oh oh you're

inevitably have to have that awkward yeah you have to keep the conversation going um a lot of times I defuse most of these just being like oh that's weird and then just continuing like you said you kind of just call it out and do it

my number one is the one that bothers me the most because it is the most frequent for me and it's the botched app the botch dapp I can't stand a botched app

painful the high that you get when a dab is perfect compared to the embarrassment and just like the pure detest you have for yourself

after you just missed it up. Well, it's such an easy thing. It's like, we just have to get on the same page on this one thing, right? And you can kind of read the body language and you can see the hand coming in and you're supposed to take the cue and you're supposed to know what it is

and somehow we fucked it up. We are idiots and I can't stand that we did that. It's the worst. So I hate a botched app. A couple of honorable mentions I have when someone holds the door too early for you.

I'm a big walk through and then push unless the person's right there then I'll hold it for them. Oh, and you have to speed up. all like step to the side but yeah like when you're walking you're like 15 meters out and like the dude's holding it and you got to do the you got to do like the fake just like the hustle just like the fake ass little job appreciate that man I actually don't appreciate it at all I can open my own door I don't need you to hold this shit for me um Dap error the you have you ever told anybody

to let the go the door go yeah yeah it comes like it's all good man ahead I'll get it no worries about it uh a slip of the tongue like you say like belly jeans instead of jelly beans they're like shit instead of shirt and then everyone's just like oh you spelled something on your shit uh like it's just like yep yeah Augusta Georgia that wasn't really a slip of the talk

that was more uh the worst though is when ignorance you get on the subway car and someone you know gets on at the same time or is already in there like I have literally rolled my eyes before because I was already like planning

I read this article conversation yeah you're stuck into it yeah yeah it's it's the worst I got the walking tripping over nothing man bro my guy You can't remember someone's name. Oh.

Come out of the bathroom. There's someone there that you need to meet. They go in for the handshake. Freshly washed hands. There were no paper towels. They're wet. So now you're left with two options. You either tell them,

just watch my hands. And they're like, I don't care. And you just put a soaking wet hand in theirs and that's the handshake. Or you have to do the like, oh, dude, just watch the hands, man. Yeah, yeah.

Hey, how's it going? Have you ever done the, just wash my hands and just put the hands away? I've done that plenty of times I'm pretty committed to it I'm just like just wash my hands and then I don't even I don't even acknowledge further that we are going to have some kind of touching interaction

yeah and then also like on top of that you're now shaking the hand you just wash the hand now you want to shake wash again we're nice and dirty again yeah the just wash the hand stuff I did have the wrong wave on there and then when you give someone like you're passing in the hallway happens frequently at my apartment and like you give them like a hey how's it going

and they're either looking at their phone or like they looked at you and then they looked back towards the hallway and they just ignore you oh it's happened a couple of times rude yeah it's a big like you talk about the story it's like i'm just going to fuck myself that like you walk in and you're just like oh it's fuck me right because it's such a minimal interaction all you got to do is even just like look at it you just got to acknowledge it a little bit oh what's up man yeah it's tough also quick question for the group here when you walk in a hallway and you see someone you haven't seen in a while and you acknowledge i'm like oh hey how's your day going great

How long before you need to acknowledge them again on the next pass-by? What do you mean? An hour later, you see the same person in the hallway. So what I do is I, when I see someone for the first day, it's like a, it's like a, yo, what's good, man? How's it going? And we'll have a little conversation. If I see them again, then you're just getting a head-on.

Unless it's been like several hours. I might not even head-knod. Once I've acknowledged you the first time, we're not even acknowledging it. The threshold, so for Rick, it's zero. You got the intro. We did that. Several hours for Connor. I guess I'm a several hours.

guy as well. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any in the chat? Did anybody have? I know. I'm looking right now. Bubble guts while squatting weight.

I used to get bubble guts while group study sessions. Hey, look at this. The girl you have a crush on is in the group and she's like, what's up your fucking gut? Oh, there's nothing worse than being with a girl. And it's like, oh, God. I have the amount of like, oh, shit, I'm actually

I'm getting a call. I got to step out for a second. Yeah, I want to take. My mom's calling me. Look at this, though. Best pound for pound list yet? Oh, people liked it. Pound for pound was probably one of the most comedic ones of all time. Yeah, Rick hated it. Yeah, there it is. Shout out. I'm actually happy with my list now. I was a little... You know what it is? I like safety, and I don't like to be... I don't like to feel like I'm

not on the track. I don't like to feel like an outsider. And so I felt like my list wasn't going to be good enough. Someone said this perfectly. We were trying to think of a name for this all week. Someone said the It's Tough Moments tier list. Oh, I love it. All of these are like afterwards, you're just like,

give this person a producer credit. That was fucking amazing. That was great. Shout out to Brian William, 1997. Shout out Brian Williams. Shout to him. If it's someone you know, then you only acknowledge them once, good friend multiple times, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if it's someone you know them. Wait, so your friends, you're like, you do the whole thing in the morning, like, what's up, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the next time you see them, you're like, ah, my bro, you do it again? Well, that seems weird. Some people come up and want to dab over. If I know them, then I'm not even worried about it. I don't even think about them.

I'll ignore them. I'll say what's up. If I have something to say, Slito says spending the night at a girl's place and your stomach starts rumbling, but it's a long way to know. All right. So it feels like the bubble guts has really like taken hold in the, in the, that is all time. So on that same thread, what about coughing in a really silent room? Like, you're in, like, a college class, and it's like a thousand people in there, and you have the coughs, and they won't freaking stop.

You got a cold room, right? The coughs or the laughs. Like, if you're in a really serious scenario and you and, like, one of your boys starts laughing, and then you can't stop, that's not really awkward. Funeral. Oh, funeral. I was at a, I was at a Hans Zimmer Candlelight concert earlier this year. off the pendulum and I absolutely could not stop laughing and it's like these four people on like

a string quartet and I am in the audience like tears streaming down my face because I expected it to be a full orchestra and then it was just four dudes out there I also expected to be real candles it was fake candles and for some reason I was like I was dying so the people I was with started dying and then it was just this like cyclical thing where we just we couldn't how did it resolve at a certain point everybody was just like got it out it got to a point where i was where like people started looking at us and i was like are we got to be serious we got to be serious but it was like tears fucking did you consider just getting up i was on the far end of the auditorium there was no getting up if i'm in that scenario and this is what i've uh being a parent has like uh attuned me to

this if the kid starts crying if you're coughing of whatever my default is instantaneous get the fuck out of there. Instantaneous. If I'm going to disrupt anything or my kid's going to disrupt anything, grab them, go. And I'm just like, eject from this situation. Yeah. I was just, I also didn't want to eject because I was laughing so hard. Probably the hardest I've laughed all year.

Like, I was like, I could not stop laughing, man. True King, 1857 says the list in people's replies have taught me I'm not as big of a weirdo as I thought. We're all awkward. Yeah, we're all awkward. It happens, it happens all time. Uh, skullface 3,000 says in an empty auditorium, cough on

purpose to assert your dominant. Show him who's boss. Oh, yeah. The professor starts speaking and you're just like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Are you all right, man? All right. You know what? It was a good one, man. I stand corrected.

It was a great idea. I feel like we executed well. We all had solid list. The fans enjoyed it. I stayed corrected. Good laughs or rare, man. I was wrong, all right? I was fucking wrong. I was wrong. First time of my life I've ever said it. Jano Smanache As good laughs are rare

Yeah Me and my boys Used always Call it Good Rolls Yeah Just fucking roll And laughing man One of my

Hardest times I've laughed In my entire life Was this scenario That Andy just brought up Was Me Me and my

Best friend Best man At the time Just somebody I kind of knew And became Friendlier with Over the years To the point

That now he's my best friend We were at a funeral For our friend And everybody was so fucking serious that it just cracked us up. Like, we could not fucking stop. Because once you start, then it just gets funnier.

It just got funnier. And we were dying. And from that moment on, we knew that our sense of humor was equally dark and the same. And we were just like, well, you're my best friend now. You can't not be friends with someone if you share a laugh like that with them. Yeah. Yeah. Afterward. It's it's all time moments. It's absolutely

fantastic. Frank, do we have any voicemails? Speaking of his life. What the fuck? That was the dude from the Simpsons. Oh, is that where Frank's thing comes from? A question aside from MMA, just to get our minds off of this a little bit. Okay.

One question, if you had to get rid of two limbs, what would they be? Would they be both hands, both feet? Would they be one and one? And let me hear what you guys think. I know one of you guys is left-handed, I believe, so would you guys, Get rid of the left hand, let me now. Thanks. I'm going one-on-one. I'm probably going one-on-one and you obviously can get a prosthetic.

Prostatic on the other. Ooh. I might go both feet and get prosthetics for the feet. Like the hands you really need. You don't need a leg? Yeah. No, no, no. I thought you were saying feet.

I got to lose the whole leg? Any limb. Lim. Do I got to lose a whole arm? Arm or leg, yeah. Well, I might go double arm then and get full-on prosthetic. You're just jacked from fucking mortal combat. I love that you're insinuating, like, living with prosthetics, it's just, like, easy street.

Yeah. I don't think, I don't, I'm going one-on-one. I just want to keep one. Which prosthetic is easier to live with? I see. The feet I could have done. No, no, it's all. Legs?

Nah, nah, no, no. I'm going double arm. Yeah, call me, I'm going to be like a fucking robot. You're keeping the legs. I'm going to put the robot flex emoji to good use. I'll go on one-on-one, for sure. Hi. Hi.

This is Cruz in Albuquerque. In L.A. Albuquerque. Go Dodgers. Go Dodgers. So first off, I'd like to thank the women that have called in since my last call. Just saying hello and letting me know that other women are out there too. I appreciate that.

Shout out. And also, I wanted to call about your guys' list from last week. Okay. The top pound for pounds, nicknames, whatever it was. Nicknames, yeah. Not many women were mentioned. Oh, good point. So, yes, I'm going there.

Karate-Hadi, I didn't mention that. Although the Karate Hottie, one of our faith here in Albuquerque, she was brought up, so that's cool. But a couple of others, the happy warrior, that was a cool name. Bug Rose, who doesn't let Doug Rose? Did we say Bar-Row? I didn't know how good a gauge page, this kind of clutter. Oh, yeah, 12-gauge. is a good one.

Boogie Women, I don't know, maybe. Bullet, Bullet Valentia. Yeah, that was cool. Overkill Hill. I would like that one. Shout out. Fighting this weekend. And then, of course, number one for me, because I'm here and also, she's amazing, the preacher's daughter.

Shut out. It is a good news. Just very wholesome. And, yeah, folly. But also I wanted to mention, who knew Girl Rilla? Really? Girl, Real-A. I didn't know that. So that was new for me. Also fighting soon.

You guys are amazing. Thank you for all the time you give us. And yeah, have a great day. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Cruz. We call. More women. We appreciate it. What's up, boys? It's J.D. from BC here. What up, J.D. from B.C.?

So I appreciate you answering my question last week. For the record, I think getting rid of Harry Potter is the only right answer. not, not, no, no, no. Which is not for me. But so I was thinking, Rick, you've been around forever, right? I mean, you're pretty much a staple in the game. Call me old. You know, you and you're playing black T's.

You're pretty synonymous in May hour going all the way back. So I was wondering, what would you say sticks out to you the most from all of your experiences alongside Ariel? Was it maybe the first time you got to host when Ariel had his kid? Maybe was it when Mayhem came in there and had to him? as freak out or that any of the awkward times or putting his mouth and just kind of leaves the in studio guests just sitting there wondering how to even respond. Anyway, appreciate the work you guys are doing.

G.C., Frank, feel free to also pitch in and let us know because, I mean, you guys are part of the team too. And, I mean, even T.C. if he's kicking around. Anyway, thanks. Keep doing what you're doing. Appreciate you, J.D. I've got to be honest. I've been doing it so long that there's not like it's kind of just felt

like a constant if that makes sense like it's like almost like hard to pick out individual moments although I will say I almost feel like

this is the best opportunity to do this I felt like yesterday was one of the best shows we've ever done and I thought Ariel was obviously super on point

but the conversation with Drichus was incredible and obviously led to so many moments that we kind of called out today the conversation with

the conversation with Kishon Davis was like almost like inspiring to me like the the way that he handled the conversation especially with the backstory of like him approaching Ariel saying I want to do it flying in by himself no PR person steps up to the plate takes accountability walks out head held high that was incredible and obviously I don't think like many people can navigate that as well as Ariel had done that so Ariel and Kishan and then Paul Heyman and Ariel chopping it up for nearly two hours like Ariel is the best at this and and this whole journey for me started with emailing him because I wanted to work with him because of what I knew about him and

what his skills were and I've never been disappointed by that. I think he's the best in the game and so it's hard to pick out individual moments but days like yesterday are the ones that I look back and go like fuck this guy's on the level yeah you kind of walk out on a high you're like oh man I can't believe we get to do this for work it's fun for me I'll never forget the the McGregor studio day in 2023, just the whole saga of like getting the call the night before and it being like, oh, yo, he's at the Rangers game. I just talked to him. Like, I think he's going to come in studio. And it's like, what? And then like the morning, it's like, nah, it's not going to happen. And then we're about to go on air. And it's like, okay, it might happen. Like, stay by the phone.

They might call you. And they're going to pull up. And then it's not going to happen. And then as we're getting ready to end the show, it's like, okay, it might happen. Like, we're just going to hang around at the studio for a few hours. And then we're hanging out at the studio. I think you, like, started driving in. I was coming in, yeah. And, like, we're sitting there having dinner. Like, we were just, like, on standby, sitting there having dinner. And then, like, Ariel's just like, oh, fuck, he's going to be here in 10 minutes.

And I was like, what? It was like, the alarms were sounding. Like, he's going. We're like, we need a graphic. We need a thumbnail. Like, I'm, like, ripping a thumbnail. Ariel was like, you got to go down and get him. I was like, oh, fuck, I got to go downstairs and get Conner and Gregor.

And, like, I go down. And, like, we had to, like, negotiate with the security at Vox. I was like, yo, there's a big name dude. coming and like we can't check everybody in he's going to have a team of 20 people we don't have time to check everyone in and they eventually like wilted to us once we told him who it was and everything and then like I go down two dudes and suits pull in like secret service they're like looking around the area and I was like hey what's up guys like I'm with the MMA hour and they're just like uh Connor will be here in three minutes I was just

like all right then they just walk out and then like four giant SUVs pull up bunch of dudes get out Seas part and then there's McGregor in a suit walking through and he's like, well it's how glad I'm Connor and I was just like I'm also Connor and then it was just a whirlwind they did the interview and then it was just like I remember like after he left

I was like sitting there and I was just like me and every were like man that went by quick dude that was just like a tornado like he literally as soon as he was there he was also gone that was one where I left and I was like holy fuck that was crazy we had already done a full show that day as well that's one I that definitely

sticks out to me for sure yeah frank anything um i remember the time that yeah i think it was for halloween that connor dressed up as a pterodactal we just we threw it together last minute and we had a tech issue and it lost audio yeah but then as far as uh i was in a studio by myself and like i could hear y'all and then you all through to me and then i couldn't hear anything and i'm just like oh fuck okay guys can't hear anything as far as awkward because it's not even my story to tell though connor you could do it as the squeaky shoes with a oh my god uh yeah so Kayla Harrison's coming in studio before the 2022 PFO championship she's like dog tired like she's been running around with her kids she was at macy's uh Thanksgiving day parade like the balloon blow up thing she's just like

she's acknowledging how tired we are and so uh there was a miscommunication box had two floors I went to the wrong floor she's upstairs waiting I go up I'm like oh I'm so sorry for making you wait like well I'll take you down right now and she's just like yeah no worries like it's all good uh i was just like busy week she's like oh so busy i'm i'm i'm super tired like i'm beat i was just like okay cool like you can kind of get the feel when someone's just like just don't really want to talk right now man like it's all good and so long walk down to the studios at the m mhm a hour and i have a pair of nikes on and it is just like squeaking like hell and like it's just me and kela walking down the hallway and it's just like

every step that i'm taking so and i'm just like so like uh thanksgivings the next I am just like, big plans for Thanksgiving. She's just like, yeah, I'm just going to eat with the kids. And it's just like, I'm just like, anything else? Like, it's just like, dead silent. Was Frank there for this? No, but like, I got there and I was just like, I was like, yeah, it was, it was bad. It was, it was so bad, yeah.

Me going to the wrong floor and then the squeaking shoes. This gave me a second to think, like, Paulo Costa cut my hair on the show. That was a pretty, fascinating one. I did host. I'm always thankful to Ariel for letting me. sit in that chair. I was the first one to kind of like sit in that chair other than him. That was significant to me and meant a lot. And so yeah, there's been great moments. Cooking with Volk. There's so many.

Like, we had to get an air fryer and a specific one that he was sponsored by. And it was like literally got it like 10 minutes before he got there. Like I'm like saying what's up to Volk like getting him from the lobby while holding like this giant air fryer. And yeah, there's been some wild moments. It's been it's been awesome. We are fortunate. We've had a really good run and I'm very thankful. The behind the scenes gets very hectic at times, like real crazy, but those are like the most fun days. Yeah. Because when it's over, you're like, man, that was crazy, huh? That was pretty wild. Totally. Boy, it's Lee, West Palm Beach, Florida. I was just listening to one of the episodes from this week

about the next title shot, RDR versus who's getting the next title shot? Is it going to be RDR or is it going to be the winner of Imova versus Kyle? And I just wanted to say I 100% agree with New York-RICs point. Okay. Chalker. I don't even remember how Kyle fights. Like, RDR has literally been putting in work. And although those other two are probably more deserving, like, I've been watching RDR,

and I'm kind of like I wouldn't mind seeing him fight against Strickus or Hamfess. So, that's all I got Actually running late for work So I'll get to work, brother Get to work, man Yeah, I'm going RDR All right, I like it I mean, Kyo is 17 and 1

If he beats Imovaub Like he'll be 8 in the UFC There's so much momentum with RDR right now, man Yeah, he hasn't fought in the octagon Since August the last year That's the problem That's a major problem It's a major problem for him

And by the way, I've said this when we were having that conversation It is not his fault at all He has been asking for fights It's not like the guy's just been, like, sitting around being like, I'm the guy. He has been asking for fights and has not been able to get them, especially because Imov is one of the only names that really made any sense, and that fight never seemed to come together until finally now. So it is unfortunate.

Hopefully he can get a big win and put himself in that position, or Imov can get a big win, and he seems inevitable for the title shot, so we'll see. But I think RDR's got some juice right now. What's up, boys, in the back? It's Olin, aka M.M.A. anomaly. I can't tell you how excited I am for you guys to have been the Bain Davis, the living legend on the show right now. Let's go. And this question's for him.

I just wanted to ask, if and when he comes back to win another season of the challenge, if he could hand pick, A, the country they go to to compete for that season, and be his partner for that season, any new threat, any old vent, who's been the Bane Davis taken to the end? Somebody. Oh. Okay, Eminem Anomily is the absolute man. Met him in Vegas during International Fight Week. Has the energy of like a Tasmanian devil. This trip. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You were somewhere. They were asking for you as well. Came up. Couldn't have been a nicer guy. Energy on 10. He was with Savjelly and all them. Yeah, I didn't see Savjali. Who makes the Tom Aspenol doll.

They were all gallivanting around Las Vegas enjoying International Fight Week. So yes, shout out the Eminem Anomaly. They were all outfitted with like MMA anomaly merch. It was good shit. Somebody clipped that out. post it, tag Ben and get his response. As a guy that knows Ben,

I feel like he'd want I don't know. I feel like you don't know enough about the challenge. Yeah, I don't know about the challenge. Boys in the back, what did you do? It's hiding again from North Carolina.

Shout out. I was calling about the USC's clamor division because last I checked that shit should have been flyweight. At least the fact is like, you know, D.C. was chanced because the heavyweight hasn't been shit and saying. And it's frankly been just horrible. Meanwhile, flyweight gives the fans what they want.

Everybody loses their goddamn mind. All they got to do is stop calling heavyweight glamour. Start saying that's the flyway division or something else. Like it's got to be something other than heavyweight because at this point we're looking at like, it's worse than women's featherway. Wow, that's it. Boys in the back more than once a week. I'm tired of having to wait until Thursday to hear you guys.

You guys have the best content on this channel by far. You guys have proven that you can interview, and I love the segments that you guys do. Hilarious, great stuff. Keep it up. We really, really appreciate that. Very, very appreciative of those comments, but you need scarcity with us.

You don't want more than one show a week. You'll get tired of us fast, I can promise you that. In reality, the glamour division of the UFC is 155, and I think it has been for years now. Forever. Heavy way being the glamour is just they're the biggest of the baddest, is the most knockouts. There was a time where it was solid. Yeah. That time is long.

Even boxing. Like, it's just like, you're most likely to see a knockout. It's the biggest guys. You can't get any bigger than this. Like, they're going to be able to beat anybody up. That's why they get the glamour. They're literally the larger than life athletes, right? Like, they are the ones that, like, when you look at, you're like, holy shit.

That's a, that's a specimen. Anthony Joshua, knocking out Francis and Gano. Yeah. This is a very pro-flyweight show, though. Oh, very, very pro. It's not 155, it might be 125. Let it be no. We absolutely love flyway.

We love the flowers. They are the best. So, boys. What's up, bro? Jacob from Denver. I was just thinking, you know, like Bruce Buffer doing the intros is like the one of the only, right? We got Connor, John Jones, and now we got Alex, right?

But since Alex lost his last fight, and it was the first time that Bruce introduced him as the one of the only. Do you think that Bruce takes that back now? Yeah. He's like not the champion and, like, he just lost his last fight and he hasn't been, like, using it on him forever? Or does Alex still get to keep the one and the only when he gets introduced against Magogamad at USC 320? So, yeah, just give me your thoughts on that. And shout out, Frank.

I want to know, Frank, have you ever played Firewood? watch. Love you boy, please. Love you, have you have you played it

Frank? I haven't played it. I think I have it in my Steam library but I haven't gotten around to playing it.

Shout to Steam. Good shit, man. Good shit. Yeah, I feel like it would be kind of

bandwagon-esque of Bruce Buffer if he changed it back. The only test case we have is Connor, right?

Connor was somebody who had lost because John Jones obviously has not lost so you don't really have an

opportunity to see what the reaction is and Connor is still the one and only now. Then it becomes a question of, is Alex

in the territory of Connor where you get it no matter what forever? I don't know, but we're going to find out. I think for the run that he went on, you can call him the one the only. For who he is, Poiton, for what he did for the sport in 2024, I think he can be the one the only.

Hey, what's up, boys in the back? This is Leviticus Appleton and Savannah, Georgia. That's a real name. That's a badass name. Savannah? I've been listening to you guys. I've been listening to Ariel Helwani. for over 10 years but

I recently stopped watching UFC and I only engage with it via commentary I want to know how rare that is

that is pretty rare in y'all's opinion because I know we don't have the data to figure it out but yeah I don't watch UFC see. I find out about fights through listening to you guys and Ariel. I'm going to call back. I'm going to try it again. This is terrible. No, no, no, no, that was fine. We got that one of the question. It has to be rare, man. I used to be obsessed with the NBA, and now I don't watch it essentially

at all, and I would never listen to an NBA podcast now. I consume wrestling this way. I don't watch wrestling. I listen to wrestling podcast to consume it. I feel like this is happening more and more. Somebody was telling me recently that they did the same thing. That's crazy. That they consume MMA through like doing this.

I do feel like there's a, like with WWE, the stories are so much more the part of it, right? Like with the NFL, it's like, yeah, there's some drama, but really you want to watch football. That's the thing. With WWE, I feel like there's a removal, right? I'm more

interested in the business of wrestling. I'm more interested in the storylines. I'm more interested in this thing. So I don't necessarily need to watch wrestling for that. I can kind of like hear people talking about it and keep up with it. For MMA, I do think it's skews still more toward NFL where it's like, if you don't watch the fights, what do you care about like hearing about Hamza versus this person? So I would say that's probably pretty unique, but I do myself do it in a certain capacity when it comes to wrestling. back. What's up, bro? I don't know.

How are you guys? This is the first time caller. She said, what's up, bro? He said, I don't know. Hammer Parsa. And you people around here call me Hammer. Hammer. Anyway, this is awkward. Anyway, I just want to say that this show went from my favorite to MMA thing to listen to,

to the my favorite thing to listen to, period. Oh, wow. Thought we were going to go to the opo. Nah, hammer nose. Hammer knows. What I see in you is what I see, like in journalism is what we see in Ilya as an MMA. You're the Iliate Seporia of MMAG. You're going to go far.

Wow. Wow. What a statement. Collectively thinks that. Anyway, just a question. Do you want, would you rather to have the best skill as an. M.A fighter, but with the worst chin, or

moderate skills with the greatest chin ever. Thank you, guys. Bye. First of all, I mean, how about you being El Madador of MMA journalism? I can't believe that. That's the highest compliment anyone's paid me. I thought we were going to go the

exact opposite. I thought we were going to say this used to be my favorite program. Now I fucking hate you guys. And Connor, you're a piece of shit. But instead, he's like, you're the fucking man. unbelievable that was that was incredibly nice of them don't think I agree but that is very nice regardless

would you rather be Luke Rockhold where you are just like a plus skills but you you can't really take the damage or moderate but you can take a wallop moderate and take a wallop because then like you you would gain a ton of fans through that yeah being a tough guy I probably I probably do the same but God when you're on and you look fucking

pretty when you're flowing and they can't touch your chin, that first option looks pretty damn good. It looks really cool. Someone said in the chat, G.C. Optoro. This is so funny because when we were leaving the Katie Taylor fight, people were outside MSG and they were like, bup, pop, pop, pop, bu, and they were like, Iliotoptoe, or Lilliatoptoe, the McGregor meme, obviously.

Oh, fuck. boys in the back Don Davis I got some big news to report the break on the show today so Frank hit it I think you would have done that breaking news

Artem Lobov yes the Russian hammer aka the goat is making his PSL debut on October 3rd at 1505 pounds you heard it here first We heard it here first, Donnie.

Thank you, brother. As I'm saying that, it has been officially reported by MMA fighters. Barely breaking news. Okay, you want some breaking news? Goathe's looking at me and saying, don't do it. Breaking news, this is real. You don't need to hit it again, Frank. We're selling the breaking news segment.

Martin Boudet, yes. That Martin Boudet is coming to the PFL. So we haven't matched them up yet, but... Is that actually breaking news? We don't know. I don't know if that's true. We're getting our sponsors, the ducks in a row. Do I be able to pay the man his money?

Excited for that. This is the first one where it's like, I actually don't know if this is. I understand Rick really liked the walking simulator. I was trying to think of what other games have I played that are in that sort of play style. And how could I have forgotten, it's technically a game, Silent Hill P.P. You know, I understand for playable teaser. was an interactive teaser for the video game Silent Hills, which was canceled. It was an installment in the Silent Hill series.

So normally there would be a video and image as a teaser for an upcoming game. But now, they went with Kajima Productions. They created a video game to tease this upcoming video game, which, you know, since has been canceled and PC has been taken off the PlayStation store. But the gameplay is a loop. All you are doing is walking through a terrifying four-style hallway and a home. And the only way you can control the character is by walking or looking. So you've got to solve these puzzles. You've got to dodge these ghosts.

It is absolutely terrifying. I encourage you to look it up on YouTube and give it a go. So that's going to be it. Enjoy the breaking news. Thanks. See you guys next time. Triple D, man. Thank you.

An absolute legend, that guy is. If he signs it to the PFL, that would be something. Yeah, I mean, you heard it here first. If he actually signed with the PFL, would they have to credit this show for the breaking news? Yes, they would. Yes, they absolutely would. What's up, boys in the back?

John Olive here, calling from Longmont, Colorado. Yeah, what's up, John? Long is good quality. Yeah, it's like a weird, like, a weird, like, Like, tinny, but still clear. Alongside Ariel each and every single day. Appreciate you, man. I just did the Ariel.

Ariel does this when he's talking to Frank about sound. He's like, it's like, uh... I'm simply wondering what the story behind Frank being mysterious is. Has this always been a thing? Did he accept the role knowing that he just never wanted to be on camera, so on and so forth? Are you simply one of those people that just likes being mysterious online for some reason? like it's not that serious in my opinion but at this point it's your gimmick so keep on going along with it yeah that's basically all i'm wondering hope you guys continue to have a great show

wish you guys nothing but the best in life each and every single one of you guys are awesome and yeah dooses you're the man what a great what a great message johnny olive my guy so he wants to know the lore frank are you going to tell him yeah i mean i think i've said it a couple times indescribably ugly idea it's just the disfigurement after the chemical burn um anyway no in all reality i started on the mma hour with aerial sometimes i needed to communicate with him directly to his headphones and he for some reason is the first talent i worked with that had this confusion as to whether or not what i was saying to him and his headphones was going live to air or not so then i explained to him no it is not going live to air he then

asked if it could. I said, sure, it can. He asked me if I was comfortable with that. I said sure. So then I started communicating with him live on air and he would refer to me as Frank and someone wrote in on Twitter or maybe it was on the nose. Like, who is this mysterious Frank that you keep talking to? Because there was no explanation. It was just a voice that started showing up. So then we just rolled with it. It's the fantastic four meme. And Ariel read that and was like, say that again? Exactly. Who's this mysterious, Frank?

But then it got to the point where like we kind of lost the origin of this. So I started to fear that maybe if I got seen, I would be like off the team at this point because it's like, oh, the gimmick's over, Frank. We don't really need you. You know, there's a dime a dozen audio. Let me be extremely clear, Frank. If you are seen, you are fired. Yeah, see, I figured this one. So then I had the conversation with these three gibronies, and they were like,

no, no, we always thought it was that you just didn't want to be seen. I'm like, that's not where this fucking came from. Okay, you say that, but like you're also like insanely defensive, like I said, like your wife's first name one time, and you were like, I tell you, I'm acting the part of being offended by it. But, I mean, now it's gone on. Acting the part behind the scenes off the air. If you say her name one more fucking.

No, all joking aside, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to do the K-fabe. It's all fun in games. When it gets weird, when people are, like, taking it as a personal challenge, like, go find me on the internet and send me pictures of myself. Like, it's no longer fun when that happens. And, like, I'm not secretive. Like, I don't, I don't give a shit. So anyway.

They're like, they're like, we got you, Frank. And you're just like, I don't give a fuck, but don't do this. It's weird. Right. So, anyway, I hope that answers your question. And thank you for the call. You say the first initial of Frank's brother's name. And he's like, dude, what the fuck?

You insinuate that they live on the same planet as us. What are you doing? And then Frank will casually be like, yeah, so I was at Connors' house at 1, 2, 3, Main Street in the city he lives in. Postal Code XXX8. The Frank Doxing is legendary. The Frank Doxing, everybody. Someone's got to do it. Frank has docked many of us. Hey, boys in the back.

How are you doing, guys? This is Noor from Kazakhstan via Naperville. Hopefully you guys remember me. Are you guys planning to come to Chicago for U.S. I thought who's going to say come there. Please come to my house. Free staying, free hospitality, free food. Do we fly out?

Kazakhstan. All in Chicago? Especially for you guys, I'm ready to take it 10 days off. 10 days all for us. He's ready to start right now. 13 till August 23rd. Oh, we stay. We stay after.

Oh. Check your DM. G.C. Shout out to you guys. Love your content. Have a wonderful day. Who would be going to Naperville, Illinois? Someone in the chat. Roger Hines, 462 says

Naperville is very comparable to Kazakhstan. No, it's a bit disrespectful. Good friend of the show, Tessa Hirsch is from Naperville. Her family still lives there. I'm trying to go to Kazakhstan. I don't need to go to Chicago. I am trying to go to Kazakhstan.

then, where I'm really trying to go, and I see she loves the gloves in the YouTube chat right now. Oh shit, for real? I'm trying to go to Georgia. Yeah. I'm trying to go to fucking Georgia. That clip earlier got me thinking. My proposal to you, and just bear in mind all these ideas that get thrown around.

There is no convincing that needs to be given to me on my part. It is everyone else. You need somebody else to buy it. All I need is one person to go with me. Yeah, yeah. The idea that I threw out, Georgia. Marab 320, U.S.C. 320. Marob beats Corey Sandhagen. He does his parade in Georgia. Boys in the back fly in. Kinkali, uh, Kachapuri, orange wine out of the horn. Okay, here's the, here's the thing. Do we say we're doing this

and then we swerve and we end up in Atlanta, Georgia and we pretend that we made a mistake and then we're just in Atlanta, Georgia and don't go to Georgia? As much as I would love to do that, I actually want to go to Georgia. I'm trying to pull up to Tbilisi, bro. Yeah, Tbilisi sounds pretty great. Boys in the Blyssie? Drop the T in the S? Boys in the Blyssie or what?

Fuck. I've got three kids. It's so hard, but I don't know. Lazy bed says we can hit the hair transplant on the way. All right. So let's fly into Turkey. Snag a quick transplant. And then roll on up to Tbilisi.

The lag on the plant? Yeah, what's up with that? I'm big on abbreviation. I figured that wasn't the best abbreviation All right Yeah, thank you, Frank They save us Okay, alright

This is the MNMA family What's up? Shout out to Gorgonzola To Frank and Frank Said out to Gorgonzola Of course, my soul's at the swan Andy Leo, leo, leo, leo, lo.

Did bro call the phone and then throw it to the back? I haven't finished listening to fucking this is one of our worst qualities this is terrible already he's with this bullshit I'm with the bullshit right head to head

doesn't determine who's better yes I'm with you on this panda up and down and they lose you mean to talk that if a person is not better than the other person what are you talking about

someone says the phone is in the trunk calling Avery 9-9-1-8 says that plan on the back end did some heavy lifting Seek help, honey, seek help All right, I'm spending You know, Rick G says bro called on a cup and string Oh, that was very low quality. Let me just...

Panda, I hear you, right? No, I mean, this is very easy to explain. does it mean they were better on that night? Certainly. Does it mean they are a better overall fighter? No. As we know, styles make fights. It is significant. It is data. It is something that you have to take into consideration.

As an example, would you say that Matt Serra is a better fighter than GSP? Well, no, I mean, he beat him on that night. So certainly Matt Sarah is a better fighter than GSP. It is not always the case that a head-to-head win. Now, by the way, that is a very extreme example, right? That is the most extreme example you can get. You can say, like, certainly we know that not to be true, but it is fair to say that somebody can be better on that night and not be a better overall fighter, which is why I think that the idea of the rankings that topology has come up with that, consider your last six fights, kind of make sense to me. Now, granted, there will be problems with people saying that that algorithm is not the exact correct one.

Certainly understand that as well. But it is a body of work. It is your career is not boiled down to what did you do in your last fight. and therefore head-to-head wins cannot be the only metric. It is a metric, but it cannot be the only metric. So I hope I have explained that to you. I hope I've sufficiently satisfied your curiosity. No, beating somebody does not mean automatically that you are a better fighter than them.

Yo, boys in the back. What's good, bro? It's jammer. Jammer. No question this week, but I just wanted to throw a shout out to the boy, Frankie. Shut out, Frank. I know it's kind of become a meme on the show. to kind of be a dick to Frank, you know,

shit on his list, shit on pretty much everything that he does. Great list of it, by the way. I feel like it's time to give him some genuine praise because he's a boy. His drops have been fucking hilarious lately. The drops have been on boy. I piss my pants laughing every time he hits James Tihuna. I think it's fucking hilarious.

It's the all the time. And the D1 Glazer drop is great, dude. But, yeah, anyways, just wanted to give Frank some love for a change. I feel like it's, you know, it's all fun in games to make fun of them. But the show wouldn't run without Frank. He's like the Fred Norris of the show. So, yeah, love you, Frankie. Oh, Ariel would love to hear that.

Shut up, Frankie. Shout out to Frank. Just don't cash that check until Friday, if you don't mind. Shout to Frank. The drops have been on point. D-1 Glazer and James the Huna. Absolutely unbelievable. Shout to the Honor Jordan.

Shout to Andy. Shout out to everyone behind the scenes. None of this happens without one person dropping out. It doesn't happen. 1,000% super well said, and shout out to Jimmer for calling out, Frank. but as you said, everybody who works on the show, even down to the people that are not in this immediate room, control room, the Ben Hefner's,

the other people, the Spencers, everybody who works on this, we love and adore you and it doesn't happen without you. The day that Frank was super sick and not talking and just hitting drops was one of the all-time Frank performances. It was elite level shit.

You're trying to tell me something right now? That you should not talk and only do drops, yes. Exactly. That's correct. But James DeHoono will live in infamy, man. T1-1-Glazer is great because I have a how jarring it is. It's so loud. The beat in the back

and the way that he says it, it's so good. But the James Dahuna, I go back and watch that clip on a regular basis. It's so fucking good. Is James Tahuna? Remember he asked

what are some moments from the show? Is that the one? Is that the one when we're 95 going to be like, remember that fucking James Dao? The funniest part about that is in the back.

I was dying laughing and everyone else is kind of like in their own world like focusing on their work. And I was like, he's not talking about Tyson Pedro. or he's talking about Tyson Pedro and I'm fucking James Tahuna

and like obviously Ty is just like the fucking joint and he's like what are you talking about dude an arrow is so confident it's just so fucking good man I can hear the exact like accent the exact way he says James Tahuna in my head

forever so good what up Blake Brett from Nebraska what's up B shout out Zach Taylor I feel like I I feel like we may have used that one

Oh today's the day Oh I hope not Duplicates Are back Bad luck Students are back I'm back at work Yeah

I'm dealing with the kids Summer's over bro Making a difference or whatever Yay Keep teachers In your thoughts and prayers This week Next week

As all of us get back to work Thanks Sounds like he's walking to his death He's on death level right now. Oh, at least your Thunder got a title this year. Yeah, I mean, we should be celebrating. It had a big summer. It was the summer of breath, bro.

I know he came up short on the list of the athletes, and it sounds like you might have duplicated one. G.C. just called you out. Or maybe his wife, said Zach Taylor. Maybe. But, yeah, shout out to all the teachers out there. That is not an easy gig, and it sounded like he, in the past calls, it sounded like he gets roasted by those kids.

So we appreciate you and salute to all the teachers out there. Salute, man. I know several. now it's kind of crazy being at this age but I have many friends that work as teachers and it is not an easy profession so boys in the back this is Jordan from Sarasota Florida

shout for Sarasota first of foremost I want to say thank you for everything you guys do you guys put on a great show every week shout out Frank your list of MMA nicknames was one of the most absurd things I've ever heard but he didn't present himself

I'd love to pound some bruskees and hit the Benjamin bun with you sometime. But I got to take Go Gators. Oh, shit. I'll have a big flashback to the plan. I'm a huge reality TV fan. I love Survivor.

It's one of my favorites. I feel like this is going to be me. Seeing every episode of every season. And I wanted to get into the challenge. I love the conversation you guys had with Ben last week. Thank you. That was fun. Shut up, Ben.

To the challenge is Wikipedia page. and that she is intimidating as fuck there are 41 seasons plus two or three other spin-off shows so my question is where do I start watching the challenge should I start from season one episode one do I start where

PJ starts hosting the show should I jump around to the best seasons let me know what you think do you at the top what do you think just watch this season just watch this season if you like it then you can go back but I would say just watch watch the up-to-date stuff watch this

you if you want to get a little more context for it and feel like you can't jump in I'm a completionist like if I want to do something it's why I hate the Lord of the Ring so much because if I have to do it I'm going to have to do all of it I would start I would start yeah they're too long too much walking if I wanted to start the challenge I personally would start with episode one and watch it all the way through and just dedicate real world season one no the challenge season one road rules season one no no not those. But you need the backstory to appreciate the challenge. No, you don't because the challengers come on and they form their own identities on the show. If you were not willing

to dedicate that amount of time, which is completely reasonable and I don't know would understand and you probably should not because it is so much fucking time as you can see from the Wikipedia page, there are plenty of good lists out there of some of the best seasons of the challenge, Inferno, fresh meat, double agents was a good one, dirty 30 was fantastic. There's a lot of, like, lists of these out there. Go look for some of those. Look for the list that have like consistency gauntlet, Inferno,

fresh meat, the ones that are consistently on the top list, and watch a few of those. You'll get the prime CT shit. You'll get the prime Johnny Banana shit. You'll get the prime Laurel and Cara Maria and all the character shit. And then watch this one and shout out to Ben the Bain Davis and cheer him on. Colt 1256 says, Bro said start season one of a 40 season show, but don't watch

three movies. Yeah, because one's good and one's boring. Oh, my God. Not that much walking in the challenge. Yeah, I can't, I just can't acknowledge it anymore. Just action. I just can't act like it's a real statement. Pure action.

Hey, boys, my back. Sammy, here? Oh, Sammy. What's up in Sweden? Just watching Hard Knocks at the moment. Mm. Go Bill. Oh, for the Bill's.

Loving it. What do you guys think if it's going to hard knocks, It's still the Hard Knocks UFC champions So you kind of see them train Like the whole training game Yeah, the whole camp

Yeah What they get up to you Yeah Just follow them into They do a hard knock A hard knock A lot of UFC champions It'd be cool man

Let me start Some guys do it on the Oh boys Have a great show Thank you Sammy Appreciate you Sammy Before we answer the question Do you still watch Hard Knock

No. Me neither. And I feel like there's certain series that do this like behind the scenes. After the first couple, it becomes so hard to keep the consistency that they inevitably fall off. As an example, haven't watched Embedded in 10 years. Haven't watched Hard Knocks in 10 years. 24-7 like was fantastic, but it did start to fall off.

Countdown. These behind-the-scenes things have like a kind of a shelf life. And I wonder how long this would even go. But I was curious if you're still watching Hard Knocks because I haven't watched it in Not only that, you see you haven't watched Embedded in 10 years, but the thing about Embedded is it comes out the week of, and I'm going to watch the card that's Saturday. So I get to see, like, behind the scenes, cool stuff happening throughout the week, and it's a bunch of different fighters that are fighting on the card. So, like, to me, that's entertaining, and plus it's so digestible, you could sit down on Friday and watch all five episodes in, like, less than an hour. Whereas, like, no offense of the bills, what do I care about the bills? Like, why do I need to see the intricacies of the bills? Like, I don't know if it's targeted for their fan. There was a time where Hard Knocks, no matter who it was. fucking must see. But I guess that was because there was just a lack of that content now. There was a lack of that content.

And also, I don't think people knew what to avoid. Like, you didn't know what was going to get you in trouble. And so you just shoot it and be like, holy fuck, this is great content. As an example, that Roku, was it Roku or Tooby show that they did with the UFC where it was like, yo, Al Jemaine Sterling is getting fucked right here. And they show it. And now it's like, we'll never do that again. We didn't know those things. Embedded, had more shit that was actually.

actually like kind of like interesting now it's just like all haircuts and all the other dumb shit that they that they show I don't if they if somebody were to truly have a full camp documented and it was like behind the scenes and not like a ton of stuff cut out I think it'd be

fucking fascinating yeah like I would be extremely interested in that who would be a fun one I mean obviously Iliot Toporio would be like incredible Alex Pereira just to see the work that that goes into a championship camp would be incredible to watch Hamzat just because the training has to probably be fucking nuts

for somebody like him there's probably quite a few guys I'd like to see but Hamzat's probably number one for me because I just can't imagine what training sessions are like with that guy I think Taboria would be one for me just like the professionalism and like how serious

he takes it all. Can't go wrong. Howdy fellows is Charles from Charleston just finished up that pole Heyman interview. Damn that was epic I'm just curious. Who is is the most compelling individual in combat sports for y'all pound. Damn, Paul Heyman's up there for me.

Good, good shit. Anyway, cheers. Paul Hayman's good, compelling? Like, Chale is always good to listen to talk to. Eddie Hearn is always very good whenever he gets on the mic. And then any of these just, like, huge name guys that don't talk that often, Hamzot, I guess Ilya talks a decent amount, but like these dudes that aren't in front of the mic a ton, is

is always fascinating to hear from. I'm trying to think who's my number one at the last. Gift of Gab, Chale and Eddie. Yeah, Eddie Hearn is a fucking... Eddie Hearn is fucking on 24-7. The brilliance of the Eddie Hearned, Paul Heyman, when Paul Heyman sits down, you know what you kind of know what you're in for, right?

You know that, like, he's going to take you on a journey. He's an incredible storyteller. What he's able to weave together, and we saw that with him with Ariel yesterday, you kind of know, like, okay, this guy's about to go some places, some a little bit real, a little bit cave, but he's going to take you on this long journey and explain something to you

and you're just going to get invested. The brilliance of Eddie Hearn is almost like the opposite, which is like, ask him anything. And in 30 seconds, he's going to be able to like get you to believe what he's going to say. But it's not going to be like very complicated. It's going to be this like quick kind of answer. And he's just so charming he gets you. There's like so many like different dynamic personalities. Chale son and there's maybe more of that like Paul Heyman's storyteller. Who is the one that like I'm just completely compelled by at the moment? Okay, sneaky guys, Craig Jones, love interviews with him. Aspinall, because when Aspenall speaks, he's saying something.

Yeah. He's not coming on to just be like, yeah, I'm doing good, man. Had eggs for breakfast. Like, he's coming on to like. He's also vulnerable. He's vulnerable, and he's going to say something that has implications on the world of MMA. God, I love if Ariel answer this question. Who's like the guy that you can't wait to talk to you?

Justin Poria, I love hearing from. Tom might be my answer right now honestly because he has such a fascinating story there's so much to talk to him about but he still has that level of vulnerability that you need to maintain because when you start to feel like you can't like you can't penetrate that defense

you don't get real answers out of people and Tom is still kind of like an open wound Tom like tells it how it is and you can kind of feel that coming through he's probably my answer at the moment Connor Ben's pretty good on the mic. Connor Ben is Connor Ben and Eubank together is like the

You know what? Yeah. Those are probably the guys. Shout out Clarissa Shields. That is all of them. All right. Any super chats, Frankie. Also, thank you to everyone

for sending in voicemails. We absolutely love that. Yeah, please. This was a really good one today. This has been a fun show, man. This has been a fun show. For an Apex card, I've had a blast. Sorry, I'm late, guys.

I appreciate you all. Appreciate you, Josh. You're right on time, baby. Is Hamzod overlooking DDP by eyeing next fights? shout to Sammy from Sweden It's a question

He's a chance man He's talking about He's going to walk through this dude Where DDP's giving him all the flowers The only thing I'll say is like you said Right Is Iliot Toporia looking past his opponent People ask that

And then he goes out there and does that Homs out to this point Has been able to always do it So it's kind of like You don't know until you know I don't know But I'm interested to find out And DDP will make him pay if he is

I'm loving the challenge Never watched before this season Will you do a watch along for the finale with Ben. 9 p.m. on a Wednesday or whatever the fuck. Maybe, no, maybe we have him on. I don't know. We'll figure it out. I don't know if people are going to love a challenge watching. Especially if Bain is, I mean, we know that Bain is going to be in the championship,

but in the off chance that he is not on the finale, it'd be kind of awkward. If MTV will let us use the broadcast within the stream, then we'll do it. The Hawani Vision? Yeah. If the UFC switches to PLEs, what happens to fighters, It's a very interesting question. If the UFC switches to PLEs, what happens to fighters' pay-per-viewpoints? Did he send it twice? Yeah, he says it twice in the same point.

Oh, he says it twice. It's a very interesting question. I guess you use the model of WWE. What might happen is maybe the fighters will get paid more. Maybe the fighters will, like, if you can't, you can't tell Connor McGregor, hey, we're going to pay you the same amount, but there's no pay per viewpoints. You couldn't possibly do that because he knows how much. you can make on pay-per-view, you might have to just renegotiate deals after that point

and just be like, yeah, I'm going to, now, the only fighters that get pay-per-view points is the champions, or like an exception like a Connor McGregor, you're not really dealing with a lot of people. So most of the contracts don't really get affected, don't need to be renegotiated. You may just have to pay the top stars a little bit more upfront to offset what they would have made on pay-per-view. But most of the champions aren't like benefiting hugely from this profit sharing on the pay-per-views because as we talked about earlier today, the paper views are down, and the number of paper views that are

making, like, massive money is not as high as it once was. But it's a very accurate and interesting question. They will figure it out, though. They would have to figure it out, and they would. Who's your top five to become three-division champion in the UFC? Oh, shit.

You have to make a top five. I like it. Let's see a real double champ these days. I guess Elia is that... Ilya would have been Islam, if he can pull it off, what one 100% have been. Triple champion. Hamza has the potential to because of where he's at at 185, being able to go around to 170

and being able to go up to 205. I feel like it's easiest at the lower weight classes because the gaps between weights are smaller. So like a guy like Ilya, if he could have gotten down to 35, which it doesn't seem like he could have, that would have made more sense. Is Marab?

I was just going to, that was true. I was able to do like 125, 145. If he could, Marob would be a pretty good answer. all right let's go marab and these are all these are all just becoming a triple champion

it's like near it's like near impossible uh ilia you'd have to put up on the list um hamzat hamzat marab alia

Islam like but like he couldn't go up to 185 Ali and others been talking about it as if it's real all begrudgingly but again

uh like dracasas can't go down to 170 Yeah, Dreykis would be hard That's the thing It's hard at the higher And then just like fifth Alex Brera Does one last trip down to 185

And then goes to heavyweight? Oh yeah No, no, no No, let's just consider Triple Champ Like getting three belts You don't have to necessarily get it at the same time Oh then I would put Alex Pereira one Alex for sure

Because he just needs to get heavyweight Yeah, that And then those other I would go Alex Ilya Hamzat Marab Islam Something like that makes sense, yeah There's the five. Yeah.

Best guess that. It's hard. It is, fuck it. Like, it seems downright impossible. Yeah. If someone successfully does it, it will be the most impressive thing we've seen in the MMA. Newark, Rick. Thank you for watching my video on the Curse of the Legendary Polish Power.

I think I'm on to something. Shout out to Hanashi. Shout to Hanashi. He tweeted me earlier today. He did, like, a, like, unsolved mysteries, like, investigative breakdown talking about the the hangman row. that Jan Blahovic has talked about that has given him the legendary Polish power.

Yeah. It was very well produced as Hanashi's videos all tend to be. Shout out to you. I'll retweet that later so that other people can see it as well. So it'll be on my ex. But yeah, shout out to you. That was the last one. I thought you were going to say something,

so I got a mouth full of water there. Almost choked on it. Almost went down the wrong. Are you all right, man? You good? We would have really had something. had something muggly on her hands. I'm so sorry.

All right. That's it for today's episode of the boys in the bag. God damn, they hit that. Shout out, shout out, shout out, shout out. Shout out. Shout out. Thank you so much to everyone who called in left voicemails and super chats. Thanks so much for watching.

We really appreciate you guys. UFC Apex 109 this weekend and then next weekend. The big one. Chills. Chills are ready. Homsop versus DDP, UFC 319. We will break that. down all in depth next week tomorrow watch the crack uh pizzi will take you into the weekend

and then monday we're right back at it week after week after week uh but that'll do it for us here see you next week thanks for watching drop a light