The Ariel Helwani Show - Major MMA promotion shake-up, Scott Coker returns, Colby Covington retires | The Craic

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Petesy Carroll, Chuck Mindenhall, and Ben Fowlkes are back on The Craic. Following Scott Coker’s announced return to MMA, the crew discuss the future of emerging promotions and what it could mean for industry-leading UFC (05:18). One of those promotions is MVP. Attention turns to what the company’s record-breaking numbers actually mean given its Netflix collaboration (43:43). Colby Covington has hung up the MMA gloves. They reflect on the timing of the retirement, just one month out from the UFC White House card (49:50). Another recent annoucement is the return of Conor McGregor. Did the UFC fumble the reveal of his comeback? (58:15). One fight flying under the radar is Oleksandr Usyk vs. Rico Verhoeven in Giza. The lads preview the crossover matchup (01:02:10). After a quick preview of PFL Brussels (01:10:30), the boys close the show by answering your Super Chats (01:21:35).

It's Friday, ladies and gentlemen. How are you all doing? It's me, Pizzi Carroll. It's the crack. Hello, crackheads. How are you this eve? This afternoon, I guess, if you're in America. Good morning if you're in the one true time zone.

The mountain area, of course, which is Ben Folks kind of beat. But a bit of a weird weekend. We've got two guys boxing beside the pyramids of Geiza. Geiza. Not too sure which one it is. We've got some big PFL cards in Brussels, but we've also got a lot of activity going on in the MMA space. Scott Coker just reared his head and said,

I'm back, baby. This, of course, on the back of all of the conversations about MVP, MMA, is there new vibrancy in these MMA waters? Are there new options for fighters all over the world with not just MVP, but now Scott Coker? and the working title Strike MMA, which we learned from Aril Hohani yesterday. We've got a lot to talk about. Chuck Mellenhall's wrote a wonderful column about Colby Covington and his tragic comedy, as he put it,

given that he's retired a month before the White House event, which was his mecca, as far as Chuck Mennon Hall is concerned. And we're also going to talk about the obstacles for MVP MMA to pull off this 12-a-year situation that Nikisa Badarian told Ariel Hohani all about on Wednesday's show. Without further ado, let me introduce the gentleman, Chuck Mendenhall, then folks, two of the greatest of all time. Welcome back to the show, guys. How we all doing?

I think it's Geyser, right? Is that right? Geyser. Please continue saying Geyser. Like Liza Menelli. I will say whatever you tell me to say, guys. So if you're joking about the guysa, gaysa, which one? Use that one, Bitsy.

You should use Geyser. What's up, Ben? Look at this guy. We were doing it over-under, and he showed up about two minutes before we went live. I'm here. I'm here. He is here. He's always here.

By this point, we know what it is. We all know what we have to do here. We know what our roles are. Pizzi shows up with a mustache. It's a little bit of a curveball for me. There's something about that mustache that says, do you know why I pulled you over? but that also says not allowed within 200 feet of a school

it's walking that fine line it looks like a little wild animal crawling out of his nostrils or something you know it's cool I like it looks good you see that guy you see a guy with that mustache walking up to you and you already are like no man sorry I don't have a cigarette

you can bum I have my own cigarettes okay I don't like it needs both so here's what happened right So I had a bit more growth going on. And I went into the barber today. And he was like, do you want me to have a look at that thing you've got going on there? And I said, go ahead, mate.

He trimmed it all up. And I was walking down the road then. And I caught a glimpse of myself. Do you want them to kind of a shop store windows? And I was like, whoa. That is, that is maybe too much mustache. And I asked Elaine, I've asked Andy, and they both seem to say like you're right there on the edge anymore. Right.

And you got to have to just get rid of it. This is you fresh from the barbershop? This is it. This is as good as it. I mean, your hair and everything. This is, you went to the barber. This is what it's supposed to look like. This is the best that's ever.

You, like, this is, uh, this is the best that can look. This is the pretty much as good as I can look ever. This is fascinating to me. Yeah. That this is you fresh out just being like, all right. The look is on point right now. It's going to decree. I didn't say that.

I did not say that. I said, this is as good as I can look. This is it. I did not say I'm fresh to death or whatever the hell you said there, right, Ben? This is just the situation we're in, okay? No, I'm jealous of even the concept of what must go on conversationally in a Dublin barbershop because it's got to be incredible. It's got just the witticisms, the sweet burns on each other.

The amount of times somebody will use some sort of like colloquial expression that involves piss for some reason. A can of it. A can of it. The piss. boiling, taking the piss, all the, like, it must, it must just be a great time, just to be a fly on the wall. That's the kind of barbershop I can see. You just go in there, sit there, read the racing form, and just soak up the culture and the conversation. It's, do you think maybe that the mustache is a prank that the barber was playing on me?

He's like, yeah, it looks great. Off you go. The bubble's over. The minute you leave. You walked out of there. They watched you go, maintained a respectful silence until you got around the corner. and then they said, oh, can you believe it? There he goes.

Look at the state of him. Pete's in. That is what they'd say as well. But luckily, okay, we have a lot more to talk about other than this beautiful caterpillar I've got growing above the lip here. Scott Cogar boys, he's back. And Ariel O'wanney gave the boys in the back a little bit of info on what we can expect from Scott Coker's latest venture.

And we have a video for all you beautiful people. Let's have a listen. Scott Coker's been working on this for a while. He's been working on this since before the year started. I'm not trying to come on here and being like, oh, I knew about this, but I was sworn to secrecy off the record, can't touch it, don't look into it, all these things and more. He's getting his familiar band back together, so to speak. There's a lot of people who he worked with in the Strike Force and Bellator days that he is, that he's putting together to join him in this venture. some have already joined him.

Some may have very recently worked for other organizations. And so this is a sort of band back together type of vibe, type of sentiment. He does have some pretty powerful players behind him. He's raised $60 million, as was noted in the press release that came out earlier today. He's got a lot of television or ex-television exec type of people behind him. Perhaps most notably to MMA fans, Kevin K, who was for a very long, time the president of Spike TV and who was the president of Spike TV when they signed the UFC way back when Ultimate Fighter 2005. A lot of you know that story. And so he's on this board as

well and he's a part of the investment group. They don't have a name, a sort of like placeholder working title name, if you will. You can actually even see it at the very bottom of the press release if you're a media member out there who got it. And the emails are all at strike MMA. Now, obviously, Scott Coker's original claim to fame was strike force. He can't use the term strike force, but strike MMA. I was at, I asked if that was the official name. I was told no, but it's sort of like the working title, if you will. That could obviously change. They're not planning on putting on events in 2026. They're hoping to do so in 2027. They don't have a TV deal just yet. Obviously, you need distribution. You need a rights deal. You need all these things and

more to be a successful entity. And here's me, Roland, the great Ariel O'Annie speaking about Scott Coker's latest venture, only to find out that Mr. Ben folks has an article that's live right now on Uncrowned, where he talked to Scott Coker, the tournament, which Ariel was just about to get into there, heavily criticized the tournament usually in MMA formats. Ben, tell us what you know. What did you find out from speaking to Scott Coker about what this venture will be, or plans to be. Yeah, I talked to him yesterday and kind of my main question that I wanted to get into

was why are you coming back now? Why do you want to go diving back into MMA? You'd think after Scott Coker has lived several lives in MMA at this point. You know, we've all watched that from the Strike Force and Strike Force itself lived a couple different lives, having that get bought out by the UFC's parent company and shut down a period of time there where Scott Coker's, was under a non-compete and just sort of sitting around technically working for the UFC. But as he described it later to my podcast co-host, Chad Dundas, playing a lot of angry birds. You know, just sort of, because it's like they were selling them, you can't do anything. And then showing back up and Bellator trying to turn Bellator into a different version of itself,

you know, that gets sold to the PFL. And now I kind of thought Scott Coker would take his money and ride off into the sunset. and to have him be like, I'm back, I'm going back into this business. I was sort of like, why are you doing this to yourself? After everything you know about the way the fight business works, what makes you want to get back into it? And so we talked a little bit about that. People can read the Q&A that's up there now. One of the things that I thought was interesting that he said, because I kind of was just like, look, my main questions are, is there enough talent out there?

Is there enough unsigned talent? This is kind of the conversation we were having about MVP, right? like especially in terms of what's next after a successful debut show. Are there enough fighters out there that people care about who aren't already under contract somewhere? Where do you get the bodies, especially bodies that people care about? And also, is this a tricky time to be getting into a new MMA venture? Because I would have said six months ago, you know, there's a little more space in the market.

Now you have MVP MMA comes out. You know, we'll talk about later. I don't want to step on the notes. But come on, you know, they don't. they're a new player in the space people are excited about and it seems more it seems like there's less room to operate less of an open niche now than there was a few months ago and scott cocker's going to take on it was like we want to do something a little different he also said there's something missing from mima right now and he even said he's like i don't know if i could even put my finger on it but you get a sense that there's the excitement that people used to have for it is missing a little bit now. There's a disturbance in the force. That's how he put it. And I was like, yeah, I do hear that from people. I hear that criticism launched. Now, whether he has the thing that's going to bring it back, I don't know, but it did seem like, at some level at least he was

accurately assessing a mood that you hear and that you feel a little bit in MMA these days. So it'll be interesting to see what he comes. Especially to have announced this now. And I said, you know, when are we going to see the first event? He was saying basically beginning of 2027, which is really not that far off. You go from something that doesn't really have an official name structure, all that kind of stuff yet. And to think that, you know, we're going to see the first fist flying in this new promotion in like, you know, January or February, 2027. That means a whole lot of stuff has to happen very soon. But at least it's, it'll be interesting to see what happens here.

If you don't mind, like, Chuck, can you, can you explain, like, Scott Coker for a lot of people, maybe towards the end there with Bellator, he was not the guy that was introduced to the MMA world with, well, you know, much before Strike Force, but most prominently with Strike Force. Like, what was the magic that he had back then? Because it is one of those things. Like, even when this MVP card was coming along, everybody was comparing the energy to something similar to Strike Force as what they were aiming for. How good was Coker as a promoter at the height of his power? I mean, he was, he was not Dana White. You know, he was more of a guy who, you know, you would talk to him. He would always kind of downplay, which is probably something he had to learn to get out of because he would say like, he would ask him something about the future, which you should have kind of an idea of what's going to happen. He'd be like, we're going to double back around in a couple of weeks and ask me in a couple of weeks. It was always kind of like the dangling carrot was, you're not even sure if it was a real dangling carrot.

But a lot of the events, you know, that they put on struck me. I know I'd been to at least one or two that Ben was at as well, the one in Cincinnati, I remember hanging out at, but there was, yeah, yeah, that was,

some of it, some of it was, I don't remember, but, but, but, but it was kind of like, they put together these one-off shows.

That's why the, the MVP, the initial one, felt a little like strike force, because you're almost like, I don't know what any of it means. I don't know if this is just, we're going to watch these guys fight and that's it for all of them or,

you know, it's, strike force had a roster, but a lot of times they were not like, there was no idea, idea if, you know, Loller was fighting Diaz or something, what was behind that? Like, what, is there a guy waiting for them? You never kind of knew. That was, that was the difference between the UFC. You almost think about it now. And when he says that it's missing something,

it's almost like if you did kind of run back the strike force idea, which didn't work in the, I mean, it worked fine enough, right? But it didn't work against the UFC and the UFC because they understood you always breadcrum to the next event, right? You, I wonder in the MVP sense, So like, does it matter anymore? It's almost like the original strike force structure, the way that they did things, would kind of not bother people now. I think it would be fine for them to just put together big events and, you know, and that kind of thing.

Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I do feel like he's probably on to something. We touched on this with the MVP kind of coming in and maybe adding a little bit of a soul, like something back to the sport that we haven't seen in a little while. Like the UFC has kind of just gone into this very corporate and, you know, dead feeling. especially with the APEC shows. I think he's right, you know, that the fan base, we've seen it as seen it. We know, like, what real enthusiasm behind the sport looks like. And right now, it does lack that.

So I think if he's coming in with like, hey, we want to correct this, it'd be interesting to see what they come up with. Yeah, I mean, one of the things he mentioned to me was the Strike Force heavyweight Grand Prix, where he was, you know, he's talking about doing tournaments, but not in the PFL sense of all our fights are tournaments, every weight class is an ongoing tournament and we're sorting it all out. Because he said something, you know, that that can get confusing to people when it's all tournaments and every weight class is constantly in a tournament and they all kind of blend together. And he was saying, you know, but at Strikeforce, we had fights and all these weight classes,

but we were doing the heavyweight Grand Prix tournament, which was, you know, that was a big moment for them and they were bought during that tournament. And, you know, so by the time they finished it, it was under ZUFA ownership. And now, obviously, one of the criticisms you can make there is that, hey, do you remember one thing you could say at that tournament, it ended with an alternate winning. That's right. And he was like the third alternate. Like he wasn't even like the ninth guy.

He was the 11th or something like that. It was crazy. And so that tells you one of the weaknesses of the tournament format, although in that case, it didn't end up being a weakness because Daniel Cormeier goes on to be, you know, he was already in the process of becoming a star for strike force, becomes a star for the UFC in a sense. And the other thing, though, I think is that when you're trying to start a new promotion, you're trying to get us excited about a sport that is driven by individuals and driven by star power. And you kind of have a couple choices.

One is to try to go buy some people we already know. You're going to pay a lot of money to lure them away, especially lure them away into something new that for all they know won't be around next year. And usually the kind of guys you're going to get from the UFC are going to be older fighters, fighters where they're on the downslope of their career. They still have the name recognition, but they don't have the same ability. you don't know how much you're really going to get out of those guys at that point in their career. We've seen promoters do this.

Bellator went through this. We've seen other promoters where that's the question of like, do you want to spend to get a version of Rampage Jackson and his decline? You know, do you want to go out there and spend the money to get old Fador. The other way to do it is to try to build your own. Tournaments, I think, lend themselves better to building your own. Because once you can take eight guys we never heard of. And if you tell me they're fighting for a million dollars or something at the end, there's some stakes. I might be invested now. I might follow the tournament and then whoever wins it is going to be a capital G guy because he won it. He got the big check. He's standing there with the million dollars going yippy yippy. You know, like that could give you somewhere to go. So like I do think the tournament structure can lend itself to that. I also, I just wonder a little bit like, you know, I think it's good for the sport, good for fans, good for fighters, definitely to have these sort of options. But when you're talking about coming in, you're talking about coming in, you know, I think it's good for the sport, good for fans, good for fighters, definitely to have these sort of options. But when you're talking about coming in.

right now with everything that's going on in the movie right now where you see MVP all the stuff that they're doing you know MVP start out by just spending a whole bunch of money getting all these fighters and coming in and just being like bah big loud show it's on netflix uh banging pots and pans yeah it is it is it's walking through the street banging pots and pans and you know you you walk through the street banging pots and pan people are going to look out the window people going to open the door stand on the porch 17 million people looked out the window yeah 17 million people to win the the downside of that is sometimes they look out the window and they see it's just a kid banging pots and pants or it's a crazy person banging pots and pans and the next time they hear the pots and pans banging they might go i know what's out there you know uh imagine if they looked out and emeval was standing there with his raven you you come out there with something that you're trying to build more gradually and a little more sustainably it doesn't really have quite the same initial appeal as you you're trying to build more gradually and a little more sustainably it doesn't really have quite the same initial appeal as you're bang and pots and pans in the street.

It's more like you're driving an ice cream truck down the street and you're trying to sell people ice cream. And they're going like, I might be in the mood for ice cream. I might not, but I've been to an ice cream truck before. So I kind of know what to expect. I do think that he, there's probably going to be something different for Scott Coker and this than Bellator because one of the things I heard when I did that story on Strike Force kind of their, the beginning where remember Strike Force also had a huge debut back in the day

where they, they set the, you know, know, a new North American attendance record when they did Frank Shamrock and Caesar Gracie as like the first sanctioned event in California. That's crazy. Yeah. And that fight, that, that attendance record in North America stood for a long time until I believe the GSP won in, uh, Guantto for the UFC. So they're the one where Donald Soroni drove out the cage.

Yeah. Yeah. They had to buy a cage from like Tennessee, Donald Seroni, who was not a Donald Soroni back then, had to drive it in a truck. They had to put it together with a million zip ties. And, you know, they had a huge debut out the gate and then kind of the next show was just a show. And so, but they did gradually build Strikeforce from what was essentially like a regional fight promotion to being a big major player in MMA right around the time it got bought. And so that was like one of the things Rich Chow, their former matchmaker at Strike Force and Bellator said to me was that, you know, when he came, the kind of Belator came to got Scott Coker out of retirement to go over there.

lead it and he came along with Scott and he was like, it never felt the same to me and I don't think it felt the same to Scott that we, this wasn't our show that we were building. This was us going to work at somebody else's show. And then Scott Coker talked about that a little with me in my Q&A that people can read where he was just sort of like, like he said that he even told Kevin K when he came on at Bellatorre like, I don't know if I can help you at this point. Like he kind of seems like the ship has taken on water and you're hiring me as captain and you want me to build something while also bailing it out and fixing the leaks and stuff like that. I do think, especially for somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit like he does,

part of the appeal, part of the reason he's willing to get back into this craziness is because of the promise of you can build your own thing from scratch. You can start from the ground up and create exactly what you want it to be. Now, he did that pretty well with Strikeforce. I also think it's a different climate now. So it's going to be trickier now. but if you got $60 million to start with, that probably helps. Scott Coker doesn't get enough credit too for like,

I know that we kind of always mention it, but as an afterthought that he was the one who kind of showcased the women. Yes. Originally. And, you know, the stuff like this. And I'm like, well,

you realize that he's been around. Like, he's coming back at another go, but he has the trade secrets. He kind of knows in weird ways, you know, just over the course of time, you know,

20 years in the business or a lot longer going back into the 80s with the kickboxing, right? in the MMA business. He knows a lot. You know, he's bringing a lot of different, uh, different elements and different know-how to the, to the process.

And I think that that will be fun. But man, let me ask you guys this. Can you recall a moment when free agency became way more attractive than anything like, because right now, if you were locked into a UFC long term and you're not making really good money, you've got to be kind of like,

damn, man, I would like out of this because you actually now, if you get Scott Coker in play, and obviously they're talking about the seeding money, like $60 million, and he's talking about, you know, big bags of money that they'll be paying,

and you've got MVP now out there, kind of promising to do this, and you still have PFL, which is in the process of, you know, its own repurposing and trying to figure itself out. It just feels like right now, out of nowhere, this would be the time to be a free agent.

It feels like to be a prize fighter right now is a pretty good thing, because if even if, yeah, even if some of these fizzle, out. Like, you could still get paid, right? And so in one of these other places. That's why it reminds me a little bit of affliction when affliction first showed up. And now that one was a, a candle that burned briefly and brightly.

Yeah. That was great. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fun. Well, you know, had two events, had a third one scheduled, but then never came off and then they just sort of folded. Fucking Josh Barnett. Yeah. The thing I remember, though, at the time was that it was suddenly a good time to be a free agent with something of the name. Because you had guys like Tim Sylvia, Andre Arlovsky and stuff, guys who were like trying to get out of UFC contracts so that they could go over and sign with this new thing affliction. I remember seeing it from the perspective where I was toward the tail end of my time working at the IFL and Ben Rothwell was our marquee heavyweight. Yeah, I think he got more than that to go over and fight Andre Arlowski.

Right. And it, that was a big, because the IFL was trying to. trying to hold on to him. But they were trying to hold on to him by being like, you'll be heavyweight champion. You'll get the belt. And he was like, I can't feed my kids with the belt, man. These people, they just showed up on the scene. They have a lot of money to spend.

Now, you could argue they burn through that money pretty quickly, especially you have Megadeth plan at the concert. Like you said, you know, everybody's showing up on these t-shirts. You've got to sell a whole lot of T-shirts to make that money back. And at the same time, I'm sure there are fighters like you're saying, Chuck, who are going right now, like, hey, maybe this thing doesn't last, but I'm in the kind of business that doesn't last. This is not a career.

It's an opportunity. I've been told that by the man himself at the top of the UFC. Plus, if you look at some of those affliction guys and how it worked out for them, like, yeah, affliction didn't stick around, but guys bought houses off of that money. You know, guys, guys set themselves up. Like, Ben Rothwell will tell you, like, he's sitting there where it's like, he's got a house with the mortgage paid off and a gym that he was able to open that's still running and still making no money because of those opportunities. So like that can be really meaningful for fighters,

even if it doesn't end up being a thing that sticks around for 50 years. I always remember Monty Cox, like he had four fighters on that first affliction, including Tim Sylvie, who got like $800,000. He was going to get $100,000 in like the UFC. He had four guys. He, he, they got $1.3 million between the four guys. All four of them lost. So they all were paid to go in and lose. And like, you got 20% of that. It was just like, I mean, he, and when you get that kind of thing, but this is what, you know, going back to the original point, it's like, it's that kind of enterprising, like, you know what, man, I could go over here, wherever it is it's an MVP, um, or if it's going to be his cocker's new thing, whatever it is,

but I could probably get paid and be part of something that maybe you're going to be showcased. Like a lot of these UFC guys who are kind of, you know, in three or four fights, they're kind of stuck in apex land or like, you know, they're just kind of doing this stuff. And I mean, how, how exciting can that be? And this is, I mean, this is kind of the thing that's emerging is whether you, whether you're a big UFC centric person and like a lot of people have been in or not, it's starting to move past the UFC. Like it's starting to, this is a moment in time where you're like, okay, there's just better options and there's just, you know, bigger kind of feeling and, you know, more feeling in general in terms of like going somewhere else. There might be more enthusiasm. So if Scott Koch, I think that's the right thing to focus on.

How do you tap back into enthusiasm? because that's the first thing the UFC kind of commandeered was fans' enthusiasm. They brought it all in one room, and that's not the case right now. So it might be opportunity, even with all that competition out there. It's interesting to say that because I've even noticed, like, it's happening a lot more where like a main event are in the apex, like even if it's a good name, like we saw Arnold Allen recently being like, you know, this isn't what you dream about, you know, when you're getting off.

No. Myconno, man, he was so pissed off to be fighting at the apex. It isn't, though. I do believe there is a gap there. I'm a bit skeptical about the whole thing right now. And I'll say that, like, you guys have first-hand experience covering Coker, Strike Force era where he was really doing meaningful things. And he was, um, he was a kind of a media sweetheart for, for some regard,

because of the energy he was bringing in, because of the events he was putting on. I saw the Bellator end of it. I was only covering regional MMA, really, when Strike Force was going, if even. And I never really had, I never, I can remember scrambling to try and get streams. There was no way to watch this stuff over here. affliction even. I can remember the absolute nightmare. Me and my brother had trying to find a way to watch Fadar and our loft

game. We made it work at the very last second. And we're very happy with our sense. Ben and I were there. We're at those affliction shows. Weren't you, Ben? You were there. I was at the first one, definitely.

I was a mega death plan was a real highlight for me. That was, played symphony of destruction. Remember they played it when they trotted them out? Like they all came out on like the runway platform. The 13 year old boy and me was just going nuts. But the tournament thing, lads, I'm with Ariel on that, like, and I do get the heavyweight tournament was a beast, and even with all the changes with Cormion, it was enjoyable. Like, I remember watching at the time, I was excited about it at the time. It was doing real competition for attention with the UFC anyway. Like, it was carrying big headlines. I just, I just don't know, as Ben said, if there is so much of the roster, and we'll talk about MVP's plan now in a second, they seem to think that they're going to have a lot of vacancies there for upcoming fights if they get these 12 fights a year that Nekisa spoke about. Who was going to be,

Like, what bracket could you fill out at this stage? Yeah, see, that's a thing. When you think about that strike force heavyweight grand prix when it started, right? Like you had Alistair Overeem, you had Fadour, you had Josh Barnett, you had Fabio Verduem. And then you had other, like these alternates that are including guys like Daniel Coromier and stuff. You know, like you just had that availability at least at heavyweight. Now, that is one of the things I'll say that's probably smart about picking and choosing what weight class at what time you want. to do a tournament in because you could look around and be like, which one has some free agents

available where you could grab some names and you could put them in there rather than like spreading it out across every weight class in the sport. You could focus on one at a time and try to get something going there. But it's still tough because the UFC has tightened its grip on the MMA fighter market a lot tighter now than it did back then back when they were doing those strike force tournaments. And just UOC has so many more events now. It has the contender series as a way to get its hooks in young fighters before they have a chance to build a name anywhere else before they have a chance to drive up their asking price it has this sort of system of like minor leagues to major leagues you go from the minors in the contender series to the

ufc everybody signs the same entry level contract you all work for peanuts until you you work your way up but i do think that there's something in what you're saying chuck the like and the the like nobody dreams of this pizzi like that's sitting there at the apex like arnold allen got a bad end of that deal, man. Because not only does he end up being the, the alternative MMA on that night, the UFC didn't really seem to try that hard. They really sort of gave up on this weekend and said, fine, that's going to be their weekend.

And it was a really good fight. It was a really good fucking fight. And it's a relevant fight. Like, for that division. Yeah. Yeah. And for, like, for Arnold Allen, it's a serious fight, like a one that's an important one in your career.

But for a lot of MMA fans, did it even happen? Because they just missed that. Everybody's watching Carrano and Rousey and the whole MVP thing. Some people are sure, they were going to circle back. They're going to watch the Aran Allen fight afterwards or they'll find out what happened or anything. But it's not going to lodge in their consciousness the same way when the next time there's an Arnold Allen fight announced. There's going to be a lot of people who don't even remember that he won this fight. And that was one, that's a big difference for the UFC because when affliction came out with that first event, they counterprogram it.

They took Anderson Silva, the middleweight champion, moved him up a weight class, had him fight on free TV on Spike just to draw some eyeballs away from the affliction thing. This time somebody comes up with a competing event and the UFC says, all right, you win this Saturday night. We know we don't have to win every Saturday night anymore because we're going to be back, you know, next Saturday, Saturday after that, all that kind of stuff. And you're not. There's no way you can reload in time to come back with another one of these. And so they're not even worried about it, which is it makes sense. for the kind of business model the USC is running now, it's still a bad deal for some of those fighters,

and I'm sure some of those guys are going, this isn't great. I get to tell people I'm in the UFC, but I make a lot less than these people who aren't in the UFC, and some of them are getting to fight on shows that people actually are, that 17 million people are watching on Netflix. And that's another thing that MVP had

that I think is going to be a key to what the success of this new venture from Scott Coker is, where is it, how easily accessible is it? because Affliction had an uphill battle when they started, they went, we got a big show, a bunch of people you've heard of and everything. It's on pay pay-per-view. You want to pay pay-per-view to see an event from somebody where you don't even know if they can pull off an event?

You've never seen any of their events. The very first offering is on paper. That's a little bit of a tough sell. And MVP had the advantage of being like, it's on Netflix. Don't you already have it? And if you don't, you've had it at some point in the past, you can just go in there and be like, turn it back on. I'll pay the small monthly fee if I don't like it.

I'll cancel it right afterwards. You know, that's going to be a big part of determining the success for the Scott Coker thing. If you can get it somewhere that we already have where I don't have to go find you. I don't have to sign up for a new thing to get you. If you can do that, people will give it a shot. You almost wonder if Netflix, especially for the fight game, is like bigger than anything else. Because, you know, even this White House card has a CBS component. I don't know what the numbers would be, you know, but at the same time,

you're like, you think about Netflix, I feel like people are more drawn to just turn on Netflix these days than they would to just be checking out CBS or like channel surfing or something. The thing has changed quite like that. It's different. You know, even in the Connor McGregor kind of announcement, the old UFC, if they were trying to counter or do some,

they would have had some plan of at least saying like tune in. I know Ariel has pointed this before this very thing. Like draw them off of the Netflix thing, right? Like draw them over to where you want to make an announcement. Right. But they didn't even do that, you know, they just, it's weird that you, Ben, you were mentioning kind of guys not dreaming of fighting at the apex. It's strange because back in the day, you know, when they were regional MMA, there's still a bunch of that, but they were small theaters. It was always like, I want to be able to get to the UFC where it's the show, right?

Like, this is where it's all happening. It's crazy that we're now to the point where the show has the smaller thing. And I think this is an apex thing more than anything, but like where they have the. the kind of almost regional feel on a lot of these fight nights, whereas these other ones are going to be trying to do, you know, arenas, even the PFL, you know, they're going from like Madrid to Pittsburgh to whatever, South Dakota. They're all over the place.

But they're like, they're still kind of small 600,000 seat type places. And they get them pretty rowdy. I mean, like, that's not the wrong way to go. And it all looks good compared to the apex. And I'm like, that's just where it's, I mean, I would have never thought that that was possible for the UFC to kind of diminutive. its own show that way at this point. I were constantly reminded of that most weeks that in fact, the apex, they actually

quite like it. Obviously, the MVP's debut did not happen at the apex. It was the Intuit Dome, much talk about the lights and the people behind the lights that the people that were watching at home could not see because of the lights. And the Kiswadarian came on, the Ariolwani show and he waxed lyrical about the show, 17 million

something in other views. I don't know what is the the language. There we go. 17 million live viewers peak.

12.4 million viewers average viewership. This is interesting because I think we all kind of had a similar idea. I think when we were looking at this we were set in the table for this event,

we all kind of thought that we were looking at like a quarterly event with these big names come along four events a year. I was kind of of surprise to hear Nikisa say, and this might be like in a perfect world further down the road, we're aiming to have 12 events a year. There's immediate obstacles that we just talked about with Scott Koker's situation in terms of talent, in terms of our roster you'd have to build

to get that kind of thing off the ground. Ben's actually wrote about some of the obstacles they might face in his latest mailbag. Ben, are you surprised to hear this 12 events a year, essentially one event a month from MVP after this first event. Yeah, and I don't think that's a good idea. I don't, first of all, I don't, I don't believe you. If you say that you're going to hold an event every year, it won't be, won't be this year. Well, probably won't be next year, you know. And I don't know if that's the way to go, especially nothing we've heard from Netflix

about the way Netflix views the kind of live sports and live events that it wants to do. suggests that they really want to be in that business of trying to put on an event every month. Some are big, some are not. As we said before, Netflix doesn't seem interested in hitting singles. They seem interested in knocking it out of the park every single time. And if you don't come to them with something that feels like a big, huge event, they're just not really as interested. And so it's hard for me to see Netflix wanting to get on board with a model that way.

I think you're better off maybe doing a few events, you know, quarterly. three, four events over the course of a year sounds about right for what you could hope to expect with just the available rosters that you could get out there. I do think there is bound to be some fighters, raising eyebrows over in the UFC or under contract to other places who are going like, all right, these people are throwing money around and they're putting on big shows. Like, yeah, maybe the next time the UFC offers to up my contract, I say I'm going to test out free agency. That in itself has become a lot more common than it used to be. used to be if you told the UFC you wanted to fight out your contract, test out free agency. They acted like you had spit in their face and we're going to treat you accordingly going from there. Now they don't seem to take it quite as seriously.

But I do think that you have, like a frustration I have heard from a lot of fighters is they're going, hey, I'm here, right? Like I'm at undercard level or apex level. I'm making this kind of money. How do I get from there to the big money? How do I get from there to, you know, a check that has six zeros behind it? And there's no clear path. There's nothing that you can tell them that says, do this and you will get that in the UFC. You're just, everybody's kind of doing the rain dance, you know?

They're just trying different stuff and hoping that it rains. And it rains on a few people every once in a while. And then a lot of other people, it doesn't. You can't just tell them, hey, you got to win all the fights. There's people out there who win all the fights are damn near all over. them and still has arraigned and you can't just tell them like all right you know make yourself a thing because if i'm trying really hard to make myself a thing but i'm in the apex you know it's trees falling in the forest and i think that there's a level of frustration there that some of them may like

look if i could just be the kind of fighter that mvp wants to sign when they're going to need some bodies for these events that's how i suddenly like MVP told us there's a minimum of 40k right that was the big yeah that's the subtle thing that they did that i thought was brilliant you know yeah that's got to sound pretty good to somebody where you're like, I'm guaranteed I'll make no less than 40K. The UFC is not necessarily telling you that. And still the opportunity to win like bonuses, right? There's a bonus structure still in play. Yep.

And that you're going to get a whole lot more people watching you. Like if you're on Netflix in front of 17 million people, then that's a big deal. That's going to be part of the draw for them. But I also do think that right now you do have a lot of obstacles in that, you know, you're looking around who could you get? You come out of this show, for instance, and you go, what do you do with the people who fought on this show? Yeah. And, you know, the winners, but also the losers, like, there's a good chance that you never see any of those people in MVP ever again. And I hated the idea, Ben, that, like, that they came out, like, immediately after the event,

the best fight they have top of mind is a rematch between Nate Diaz and Mike Perry are going to, like, really? Nobody wants to see that. We saw what there was to see in that fight. I did not leave that fight with any lingering questions. Why do they have to, how many fights were on that MVP card? Was it something like 11 or 12? Like what, it was like that, right? It was kind of like structured like an old UFC. Like that these days, UFC has like 13.

11, 11 is good, but like why do we have to have that many? You know, when you're talking about 12 events in a year, that's, now you're talking about, in which I agree with Ben, it's not going to happen. but now you are talking about trying to roster up. You're trying to actually build something. And I'm like, that was not the way that I feel like is their path to success. I mean, honestly, why not do four like a quarterly event at the top? Because you're then, you know, if you're just trying to do the biggest types of shows,

like you mentioned with Netflix wanting home runs, you could do that, right? Like you could put together the biggest types of shows that you can. And every one of them is a Super Bowl type of event happening quarterly. This is kind of the old UFC's method of pay-per-view. view, right, which we're going to have 13 pay-per-views before they started to really have more and more and more fight nights and then more and more vehicles, you know, outside of a contender series, all that. Before that, the greatest part was the reason it became such a big and wild sport was that everybody concentrated on these pay-per-views. Everybody came to the, everybody knew that

these were the biggest stakes, that these were the biggest stars, all that stuff. I feel like MVP, if they want to compete, they kind of almost go that direction. Like, just try to make the biggest numbers possible, have the purses, you know, like the $40,000 minimum is sort of, I thought that was sort of like one of the brilliant strokes that they put in there and made it kind of vocal about it because you're like, not everybody, there are guys in the UFC who fought eight times who aren't making $40,000, you know? I think that those, that's what they should do. It's like you can compete and people, you can hold interest in lead up. People love to be in the lead up to fights anyway. So if you have big events, you circle them once every quarter. I mean, that's how you, that's how

you compete right now and you know just blow them out of the water with the with the numbers and and there was that simmer and feel that like you didn't get from the early 2000s the UFC do you remember how much you'd be dying for these events to happen you like yeah you'd be like i cannot believe it's still three weeks away and i know we saw much discourse do you remember on the mondays of fight week everybody like day in would like fight week and there would be this huge echo i'll be like i know everybody were like we're monday we're we get fights on saturday it's crazy that's just unheard of now I didn't quite get it I mean I wasn't there

but I can remember thinking about like I can't believe these two guys I'm gonna be looking at these two dudes locked in a cage with each other you know that that sense like it's been building up for so long it did have an element of that and I think you kind of nip that in the board if it's every month and you know when it's coming

I like the kind of big showcase here's a big splash here's right you know not to say like I was like oh who's gonna win this rousy v. Carrano fight like I definitely wasn't one of those I see there, you know, put it. You're right. The conveyor belt loses excitement.

Like, it's a conveyor belt week to week to week. You're just kind of going and it never stops. You know, what is it, 46 weekends? There's a UFC event. I think that we, as a fan base, the original psyche they were tapping into is all leading to some bike rack that was like, you know, like a month in the, you know what I mean? Like, and everybody focused on that. I just, I feel like that's where excitement when you're talking about Scott Coker, like

we're lacking enthusiasm. I think that's what's missing now. It's like it's just such a, you know, kind of wrote thing that we do every every Saturday. What's the UFC this weekend? You know, it's, it doesn't have that feeling of anticipation that it used to. So I feel like that's where they got a, like, MVP is

the perfect vehicle for that too. With Netflix, I mean, it's the perfect vehicle to build those shows. What I was wondering is, okay, the, when I think of the event, the UFC event that does have that long, long lead up to it is this White House event, right? We're talking about it for so damn long. We spent months of our lives.

fantasy matchmaking this thing. Everybody's throwing out all these ideas. Dana White spent months of his life shooting down all these other ideas. And shooing away Nats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing.

And talking us through the like the obstacles, the production obstacles of this thing. Oh, we can't sell a hot dog. It's federal land. Now there's gnats. It's humid. It might rain. Not dogs. All this kind of stuff.

There we go. Yeah. Now, when I saw the 17 million number for Netflix, and that's the peak, you know, average round 12.4 million. But it's like when you're thinking about like is that a good number or not, I mean, you compare it to, I saw a story about how the game one of the Western Conference NBA finals

hit a new high and their peak was around 12 million. Wow. They were very pleased with that, you know, like they were very, very pleased with that viewership number as a peak, you know, and Netflix and Samsung,

they beat that. What they got is around like four times what your average, uh, major league. baseball playoff game. Well, can't. It's around. It's close to what like an average NFL game does, like regular season NFL.

But still. I mean, that's huge though. Yeah. So that's pretty good numbers compared to other sports. Does the UFC White House beat that after all this buildup and all the, you know, it is the weirdness, historic weirdness of it being at, at this particular White House, at this particular time? Does it beat that number?

And if so, by how much? I don't. Simply, right, because of the subscriptions. you know, Netflix completely dwarves Paramounts. You guys have to give me a bit of intel in terms of the CBS element of it. But like, I mean, if I'm looking at it from the Paramount v. Netflix situation, I think it's, I don't think it can. CBS is obviously in a lot more households, a lot more easy to access.

But those numbers you're hitting me with there, Ben, like the Oklahoma Tunner, like the Oklahoma City Thunder are the champions, right? They're the NBA champions. Wemba Yamma is the biggest sensation in the league. league and their playoff game is getting 3 million, 12 million did you say? I don't know, man. 12 million peak, yeah.

It's wild. What do you think? I mean, I mean, those numbers to me, I saw people, like, I don't know where, I don't know what this fan base is thinking sometimes because I'll see people saying like, wow, that's awfully low. And I'm like, well, what do you mean it's a low? What were you expecting?

Like, to me, it was kind of wild, right? Because this, we didn't know what this type of number would be, but to me, that's a really, really strong number. What was the Tyson one then? Like, Ben, do you know that off the top of your head? Like Tyson... 60 odd, wasn't it? Yeah, it's much higher.

It was much higher. Which makes sense, obviously, because you're talking about... Now you're talking about generations are involved in checking this out. And there was an element of Tyson 57, but to me, that number was tremendous, man. You know, it's like your first show and, like, tuning in and, uh, I don't know how it could have been better that way. I think, I think what's... fucked them up a little bit was the fact that Jake Paul and

Nikisa had kind of said 20 million. Like that would be their idea. Like when they were asked like what would blow your your head off in terms of like what would be the the best outcome for you guys? They both said 20 million. So as soon as they came in it under like that's everyone's gauge right. Like we don't fucking know what a Netflix of it. Like a Netflix MMA show is doing. We don't know how many people are going to watch that. So they said 20. It got 17 and they're like, in your fucking face. Oh my God. It's so embarrassing, you know. But I mean, when you compare it, especially for like, this is, it's still MMA we're talking about, you know, it's not going to be for everybody. It's, and to be able to do

that with your first MMA event, and with honestly not a single fight on there, that's really super relevant for the sport where it is right now. You've got names. You've got some people who seem, you know, like you had Saladin Parnas, you, you had Francis and Ghanu, but they're both sort of in fights where they were set up for success. They were put in fights where they could look good and they did. But the fact, like when we were looking at our uncrowned picks, we did uncommonly well for our staff. It was pretty easy.

Yeah. Most of us, not all of us, most of us picked them all right. Some of us came on here talking about rebellus to Spain is terrible at MMA. We didn't really get to find out how he does MMA. How much M.A. did we see from Rubellas to Spain? How much at MMS? At striking, at striking, he's pretty good.

Turns out he is. Turns out he is. Flat footed and his hands down here, I was like. But all of those fights that you saw, you could tell, here's what's probably going to happen. Here's, and even, not just even in terms of winners and losers, you could look at every fight on that card and be like, here's what this one is here to do. Here's why they booked this one. Here's what kind of fight or what kind of result the promoter is looking for. And then every single one that got what they're looking for.

Yeah. You know, like every single one did what it was supposed to do. But none of them were like, this is a fight that is super meaningful for the sport where it is right now. And you still beat what the UFC did, granted, you know, 15 years ago or whatever with the first UFC event on Fox. But they put the heavyweight title up for grabs on that one. And you beat their number, you know, years later with your very first MMA show and not having the advantage of being able to say, this is the heavyweight title of the world. there is something to be said too about the UFC is concealed within a box right like they we kind of know what their ethos is like they're going to bring in certain fighters and you know it's we know how

it's structured with MVP right now it's still anything can go right anything goes you could have jake paul challenging everybody you can have mike tyson and then you can bring back ronda rouse who who's to say that they don't contact brock lesnar or like these types of people who again could because you can come back and be like hey we're going to give you the run under rousy treatment. We're going to put you into a main event and, uh, you know, you get to go out on top or like, whatever you want to do it. Um, I mean, they could do these things because that's the model they've set up. They've set up like this very malleable like, hey, how, how deep does your imagination go? We can do that here. How aren't we talking about Brock Lesnar? How the fuck is

that just, how did you just pull that out? How was just thinking because he was retiring and then he showed up at the WWE again. And I, so I don't know where he stands, but I mean, obviously, guys like that though like and it's also you always so because he's a huge name but he also has like that ufc history just like ronda rousey that suddenly is on this other end you know like things like that i mean that's where they that's where they should operate they should be operating in those levels and they've kept themselves a decent make too that pro lezner retirement just doesn't mean what it used to mean no you know i was talking about this to somebody recently after here are at the university of montana our head football coach announced

his retirement and then within a week announced that he had signed on as defensive coordinator at Southern Illinois and you're just like, what do you think that word means? You know? Well, that's interesting, you say that man, because if you look at the notes there, we have a segment upcoming about, I think he does read the notes, guys. I think, you know, that was too, that was too good for me. That was too good of a segment. Lots of love.

That's all I saw. Lots of love. That's all. I just scroll down looking for that. Chuck, you wrote a fantastic column about Colby Covington and his untimely retirement from MMA. I would say that he has devastated looking at the reaction to this because it's been just kind of people like, psh. You don't see anybody being like, no. I know.

It's such. It's like, it's the worst, like, reaction to a retirement, I think I've ever seen. I was like, ah. I was done with that dude anyway, to put it nicely. I know, I know. You've had a few cracking lines in this column, Chuck, and obviously it centers around the fact that he is retiring a month before his mecca, the house, which he talked about at nauseam, and now suddenly he's gone.

Tell me how you feel about the- Well, because his whole career was kind of based on this gimmick, and at the best of it, I'm talking early on, I remember people like, he's kind of like the Andy Kaufman, he holds these awkward, you know, and as time went on, you're like, like dudes we're just fooling ourselves here uh you know this is not this guy but like his whole stick though was leading to this moment was it not i mean like this is this was his super bowl this was it like he was going toward this moment he did i think he wanted this more than he could have any title you know like it was like this was what he was leading towards and um and to see

it coming to come into view finally where it's like it's planned you're seeing all the designs you see the thing being built the whatever the alien craft that they're building and like to put up like you see all of that and And he's not part of it. And his party's moving on without him. You're just like, dude, this is so sad, isn't it? It's such a gut punch, especially because of like those combination of things that you said. Like, like, imagine if you were a person in musical theater, that's what you did for a living.

And your whole personality was based on, like, what a huge Star Wars fan you are. And then, amazing news, Disney announces, we're doing a Star Wars musical. going to be on Broadway. It's like Taylor made you. Everybody's very excited about it. You're going, I'm perfect for this. My, the intersection of my talents and interests that are all publicly very well known makes me the ideal candidate to be cast in this thing. And then in the end, not only do they not give you any role, not not leading role, not supporting role, not a member of the damn chorus.

not only that they not give you that, they don't even really let you audition for it. They just kind of keep telling you, thanks, but no thanks. We've got something else in mind for you later on that doesn't have anything to do with this. And they snap up Josh Hokit, who just came onto the scene, like, put chins on there. They got some other guy who just showed up doing your thing

and you're just like, what? Like, that has got to be, that's really got to be depressing for the guy. I mean, after every. he's said and done, it's, it's hard to feel much sympathy for him, especially because he made his thing, like, let me intentionally say the worst things to people that I can think of. Let me like intentionally kind of be a bad person in order to make people mad and then try to ride that wave of anger to fame and money.

But to be left out of something like this, it must have just showed him like, well, they don't really care. All this, this love that you felt like you were giving to this thing. it did not love you back. It never reciprocated any of that enthusiasm that you had. That's got to be tough. I do wonder a little bit, did he think, hey, if I go to them and say, look, you guys aren't showing me a love right now, so I'm going to quit.

Did he think that kind of in the Henry Sehudo? Yeah. Did he Henry Sohudo himself? Did he think they were going to be like, no, no, no, no, wait, come back, come back, come back. You know, like, be careful with that door. It doesn't hit you on the way out. That door's tricky. Yeah, if they were just like, well, uh, see the girl at the desk, you'll validate the parking and we wish you well.

They're like, and you went, remove them from the website right away, please. I get a sense that it was more from his part just the feeling like, you know what, to hell with all of this, to hell with all of you, I'm walking. Like, I don't, I don't necessarily believe that it was a like a negotiating strategy that didn't pan out for him. I think it was probably just like anger and a weird version of heartbreak. and he just kind of went, I'm out of here. The fact that nobody was pining for him, though, like, you mentioned this off the top of, like, the fact that people are like, you know, usually when somebody retires, there's some kind of like, oh, man.

Yeah, we remember you fought. It was nothing like that. I didn't see it. If you guys saw it, I mean, I did not see that kind of sentiment at all. The opposite. I saw the opposite everywhere, everywhere. Anyone who spoke about it was like, you know, he was like, you know, he had some great fights.

There's no doubt about that. But it's like what Ben said. Like, he has said some really fucked up shit. Oh, yeah. The Leon's father thing. me where I was just like, mate. I mean, it's just, it showed everybody. Like, this is how you go too far.

And then it's like, Strickland just takes that baton and like runs with it. But I'm like, that was where I was like, man, what's the etiquette within this? Like, isn't there? It's just too far. But, I mean, that was, it felt like he was just, you know, I don't, what would you say? It's like, it was so alienating that it almost both, like, whoever you were, it didn't matter your politics. At some point, like, he alienated you on other levels. It was just such a bizarre run.

And you think that a guy who had that many title shots and everything. anything would mean more to the public, but the UFC must have just known. Because even with the, was it the walking? Was that the last, his last fight? Um, I felt like there was a zero fanfare. And watch him get beat up was actually more sad than it was anything else. Cause you'd already seen the most poetic thing where he's running his mouth and he gets his jaw broke, which was like this. Yeah, and runs out of the arena. Yeah, runs out of the arena. And then I'm like, okay, so we've seen like the thing that was like the come up and sit, that that's what was drawing people in. So all these things that, you know, all the way of this

all played out, it just feels like these extra kicks. Boom, boom, boom. He's down. It's just a bizarre. It's a bizarre ending, but that White House thing just blows it up even more. You know, it's just like how. And doesn't it also, it still surprises me that the U.S. didn't put him on the White House thing. Same. Unless we were trying to make a point. Like, were we trying to hurt his feelings? Did we go to Donald Trump and Trump say, actually, I'm sick of that guy? Don't bring up Mar-a-Lago all the time. He's like he's calling me all the time. Do not let him on the permissible. Like, yeah, is Colby Covington for Trump, what Oppenheimer was for Harry Truman, where after he walked out of the Oval Office, Truman said, don't ever bring that guy in here again. Like, because otherwise, it doesn't make sense. Like, you would, not only does he seem like a natural fit, he'll be really excited about it. And you could put him against somebody like Bo Nichol or something.

You could have him up there, even if he's there to get beat up and help usher in the next generation of people doing this thing. Yeah. People would actually watch it. it would make sense. So it is surprising that they didn't put them on there, especially when you look at the rest of the lineup. And it's not like every single fight on there is something where you're like, well, obviously, they were going to do that. That one just makes sense. It's not, it's a, it's a no-brainer. Like, no, there's plenty of fights on there where you looked at it and you went, okay, I guess. You know, like, and they, when you look at that, you, because that's the other thing, in my musical

theater analogy, you're looking at the people who did get cast and you're like, the dude who's Chewbacca doesn't even watch Star Wars, man. He's just tall Diego Lopez in this case All he is tall What the hell You know This doesn't make any sense

And so that's got to read even more Do you think it's a hang-up From that time he'd streamed Dana In the poker room That time Rachel showed up I forgot all about that And some people have to make themselves scarce

Very quickly If I remember correctly Right out of the frame Yeah What are you I wouldn't be surprised man That's how you draw attention to yourself

Like those people at the cold play concert as soon as you duck out of the way. We know you feel like he got caught doing something you weren't supposed to do. That was fucking much. I forgot all about that. God. I'd just be more embarrassed.

Never mind like cheating on my wife. I'd be more embarrassed just being on video at a call play concert. I'd be like, oh, fuck. I try to go out and enjoy just a one evening. I was like, I'm not even a big fan. I liked one or two songs. I just wanted to go out. The first two albums weren't bad.

still sing yellow um p t i hate to hate to call you out on this but you did skip an item on your notes realize that you skipped right over the question of did the ufc fumbled the connor mcgregor return announcement well you see i thought that you know kind of you solo it off in that direction chuk did at one stage i was like

that's not covered but please ben tell yeah did the ufc in fact fumble the connor announcement i mean it's interesting to me that the way you choose to do it is during like Francis and Ghanu's walkout first of all not the main event not not trying attention from that but it's like you know people are going to look at it and be like

Dana's the rudge against Francis and Gano lives on like that's the fight he picks but also to just do it as a thing on like Instagram like it's like I know that's where you go to announce you know I'm in Zahabi and Sean O'Malley Like that's, you know, that was where he goes to an else everything now, Ben.

Yeah. That is it. That is the production room now. Yeah. It's Dana's phone. And it's like, we got this huge fight. Well, I know what I'm going to do, baby. What's up, fight fans?

Yeah. Looking at it with that like kind of boomerish camera angle where you're like a little, like, you're getting the top of your head too much. And it's just like, and to just do it like on that kind of like low energy sort of. of way and I to think that it was ever really going to steal too much attention from the MVP thing I think was always going to be a fantasy because it's hard to use something like that as counter programming because it's a it's a very small nugget of information that as soon as you hear the information you've heard everything there is to know about it for right now like as soon as you hear conna McGregor coming back this event against this opponent that's it there is nothing else that you can really announce about it right now. Like so as soon as nobody needs to tune in to Instagram to see the video, everybody can just be like, look at Twitter or look at whatever and be like,

did you hear Connor McGregor's fighting Max Holloway, international fight, we can go, okay, got it. Don't need to like seek out the video, don't need to find any other information on it. I know all there is to know about this situation for now. So maybe it was never going to be that huge a thing. But it does seem like we could, like there were other opportunities to roll it out in a way. that kind of kicked in the door and made the announcement. We're doing something big this summer.

We're back with another big event for international fight week. And Instagram ain't the way to do that one. Yeah. So the way it went down was it's kind of like, Hey, Conn McGregor's returning on this date. Oh, he finally got it. Cool. That's got it.

Let's go, Francis. Let's see what he can do against this. It was like you didn't even break stride with what you're watching, you know? We probably won't hear about it, but like, the Conroy, I knew whatever, like, whatever 15, 20 years ago would have been absolutely filming at that. Like, that's how we're doing this. Five years I'm away. I'm still the biggest superstar for some reason.

I'm still the guy. And that's how you're doing this. Yeah, especially because like you say, Pizzi, one of his talents, especially back then, was to have an understanding of like the visuals and the presentation for how to make this stuff, how to capitalize on these moments. I always think of that moment. when he insisted where he was like, give me my other belt, give me, give me both my belts. Because he knew I want that photo. I want that moment to live on where I've got a belt on each shoulder in my moment of triumph. Look, I did it.

Titles in two UFC weight classes. And he had to tell them to do that. They weren't that did not really seem to be on anybody else's mind at the UFC. Like we should make sure we capture this moment in MMA history. He was the one who had a sense of that. And you're right. I do wonder what he's thinking because it would be a good indication of how much he cares right now because he should be kind of fuming about that, right?

Yeah. Yeah, and I can imagine he was, if I'm being honest. But there is another big fight happening this weekend. I've noticed that I spelled Ussick's name. There's a lot of typos in the notes this week to be fair. Uskai. I went for Uskai v. Rico. That's how you pronounce it.

In Geyser. Yeah, that one. Giza? It's Giza. It's Giza. Thank you. The pyramids of Giza. Rico there, kickboxing world champion,

Usik, heavyweight boxing champion. I'm surprised there is literally zero talk about this. Like, honestly, like, no, not one person has asked me this week. Yo, are you going to watch the Usik fight? Not one person. An Usik fight. Not a single person. Now, maybe that's me hanging around with the wrong crowd.

But I'm getting the feeling. They're not talking about the barbershop in Dublin? Not once. Not once they were asking about MVP, though. They were. They were all about that because it's on Netflix. Is part of it because of that? Like, you just watch this show that, you know, this is this one feels like an MVP event in a weird way because you got, you got a guy coming from kickboxing who's had one boxing match that lasted like less than two rounds, right? Going into against the best heavyweight champion going like it's like it feels a little bit like one of those weird events.

Plus you're now. And then we have the, you know, the gimmick of being at the. pyramids here. Like, does it feel like it came too close to a circus type of event? You know? You know, it does feel like it's, that's got to be part of it, right? Is that like, just we didn't have the mental bandwidth to turn right around? Because once I hear it, once you tell me that, oh, yeah, this thing and it's at the pyramids is this weekend, I go, oh, yeah.

Okay, no, I do want to see what that looks like. Yeah. You know? That's all I want to see, though. I want to see what it looks like. I don't give a full. Really? You don't care?

I want, I care. What a freak of goes in there and flattens them? I mean, I don't expect that to happen. I'm kind of just like, guarantee it. I'm kind of just like, how quickly are we going to be done here? What's it actually going to? Like the whole thing is just seems like, I don't want to miss that. I, but I know how it's going to happen.

I can, even though it's, you know, tomorrow, whatever, I can look into the future. I will have forgotten again that is happening. I will look at social media and somebody will be like, like, I'll see a, like, a video from the card or something where you see what it looks like with the pyramids, whatever like that, that whole setup looks like and I'll go, oh shit, yeah, okay, I do want to see it. Like, I want to see not only the fight itself. Where's my bong? But I'm going to go, all right, like, let me, let me tune in here.

Let me, like, especially because it's like, once you start rolling out some of those videos and we see the visual, assuming that it's cool. If it's, if it's not cool. What if it's time square? Oh, God. Or what if. You can't even, like, because of the lighting, the setup, whatever, what if you can't even really tell the pyramids are back there? Like, you, I need it to be like a street fighter level, you know, where it needs to feel like Tekken.

Like, this is the level that takes place at the pyramids and that is a very big part of it. Like, I love the poster and like the branding we're doing for it and everything. Like the whole, like, ancient Egyptian thing, we're just going completely overboard on it. Like, that works on the- You think they're hanging like a huge dude wipes banner online of pyramids back there? It's good sponsor space. You really need to incorporate that, the weirdness and the novelty of the setting. And if you do that, though, like as soon as those videos start showing up on social media, I think you will get some people who go like, oh, yeah, okay.

Now, I actually do want to check that out. Would you be more, are you more intrigued by this than if they did Alcatraz? Remember they were talking about, like, having a fight card on Alcatraz? I was like, that's truly bizarre. I mean Alcatrazabia. They just didn't sell this well, did they? They just didn't like, outside of saying like, we're doing an event at the pyramids.

Yeah. And then a poster. I don't really think they've really sold us this stuff. Yeah, you haven't heard it really brought up since then. Yeah. Cutting back with that Saudi money. You know, they're not just going to, they're not going to pound it down a throw anymore. Picture length documentary about fist fights that have happened near the pyramids.

That's what I need. I'd be in. What fucking 40 minutes about some kind of fight related thing and the barrens I'll be like, oh, mine, this is going to be amazing. I haven't seen a fucking thing. Do you think, I mean, if you're, if you're one of the announcers for that, have you spent weeks cramming a bunch of interesting factoid about ancient Egypt, just that you're ready to sprinkle in like the way like a baseball commentator will do when there's a lull in the middle of the sixth inning, you know?

You know, and 600. Yeah. A lot of people don't know this. Cleopatra, closer to our time chronologically than she was to the building of these pyramids. any hook That pitches outside That's a hook That tooth

The common Would be proud of You know Yeah You got You better If you're one of the people Working this thing

You better have some Egypt Yeah Yeah lined up Ready to fire You better work that stuff in man

I'm gonna be really disappointed If you don't Under over I'll say What's the under over I'll give Under over

Five rounds Chook There's no way You'll last that long If it happens Oh my God That would be truly crazy.

That's when we'll be talking about it if that happens. Chuck is just concerned, like, where's the nearest medical facility to the Great Pyramid? You need to make sure Usik isn't too far away because he's going to be in dire straits. Do you give Rico any chance here? This seems like, I think if he goes beyond five,

all people will start saying he was carrying him. Yeah. The closest, I mean, it's, the closest you can come is like the Angost. Anu Fury thing, right? The setup to that. And obviously, Angan dropped him.

I mean, that was, that played out to be perfect in the sense of, like, drama, but I, I don't see it, man. I don't see that happening here. RICO's fights of all, like,

of lay have been, like, just overwhelming guys. You know, overwhelming them and then they, you eventually can't take the pace and they go down. You can't do that with Usik. You're not going to be able to outbox Usoc.

Like, put work on Usoc, the way Usoc put work on Fury and all these fucking guys. I just can't see it. you know what I mean? I just can't. Yeah. But I couldn't see Sean Strickland beating Shemaiah Vita, so here we fucking go. That's what the barber talk was, by the way.

Here, do remember the last time you were in here said, not a fucking chance, peasy? Yes, I do remember this. Well, Cleopatra, one of the only rulers from the dynasty of Ptolemy to actually learn the Egyptian language. There you go.

They should get down on the desk right sharp. It's just flying out now. No, you know who they need. They need to get Pats. They need to get Oh yeah The Combat Sports's only PhD historian of note Patrick Wyman

Who has a new book out by the way that I've been reading and it's awesome But he'd come on there and he could give you actually good Striking commentary like breaking down the technical aspect And he could tell you a whole bunch about what was going on with these pyramids man The fact that they didn't get him At least he could be on there in like a sort of like ringside You know Harold Letterman kind of function or like a Teddy Atlas kind of addition to this broadcast,

and they drop the ball by not getting, I don't know, maybe they don't have Patrick Wyman money to spend anymore. No. But the Saudis aren't funneling all that cash. I mean, this is, this is the Star Wars musical for Wyman. I mean, this is like, this is this moment.

This was Taylor made for him. I mean, I believe he's on the book tour right now. I saw he's at Powell's books in Portland. And so maybe, maybe it's a sign of where he's at where they, they go, hey, can we get you over here to the great pyramids of Giza or Geiza,

or Geysa, some people like to say. I'm going to change it a few times before tomorrow. Believe it. See if we can get you on the commentary and he's like, no, I have to read a pal's books. I cannot be there. Speaking of Patrick's, there is a very, very exciting young prospect named Patrick Habiraro, who is headlining tomorrow in Brussels. It will be on nice and early for all you guys in the US.

He is one of the guys that we are circling to be a Dakota, to be a Paul Hughes, to be an Usman, a Magamayanov, a Tadjian, whatever you have there. This guy is special. spoke to Omeria this week and just such a different take on everyone is dying for Patrick Haberora to pick someone in the rankings that he wants to fight and he's like yeah I don't really think that's important anymore you know I just want to fight the biggest name there to make the biggest splash possible every single time I don't think I can I can have interesting fights with a lot of these guys in the rankings that no one's ever heard of which I was like oh very interesting

he's fighting Benson Henderson and if you want a rock a scene if you are sick of the apex have a look at this guy's events he's already fought in brussels he's fought and he's main evented in France as well a massive deal i was at his debut it was at that cedric dune bay v bacchi fight and this was early doors like i think third fight of the night maybe first second third fight at the night and i see a dude walking out with a belgian crowd a belgium flag and all of sudden this parisian crowd lose their fucking minds he's a massive massive deal it should be a decent fight will he ever fight at 155 his supposed weight class i don't know but i'm going to have fun watching him as he goes about his work

And we're into the hilarious boundary section, that was. Nobody sells these PFL fights like you. I don't know, Chuck, I think maybe you were there the one where Benson Henderson defended the UFC lightweight title. Look, it's Gilbert Melendez, I believe. And he outlined a plan for his career where he was like, I'm going to defend this belt a few more times. Right.

I remember this. And I'm going to be retired by, I think it was 35 that he said. I think he was like in his late 20s at the time. Maybe he said 30, but it couldn't have been more than 35. I remember this. do this, do this. And I remember at the time being like, huh, okay, let's see. Benz and Henderson, I just looked it up here on Wikipedia, since he mentioned his name fighting this thing this weekend, uh, is 42. And still, still at it. Um, Patrick's 25. And I was just,

my only thought about it was, ain't that just the way. Everybody has a good idea about what they're going to do. He was adamant. I remember that. Yeah. And I remember being surprised at the time, But also it's just like people get to a point. And they're like, well, physically I can still do it. There's still money to be made. Do I want to leave it on the table? Once you're done, you're done forever, even though retirement doesn't mean what we thought it meant anymore. Still out here.

Still one to compete. They call you up, say, hey, we're excited about this 25 year old prospect. You want to get down and fight him. And he says, okay, sure. And toothpicks aren't cheap. He's got a grappling much. Toothpicks are actually one of the cheapest things that there is. I can make you a toothpick right now if you need one.

Them Tom Aspen ones are fairly expensive. It's a bit ridiculous, to be honest. That guy, that heavyweight guy, it's gone to his head, everything. You know what I mean? It's just pure luxury over there with the two picks that man's consuming. I went to the Michael Jackson movie last night. What? Yeah, right?

Let me tell you. I was a massive, massive Michael Jackson fan as a child. As a child, like, totally. I believe this. I saw your photo at like 12. I believe this 100%. This guy, right? Now, that was when I went gangster after that to try and revoke my Michael Jacksonville.

Jackson fandom at that stage. From about 10 on, I was like, no one can know about this. So what happened was, I just thought like he's this magical performer. Nothing controversial here. He just dances fantastically. Um, so we got to this age around, I was about nine or 10. My brother was 12. This was right in his wheelhouse this age. Anyway, go ahead. So kidding. Go ahead. Beezza. My mom and dad would leave, leave the house, right? They leave us there and Luke, my brother is in control. And we had the, back then you had VHS tapes. loads of VHS tapes. And I had all the Michael Jackson shit, like the making of Triller, all of these various

different videos he had because he had a lot of videos out. And at the back of the video thing, we had these massive hundreds of videos, I find this thing that says Michael Jackson interview. And I'm like, nine. I'm like, well, what could this possibly be? Yeah. Let's hear more about this guy's life. I think it's interesting.

Yeah. I can't wait to find out more about this dancing man. And I put it in, it's the Oprah Winfrey interview where she's grilling him about all of these sexualists. Oh, man. And I'm like, I'm watching this kind of not understanding because I'm a child. And my mom and dad came in and saw that I was watching this. And I was saying to Andy earlier, it was like, John, like in the line of fire when Clint

East would dives in front of the president. I was like, hey, I found this video and they're like, no. Oh, they wanted to protect your innocence and your Michael Jackson fandom just a little while longer. Here's the thing. That's what the movie does as well. It's amazing. Yeah, that's what I heard.

Maybe not. Maybe not the best way to go with it in the movie. But I recently had the choice to kind of go in the opposite direction because my kids had heard about Michael Jackson, heard Michael Jackson songs, seen him dance, that kind of stuff. And I remember, they had asked me about them and stuff a couple times before, like Michael Jackson music. And then over spring break, we were waiting in a Taco Bell for their food because, hey, it's spring break, you want Taco Bell. I'll get you Taco Bell for lunch.

And then there was a song by the Jackson 5, and I was trying to tell him. I was like, this is Michael Jackson when he was a kid and trying to tell him about, you know, he learned to dance because if you messed it up, your dad would punch you in the face kind of thing. And therefore, didn't mess it up too much. And ended up learning pretty well. And then, you know, they were fascinated by this to learn this about Michael Jackson. They had no, I never heard of the Jackson 5, all this stuff. And then we leave in Taco Bell with our food.

We're driving back to our. our lakeside Airbnb enjoying our spring break day. And my youngest says, is there any other Michael Jackson lore? Oh, my. And I went, yes. Is there, baby? No. Yes, there is.

Yes, there is. I'm, where did you go from there? I told her. I, you know what? Look, this is a swan. You didn't start with bubbles first? Like, you just went, this is. I told them about bubbles when that hilarious video

with John Mullaney interviewing bubbles. When I saw that one, I was like, okay, they'll appreciate this, but first they need to know who bubbles was. Oh, my God. Yeah. And the interesting situation where a man came in with his wife and they were about the same age as my mom and dad. So probably like 60s, late 60s. And me and Elaine are sitting right by the oil. And it's dark.

It's a movie. It's a movie theater. But like the rows are all little. You can see this shit. It's easy. this dude puts on his light, like full torch on his phone, and he's just beaming it into my face. And he's like, yeah, that's B there.

That's B. That's B. It's going on for like three minutes. And next of all, Elaine's, like, starts convulsant. I think she's having some kind of seizure. I'm looking at her and she's like, what the fuck is going on with this dude on his torch? He's there for like five minutes just shouting letters at the alvabet to his wife. A, B, is it, where are we?

Are we in B? And I'm just like a little, I'm fucking little there. How do you react in that situation? How could you possibly behave in such an untoward manner at the Michael Jackson movie? I mean, have a bit of respect to have an uncomplicated good time and you come in here acting like this. Who are your top? What are the rankings for Jackson's? Top five here.

Let's, uh, where do you put Jermaine? Is he in the, he's in the, he's definitely in the top five. He's definitely in the top of him in the top five as well. Yeah, yeah. I was always a Bill. A guy. Bo is my favorite. Bo Jackson.

Yeah. Yeah. He's number one. Yeah. It's pretty fair. I mean, who else has played both Major League baseball and in the NFL out of the other Jackson's? He wasn't in the movie and I think that's because they're jealous of him. Yeah.

They can't afford him. They can't afford Bo Jackson. Bonos. Bonos. Um, will that anyone else have any hilarious banter that happened recently? It doesn't work like this when you go for it. just straight with us people. No, it's just got to be organic.

I mean, yeah, the banter just has to come free. Well, oh, okay, here, here, this is not my hilarious banter. I'm going to share it with you guys anyway. This is a story from a friend of mine. Is this the astronaut joke? No.

I'm just kidding, go ahead. Uh, friend of mine says, you know, his, a long ago ex-boyfriend of his wife's contacts them out of the blue. And contacts them. Hang on. Contacts her. But knows that she's married now, knows that they, and he's just sort of like he hasn't lived in this town for a while.

He's going to be back for the summer, living in an RV. And basically the reason he's contacting her is because he's looking for somebody's driveway, that he can park this RV in and live in it for the summer. And who knows how many other people on the list, he asked before he got around asking an ex-girlfriend from like 15 years ago or whatever. Oh, my God. But it's already, you already got to figure if you're this dude. You know she's married.

You know like you haven't talked to her in a long time. It's a big ask. It's unlikely to be successful. Already, even if you go about it in the best possible way, there's a high probability you get a no here. And what does he do instead of going about it in the best possible way? He opens the conversation by saying, do you have an outdoor power outlet that's close to your driveway?

Oh, my God. Because basically, if the answer is no, he doesn't want to go through all the other stuff. I'm trying to talk to you into it, only to find out you don't have an outdoor power outlet he can plug his RV into. So he's going to start with that and then going to explain that he would like to live in your driveway, please. Wait, did she have one? Yeah, yeah, they have one, but he's he living there now, Ben? It's not going to happen for him. And then I was like, you know what?

I live down the street. I do have an outdoor outlet. Didn't ask me, but go ahead and tell them it's a no for me too. But let them know that I do have that outlet. Yeah, let them know I got it. I'm not even using the driveway for anything right now. Still, still a no. There are worse things that ex-boyfriends can text your misses.

You know what I mean? Yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? You seem to have some stories, but we'll save that for another show. We're all dead. Joe, it is. Like, fair play. You know what I mean?

Like, I admire the fact he did that. Like, I'm the opposite. If, like, I bumped into an ex-girlfriend anywhere and they're like, oh, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm a billionaire now. And I own it. I'm not like, can I plug my fucking house? I know. That's a great point.

Yeah, I'm actually of sign for Manchester United. And she's like, oh, you're nearly 40. And I'm like, yeah, I know. That's how good I am. And I'm loaded. Some people, some people keep it real, Pizzi. Yeah. Well, I don't.

I lie. So I walk away going, I think I won. I think I won there. I won that exchange. And then she's calling up her sister being like, it's the saddest goddamn thing you ever seen. He thinks he plays from Manchester. I see his stupid videos

where he's talking about guys fighting each other. We can see you, Beatsy. Jesus. It's happy. Do we have any super chats, Andy? Oh, yeah, there it is. Nice rip. The crack is my favorite podcast.

Keep up the great work, lads. Ben, it's time to put your money where your mouth is and show up with a raven next to me. Yeah, baby. Infamous warrior numbers 499. Thank you, sir. Will, do you have a raven? I'll tell you what.

I learned today when I went to my, my youngest child's school presentations, everybody in the fifth grade picks something that they're very passionate about, does a whole presentation on it and everything. One of her best friends did a presentation about pigeons because she would like to own a pigeon someday. And really what it was. regular Mike Tyson. She started out wanting to own a crow. And then she found out you need a special permit to own a crow.

And that really crushed her dreams. And so she decided to do this project on pigeons. And I was just like, well, she could still do the presentation on crows. Like, even if you don't, you can't have a permit. Like, her parents probably not going to let her own a pigeon either. I know them. They're not, they're probably not going to say yes to that one. But like, she could still do the one on crows.

and the answer I got was she thought it would make her too sad to do this whole presentation to research and learn all the stuff about crows and knowing she would not be able to own one and I was like, there's somebody that's somebody who is in it for the love of the game that's somebody where you wouldn't have to talk that person

into making a bird on their shoulder, their whole personality, just give them the opportunity. See, that's the thing, Nasrudeem. You're out here ignoring my suggestion. There are people out there who are dying for the chance to have a bird on their shoulder make it their whole personality

people would love that wild west out there Ben like you've got like stories about people plugging in their RVs and like people want to own crows and like it's just different life out there man what was the most random topic out of all of the presentations I'll tell you what did extremely well

was one kid did his on heavy metal and uh Metallica, Guns and Roses, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and man, the over 40 crowd of parents who were there, because it's like, you know, you go see your own kids presentation, and you can just mill about and see which ones you want to see.

And people were lining up to hear this kid talk about heavy metal. He and his dad had built a whole little, like, soundbox kind of thing where it's like you could push a button, hear some guns and roses, push a button. Oh, shit. Here's some Iron Maiden. It was great. to the hills baby.

He even had some cassette tapes. He had a cassette tape of appetite for destruction and then a cassette tape of and justice for all sitting there in front of the poster board. And man, he picked the right audience to play to with that because there were so many people who were like, hell yeah. And then the next kid over is just like, oh, like football. And you're like, okay, sure, everybody likes football. Let's get back to the heavy metal kid from that here.

Look at how amazingly he recreated the Metallica logo. It's perfect. I would have been right beside that kid at that age with my Michael Jackson stand. And the thing about him is he's never done anything wrong. A completely uncomplicated figure. We got on else there, Andy? Oh, Pizzi Don Frey, Carol, I'll take that. I'll take that to the motherfucking bank.

If McGregor ends up stuck in his contract like John Jones, what do the legal and financial ramifications look like if he breaks that contract? is that a realistic option for someone as rich as him? To break his contract. That's interesting, right? Because I was speaking to someone about this the other day, different fight or different error. And he was talking about like,

but what would happen if someone just fucking broke? What if I just went and they announced a fight? An injunction to stop you from going through with the fight. There you go. I'm glad Ben is here because Tyrone Woodley, who on Live Air was like, you got to do this, man. Just ask the people at Netflix.

They'll take care of whatever. He's like, I mean, Rampage Jackson, remember when he got pulled off a card and then later put back on because of like an injunctive relief, like challenge to his contract situation. The way you could do it is what if Connor McGregor pops up? I mean, I don't know who we have in mind outside the UFC that we really want to see him fight or something. Maybe if it's like Nate Diaz or something. What if Connor McGregor is like, hey, fun, fun info for you guys. Last weekend, me and Nate Diaz, we got together, we had a sparring match.

We recorded it so that we could study the film of our sparring match. If you would like to see the film of our sparring match, I'm not going to tell you how it went. It was a doozy. It is available for purchase on my website for $9.99. Could they do anything about it then? It already happened. You're not telling it as if it was like a professional fight. You're offering to let people see some of your training footage, but you're also letting people know

we really did it. We really had ourselves a fight. We got after it. Maybe we did it in like a cool setting, like a open fish market or something like that, like a different street fighter level, whatever. That I think you might be able to get away with. That would be an interesting legal one. Yeah.

It's like when Apollo Creed and Rocky go out at the end of the movie, remember they're like in real? Dang. Yeah. It is interesting though, because we're all, With all this talk, like Nekisa Badarian, like salivating all over himself talking about like when Connor's free. You know?

Um, why is nobody but like, the idea of buying someone out of a contract is, is just, it's not even been talked about. Like that that happens. That can happen. But is it just the fact that UFC just have so much money like, why would they especially for somebody like Connor? I mean, back in the day, we're talking about Tim Sylvia. That's basically what they did.

Well, they just let him out of a contract. One fight left. And they're like, go ahead. like they just let him go and that's how he ended up on that affliction card i mean but you don't really hear about that happening anymore do you especially with big stars i just i feel like that's not a not possible like a jones you know what i mean like how much would cost to bust his contract out and conner with two fights left i'd just love to see this shit happen like that's part of the fun of having new competition i'd love to see some weird scenarios break out like that and the answer

to the question is as ben says because i didn't know this injunction is what would happen unfortunately. Unless we do it on an ocean barge somewhere out in international waters. It can't touch us. That could do that. Love the show still, boys. Thank you for still loving it.

Rank these M.M.A. What if fighters in terms of talent? Zabees. T.J. Grant. Ooh, good show. Chris Holesworth. Fulip. Miller.

Crack ain't whack. It ain't whack. What are some of your favorite Philip Miller moments? Yeah. I don't. Are we talking about Chris holds it down Holdsworth? That's who we're talking about.

That is who we're talking about Chris holds it down, Hollsworth. I mean, see, that's the thing about having one of those kinds of nicknames is it's like, I will remember you. That's the thing I'll remember though, you know?

Yeah. But Holzworth was all kind of like. What was it, Jesse Bongfield like as, uh, yeah, water? Water.

Jesse Water Bongfeld. But wasn't the holdsworth thing all just spoken word, basically the hype? Like everyone just gone. Oh, this fucking guy. If that knee hadn't a fucking gun. Was that not it? Or am I crazy?

Like, what was the standout moment? Hmm. I don't remember him being like, like, like there's a beep. You could be like, okay, that's a big what if. Because he beat like TJ on tough or something like that, like Chris Hullsworth. Yeah. I'm pretty sure like he had some like that. But it was more like everybody was like, oh, my God.

If this guy, if this hadn't happened to this guy, my, my God. I do have to call your attention to a, uh, a fighter that I, I saw recently, I got to look up his, here it is. He was an amateur fighter. Well, I think he still is. He's fought this year yet to pick up a win. But fighting somewhere out of England, his name is better call Saul O'Neill. Saul O'Neill is the name.

And he went with Better Call. I assume this is one of those nicknames. Because, you know, sometimes they'll mess you. up and you'll have a nickname like that and they'll say it in the middle of your name like Saul right call oh neil you completely fuck your whole shit up this one you got to put it in the very beginning and i don't know it's i mean it was a great show uh i don't know if you really want to tie yourself to a tv show that's no longer on the air though like it's gonna give yourself a little bit of a limited shelf life it also seems like we don't have to go with the first idea we

have you know for nicknames we could come up with a few it does matter matter if it's before the full name or if it's in the middle right like oh yeah if you what was a who's big johnson was it was the guy's first name lavar levar so i mean you can't just be like big levar jackson or johnson right like it's okay he was a big guy so it worked but i don't think that was the intention i feel like the no google philip miller this like he fought mark weir um at ufc 40 he has two ufc wins and retorted 16 and oh i think he was one of those guys that was talked about a lot around the Habib retirement, Retarers Undefeated. But it's got to be, it's got to be.

It's got to be for me, right? Like, they're two guys. T.J. Grant was right there. Like, you know, who did he beat? Was it Gray, was it Gray Maynard? He beat somebody. I was there. I remember it was his last fight.

He's basically earned the title shot, you know? He became the number one contender. He became the number one contend. And then he went to the salt mines up in Canada. It was like, that was it. God damn. Nobody, uh, nobody even going to say Cole Conrad's name, huh? Nobody even going to be out there.

He now shot he would have. He would have. You know he would have. You know, he chased that one for years. I know. I know. I know. When he finally got that story.

And my favorite part about it was he finally manages to track down Cole Conrad and get him to talk about his career and how he walks away as the undefeated champion and all that kind of stuff. And him saying how his kids still don't know. Still don't know that he ever did. And he said, you know, his kids were older. That was a good. and he would say every once he would make a little like joking reference or something his kids are getting older they're getting interested in sports all that stuff and every once in while he'd throw in some little joking reference that the kids are not going to pick up on and his wife saying to him like you better be sure you want to do that because one of these days they're going to they're going to hear what you're saying it's going to get through there and they're going to go wait a minute especially i've found this out where you know once your kids they get old enough they're in school they have access to computers with the internet they're going to google you Oh yeah. They're going to Google you and see what's out there.

And it's only a matter of time to your kids realize dad was an undefeated MMA fighter and somehow never mentioned it. Think about all the mistakes I've made on the internet now. Too many. My daughter mainly, she uses the Google feature because every once in a while, if she wants to show her friends at school a picture of our dog, she'll just Google my name and dog. And somewhere on there will be a picture of Carl that I've posted on the internet.

That's funny. Does anybody ever confuse you with Ben? Fox. Yeah. Once or twice, Chuck. I was going to say. Because I sometimes hear people

talking about him and I'm like, what, Ben? And then I'm like, oh, they're talking about the gambling dude or whatever, you know? Honestly, it's a sign of the decline of Ben Folds' career that people don't bring that one.

Didn't even think about that one. See? Do we have? Yeah. Any more? That was it. Well, look, lads. What a day.

What a time to be alive. My mustache survived the episode. Definitely thinking about maybe. Just. I ride this one. to the wheels fall off. Man, I want to see it at Tom Sillick levels

next time to get on here. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see if it lasts. But anyway, boys, it was a pleasure, as always speaking to you. It was a pleasure

speaking to all the wonderful crackheads. Thank you so much to Andy. Thank you so much to Oscar. Enjoy the pyramids and whatnot. Enjoy PFL Brussels. We'll be back next Friday. Love his loads.