The Ariel Helwani Show - Massive weekend recap, Salahdine Parnasse, Dave Allen, Thomas Carty, Mario Pinto, Russ Anber in studio, news & notes

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Ariel Helwani kicks off the show by reacting to Katie Taylor’s magnificent retirement fight at Croke Park, with the crew debating the greatest sports retirements ever, before touching on the scene at UFC Paris (08:25).Saturday’s star Salahdine Parnasse is back on the show, breaking down his huge win over Dan Hooker, talking about the celebrities in attendance, the raucous crowd, the finish itself, doubling down on his Max Holloway callout, being ready to return before the end of the year against a top-five opponent, and more (39:22).Boxing Hall of Famer Russ Anber joins Ariel in-studio to discuss his new book, Unrivaled, before launching into stories from Montreal and his early days in the sport, breaking down the proper way to wrap hands, and more (1:07:20).Heavyweight boxer Thomas Carty is back on the show to discuss the bizarre ending to his fight against Dave Allen at Croke Park, where he fell through the ropes. He talks about what happened leading to the no-contest, Allen’s response in the aftermath, the fan reaction to the incident, and more (2:14:22).Dave Allen is up next, giving his own perspective on the controversy, the finishing sequence, a potential rematch, his physique for the fight, and more (2:28:38).Mario Pinto makes his show debut, discussing another memorable knockout and promo at UFC Paris, his place in the heavyweight division, not wanting to rush into a title shot, his time as a bouncer, how he handles criticism from fans, and more (3:00:06).The Boys in the Back and Petesy Carroll rejoin Ariel to finish recapping the weekend, including the future of Michael ‘Venom’ Page (TIME) and cover news and notes, with the UFC 332 main event, new Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury drama, and Ilia Topuria breaking his silence up for discussion (3:30:08).The crew answers your Super Chats to close the show (4:31:27).

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the on this Tuesday, September 8th, 2000. And 26. Hello again, everyone. I sure hope you're doing well. It feels like a Monday, but it is in fact a Tuesday. If you live in North America, I hope you had a lovely Labor Day weekend. And thus, my friends, comes to an end the greatest summer of our lives. Yes, in my opinion, this is it. The Tuesday after Labor Day pretty much ends the summer season for all intents and purposes. And this pretty much, I mean, not even pretty much, it was. It was in fact the greatest summer of all of our lives. I don't care if you're a Knicks fan or not. It was unbelievable. And I'm sad to see it go, but we are grateful.

We are appreciative. We are happy. We are thankful. And we are excited to get back to things. I had a bit of FOMO yesterday. I'm not going to lie. It was a beautiful day in the tri-state area. It was a lovely way to end the summer. But I had some FOMO. I loved the Monday after a big fight weekend. There's a lot to discuss.

A lot happened. Friday, Andy Ruiz losing in Newark. Saturday, R.A.F. in Moscow. UFC in Paris. An unbelievable show at Croke Park. Yesterday there was a little WW Sunday night's main event. No, not yesterday.

Two days ago, you see. I keep thinking it's Monday, but it is in fact not. And probably the highlight of my weekend, without a doubt, had to have been, you know, coming to work. I was late. I was late today because I actually left. I left pretty early, but there was so much traffic. And usually on Tuesdays, it's pretty good. Like Mondays, it's relatively quick.

Tuesdays, the community gets a little bit longer. Wednesday is the worst. Thursday, I think, is longer, but I don't come in on Thursday. Friday is probably really great because everyone enjoys it. enjoy summer Friday, fall Friday, spring Friday. And so I was very excited to hear about everyone's Labor Day. I was excited to talk to everyone about their long weekends and about what they did. And lo and behold, I come to find out everyone was hanging.

There was a big housewarming party. Yeah, we were celebrating the end of summer here. There was a big get-together. There was a big to do. Look at this. Pizzi, could you believe my surprise as I come in, I say, hey, how was your weekend? and how, lo and behold, they were all hanging out. You were there, too.

You were texting me. And the response that I got, Pizzi, was, oh, you wouldn't have come anyway. And I just feel like, you know what? Saved you the guilt. That's why you invite the person, right? That's why you invite the person who you know is not going to come because you know they're not going to be a burden. I didn't even get the invite, Pizzi. Did you get the invite?

I'm sure you did got. I bet you got the invite and I didn't. You didn't get one either. This is so great. They talked to the crack producer, Russell Ossev about it briefly. Okay, wow. Wow.

Wow. He knew about it. You know what, Ariel kind of reminds me of the fact that we're doing a fancy football league this year. I invited you. I knew you didn't want to do it. But I was like, you know, it nice to be asked. It meant a lot. It meant a lot that you thought of me.

You knew I was going to do it. But the invitation, the thought was very much appreciated. I felt like there was a divide today. It felt like everyone had a good weekend together. Everyone hung out. Everyone had this going away summer party. I do remember specifically seeing Conner and Eric at that party. Listen, did they get the advice?

No joke place. Is this performative? Like this relationships we have? Yeah. It's all just performative. Yeah. It's the power to be friends. Let me know now, by the way.

If it's performative, let me know now. He's, I don't remember getting the invite to go watch Katie Teller in Croke Park. I did. I had one ticket. You know, I had one ticket. There was 82,000. I'm mate, you could have fucking got one. You know what I mean?

By the way, notice how defensive he is. I still haven't even said. party it was, but he jumped right in. Well, I don't know. Well, I don't know. I'm all the ears. Jumped right in. Very defensive. A sign of guilt. I think I know, though. If I do say so myself, and it's fine. Now I know, you know, when the chas-on-parallel, that's what they say. In other words, when the cat is in here, the mice like to dance. And so if that's, if that's the divide, if that's the relationship that we have, then I'm happy that I found out. I understand that you're upset, but please, just no jokes about it, please. Okay, well, you know,

I like what we do I like what we do inside jokes that only five people know when we're speaking to an audience of thousands. Nevertheless, I'm over it, guys. I'm over it. Thank you very much for the invite or no invite. I know I was there in spirit

and I'd like to move on. I'd like to move on. I don't want to make a big deal about this. I'm not hurt. My feelings aren't hurt. I'm excited to talk about everything we need to talk about today. We have a loaded show

back into the program, Mario Pinto, who is now won four fights in a row in a somewhat rebuilding era for the UFC heavyweight division, but I feel like we may have turned the corner with the likes of him, with the likes of Josh Hokit, with the likes of Anthony Wendt last week. I feel like, you know, Pereira is in the mix. We'll get to him. Hopefully Aspenol comes back, Surreal Guy, and having a moment.

I feel like there's some things to get excited about it at heavyweight all of a sudden. And there's some other names that I'm not mentioning as well. Mario Pinto, though, beating Ryan's ban on Saturday at a fired up, Aco Arena in Paris. Everyone very excited after that show. Why? Because Saladin Parnaz won his UFC debut. California walks out, amazing stuff.

Liver kick, first round finish. He is here. He's a superstar. We're going to talk to him at about 740 Paris time, 140 hour time. So stay tuned for that. Russ Anber is going to join us in studio today. Russ Anber is a Hall of Fame trainer.

He is one of three Montrealers to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canistota, New York. He was just inducted this past June. He recently came out with this book called Unrivaled. Play on Words, he owns the rival boxing gear brand, one of the best in the business. He has turned into one of the very best cutman trainers, hand wrappers in the business, the likes of Alexander Usik. He's been working with him for quite some time, Lomachenko, Vassili Lomichenko. He was in AJ's Corner just about a month ago when he fought Christian Pranga, has cornered the likes of Howard Grant and Otis Grant, Montreal Legends took Otis from a neophyte, a 13-year-old all the way to the WBO middleweight

championship. He has seen and done it all in the boxing game. I've never interviewed him before. He's going to be joining us in studio. And when I was a kid, he used to host a show on TSN called In This Corner with Russ Amber. And it was like the only place that you can get boxing talk on Canadian television, legend. and he's joining us in studio, and I'm very, very excited about that. Thomas Cardi's going to join us at 305, 805 in the UK,

and Dave Allen is going to join us right after that, and they're going to talk about their wacky, wacky, wacky, co-main event on Saturday at Croke Park. What a scene that was, what the hell happened, where do they go from here? So we'll talk to those two guys. Tomorrow we'll have a whole bunch of other fighters from the Paris Card. But that's the lineup for today, and of course, there's a ton of news and notes, because today is essentially a Monday.

on this program. And usually we have a lot of news and notes on a Monday. I do want to let you know that today's program is brought you by our good friends over at CalShe. Think of Calci as a marketplace where the price on something is basically the odds of it happening, sports, politics, whatever's going on. That price moves in real time based on where people are putting their money, so you aren't playing against the house like you would on traditional sports book.

Right now, trade $25 with Code Helwani, and they will add another $25 to your account right away. All right? Not bad. Trade 25, you get 25. Sign up right now. There's the code. There's the app. K-A-L-S-H-I code is Helwani. Thank you very much to them. Please support them because they support us. Pizzi, you are at one of the all-time great sporting events of our lifetime. I feel like they say there were 83,000 people in attendance at Croke Park. I feel like by the time it's all said and done, by the times our lives are said and done,

150,000 people will have been there and will have stories of where they were on the night Katie Taylor retired. It was breathtaking, watching it from afar, and I said it beforehand and I'll say it after. I had FOMO. I wish I could have experienced it the way in which you did in the arena

or in the stadium among your fellow countrymen and women, emotional scenes, as I said, at taking scenes, and you did a great job. The post show pod was amazing. I loved it. Shout out to you. Mikey Stafford of the RT Digital site,

the executive editor, I do believe is his title. I may be screwing that up, but something along those lines. A great breakdown, check it out. Very, like, sort of in the moment type of stuff. And I was thinking about this, guys, and I wanted to get your take on it. The way in which they set this up, in my opinion,

all led to perhaps, you don't know how it's going to play out, the greatest retirement in combat sports history. And then you watch it. And I started to think to myself on Saturday and in the aftermath as I started to digest it even more so, was that the greatest retirement in sports history? And I know that's a big, big statement. But just stick with me here for a second. Here's this woman, and we don't have to go through our whole history again because we've done it ad nauseum at this point. But just very quickly, the trail that. that she blazed as a youngster to just get women's boxing legalized in her home country,

then to get it into the Olympic Games, then to win the Olympic gold medal in those first Olympic games in 2012, then to have her heart ripped out in 2016, but then to make a successful jump to the pro ranks and have an unbelievable run to become a three-time undisputed champion, a two-weight undisputed champion, and for it to all sort of culminate with this homecoming in this historic stadium which the likes of PT did such a great job of setting the table for throughout the week on uncrown.com, the whole site was just buzzing

with all the stuff going on. And shout out to Jackson Morrow who did a great job with those photos of the Katie generation, as we called it. For it to all culminate with this show, 83,000 people, the range of ages in attendance from kids to adults to grandmother's, men and women, the party that it was, and then for it to translate into that

performance with that win, with that post-fight interview, and that post-fight celebration, with the gloves in the middle of the ring, with the belts laid out, I don't know. Like, we talk all the time about how the end of a fighter's career can often be depressing, sad, heart to stomach. It's like three, four, five, six losses in a row, uncomfortable conversations, who's going to pull the plug. And yes, we have seen great final fights or retirement fights. Habib retiring was great. That was in Abu Dhabi in front of no people. That place means nothing to him. There was no one there to really, like that was to me more sad than anything because it was tied to tragedy. GSP, Matt's Square Garden at the time, we didn't know that was going to be his retirement

fight. In retrospect, it was amazing. But it wasn't all built as the retirement fight in the best setting possible in the main event with undisputed gold in front of 83,000 people. I feel comfortable right now saying that's the greatest retirement in combat sports history. And now, and we could talk about that and then talk about sports. Does anyone disagree? I'll ask you first, Pete. You've had some time. You were there.

And your emotions may be even greater than mind, especially considering where you're from and you were in attendance. I've been thinking about it. I can't think of a better retirement in fight sports history, MMA, boxing, all these sports that we talk about. I can't think of a better one. You? No, and honestly, it looked magic on TV. I had to go back and watch it to see if it really conveyed what was happening in there because it was like nothing I've ever attended in my life.

Just that, as you said, like this, I kind of put in one of the last piece I did in it. Like, you know, these people weren't boxing fans. They weren't necessarily sports fans. But they were all Katie fans. And that might be the biggest catch-all demographic in Ireland. Because there was groups of women going to this fight. There was families with all different types of generations going to this fight. And it was like a festival in there.

You know, the DJ for matchroom had the place in the palm of his hand. Every time a round broke, everyone's just dancing, like 80,000 people dancing. Granted, this fight didn't have the jeopardy of a Chantelle Cameron. It didn't have the jeopardy of an Amanda Serrano. I think the scenes we just saw there were Peeley landing on Katie wearing the seventh round. That was probably our best round of the fight. But otherwise, I felt like Katie took it at a canter. it was just miraculous

and to think of like, right, we're talking about the greatest retirement ever. If we just like, take it back a little bit from there, think about the amount of awards this will be up for

when we do our end of year awards. Walk out of the year, crowd of the year, promo of the year. All of this happened at this one event, this one magical thing that we never thought could happen. And I honestly feel like

it was the most wholesome atmosphere of ever seeing at a fight night. Even afterwards, right? There was a lot of talk in Dublin about the kind of unruly behavior that goes along. It kind of goes hand in hand with combat sports, right? We've all been at these events. We know things can pop off in the crowd.

That's in stadiums of like 10,000 to 20,000. You've 83,000 people here. Like something's going to happen, right? I have friends who are sitting all around this arena. Nobody heard a cross word being said. It was a big jovial feeling like the Irish football team are playing. You can see so many people wearing Irish football jerseys. Because that's what Katie is.

She's representing Ireland. She's always represent Ireland. And I walked down under the streets after I did that post show with Mikey Stafford that you mentioned. So it's probably about an hour after everything was wrapped up. And that's when it's going to happen, right? Like, if it didn't happen in there, it's going to happen then. And everybody is just these veins running out of Crow Park, all these different streets, and they're packed with people.

And obviously the people have had a few tipples, which they're more than welcome to do on such a celebratory night. And the feeling was just magic out there. I walked 10 kilometers home before I got a taxi. Like halfway home, I just walked from Crowe Park because everybody was trying to leave at the same time. I didn't see a bit of trouble. The guard looked bored,

the police. They were standing around, like they obviously put so many bodies around this stadium because they thought like something might pop off. They looked bored. They were just directing traffic and like chatting away. I was chatting a few of them asking them which way is my best way to walk to get a taxi. They were,

they could have talked to me all night because there was absolutely nothing to do. A magical knife for a magical person. And it couldn't have gone better. It really couldn't have. The one thing, if you want me to nitpick, will I nitpick? Sure. One thing I'd say is, and we all know sponsors are very important. Yeah.

I would have loved if that that was a blank canvas. And she was put in the belts and the tricolor and everything and the gloves down, obviously. What is Lytle, by the way? It's a supermarket? It's like a supermarket. Yeah, I think it's a German supermarket. There's loads of them here. there's usually one within a kilometer's distance of an Aldi.

Whatever they paid for that, by the way, they got a sweetheart of a deal. And I know it bothered a lot of people. And I guess you could say, like, who could have predicted it? But I guess they could have predicted it because they knew they were going to do that. Eddie was ready to do it. You can tell, like he was telling her he was going to do it beforehand. Maybe he didn't tell her days beforehand. But it didn't bother me.

Katie's speech, by the way. Like, when have we ever heard Katie just taking the mic and just being like, I just want to give everyone thanks? There was no like, look at me, look at what I did. It was like, I need to thank everybody that helped me along the way here. Going down the line, mentioning her dad, mentioning her husband, mentioning Brian Peters, her longtime manager, taking the mic. I would never advocate for a post-fight interviewer to give up the mic.

But I thought Jamie Ward did the right thing. You have to give it up in that moment. It's her moment and she was so classy and it was just so beautiful. And you said this in your post-fight pot as well. It felt like all the... the pressure just kind of left. Her guard finally went down and she was, there's a moment where she's like, let me just take this in because it feels like often she didn't take things in. I know the MSG walk was nice and the three arena walk walk was nice as well, but it just always felt

like she was so businesslike. It was just like every single box was checked, in my opinion, to make it the greatest retirement fight in combat history. Let me ask GC, who wasn't there, obviously, but has been watching now for quite some time. What am I missing? Is there anything that comes to mind in terms of fight sports that you've seen that you've read about, that you've heard,

I really don't think anything tops this. No, combat sports, I think maybe the best one I can think of off Rip is Robbie Lawler, but that's, he was fighting on the prelims. It was mostly the fact that he got the AO. That place meant nothing to him. Yeah, I mean, selling out Croke Park,

the fact that they even made Croke Park happen is just unbelievable in and of itself. There's no disaster in terms of the result of the fight. Everyone, to Pizzi's point, is in good graces. It's basically just a massive party for Katie Taylor. She gives an amazing speech afterward. In terms of combat sports, I'm having a hard time thinking of a better retirement. I mean, especially in a sport that, A, a lot of people don't stay retired. They end up coming back. I cannot imagine there's a scenario where Katie Taylor ends up boxing again. And then B, happy endings are very rare in both boxing and. And,

and an MM. It's usually depressing, awkward, sad, uncomfortable, and you don't have the whole show built around you like that. She had the whole show. It was historic. The first one since Ali there, and I know to a degree a lot of this is regional. I understand that Katie isn't the biggest star in North America as she is over in Europe and Ireland in particular. UK as well. The Netflix fights certainly raised her profile. But I just, I really can't think of another one. I can't think of another fight that was for a retirement fight that was that much of a home run that

hit all the notes and was that amazing and all worked in her favor. The one who had announced months ago that she was going to retire in this fight. Rick, am I missing something? I will admit I missed the early parts of the conversation. You miss nothing other than me and everyone agreeing that it's the greatest retirement

fight in combat sports history. We're not talking sports yet. Yeah, yeah. Just combat. I have to I have to agree there. There's probably no equivalent, right? Like, Habib is maybe the best version that we get in combat sports. But again, that was in an empty arena in Abu Dhabi.

Sure. No, in terms of said it, absolutely. But in terms of just a magnificent moment for one of our best athletes leaving on top, that's probably the closest comparison. Maybe if Dustin Porrier's fight goes his way, that could have been. And again, more often than not, it ends in sadness, right? Also, he lost. It felt like they missed a few things.

Like the little Wayne walkout was atrocious, everything like that. And then obviously the loss, yeah. And this is why the retirement is more to me. It's less about the pomp and circumstance and the theatrics, which are important and kind of what this conversation is centered around. But it's about Katie's greatness, which is, as you said, most of these don't go that way. When you are retiring, often it is because you cannot hang,

because you cannot do that at the level that is required anymore. and it is very clear that Katie Taylor could still be a top-level women's boxer. That is unequivocally true. You can see it in the way she fights, but she is choosing to walk away, which is not a luxury that many athletes have, especially in combat sports, let alone other sports. But in combat sports, it often goes sad because you're the last to know that it's over. And Katie Taylor is deciding it's over, which is commendable,

but also shows she is still a very, very high-level athlete. And she's not deciding, you know, five years early to try to go out on top. She is 40, but it's the perfect time. She gave us the last 10 seconds there of vintage Katie. I don't know how many more people can have the stars align. And it probably says a lot about who she is that everyone worked so hard to make this happen. But honestly, Matroom deserves a lot of credit too. That show was beautiful.

Even the boy band that sang there, Westlife, like, Westlife, they're called Westloaf. And there's no space. It's one word. Okay, my bad, my bad, my bad. I wasn't even bothered. You know, I wasn't even bothered. they had to kill some time because of the wacky comane. It was just a phenomenal show.

Now, greatest sports retirement ever? I feel like there's a case to be made. Again. It depends on what we mean by greatest. Meaning the stars aligned. You're literally at the mountaintop. You've got 83,000 people who are there just to see you. Let's be honest.

With all due respect to Dave Allen and Thomas Cardi and Patty Donovan and anyone else, they were all there to see Katie Taylor win. There probably was 0.001% of the people. people there who were there to see someone else, friends, family, maybe Flore Peeley's, you know, partner or something. I don't know. Donovan probably had the second biggest. And what was that, right? Like a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction.

Everyone was there. They also were there to see. Exactly. You know what? Can I throw out some other names? Please, please. Now, let me just say, in throwing out these names, I am not saying that these are greater.

I am just offering for thought. I am putting out. You were going to throw them out. I'm going to throw them out. I'm going to throw them out. I'm going to get offended anyway, Rick. I'm going to get offended anyway. I hope you do, please.

This one has an answer. Because he comes out of retirement, but Jordan shot in 98, I think, is a gold standard moment. Okay, and can I add an important distinction. Part of what makes us great is she told us beforehand going in she was retired. And that adds a level of pressure. Jordan, while we all thought the end was near, had never actually said it. Absolutely. We knew, we could, like, this was all phenomenal.

He played for the fucking wizards. He played for the wizard. Okay, okay, okay, let me keep going. In the moment, you're right. Let me go with my list. Okay, go ahead. Let me keep going. Kobe Bryant, who did tell us ahead of time.

He did. 60 point game on the way out, got the win. Beautiful. Regular season. Everybody was there. It was a moment. But it was amazing. I'm not trying to diminish it.

It's unbelievable. 60 points in your retirement game is absolutely unbelievable. Sure. If you would have had that 60 point game at the L.A. Coliseum in front of 75,000 people. Well, I'm just saying the 83,000 helps. I know. All right.

We can only do so much. We're going to have a conversation, Rick. We're all going to have a conversation. She could have been at the three arena. Okay. Okay. You can only do so much for NBA again. John Elway.

Yeah. Super Bowl winning Super Bowl MVP on the back-to-back championship Broncos walking off into the sunset after two. Got to be mentioned. Two Super Bowl. Falcons in the second one. No, actually, Terrell Davis might have won the first one. But a Super Bowl MVP in the final game of the career, of the historic. Shout out to Thorel.

I remember, I remember I think it was 97, 98. Yeah. Did he tell us going into that Super Bowl? This was another like we kind of all knew, but I don't know if he said. No, because remember he did the speech afterward that gets memed now where he's just like, my body. Right. I'm physically. I just can't hold it.

It's up there. It's up there. I'm not trying to diminish. Keep going. But Katie's still winning. This one I don't feel is as good as Elway, but same sport will go Michael Strayhan, championship giants, upset the Patriots. He did say it was going to be his final year.

Sure. Bit player. One of 53. Wow. I mean, Big player. It's not all centered around him. Never heard of him.

It's not all centered. Never heard of. I never heard of. Michael. All right. Good morning America. Here's, it's fucking crazy.

Here's the one. Here's the one that made me go. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Michael Phelps. 2016 Rio. Walks off into the sunset with five gold medals in a silver and says

Sianara. That's pretty That's pretty And you talk about the eyes of the world It does not get bigger than the Olympics globally Right That's the one where I'm like Hmm

Because if you do five goals on the way out the door It's not bad It's not bad I mean is it Flora Pili Under the Lights on September 5th 2026? I don't think it is Did Westloaf play?

Did Westloaf play before? She's fighting Flora Pili Chamb Minus 4,000 favorite Like it was a four- Defeated? Undefeated 12 and 0

12 and 0. 12 and 0. Do we admit that Michael Phelps is the frontrunner of the number of the names that I've said so far? Okay, yes. John Elway is pretty badass. John Elway, the MJ, all pretty great. They're manning as well for the Broncos.

Manning for the Broncos. 15 and one panther. Less we forget. Never heard of them. Never heard of them. 1994 World Cup Diego Maradona against Nigeria is retirement. A big one as well. Felipe Alam.

Philippe Lam, German left back wins the World Cup. It goes off in the distance. One is fifth Bundesliga title that year as well. pretty good. Jerome Bettis. Played in his hometown Detroit in the Super Bowl. Okay. Can I tell you what a crazy one? I just want to throw off. I'm out of here.

I want to throw out one absolutely insane one. You're crazy. That needs to be sent. Secretariat? Hey, go. 1973. Okay. Sixth is all good.

Michael Keesla, Seattle. These are all good. But ultimately why I still give it to Katie is because the whole freaking show was built around her. Yeah. The Olympics weren't built around Michael Phelps. So the amount of pressure

that she must have had, and I know minus 4,000, all that, that's an immense amount of pressure. She told us beforehand, she broke the barrier to get croak, to do this fight. She sells it out in 30 minutes.

Insane numbers I saw on RT, 1.6 million or something like that. I just feel like it's not so much about the result. Big, no doubt about it. If she loses, it's not the same. But every single thing, like the moment, the occasion,

the walkout, the emotion, the journey that she took this country on and really the sport of women's boxing there is no MVPW if not for Katie doing what she did. And it just felt to me like, I mean, look at this, look at this greatness right here.

And you may feel some sort of way about women's boxing and you may feel like the talent pool is in there. It's so hard to sell 83,000 tickets in a venue that doesn't usually host big fights. It just doesn't. 17 minutes.

17 minutes. I still have a hard time trumping that one. It was true. The word that keeps coming to mind is breathtaking. Like, she's walking out. I'm like, this all looks great. You know, even sometimes like a ring in a big stadium doesn't look good or it doesn't sound good. It just all looked great.

It all felt great. And nobody knows that song apart from Kay Taylor. And it was fine. And it was fine. And I didn't mind it. People were weeping on press row. Oh. Yeah.

People are just growing. There's people crying all over the fucking place. It was unbelievable. Look at this. To me, to me, it goes back to what I said earlier. It's an extension on that, which is not only was the, the ending. on her terms. The whole spectacle was on her terms. It's her.

Can we just say? Look at this. In this venue, in this moment, she decides this. She dictates her in a representation obviously, but they dictate this, right? As you said, Michael Phelps doesn't get to tell you where the Olympics happened, doesn't get to set the same as well. But that's not Michael Phelps fault. No, I'm not saying. But she has

where you can do that. Absolutely. But that's what makes it so much better. She does have the control of that. The fireworks. She did it in this setting. Wow, it looked beautiful. It really did look beautiful. The fireworks were incredible. I was telling you, that stadium, didn't I tell you, it's for a long long time.

It's some piece of work. It's some piece of work. I mean, honestly, if I'm Connor McGregor watching that, I'm thinking that should have been me. It could have been me. You know what I mean? People don't want to admit that, right, that it could have been him, but he could have sold that place. They were absolutely. Easy.

10 years ago, 2015? They don't admit it. They don't want to admit it now, obviously because of everything that's happened. Really, they don't want to admit it. I think they would. No, I think. Oh, you had that argument like five times this week. I was like, 2016.

You don't think you got to have sold that thing out in 40 seconds, just as fast as her. That's not less. Yeah, maybe a little bit less. No, I mean, at his height, at Connor's height, he was bigger than Katie was. At his height, he was world renown. Katie's not necessarily world renown, but she's the person to do it. She got there first. She, like I said, she opened up those doors.

It was amazing. It was happening, guys, at the same time as the France fight. And I thought it was going to time out to where, Parnas would happen maybe a little bit before or a little bit after. I can't remember, but it was all happening at the same time, which was dizzying. You know, some of us have multiple TVs. Others are just sort of like on multiple devices, neither here and or there. But I was able to take it all in. And Parnas coming out too was breathtaking. Like it was a very, I thought it was like a very emotional day in combat sports to see that scene and that walkout and those lights and those fireworks and that result. And also to see Parnas who, you know, it's been a while since we've had some. someone on the European scene or international scene or regional scene takes so long to make it to the big dance and then come out and have that kind of debut. And again, in a very unique spot where it's main event in his home country, massive star, Wembe's sitting cage side, Rudy Gober is sitting cage side, making him feel like. Parnas came across as a superstar, more so than he did on the MVP card because he's in France and there's all these things that are built around him.

that was as great. Like, Katie's fight was as great of a retirement fight, and this was as great of a debut as we've ever seen, in my opinion, considering all of that. And it was something interesting about seeing the two happen at the same time. The end, the beginning, this guy coming out and living up to all the hype, smile on his face, he is a stud. I said afterwards, PT, I don't know what happens if he's in these fights,

but I feel confident in saying, put him in there against the top fiver. He is that good. he is competitive. I don't know if he beats Armin. I don't know if he beats Ilya, but he is ready to fight with those guys. Do they put him in there just yet? Maybe one or two away.

But like the idea, as I saw in some of the comments, like, wow, way to overreact after one fight. This isn't one fight. He's 24 and 2. It's over 10 years. Yeah. It's crazy. He's ready.

And a prodigy since he was a kid. And just once again, have the credit as his management as well. Because look, this is a step up. As I said, like, Dan Hooker is a step up to see how he dealt with that was brilliant. He was obviously ready for it. And his team obviously knew that he was ready for it. But I would say, I agree with you. I don't think you need to throw him into the top of division.

We can have a bit of fun here with Saladin Pernas. And in the vein of fun, there was a fight, you know, back in the KSW days. And we're all like, imagine if that wanted to happen. Imagine if this double champion fought another double champion, just so happens they're both in the same organization now. I would do Parnas v. Gamrott. No. in the next week. No, you're crazy. You're absolutely crazy. What are you talking about?

Quill and Selkeel just disposed of Gamera. What are we doing? What were going backwards here? We're having some fun. Paranas just sold out the Akhor Arena. The whole damn place was there for him and we're going to have... What do you do then? You want to do Selkill then?

Nah, too soon. Give him Max. Say Max. Give me Max. Give me Max. Although Max isn't going to do it. He's waiting on Connor, yeah? Yeah.

No, I mean, he's too damn good. And I'm not going to suggest that Max. is afraid, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Lightweight. Minimum top seven. Can I get Charles? I'd watch it.

If Charles wants to fight him, I'd do it. Saladin comes in, takes the BML, two fights in? Here's the problem. I would love... 238. I would love Marisio Hoofee. I would love that.

But if who, like, from a stylistic standpoint, but if Hoofee beats Armin, I don't know if that's fair to him. If Hoohy, if he beats Armin, no way. If he loses the Armin. Then I feel like, like a little bit of momentum is lost.

You're in the gamrod zone then as well with the emotion on that one? If Huffy loses. No, I don't mind if Huffy loses. I still kind of like that. Because who else is there? Sal Kield, Max. I mean, here's the, it's not going to be Paddy. It's not going to be Ilya.

Here's the meta rankings. It's Ilya, Armin, Charles, Max. What about Charles? Fuck the meta rankings. Do the media. META doesn't even have Saladin rank. Sorry, my bad. Oh, wait.

No, this is the media, I think. Okay, media. Is the white media? No, white's meta, bro. White's meta. What about Fiziv? What about Fiziv? What?

I feel sort of about Faziv in the same sense you feel about Gamrod. Fassiv looked good in his last fight. I know. But I don't feel like that's like the step up to that upper echelon of 155. I mean, we're running out of names. He's just going to have to fight one of these guys. I don't think Gammarott's a horrible option, but I would probably look to be higher if I was him. Listen, PC, I'm not trying to...

I know the history double chance. No, no, no, go ahead. Go ahead. And I know that there's some people who are like, Gamrod should have gotten this type of push. But, like, do you think if they would have had Gamrodot fight in his home country coming out of KSW that he was this popular? He wasn't this popular, was he? Gamrod is not as popular as Saladin Parnas right now.

Right. That's true. But if you were to debut in the UFC like this in Poland, sell out huge. He was the guy. He was like the poster boy of... Sure. He was massive.

There's something, Paranas has it, though. It feels like he has it. Oh, he's magic. He's magic. And the French scene is on fire. Yeah, you're right. It is a tricky one. The Max one kind of jumps out, but I just don't see Max doing it.

BSD not available? French on French on French crime. Legends of the division to give up, give up their momentum. Like give up, it's like Highlander. They take their souls once they beat them, you know what I mean? Yeah. What a show, though. That was another great show.

better crowd than Shanghai Oh two back-to-back elite crowds It was fantastic I said in my wrap-up I said that it was louder than Song Yudong But a lot of people disagreed with me They said the-Songedong said like the decibel record

For the UFC or whatever No he said it for that arena That's a big difference It's a huge difference Yes it's a huge difference What a show though Parnas was great Hooker was great too

You know didn't love the abuse But I think he's okay with it. You know, he, he sort of asked for it with all the, you know, I'm going to shut you guys up

and take your belongings, leaving an orderly fashion. I said to GC it was very Libin and Silva. Like he just played the heel perfectly. It was just like, this is it.

I'm going to do it. But I can't stress this enough. The UFC doesn't usually put these guys in their home country in the main event. There's always a like, Roberto Soldich just got signed. They could put Roberto Soldich

in Croatia and probably sell a few tickets. It doesn't usually work. out this way. What? Yeah. Or Serbia. They could go back there and do a huge event with him there either. Yes. Thanks. We'll put you down below Natalia Sylvan and Wang Kong. In Utah. Enjoy.

In Utah. Not a robo cop coin of crowd out there. I think to that point, they're pushing Saladin Parnas, which I don't think it's going to be a gamron next. I think it's going to be one of these upper echelon guys at 155. I just loved how it all played out and the fact that they were willing to push someone who wasn't their own product and put the whole, you know,

show based around him on the marquee. Credit is my personal for the right time. 100%. They waited. They waited for the right time. The Netflix thing opened up. Again, yeah, you have to be a little bit smart.

You have to be a little bit lucky. You have to be calculated and all worked out perfectly. Before we move on from the matchmaking part of this, can Max just sit and wait? Does Max have to, like, I get it. I get that Max has a big opportunity potentially upcoming.

But if Usman or Magamadov also enters this fray, now Parnas is a new player. Like, we can't just have Max, Charles, Armand. Everybody just sitting there. That's the one. You just answered it. You just answered it. Usman Saladin.

That's the one. That is the one. That is the one. That is the one. That's four down the line. No, that's the one. PFL champ versus all these other organizations. Yep.

Yes, that's the one. No. Yes. Max fights one. No. You know what? That's what we're saying, Gamra. You know what I mean?

Listen, by the time, Max is going to be ready to come back, it's going to be like, oh, we're four months away. Let's just wait for Connor. That's what it's going to be. Is he not ready to come back now? Nah, he had two fights back to back. I mean, that was, you know, March and July is pretty damn quick in this day and age. I know it just took zero damage. Yeah, but the training camp, you know, don't forget about that, the wear and tear on the body. That is the one. Saladin, Paranas, Usman, Armaghamedov. That's the one. Tell me a better fight for Usman. Okay. What's a better fight for Usman, right, off the jump? If you're going to have a hard

time booking Parnaz against these guys. Gaichi? He's going to get the title shot first? That's not going to happen. At this point... Has that magic second name, my friend? Uspin has... Win for Mr. Alia del Aziz.

Usman has the win over Paul Hughes, so that trumps anything Paras has. Paras has the win in the UFC against... That's big, though. Against Hooker, yeah. The visibility. The resumes are pretty damn equal.

Are they not? Yeah. Very, very, two brilliant fighters. Two brilliant fighters. I would love to see. Who would you favor in that? But it's, you know. Jeez, I don't know.

Who's the betting favor in that, G.C.? No clue. Like, I think there's a striker. Stryken's obviously on Sala, and then the wrestling's obviously with Usman. Usman's a very good striker as well, though. And Saladin's very improved.

I think it'd be a silly fight to make, if I'm being honest, which I are as good as it is. From a promotional point of view, silly. Why? Why? Silly, mate. Why? But tell me why. Tell me why. Can't just be silly. They're going to give Usman too soon. Gamrod or Fazeve. That's who's next for Usman. Less silliness with these suggestions. That's all I'm asking me.

All right. So you like the Gamrod one better. Listen, no. This is a much better. Obviously, Usman and Saladin's a great boy, but I just don't think they're going to do that. I think they want to repopulate the top of this division based on what Rick is saying there, Charles Max's all hanging around there. But them boys aren't going to shift easy. Kids made a lot of money. All right. Well, let's see. Let's see.

We're going to talk more about the rest of this car. We've just wet the beak, as they say. We have to talk about Axel Sola, MVP in his future. Is he out of the rankings already? What the hell is going on over there? Cato with that great celebration, Curtis Campbell. We have a lot to discuss. But without further ado, I did want to speak to the man that we were just speaking about,

the pride of France, who was so very successful. and what a debut it was on Saturday at the Akko Arena, the former KSW double champion. Now, UFC vet, now 1 and O in the UFC. Mr. Saladin Parnas is here to talk about what transpired on Saturday. Bonsoire, Saladin, felicitation. Congratulations on the win. Thank you so much for coming on.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. And by the way, Saladin, I have to say, I know we have a translator, and translator Tayo, I believe his name is. But I heard you speaking English,

so maybe you don't need the help anymore. We do the interview in English now, on Angles? I'm working to do English, you know, and prepared for my future. Okay, I like it, because I saw a little bit of a taste on Saturday, so this is good, very smart. Saladin, can I ask you,

we've been talking so long about what it would be like for you to fight in the UFC, what the scene would be like to see how it all came together in France, in Paris, main event, first round finish. Does this feel like a dream to you? Is that to have combated at U.S.C. at Paris,

at your, it's a reason for you. Yes. Yes. It's a dream. No, it's a dream. Frankly, it's a dream. No, nothing to say. I've lived a night, a night.

A night of the manner of the manner of the Maneer with a TKO in the first room, so, no, incredible. It's a dream for him. It was a real dream and he won with a big TKO at his home in Paris. So it was incredible and he could not dream better than this. How much has life changed for you since Saturday? Do you still feel like you're on a high? Do you feel like you're getting recognized so many people talking about you?

What is life like now after your debut? Is that you just saw that really your life has changed, your notoriety to change, the people who recognize more, since Saturday night yes yes

and no but I rest really very I change not my

priority is the number I work so I work for

so I'm some things change more people recognize him

in the street but the most important thing for him is

to not change his behavior in the life and he will not

change and he stay focus on the next fight. That's the most important thing for him. When I was speaking to your long-time coach and manager, Stefan, about coming on the show, he said, oh, you have training.

And I was like, training already. You just fought on Saturday. And then I saw a video of you at the gym yesterday. And so are you back to training already? Yeah, it's... Well, I'm obligé, I do that. It's the entranement. Now, for example, I'm in Madrid.

I'm trained in my interview with you, directly. He said, yes, he always like to train and he has no damage from the fight Saturday night. And right now we are in Madrid and we just go out from the gym. So, yeah, and then we have the interview, but he always wants to train. No vacation, no break, you don't want to give your body a break. I don't want to learn to... No, no, no. No.

I'm born to fight. He didn't make, yeah, he's born, he's born to fight. I love it. Can I ask you, Saladin, what was the week like leading up to the fight? Not necessarily fight night, but just going through the UFC protocols, the way-ins, the check-in, all the stuff that the UFC is so good at. What was that like for you to do it for the first time? Getting your gear, the gloves, the uniform, all of that. What was that like?

How would you describe it? We've been talking about the showry of combat How you've ever You've ever seen The protocol The USC They are very strong for

So their professionalism How do you have How do you? What's It's a bit Chongety Like a job I think If we're mediatized

If we're mediatized Like that We've To do It's part Mediatic So there's There's a

Many Role because I I was the main event So I'm Wentre in the In the and it's normal. I think I'm, I'm

obituated. I've got the I've got to do that. And for me, the most important is the combat, it's the georgie. He had, he had a lot of media much more than before, but I'm used to eat. But the most important thing is to stay focused on the fight

and for the day to be ready and to make the best the best war he had he can do. You seemed as you were walking out, I was trying to really study you to see how you were coming across. You seemed very relaxed, happy, giving high fives to the fans and whatnot, but I was wondering internally if you felt more nervous than usual. You've had some big fights, you've had title fights, you just fought on Netflix as well, but because of it being your debut and your home country, were you feeling a little bit more nervous than usual?

When you're When you've done In the arena You have been very relaxed and Very relashed Is that It's a combat

More important than the other Is that you You've felt a little more nervous Or, you've already done to be

champion You've been You've been You've been The thing And I'm Have this This pressure

I think This pressure It's a Addute a difference And it's that that That's the

Offer the big combats to the grand public Like I I'm a combatant who is very divertisant, who is a great pleasure to look at all. So I hope to have diverted the world

entire and it's my goal to mark my sport. He is used to this pressure and he really likes this pressure. He felt very relaxed because he knows this pressure. But this pressure makes him much more, much more like he really likes that because he can give very good fight and strong fight and he really wants to to entertain the people and the arena during the fight. And that's pressure, give it to him this kind of strength. You know, we've talked a lot about the fact that the UFC has called you in the past,

and it just didn't make sense for you to come over and sign with them, you know, a couple of years ago. Do you think Saladin a couple of years ago would have looked this good in his debut, or do you think it was perfect time to wait a little bit, to become a little bit more comfortable, to be the man, to feel like you're feeling now, and not jump at the first call when they called you for the first time with that contract. He told me, it was just a few years, but how you, you know, what you wanted,

you wanted, that it was the perfect moment to go? How did you feel the thing? No, I think that it was the moment perfect where you had to, you had to partier the UFC, because, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's a new era, it's a new generation. And I think we're there to conquer this

new new this new new defeat, all simply. He thinks that it was really the good timing for him, because that's a new generation

coming into the UFC. And he really think that it was a good time for him to have some new challenges and to maybe to get the belt one day with this new generation. I was curious if when you were entering the cage,

if you noticed it was a beautiful symbolism. It was symbolic to see French giants of the sporting world. Victor Wenbanjama, his brother, Rudy Gaubert, watching and acting like fans, clapping you on, reacting like this. These are guys that have millions of people who react like that to them. And there they are acting like fans about your work. Did you notice them? Did you see them as you were entering the cage or even afterwards?

Is that when you're entered in the cage, you've got to come back, you've got the icons and the symbols of the France of the NBA, Victor Wenbanema? Is you, you, have seen before to combat? And what do you think of that?

Yeah, I've seen. It's a super pleasure to have these figures montent in France, and who is Wembe, who, who, who, who, who,

he's a motivation in more, it's a motivation in more, to mark the sport. Normally, it's more motivation. At the contrary, it would have to give them a good spectacle. If they are there, it's not for nothing. So, you're assured, they're sure. Yeah, he said, I saw them and it gives me more motivation.

I'm very happy to see them during the fight. And that's a very big symbolism for him because they represent friends. And he really wants to entertain everybody because they are here. And he is very proud of that. When you were thinking about the fight and how it was going to play out, were you expecting a quick finish? Is you, is you, you'd attended a, an also rapid finish?

When you started the combat? No, no, no, no, no, my mentality, it's not to search the finish. The finish, it really, thanks to the work that you've done your preparation and all along in the cage, when you enter in the cage,

it's where you read all my adversary, and I mean, I get my adversaries, and then I install my rhythm, and if there's a finish in the first round, it's that I've found the file.

I don't look for the quick finish. I am a very adaptable fighter. I just want to read my my opponent and to understand his plan and I do what I think good during the fight at the good moment, at the good timing. His undoing was the liver kick, the kick to the body.

Was that something that you were trying to set up? Was that something you specifically were targeting in practice that you knew was going to be open in the fight? The coup of course is that something that you had worked, that you thought to do for? Well, I work all along my preparation, all the time. I'm going to gochered. And we know that the arm of the left is the middle, the right. So it's important to work and I think he

should be out naturally. And I think, as I'm going to gochet, they're actually naturally. So, so I can place my middle full of the left. Yes, I worked a lot of this kick to the liver. And has the left hand and the left left lead leg. he really liked that

and he thinks it's a very good strength for him that moment where you win and especially in France you win your UFC debut could you tell us do you even remember like how old were you

when you first started dreaming of something like that like that seems to be like a literal dream come true for you how long have you been dreaming of a moment like that for when you've gained

you've you're reminded of when you were to when you were to gain at the UFC in a state of a full of it? Is it really, do you think of that? And, and,

when you've always, we're all of that, we're all of having, in in a time as a combatant, to become the best of the world. And what I'm trying to do, step by step, and I'm going to my talent to the eyes,

to the world andchie. And I think that's a rave that can be realise. I think in my I'm a hard for that. Everybody dreams of that kind of thing. That's crazy for him, and he wants to

to go step by step and he worked every day since he has 11 years old and he believes in him and that's a good adventure for him. By the way, when you were young, who was your favorite fighter? Who did you look up to? Who did you want to be like?

Oh, I love two sports. The box English also, I love So, my aspiration It's been Floresme Bezor because he didn't know because he didn't

very much of a lot of course. And so I try to me adaptate a bit to make a

bit of their style and to put in the MMA and Rabib and Mag Gregor Josaldo also

and then he really love the two sports English boxing and MMA and then

in English boxing Preumaeweiser and Canelo Alvarez and in MMA Konor Malrigor and Rabib and Josaldo Okay, they came out with the rankings

today Saladin and in the meta rankings you aren't ranked and in the media rankings you're ranked ninth and so there it is can I ask A, how do you feel

about not being ranked in the meta rankings the AI rankings and B, do you agree with ninth or do you think that that is two low. What is you

think the fact that you have been classed 9th? Is that you think

that's, what you think it's too bad? No, I think that's a

good thing. I've traversed other organizations. I think I'm the

sole combatant to have done quite the large organizations that is the

KSW, the MVP, and there the UFC, I've managed to make some

or eight KOW of five, eight KOW of the majority of my he's not the second round, so I think I was legitimate.

He's happy. He thinks that he deserves it. He did eight chaos in the last fight, seven or eight chaos in the last fight, and he thinks he deserved it because he fought in the three biggest organization of MMA in the world, UFC, MVP and KSW. So he is happy of that rank and he thinks he can, he can. He can go better. Now, now,

for the confirm it. And he has to confirm it right now. What about the computer, the meta rankings, not having you ranked in the top 15. Did you notice that? The computer, the,

the, the, the, the, the, uh, not, uh,

he, not, uh, what's that you think of that? No, I think, uh,

I think that's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, in the,

, the, the, the, The world has all my talent, the world has all my potential. So, it's the essential. So it's to mark the world in the entire. It doesn't matter about the computer ranking.

You know, not? No, I didn't know that. So you just tell him. So, yeah, he didn't know that. But he's very happy to have shown to the world right now. His skills, his talent, and he wants to confirm. and to have the biggest, bigger fights then. Well, I just want to let you know that this confirms to me

that the computers, the AI, the meta rankings are stupid, and that I think you should be in the top five. So I think I am offended on behalf of you. You know what he defends. He said he defends because he says he's a idiot because you do have in top five Thank you, thank you. Okay. I'm coming, I'm coming.

I'm coming. I'm coming. Five ranking. How soon would you like to fight again? When is you think you can combat? Tomorrow? No, look my face.

No, it's clean, you know. Tomorrow I'm ready. Do you think this year? Do you think in 2026 you may fight again, like maybe in December? Is that you can combat there? In 2006 in December. Yes, of course.

He's ready always. He can't fight tomorrow. You said that in the cage you said Max Holloway is your dream fight. Do you think he would agree to fight you now? You think Max, he would agree to fight you now? I think that's a good opportunity for him, he who wanted to do big combat.

I think I've shown that I was a great combatant and I was part of the best combatant. I'm a 9th, so if he wants a big combat, I'd be ready. And I've got a lot of respect for him, because it's a legend. I'm not too in the trash talking. I'm someone of very humble.

So if we can do this magnificent combat, it would be good. He thinks it could be good also for Max Holloway to accept the fight because Max, he really likes the challenges. And Max knows that Saladin is a very, very good fighter

and they can do a very good work together. so he thinks that it could be a very good fight and very good war, and Max really likes that. And also he says that he is very humble. This fight will be with a lot of respect because he respects a lot of Max. He doesn't like trash talk. That's not his personality.

So that's always with the respect. If Max isn't available or isn't interested, is there another name that interests you? that excites you for your next one. Is if you're a other name that would interest at parmax? Well, for the instant,

frankly, no-pore-who, in the top five, I'd be, I'd have a preparation in consequence, and I think that I'd be pre. But Max Holloway,

it would be the ideal. He can fight anyone, he's ready for anyone on the top five. He really wants to get the top five whenever he's ready, but Maxeloway would be,

the perfect fight for him. I wanted to ask you about two names. There was another double champion in KSW who a lot of people wanted to see you fight Mateus Gamrod who's now in the UFC. That fight never happened. Are you interested in that fight in the UFC? You're interested in the

former double champion as he, Gamrot? Now, at my view him, he's there. I think I'm interested to more up in the classment than to go to the rear. He is not very interested about this.

because now Gamerat is ranked 12, so he wants to look in front of him and not behind him. Fair enough. What about at some point Benoit-Saint-Dunee? Do you have an issue fighting against another Frenchman? Is that a problem to combat against another French? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no problem, to, after, after the confrars, it would be it would be a, it would be a problem. he doesn't have an issue to fight another French guy that's Beno Sandini but he

he has a good relationship with him so if they can not fight together that would be better for for them but that's his job and he will never refuse the fights he's really I said on Saturday I think you're ready to fight the top five I think you're as good as the top five, you can hang. I don't know how all the matchups go, but you are that caliber. Do you agree with me? A lot of people didn't agree with me.

I'm curious if you agree with me. Are you ready to fight the top five and can hang with all these guys in your opinion? Selon to you, there's a bit of debate on is you pre for the top five or not? What do you think? Do you think you're really pretty? Yeah, well, I think that I'm ready.

I think that I'm ready. I'm training for that, we're decontententant. So yeah, I think that he's ready. And he trained for a long time since he has 11 years old for that. And he's very ready for that. I remember asking you when you signed with the UFC a couple months ago, in your mind how many fights before you fight for the belt? And if my memory serves me correct, you said around two to three.

I'm curious what you're thinking now. How many more before you get to the belt? For the KSW, he said that you've combated two or three before to have the Cinture, how many of the four you think, to combat,

how many of the CET? For the KSW, I've had three combats before the Cure. I did some great numbers on affronted directly with the grand

non, because I was at 9-0 at the time when I went to KSW so I confronted directly the grand name of KSW I got to get and then the CIN, so I

know what they want to do it I'm my manager the next I've asked Max Holloway I hope

I'm sure that after we're going to if the UFC will make the title why

not I don't know I'm not I'm not he did three fights in

the KSW against very big names of the KSW he did a great

fight and for the UFC he doesn't know what's going happen

but he called out for for Max Hollow he really hope that he's

going to accept. But he wants to follow his manager, Stefan Hatch, and he's going to see what happened. Last thing for you, Saladin, I'm always so blown away by the support from the French crowd to the French fighters. Just the amazing passion that they have, it's amazing to watch. And so I just wanted to know what you wanted to say to them, in French, if you want to, to the French crowd that was there in attendance on Saturday, screaming, supporting you online as well. It's amazing to just see the fan base growing so quickly each and every year. And so what would you like to say to these people who have been backing you for so long? The French, there's an ambience incredible in the stadium.

The French, there's a lot support enormously. There's really a big support of the French for you. What do you want to tell? You can do it in French and in English, for a lot of time? They've been from the I think we've got to

think we're to put in the way, we're not push the not push the people, I think

we're not we're going to get in front because we're French and the compatriote and you

have to push it and we have to think of it's I think on me.

He's very happy about the support of the French people and he he really liked

that the people are with him and he thinks that the French the French people has to be together and to be unified

for the fight and for the next step. I think it's just all, just simply. Between French, you have to have this support, to be to support and to push to, uh, ver, uh,

to, uh, uh, uh, to, uh, uh, uh, unified to step up together. Yes, and by the way, can I ask you about that? Because Axel Sola spoke about that as well. And I maybe have missed something because he was saying that he didn't feel like they were unified for Faris-Ziam.

Is there something going on with the French people right now where there's a lot of division? And is that what you're referring to as well as Axel? So, Axel has said that there was a that the people didn't

have not not seen Faris diam is that you can't a bit a division in France in this moment?

No, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, it's a bit complicated, it's a little complicated,

it's, I don't know, it's like that, when two Americans and South France, I think that,

I think that, it doesn't feel a division in French sorry just it was a difficult situation because two French guys was fighting okay so people has to choose a camp so some people who was for for Fares some people for for So for him, it's just... There's no division. Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear that.

And one more time, unbelievable. It was emotional to see it, to see you finally debut in the UFC, and to see the crowd react the way that they did and to see it all play out that way. Well done, Saladin. Felicitacion. Enjoy the victory. And can't wait to see what you do next in the UFC. And I think it's going to be a very fun journey covering your rise in the company, because I'm

expecting some very, very big things out of you. So well done. and enjoy every step along the way. He felicit, he is there to you, he's going to have a super career to come. Merci. Thank you, Aaron.

Okay, au revoir. Merci, and great job, Tayo. Well done. Thank you very much. I'm not a translator. I'm just his friends, but... Hey, you did a great job. You did a great job.

Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, there he is. Saladin Palnas, the newest member of the UFC Lightweight Division. Remember that name. That is going to be a name

that we speak about for a long time. I think he is going to be a stud, a superstar, and if he can turn around relatively quickly, and if he could fight Max, if they get him the Max Holloway fight, holy smokes, strap on your seatbelt. It's going to be a very, very fun ride.

All right, still to come, we're going to talk to Thomas Cardi, who is involved in that very bizarre co-main event on Saturday. Dave Allen, his opponent as well, and there's a lot to talk to Dave about. He's great when it comes to just the business of boxing, and there's more drama surrounding the Tyson Fury

and A.J. fight, that whole meshugas. We'll also talk to you. Mario Pinto, who won his fourth fight in a row. He defeated Ryan Span on Saturday. And there's a ton of news and notes. We have to talk more about the rest of the card MVP, all that stuff and more. So stay tuned for that. In a matter of seconds, though, we are going to be joined by the author of this book. And I read this book over the last, I don't know, five or six days, an amazing read. It's called Unrivaled by Russ Amber and Paul Harrieta. a boxing memoir.

And there you see Russ in the corner of one Alexander Usik. He has been in the sport of boxing for 47 years. He's just 65. So if you do the math, this is a guy who really started his career in boxing when he was just 18 years young. Former amateur fighter, trainer, cut man, broadcaster, entrepreneur, rival boxing gloves, and now an author. Class of 2026 International Boxing Hall of Fame that was just a couple of months ago, launched rival boxing in 2003

has become one of the most popular and trusted brands in the sport. We showed you the Katie Taylor highlights. She was wearing rival in that fight on Saturday. Has done commentary for six Olympic games over the years for CBC sports. As I said,

hosted a show called In This Corner on TSN, back in the day, which a young me used to watch all the time has been in the corner for the likes of the Grant brothers, Howard and Otis Grant, Arder Better Beav, Alexander Usik, Facilia Lomachenko very recently,

Anthony Joshua, the Smith brothers. He has seen it done it all, also a 2023 Quebec snooker champion, a proud Montrealer who is kind enough to be joining us in studio.

What an honor this is, what a privilege this is. There he is. Russ Amber, in the flesh. Two Montrealers in the big city talking, please, please. Have a seat.

So good to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. It's so nice to have. you here. I'm so excited. It's rare that I get to to have someone on the show who is from my hometown as well and who has done such amazing things. I'm older than you, so you're from my hometown. That is right. That is right. Yes, and I left. You're still there.

Well, that's right. That's right. Yeah, maybe that was a good thing you did then. Yeah, that was a good thing. That was a good move. This book is phenomenal. Congratulations. I was just speaking about it before you came on again unrivaled. You wrote a freaking book, Russ. Well, I didn't. Paul Harrietta wrote the book. I mean, he was And I mentioned his name, but you did it together. Yeah. I mean, I mean, what I loved was he was able to capture how I would have said it if I was writing him. Right. So, which was nice.

You know, he's not easy to capture somebody else, especially when you're writing about it in the first person. So, yeah, he did a really great job. And, you know, I got to also say that, you know, Neil Shuttlewood from Curtis Press, you know, a UK, a UK publishing company wanted to do the book. They reached out. They approached you. Yeah. And it was, I was thinking about doing the book. Okay.

And, you know, Paul and I were talking about where are we going to get it done? Who are we going to get? Canadian publisher. He has a little history in the publishing field. So, okay, he was going to see where he did. And then all of a sudden we received an email from Neil Shuttlewood at Curtis Press in the UK. And he said, I keep seeing this guy in a tie who's in a corner. Every time I turn on the TV, he must have some good stories to tell.

And that's how it came about. So, yeah. I've heard you say that one of the daunting tasks in all of this is like, am I going to forget someone? Am I not going to mention? So that to me is very stressful. Like the idea of writing a memoir, if you will, a book on your life. life, and there's still many more chapters to be written, we all hope. I would think very daunting because you've been involved in the sport 47 years.

You've met so many people, so many people who have been so important in your life. How did you come down to like, okay, this is everyone who needs to be mentioned? And after the fact, have you forgotten anyone? Or are we good? I think we're good. Okay, okay. I think there might have been some stories that might have got left out or whatnot. The induction into the Hall of Fame kind of pushed the book release date up by about six months,

because we were planning on releasing for the Christmas season. You know, like, so it would have been, had to finish publishing and everything. So get it all in by November, let's say. Well, when the announcement came for the Hall of Fame, all of a sudden, you know, oh, press on the gas, let's go, Paul, you got a right. Whipping him. So he wrote, and I was worried about that.

And Ariel, the thing I was worried about was more about the people who gave me a chance when I started out. Because you can talk about the successes you have now in the game. You know, you can talk about that and say, oh, I work Lomas Corner. I'm working with Ousig, you know, Joshua, Shakur, Stevens, you know, we're going to be these big names, Roy. But if the people at the beginning didn't give you that chance

when nobody gave two hoots about who you were, no one cared, you know, like you're trying to make your way. If those people didn't give you a chance and give you the education and see something in you, none of this would be happening today. You know, and I firmly believe that. Sure, sure. So I wanted to make sure that some have passed, you know,

but I wanted to make sure that I, that people know that I didn't forget, you know, where I came from and who gave me the chance and that I remembered them for what they did, both good and bad. I try not to talk so much about the bad, but, you know, I remember the good and the bad. And I remember the people who helped me to get to where I am now.

Not necessarily because they did something, because they believed in me and gave me a chance. That was important. One of my favorite parts of the book, and I don't know if everyone will feel this way, certainly not someone who maybe lives in the UK, is reading about Montreal in the 60s and 70s. Because to me, I've heard about this from my parents, from my grandparents, maybe a bit of a different time, a different city. I always like to say, I feel like in the 70s, Montreal was the crown jewel of Canada.

It was Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and they were a distant second and third. Now it feels like it's flipped. So to read your stories about Expo 67, to read your stories about, about Jerry Park and about your relationship with your dad, the baseball. Like this to me was, I could have read a whole book on just that. And so can you tell me as someone who was born in 1982, a little bit past the time, what made Montreal so great?

Why was it so romanticized and magical back then? That just made me feel old when you said you were born in 1982. You know, I've got my own gym running now. I'm training Howard notice grants, you know. You're just born. Okay. And now you're talking to me. You know, Montreal was special.

Montreal and New York were our sister cities, really, you know, because, I mean, there's a lot of similarities, as you can tell, between the two cities, you know, for sure. And how vibrant Montreal was at the time. So when I was sometimes when I critique Montreal now, it's because I saw it when it was ranked, you know, among the 10 best cities on earth. Not just Canada, you know, on earth. Like that was the place. This was the future. Expo 67 was the gateway to the world to come to Montreal. I mean, in that short period of time when you think about it, Montreal built a subway system from nothing,

built an island which Expo 67 ended up being on as a result of the subway system that they built, built the DeCarrie Expressway, built the Metropolitan, which by today's standards might say, oh, it's a congestion, you know? Well, at the time, it was state of the art, and we had highways going right through our cities in a north, south, east, west direction. and all this stuff was done. The Montreal Expos became the first team to come out of the United States into Canada. We were somebody. So when I look at Montreal now and I see the state that it's in

and I see the decisions that are being made and the politics that are being played in Montreal and how we keep dropping and dropping as a world-ranked city, as a place where people come and say, wow, this was the place. You guys don't know what it was like. Right. This was special to be in Montreal. It's sad. It makes me so sad.

It's awful. The only consolation you have is, I guess, a lot of cities aren't what they used to be. Right. But when Expo 67 was made, the city had zero deficit. The city of Montreal was in zero deficit. What happened. Right. What's interesting is you talk about, you write about the 76 Olympics and hearing Howard Kosell talk about, you know, like the guys who ended up being legends.

But, I mean, even one of those guys right here, I have this poster here. That's nice. That's what my city means to me. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Um, and you were there, I think in attendance, right? Um, but in a weird way, the 76 Olympics kind of helped like expedite the demise of Montreal, right?

Like the amount of money that they put into that stadium. Of course, of course. So it's like, the way I look back at those Olympics, it's like, it was great that Montreal got a summer games, but sometimes I wonder what if they never got those games, would we be better off as a city? That was the beginning of the end, wasn't it? That was really the start of the, the rust on the car or the cancer. You know, that was the start of it.

It just. everything kind of went downhill from there because we became the first city on earth to operate the Olympics in a deficit. We lost money. And the Olympic Stadium is still losing money to this day. So every decision that was made for a city that had made so many great decisions

leading up to that, I think there were a lot of forces working against the city of Montreal, realizing that they had, Mayor Jean-Drepaux, you know, by the proverbial balls, you know, and they were going to, squeeze everything they could out of that. And there was a lot of corruption that went on with the,

with the building of those games. Now they're pouring more money into the stadium. Yeah. And who's using that stadium? Don't know. The odd boat show, car show. It's crazy. And the excuse is it costs more money to tear it down than to fix it. Really? I don't see how that's a problem. They just destroyed Dorval Airport now. Right, right, right. You want to see a disaster? It's a mess. I make it a point to try to travel out of the States, like from Burlington or whatever if I have to travel because it's really tough getting out of door balance. Indulge me for a moment. What was Jerry Park like to go to that stadium?

The pool in like, what was it, left field or right field? Right field. Rusty Saab was. The mayor of Jonesville. Mack Jones. Yes. What was that like? Because I hear such great stories about that stadium.

You know, what was great was that when the Expos came in town, there'd been a year buildup to this. And my father was a huge baseball fan. My father actually lived in New York for two years when his dad was doing his business, starting his business was in Brooklyn. And his team was the Brooklyn Dodger. That's right. And then when they got shipped out, you know, that pissed him off.

Expos came. My dad was really excited. And then the Expos got shipped off. He never got to see the Expos win the World Series either because at 94, you know what happened. But Jerry was a quaint, special old school ballpark. To put it into perspective from the first row of seats to the top was even shorter than a average concourse in a regular stadium now. There used to be a guy who free of charge, like he wasn't hired, he wasn't a mascot. He was just a fan.

They called him the dancer. They put the music on and he would dance up and down the aisles, you know, and people would be clapping and whatnot. You know, it was special. And then they would yell, cold beer, beer, beer, quote. And they would throw stuff at you, you know, like it was that kind of vibe and environment. Bank of Montreal started the Young Expos Club. Rusty Stob was the president.

And if you opened up a bank account, you'd get a young Expos card. and you'd get all kinds of little posters and stuff that came with it. You get a young Expos card, which allowed you to go to any Expos game on a Wednesday or Saturday for 50 cents and sit in the bleachers. Wow. So our friends just used to go. I mean, we weren't even great fans.

It was just a part of being at the, at Jerry Park with the Montreal Expos, and we'd go and watch, and Mac Jones was right there in the Mayor of Jonesville. I love those stories. And to think about it, the amount of people that went for a team that only won 52 games its first year, this was proved that it was for the love of the game.

You know what I mean? And that was the important thing. It was for the love of the game, not the money, not everything. And then Claude Raimaud, who, you know, by today's standards, wouldn't have been allowed to have the nickname he has now. You know, it was called Frenchy. That was the name. He was the local hero.

And he was the relief pitcher. And Claude and I became good friends actually in the future. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. So March 8, 1971, the fight of the century. That's a turning point for you as far as like your boxing fandom is concerned. Yeah. It's like my little introduction to the sport of it, you know, it's like my, well,

What, boxing? Okay, what's this? You know, the only name that resonated with me at the time, because it was a really cool name was Donato Paduano. Okay. Donato Paduano, that had a strange reaction to it. You know, that's a cool name, you know, and you would hear it on the news because he was the angel of the ring.

Lars Dunding fought a lot of fights here in New York City as well. He was very, very famous and popular in New York City, Paduano was. And so, of course, all our friends are talking, oh, the fight, who's going to win, Ali Fraser, Ali Fraser. people might not really grasp what it meant the social implications that that fight had, Ariel. I mean, you understand it, but I mean, most people, most fans, because everything is so niche right now, don't understand that that fight was bigger than the world. You know what I mean?

Like this was all over the world. This was outside of the sports pages. This was into the political scene. This was, it was an era, the Vietnam War, everything, all that was wrapped up into that fight. So our friends, you know, I'm not yet 10 years old. We're all right. Who's going to win? So I asked my dad, who's going to win? He says, ah, Joe Lewis would have beat both of them.

You know, so typical, right? Everybody's best fighters from their era, right? You talk people today, Mike Tyson was in the most of the world. So. Did you watch it live? No, I didn't want nine years old. Because that was like, it was closed circuit, right? So you found out maybe the next day?

The newspaper the next day. Did your dad watch it? And what do you think? No, probably listen. on the radio. Probably listen on the radio. Love that. Do you know what the picture was on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, wow. But what people don't remember from that is, Arthur Mercanty, I mean, Ali gets hit with a shot that should have decapitated him, right? I mean, it was boom. And he'd been getting hit with that left hook all night. Allie always was susceptible to left hooks. He got, boom, he gets hit. He goes down in a heap. Mercanty turns to point Fraser to the neutral corner. And when he turns back around, Ali's up on his feet. Crazy.

Bro, when you watch that fight, you watch that film again, how he got up was unbelievable. So, yeah, that was special, 15 rounds. How old are you when you first enter a boxing gym? A real boxing gym, I enter when I'm 17 years old. Who tells you to go there? Who introduces you to it? I'm in college, which was the normal thing to do after high school.

and I asked one of my teachers, you know, does he know of a boxing gym in the city? And he told me that somebody that he worked with or somebody who he did work at his house, one or the other, named Ron Saint-Martin, told him about the Olympic boxing club on Park Avenue. And he came back and gave me the address,

57-11 Park Avenue. It was a block away from the St. Vieter Bagel Company, you know? Oh, yeah. Legger. Why did you ask him about a boxing gym? Why was it interesting to you? Well, because I had come out of high school after my chemistry teacher had taught me how to box.

And, you know, I had fought and I said, I wanted to continue this, you know, so I wanted to go to a real boxing gym. And when I, if I tell you, you know, a real boxing gym, this is not like the gyms today. This is like the gyms of that era, you know, when you watch the first Rocky and you see the Jimmy walks in, like this was nothing pretty.

It was dismal. This was on the third floor of the Rialto Theater, which is a Montreal landmark right now, which it's a tarred roof, okay? So you can imagine the third floor, how hot that is in the side. summer, okay? And that's where the, and it was like, you know, I mean, this was just a cheap place that the guy rented so he could have a gym and that was where the Olympic club was born. And that's where I

started my career. That's where I met Vinny Curdo and that's how I got my shot. And so initially, are you just doing it to stay in shape, to have fun? What are your aspiration? I thought about wanting to compete, you know, and getting into a real gym made me realize, oh, man, this is not going to be easy. You know, these guys are for real, right? But I was so enthralled with this. And I knew from an early age, And I'm not sure why, but I just knew from an early age that I could watch fighters. And I said, well, he's not doing that right. Well, that's wrong. You know, he should be doing, if he did that, he'd be, you know, much better.

And I thought that, you know, I didn't have the physical tools. Like, I played sports, and I always loved to be in sports. And I had an athlete's mind, but I certainly wasn't blessed with an athlete's body or skill set, whether it be speed, power, and especially my baseball career, which baseball was my first love. I was good. I was good enough to start. I was good enough to play, but I wasn't the best player on the team.

I was, or in the league, I wasn't the best. And I guess that was sort of the thing with boxing. And with boxing, you learned that really early, and it was painful lesson at two. And I'm saying, these guys are really good. And that's when Vinny kind of entered my life and I was still working out training and I recognized him.

And in my head, I said, I know that face. You know, I don't know who he is, but I know that face. So I go back home and I got a box full of boxing magazines. and I'm flipping through each and every one till I fight, boom, there it is. Vinnie Curdo. So I go back to the next day,

I say, excuse me, you're Vinny Curto, aren't you? She's, yeah, how'd you know? I said, I've seen your picture in the box. And I asked him if I could go do road work with him that day, next day, and that turned into a relationship that he's the one who saw my passion for wanting to coach and give advice and do things, and he's the one who nurtured it.

If he doesn't do that at the time, Ariel, I don't know where my, career goals, you know, but this was a legitimate world rank. The best fighter in the gym just gave me his blessing that I knew what I was talking about and he liked me and he liked my passion and he liked my mind for boxing. And he tells a story, Ellie Seckbachs got it on one of his posts on his YouTube page where Vinny says, I tell him, this guy in here, this kid knows more about boxing than any of you in here. He says that in the front of the whole. old gym, right?

You know, he says that about me. Now, of course, there's part of me that I'm, oh, this is great. But he just, you know, he just cursed me because now all these older guys in there, now hate me, you know what I mean? Now hate me, because I've jumped right to the top of the ladder, right in with the best fighter in the gym. And, yeah, so he gave me my shot. And I mentioned him in my Hall of Fame.

Yes. So that was nice. You're 18, by the way, when you corner for the first time. Yeah. At the forum. October 2nd, 1979. What is going through your mind? As an 18-year-old, cornering in a pro fight?

Yeah. I'm just like, wow, in the dress room, you know, I hear I'm wearing the dress room. I'm getting the stuff ready, you know. And Roger Larravee says to me, Shushine, tape the bottle. Now, in those days, we used to use quart-sized soda or beer bottles for use in the corner, right? Used to use that in the corner. It wasn't, hockey teams had plastic squirt bottles, but that wasn't, like, readily available, you know? So you just took an old quart-sized beer or a lot, and what you'd have to do is you had to put tape all around it from the top to the bottom,

and especially around the top, because just in case you were to drop it, if it broke, it wouldn't shatter glass everywhere, right? So you put tape around it. And so you tape the bottle, shoe shines. I'm taping the balls. You know, oh, you got to do this right. You get the Vaseline, get everything ready, put it on.

And we're standing in the corridor waiting for them to tell us to come out with the music. And I say, oh, this is great. You know, look at this. And, I mean, all I did at that point was just like pass the bucket up. You know, that's all I did. But in my mind, I was working the corner of, of a world-rank contender in an eight-round fight against Marciano Bernardi from New Jersey, you know, in the Montreal Forum.

The next one was even better, though. November against Eddie Mello was the big one. Why? Because we went to training camp for that fight, and I was the one calling the show in the training camp. I'm the one that did the work. I laced the gloves up. A Vinny's trainer, Roger Larravee,

which would come up like on the weekends or whatever, or come up on Friday, Saturday, you know, or maybe one day during the week, but I was there the whole time. did everything, made sure he got up ready early in the morning to go run and I felt like I was really in charge, you know, and, uh, as an 18 year old. Yeah, as an 18 year old. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it is. So you know at that point, this is what I want to do. 100%. This is my, my, my career. I'm all in. I can coach. I can be part of it. How did your family feel about

this? Your parents? I think, um, you know, I think they must have thought I had to have been a little crazy, you know, because what are you doing? You know, like, boxing, you're going to make a living doing this. And I remember thinking one day, somebody does make a living doing this. Why can't it be me? You know, why can't it be me? And that's, that was, I mean, I was hooked from there. That was, that October, that November fight in 1979, you know, against Eddie Mello, who at the time was the biggest draw in Montreal boxing and Vinnie fought him, you know, and boxed his ears off to winning unanimous 10-round decision in the forum. I've been in training camp with him when they announced the decision, Vinny's handlers pick him up and put him on his shoulder, he reaches

down to hug me. You know, while they're trying to hold him in the air, he's reaching down, trying to hug me. So that was special. That was special. But the funny thing, and I learned something that night, Roger Larravee used to prepare this concoction of brandy, lemon juice, and honey, and put it in a little bottle and shake it up, right? And every now and then you give a little sip to the fighter, you know, in between rounds, send them out. That was 1970s steroids, you know what I?

Yeah, love that. So Vinny comes back at the end of the fourth round. He lost the fourth round. I remember he lost the fourth round. And he says to Roger, give me a shot. Roger puts his hand in his pocket and says, takes it out and says, no, that was a bad round. He says, you give me a good round. He says, I'll give you a shot.

So thing, bell rings goes out. He says, Shushine, go back to the dressing room. left the bottom in the dressing room. Yeah, but the way he played it, I said, oh, you, that was good. I loved that. Went back out and came back into that. And I had to run back there and I'm telling, my biggest fear is that I'm going to leave the floor of the arena, no credential or anything, and then have to make my way back

to the corner, I'm going to get stopped by 100 security guards telling me you can't go back in. So every security guard I passed along the way. I said, hey, guys, I'm going back to dress me. Okay, okay, no problem. Then they all let me back in. And going back to what we were talking about earlier, like the Montreal Forum was, was our MSG.

Yeah. Hallowed grounds. With all due respect to the Bell Center, it's just not the same. Of course not. For someone who's never been to a fight at Montreal Forum, how would you describe what it would feel like?

It was like going to the fight at the garden. Like because you were surrounded. Like there's something about the spirit that lives within the walls, you know, there's something about the winning in that building that becomes contagious about being there, you know? Now it's because we're sterile a little bit.

You know, everything's kind of sterile, you know. Even gyms today, you know, back in, back in the, those days, a lot of people thought that, oh, gyms were in poor neighborhoods because they wanted to attract a poor clientele. Well, that's not why. It's because gyms weren't in the making money business. They were in the fighter business. They weren't in the making money business from the boxing club. So they went guys who wanted to have a gym and who worked regular jobs. Roger Larravee was a bus driver. You know, they wanted to open up a gym. So they had to go to a place where

they get the cheapest rent possible, you know, because they know they're not going to make any money from the, from the members that are coming in because these guys only get paid when they fight and so there's not a lot of money going around. So they opened up gyms in those areas. Now people are opening up gyms. They don't find either they don't find those places or they're looking at a different clientele.

They're opening up gyms which are sterile, you know, with beautiful showers and nice and framed pictures on the wall. There's no frame pictures. We were taped them to the wall. You know what I mean? And, you know, now they have, They give courses and private lessons and group classes and whatnot because they open up their gym in strip malls where they're paying $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 or more for rent a month.

They have to make that money, you know, and that concept wasn't that way when I started in the game. You went to a gym that was in maybe the worst place possible, small room. My friend, John Davenport, had the Second Street Youth Center in Plainfield, New Jersey. Now, the Second Street Youth Center might have been arguably the second best performing boxing gym in America behind Kronk at the time, okay, in the 80s. Behind Kronk, they were second best, okay? The Harold Knight came out of there, Darrow Dudley, Albert Steele Mills. I mean, it was just a plethora of real legit fighters. His gym, where he had the gym, had enough space for a ring, two heavy bags, a double end bag, and a speedball.

That was it. and they just produced talent after talent out of there because the coach was good. But it was just a small place. Now people wouldn't even, if you walked into a place now, a guy said, I want to open a gym and you showed him that,

he said, no, it's too small, I need a bigger place. And he'd want to pay more money and he charges his members $300 a month for rent. And back in those days, it was free or very, my first monthly rate was $7 a month to join the Olympic club. Wow.

Seven bucks. If you were a boxing fan in the 90s, as I was in my, Montreal, Otis Grant was the guy. First it was Otis. Howard was a little bit before my time. I was a little too young. Otis was the guy and then Arturo Gaddi, obviously. And I remember when he won the belt and I've heard you say that that's like your, your crowning moment in Sheffield to take someone from 13, I do believe you met him for the first time. And then he wins the WBO middleweight title. When he fought Roy Jones, I remember on HBO. I remember thinking like, holy shit, one of our own fighting Roy Jones. Unbelievable. When you first met Otis Grant, the great Otis Grant, who I don't feel like it's talked about enough, to be honest, in all these years later. Did you know right away that he had something different, special? If I didn't know, we certainly thought we knew, you know, we said, yeah, we're going to be world champion, you know, all my guys, you know, like, I started put, because of Davenport, I started putting my team together and treating them like they were pros,

even the amateurs, you know, as they were amateurs, but we treated it like they were pros, and they trained like Vinny trained, you know, we did the same thing and we worked hard and we was, it was old school boxing, you know what I mean? This was, this, we were serious about fighting and We were going to win a world title. And I remember saying to Otis, I said, listen, whatever you do, you're either going to be a middleweight or you're going to be a heavyweight. You can't be a light heavy because there's no money in the light heavyweight division. That was back then. Yeah, yeah.

That was probably true, you know, back then. But yeah, I was convinced that I had guys good enough to fight. And I remember when Otis was either he was 13, just going on 14 or 14, or just turned 14. And Mario Cousson was defending his Canadian welterweight title. in the 12-rounder against Alan Clark. Alan Clark was nicknamed Superman by Aaron Pryor. Okay, so just to tell you how good he was and how tough he was. And Couson used Otis exclusively as his sparring partner to get ready

because Otis was Southpaw. I couldn't believe how good Otis was at such a young age. And people thought he was crazy. Like George Joyne was his trainer at time. He said, I can't use this kid. He's a kid. I said, George, just try him. You know, you'll see, you know.

And he did. And they were both. Wow. So I knew I had something special there with Otis for sure. Who taught you how to wrap hands? Well, nobody actually taught me. It was more of me watching, okay? So I watched.

Roger Larravee was the first guy I watched exclusively, you know, of how he wrapped hands. And then I'd look at pictures off and say, okay, and then I start playing with it myself of how to be able to do it. I'm still might now be the only guy on earth. And what used to be a way of doing it, I'm still the only guy on earth that layers the pad right off of the roll. Like I don't make a prepad. I just layer it on, you know, using my fingers and layering on to make the pad. Because that's how I learned from Roger. And then I, you know, started tweaking a little bit, adding this kind of, adding tape this way,

doing things just a little bit different than Roger did it. And I evolved into the way I do it now. A guy named Jumbo Ispardulo showed me a trick in New England of what to do with the tape when we were finishing, which I still use to this day. So, you know, If Jimmy Birchfield's watching, you know, Jimmy, I give credit to Jimbo. He taught me that. I love that.

Yeah. And so, so like, so you take this very seriously now. And, and would it be fair to say these days more cut man, you know, hand rapper as opposed to trainer, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not in the gym like I used to be. That's, that's a fact. The only time I get in is if I get called in for to work in camps, you know, go to a camp for three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. I did that a lot with Deonté Wilder.

I got called in and for five years, go to training camps. and spent like five weeks at a time in Deontes camp with JD's. And, you know, Jay gave me a big chance to work with Deonti. And he let me do my work with Deonte, even though no one knew about it. We just all did this on the quiet, you know, and I got a chance to do that. Today, yes, I do more of the cup man work.

But Ariel, when I sit down in the corner, until something happens, I sit down, my brain goes into coach mode. And I'm talking to the trainer, and I'm saying things of what we do. I'm giving advice in the dressing room, you know. Okay, so you are even. 100%.

I was just wondering if there are certain times where you feel like, oh, maybe it's not my place. Sometimes there is. Depends who I'm working with. How difficult is that for you? When you see sometimes something that you think is not. Not right? Yeah.

It's tough. It depends. If it's with somebody that I'm comfortable working with, I'll say it right away. I don't even have to ask permission. I'll just say, hey, don't finish with the left hand or whatever I have to keep your hands up. Whatever I have to say, I'll say it when I'm working with someone.

If it's somebody not all, then I'll just, you know, I'll back off a little bit and, you know, be careful when I say it or how I say it or who I say it to. Okay. I'm really happy with the relationship I've developed with Shakur's grandfather. Pops is a really good guy. And me and him, we clicked for the first time he saw me, he didn't know who I was. And after that, we've become friends. And I feel free to talk to him and I say things that he, when he gives me one of these,

I know he knows. Okay, you're right. Okay, okay. I love that. Yeah. I remember Shakur coming in studio about eight or so months ago and when I shook his hand, like he does not, he doesn't grip your hand. Like he keeps his hands very, and not in a disrespectful way.

Yeah, yeah. But I, you know, you know the hands better. So when you start working with someone for the first time, how much you have to learn about what they're going through, what they're doing? Yeah, I ask them, obviously, I have to ask them. Lomachenko was a special case as well, wrapping his hands because he's had so many surgeries prior to me, had so many surgeries on his hand that one hand. hand doesn't close completely, you know, so I have to wrap accordingly. And when I put the wrap on,

it looks like his hand is completely closed. But underneath, it's not, you know, so there are certain people who will tell me, okay, I got this problem or that problem. And then there's others that, yep, no, it's all good. And I wrap away and, uh, that, that period of time, it's about 30 minutes it takes for you, right? 30 minutes, yeah, that period of time there, what is your approach in terms of like, do you talk to them? Do you, I love observing the, the few times that I've gone to go into a locker room before a fight, you're about to interview someone, it's very quiet, it's eerie. Some guys like the music and all that stuff, but in terms of your interaction with the fighter, they're putting their hands out there. Are you talking to them? Are you not? Or is everyone different? Well, you see,

when it's not a title fight or a main event fight, I will save that moment to get home the messages I want to get home to the fighter, you know, whether it's the encouragement, whether it's a technique issue, whether it's a strategy, remind them of something. I'll use that moment right there to do it. When it's a title fight, that's when the other team comes in and gets a free hand-wrap lesson on how to wrap hands, and they watch you do your work, right? And so now this guy has come in and now watches me. I can't talk to my fighter at this point because he's standing right there, so I can't give any instruction to the middle of the time. If I have to, I'll lean into his ear, you know, maybe and say something in his ear or whatever, but I have to

kind of keep it as, yes, no, good, tight enough, yes, it's good, okay, too tight, too loose. But I can't really talk about the fight because there's a member of the other camp standing in there. Do you hate that? Is that annoying? Yeah, I hate it. Yeah. Because I know some people are just coming in, like I said, for a free hand rap lesson. Sure. They're just coming in to watch me work because I've seen guys that have come in and watched me work.

And next thing I know, I'm watching them rap and they're rapping doing something exactly like they saw me. Right. And you feel like this is your thing. Like, why do you need to share? Yeah. I mean, you know, like I did my thing. I learned and watched from people. It wasn't the same as it is now.

I had to do that in the gym. And trial and error, we didn't have the access that we had now. This wasn't a case in those days of going into someone's dressing room, watching them wrap, watching them put the gloves on. That wasn't the case. As a matter of fact, back in my day, you gloved in the ring, which I still think should be done to this day. If you want to make boxing safe, you know,

I think it should be done to this day that you don't have the gloves in the dressing room. No one gets a chance to pound them against the brick wall or manipulate them or whatever. You get them. referee hands them to you put them on in the ring brand new the way they're supposed to uh i think why did they stop doing that probably tv i'm thinking it's probably tv time take a little bit more time yeah another thing that i've been a proponent of you know in safety issues in boxing um you might have saw i believe was this past weekend where the guy who fought dave allen went out flying out the ring he's coming on right after you well then you tell him that russ amber has talked to every commission

and I said there should always be those long eight-foot tables all the way around the ring. You know, so they'll have it on the side where the commission is, but they don't have it on the other sides. And then the brave photographers, what do they do? They step back and let a man fall all the way to. And I saw that when Bernard Hopkins fought, the kid who fought, the kid who fought better be of from New York. I know the fight you're talking about. Yeah. And Hopkins goes flying out of the lake.

And, you know, they tell you, you don't, can't touch anybody. The guy's falling three and a half feet on his head, you know. You got to catch him. What did you, so in that, in that case, what did you think happen? I don't know what happened. He says it was back of the head. Whatever is, I don't know. I didn't see the fight.

Did you see the fight? No, just this. Okay, I mean, it was like an 80-second fight. But now, you see, if there's a table there, it lands on the table. Right, right. Instead, he goes down on the cement floor and look at all the brave photographers, step away to let him plummet to the floor. You know, like, you don't know what's happening.

And I saw this happen, sadly, when Mick Conlin fought Lee Woods. Oh, yes. That was a crazy one. He goes down again all the way to the floor. His father had to run out, runs out from his seat to break the fall. But if you have a table all the way around there, that adds security and safety for the fighters, that that doesn't happen, you know, so. When do you start rival? officially we started in 2003 was the official incorporation started working on it probably two years before that

before we started the official incorporation and it's you who else owns it or is it all you there's me there's myself and there's i okay that's it that's it's it yeah golly and now it's i mean katie's wearing that everyone wears them you saw that on saturday yeah of course i saw it yeah yeah yeah i saw it in case you missed it. What makes rival so good? And why don't we have any rival in here? Well, I didn't I believe I sent you a pair. Matt Cassavon, the great Matt Casavon, I have to give him a big shout out.

He used to listen to his dad on Expo's television. That's right. Deney Casavon. He sent me a Kobe Bryant ones. Oh, just those ones. I can't have these here. I'm too afraid to leave them in here. So they're in my house.

Okay. But maybe we can have, you know, special ones. But those are incredible. Actually, he sent me another pair as well. So I should probably bring them out. but they're so nice. He makes his name on my stuff, you know. I mean, he said it was courtesy of you.

Yeah, courtesy of me. Look at this stuff here. This stuff, why is your brand the best? Why are you guys the best? I didn't say it's the best. I would like to think. No, I just want to make stuff as good as I can make it. You know, I mean, everybody's going to have preferences.

And I don't like to say we're the best because, you know, all the top brands, you know, most of them, especially the ones have been around, you know, can make good stuff when they want to. And they do, it doesn't mean that I like it. There might be one brand I like over another, and there's going to be people who like mine over something else. I just want to make sure that we've made a, we've made, I created a brand that's authentic, that has integrity,

that has innovation, that we're true to the game of boxing. That's what means more to me than anything else. We have a couple of slogans, one being born from a boxing mind. Another one is, by boxing, people for the boxing world. And what I often say when people ask me about that is other companies are businessmen trying to infiltrate the boxing world. I'm a boxing guy trying to infiltrate the business world.

So, you know, I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that, you know, we do that and we make these, we make equipment that's going to last, that's true to the sport, that has a reason when we do things, it's not just, we are not all sizzle and no stake. We are the stake. You know, and when you get something from us, it's authentic and it's real and it's designed in a way to perform and probably give you the best value for your dollar and will last you a long, long time. Produced in Montreal? Designed in Montreal. And I tried for years to make stuff in Montreal.

And I don't know if you remember back in the day, do you remember a hockey equipment company called De Nogneur Land, D&R? Oh, yeah, of course. So D&R used to have a plant in Montreal. they made all hockey and baseball equipment. I mean, some of the Grant Fuhr, some of the best Raymond Bork wore DR. You know, I mean, they had up. And I tried desperately to,

to manufacture in Montreal. And as DNR went, they don't manufacture, nobody manufactures in Montreal or in North America, for that matter. I mean, Everlast manufactured right here in New York. Right, right, right. They did everything right here. They cut, they sewed, they made patterns.

They did everything right here. GNS, you know, they're naming so many New York companies that made it. equipment right here in the city. And that's all, that's all gone, sadly, in North America. Manufacturing is gone. Right. That's sad. Yeah. Because I would have loved to have made something. I still have baseball gloves and hockey equipment. It says made in Canada, you know, by DNR, you know. And I just sent one to a guy to refurbish. And he looked at, he'd never heard of it. And he said,

wow, that's a glove. Yeah, it was a good glove back in the day. They were really good. So, I don't do that. You get a lot of attention for your work with Alexander Usik. Lomachenko got you to Usik, right? It was more Egus. Okay. Egus kind of got me to... And how do you link up with them? Well, a friend of mine who worked for us at Rival named Anthony, for some reason, he somehow

was talking to Egus through some... I'm not sure which way, whether it was on social media or how they got it, but he got talking to Egas. And I think Egus, I hope I'm not getting this story right, Anthony, I'll have to tell you if I'm getting it right or not. Egus asked Anthony if he knew anybody or Anthony said to Egus he knows somebody because Lomachenko had had three pro fights

and had injured himself in three, injured his hands in three consecutive fights. I don't know how severe, but he'd hurt his hands in three consecutive fights. So Anthony said, why didn't you ask Russ Amber to do it, you know? As it turned out, Egus came to town with Lomachenko when Sergei Kova left, Jean-Pascale,

and I was working with Jean. So, Eges calls me and says, Russ, can you come to the hotel and do Loma's hands? I said, Egus, thank you for asking me. I said, I can't get to the hotel, but I'm going to be at the Bell Center early. I'll be there by 3 o'clock. Nobody will be there.

If you can come across the street, they were staying at the hotel across it. If you can come to the Bell Center, I'll be happy to do the gloves for him there. So Loma walked in, met him. I had met him before in Macau when I was there, with Jesse Vargas and Roy Jones. We had met, took a picture with him, you know.

And I had known about him since the Olympic Games because I called his fights on TV, right? So I had seen him in Beijing. So, you know, I knew definitely who he was, took a picture with him. Anyways, he comes in. I do his hand. And a couple of days later, I get the call from Agus says,

we want you to come out for the next fight. And I went out there. Of course, nervous, you know, and they were very quiet. Father's very quiet. Loma's very quiet. wrapped him up boom he fights he wins we go back to the dressing room he turns around sticks his hand out and says welcome to team lomachenko oh wow that's good and the next in the next fight I

worked he gave me he brought as a gift for me he brought his Olympic Olympic tie with him wow because he noticed I wore a tie yeah yeah and he said where the view and I've worn that in every lo machenko and usick fight that I love that where did the tie tradition start it was it was it was my wink, if you will, in respect to the old-time trainers, if you watch a lot of old fights, you know, Bundini Brown or Angelo, a lot of guys, you know, wore a tie in the corner,

you know, so for me it was just respectful for being in the corner, you know, respect to the sport. I used to wear a tie, a suit and tie when I used to go watch a Montreal Canadians play, you know, because back in the day, it was mandatory, you had to wear a suit and tie to get into the forum to begin with to watch the Canadians play, you know,

because this was special, this was respectful. So to me, that was my way of showing I have so much respect for the sport and I love the sport so much that I'm going to take the extra effort to dress up properly when I'm working a corner and I'm working with people who are trying to get into the history books and trying to write sports history. I'm going to give that the respect it deserves. So your man Ussick in the news today because Fury's... What do you do? Well, Tyson's trying to now say, I'm done with A.J. I want you, Fury.

Excuse me, I want you Ucic. Usik responding to him saying, let's go, let's do it. I don't know how much of this is, is PR or whatnot, but can I ask, what do you make of this whole thing between A.J. and Fury, this drama that is playing out. You keep up with this? You pay touch to it. I do, and all it does is remind me all the time of how much,

in all of boxing, the one thing I've always hated the most is the business of boxing. You know, everybody, you know, it's become so, you know, Ussig named the right, you know, greedy belly, but it's not just him. It's everybody has become greedy all the way down, you know, from anywhere you want to, any, any level of, boxing you look at, there's greed along the way.

Whether it starts with television and works its way down, there's greed along the way. And everybody wants a piece of the pie. Everyone wants the biggest piece they can get. If I understand it correctly, there's a fight, a contract that's been signed and that the fight is supposed to take place in the UK. I understand that in the past, you know,

whether it's Leonard and Duran was in Montreal, Ali and Foreman was in Zaire, I know that fights have gone somewhere else, right? It's not impossible. But when the fight's been made, in the UK, and you had a chance to make it in the UK in what would be the biggest heavyweight fight in UK history between two British fighters, it's difficult for me to see the logic of moving it out of there.

As great as MSG is, right? I mean, that is the mecca. There's no doubt. But it just, to me, it doesn't make sense that you're taking that fight and putting it here. Neither of you, you know, New York or anywhere else didn't give two hoots about either of those guys before, now all of a sudden you want to host the fight. Something is weird along that lines. I don't know, I don't know why Ariel, but it seems to me that the fight should be there.

And I think it's a TV thing, Netflix, you know, it's hard to have it in the middle of the day here or the curfew over there so you can't have it too late. But it's turned into a bit of a mess and it's turning off a lot of people. Absolutely. And I'm just, I mean, they must do the math that no, I don't know. But so if you have it at MS, if you had it at MSG and, and. completely alienate the biggest fan base in boxing today, which is the UK market. Because if you put it on at 11 o'clock, the fight goes in, you know, that's 4 o'clock in the morning in the UK.

You're going to lose all of that. So is the makeup going to be different if you have it here? Like, I don't get it. Like, you can have it in the UK. They're five hours ahead. You'd be here in prime time. I mean, you'd be able to do it like they did in Saudi. You could say, okay, you know what?

We're going to put it on. You're going to enter the ring at one in the morning. in the UK, which I think they would both go for it, because we've done it in Saudi. You're going to go in at one of the, which is going to be 8 p.m. prime time. Well, historically, there's a curfew, but Eddie Hearn is now saying the mayor of London

is saying he'll extend the curfew. There's this weird thing over there where it has to stop because there's no transportation anymore. That's possible, yeah. But it seems like they want to make it happen. Can I ask you about Anthony Joshua because you were in his corner for the Prangafite? Twice now.

Why is he one of the hardest people to wrap his hands? How did you know that? I do my research. Okay, well, I got to know. Because you said... Who betrayed me. No, I believe you actually said this in an interview that I listened to where you said, you know, you said something to the effect of, oh, Anthony, you know, I heard you say that

you don't like how hands are wrapped or it just didn't look good enough. But now you know, it wasn't the fault of the hand wrapper. It was your fault because he's so freaking particular. Yeah, the first time I wrapped him was for the Jake Paul fight. Okay. We were in the, in the gym, and this was going to be the first time I wrapped him. The only other time I had wrapped him, if you will, was in Sheffield at the GB Training Center

with his training hand wrap. You know, he was still with Rob McCrack in time, and he's putting it on, and I'm saying, this is bad. I said, okay, I can't keep watching. This is how you do it. I showed him, right? So he laughed and did it.

And then in Florida, wrapped it again, and he said, oh, careful, rest, oh, not too tight there. Oh, no, careful. Okay, can you move that? Can you cut that out there? Oh, wow. So in the meantime, I'm doing it.

I'm saying, this is going to be terrible. You know, he's, oh, no, it's good. And it was awful. You know, like, I'm looking at this. Terrible. It's good. So when we came for the Pranga fight, I wrapped him in the gym. He was better this time.

Okay, we'll do this. Yeah, okay, good. And then on the Friday, he wanted me to wrap him again. I said, bro, can you just please worry about the fight? You bring me here to do this. I do this all over the world. It's 50 years I'm doing. Can you just worry about the fight, focus on what you got to do

and not worry about me? Okay, Rossi says, no problem. Next day at the fight, puts his hand out. I said anything, if we're going to do this, he says, Russ, do what you got. Oh. What? You okay. You're right? Yeah, do it. Yeah, this is good. And, uh, no issues. No issues. No issue. Zero. Sounds good. Will you be back? Make sure not to do it too tight. Will you be with him if he fights Fury? I hope so, because I'd like to get a third win over Fury.

Yeah. Yeah, you're two no against them. You're not a fan? You're not a fan. I have a lot of respect for him because I think he defies what you see in the ring. Okay. Like when you look at him, this should be a clumsy big oaf of a guy, you know, who comes out swinging punches, you know, but he's not. He's as fluid as you could be, especially for a man that size. And watching him up close, like I had seen him, I saw him, I was ringside when he fought Otto Wallet in, in Vegas. Yeah. And then I saw him when he was on the undercar, to Jean-Pascale and Carl Frotch. He made his pro debut then.

Yeah, a long time. I saw him there. And then watching him in the ring up close and personal with Usik and seeing just how relaxed he is. And of course, I'm watching the wilder fights and whatnot. You know, his body belies his real skill, you know, like there's something definitely there. Whether it's him or somebody else, I'm not a big fan of people, blah, blah, blah, blah,

all the time. Social media has created, you know, a storm of this. you know, in the ring you certainly can't deny how good he is from a trainer's perspective watching him work. A big guy can move like that. Like that was unheard of. Big guys didn't move like that, you know, and he did. So that's special, I think. Um, you know, obviously it worked out. It was a little bit scary there for AJ for a moment, but what was the sense that you got from him coming off the, uh, the tragedy, the car accident? Was he, was he good to fight in July? Was it too soon? I was blown away by his poise, but I can't imagine the, the pain that he was

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I felt as well. And one of the two guys I met when we were at the Jake Palfi, and I got to tell you, what a sweet guy. Senna was just an absolute gold, man. He was just such a good man. I mean, I met him briefly. He talked, shared moments with him during the week and stuff.

This guy left a mark on me, and I only met him for a week. Wow. I can imagine what he left on on AJ. And I don't know that even a lifetime is long enough to get. over that, you know. I can't say on to what level the healing has taken place with AJ. I don't think I know him well enough to be able to speak on that. I'd be lying, you know. He seemed okay in the gym, you know, but I mean, look, he had a special relationship with this guy and then he's there when the accident happens. He sees it happen. There's things that I understand that he was supposed

to be sat where he was sitting and they switched seats and whatnot. So, I mean, that's 100%. Has to, has to. I'm curious, this whole story with Moses de Tama and Ben Davison and the way he sort of like zapped towards the end. What is your take? Now the video comes out of the way he was talked to in the corner and everyone's going after Ben. And I think Ben's one of the best in the business as well.

Andy Lee doing incredible work. But like when you see this, I'd love to hear your take on what happened with Moses. You know, I think what happened with Moses is what seems to be happening in the world today that we forget about respect to. the sport and understanding what it takes to really become a bona fide professional world champion. And we think we can just accelerate it on speculation. And that bothers me. I think that whether it's Moses or any other fighter, there are steps to this.

And you have to follow those steps all the way through. An example I can give you is when I had David Lemieux and I had David, since he was years old. When I had Lemieux, I said at the press conference, he turned pro in his 18 years old. I said, I don't want to hear any of you guys talking about any kind of a title fight or anything until David's had 40 professional fights. Wow. Well, that didn't last long. All of a sudden, they want to accelerate him. And I see I'm having problems with David in the gym. He's not listening. He's thinking, this boxing is easier. I just have to hit guys on the chin and I knocked them out, you know. Amateur was way more difficult than this. You know, I'm knocking

everybody out. So by year, by year two, I've pretty much lost control of what David's doing. He went from being the quintessential, perfect student the way Otis Grant was, to now believing his own hype, thinking this is going to be easy, just hit the guys on the chin and knock these guys out, and it's easy. I told Yvonne Michel, before I said, I don't want the Rubio fight. David is not ready for the Rubio fight. Oh, he's going to win. I said, even if he wins, that's even worse, he will be even less ready going forward, you know. But I couldn't get my way, made the fight. Same thing happens a little bit like the Toma.

He batters Rubio from pillar to post for six rounds. Can't get him out of there. And then I have to stop the fight. You know, he gets hit with a shot, he gets hurt. I have to stop the fight. David ends up winning a world title later on in his 36th professional fight. Right? So there's only four away from my prediction of 40.

So I think sometimes, and I thought, and people I hadn't heard, heard anybody mention this, but if you remember correctly, the Italma Hergovich fight was made as a step-up fight. The title wasn't on the line, right? It wasn't on it. So I thought to myself, this seems like a big step to be taking. And when I had spoken to Moses on numerous occasions, I said, Moses, you know, whatever you do, don't let them rush you. You know, take your time, you're young, you know, learn the craft, you know, keep investing in your time to get this done. And I thought, this is a big step up when, you know, your best opponent is Dillion White, who's, you know, past the sell-by date at this point.

Your best opponent was that. Marius Vok was the name, but, you know, Marius is well into his 40s. And I said, you're stepping up to fight a guy who only has one loss on his record. He's an Olympic bronze medalist. He's only got one loss on his record. And that's your next step-up fight. Like, that's a huge step. You're not just taking a step.

That's almost like a story. It's not a step. You're skipping an entire story. And I said, that doesn't seem right for this, you know, despite the fact of how skilled he is. And he proved just how skilled he is. You know, I don't think there's any doubt about that. But there's levels to this, you know, and there's a way, and I've often made this example with people. You could take a former fighter, a real former fighter, who's been retired for three years.

and on his first day back in the gym he could go eight rounds. Not saying you'd win the eight rounds, but he could go eight rounds. Because going rounds is not about conditioning. It's about how you do the rounds, Ariel, knowing how to do three minutes in a round, having enough relaxedness in you that you can go and do three rounds. John Scully, to the John Scully must be like, he's probably 56 years old by now, still spars regularly with kids, and they get tired. And he's not in any shape.

You know, he just goes in there and he boxes guys. He knows how to go rounds. And there's a skill to learning that. And that's why we start off at four-rounders and six-rounders and eight-rounded. There are guys come out of the amateurs. They're gassing when they're in a four-round fight, you know, because it's a different four-round

than it is in the amateurs. You know, and I just thought that, you know, the guys got 14 wins, 12 knockouts, hadn't been past the sixth round. You know, and I know you're comparing to Tyson and doing all that. You know, you want to break the record, be the youngest.

I get all that. but there are things that have to be answered and you answer them in the gym. And I think people have to learn how to go rounds, how to do that. It's not about just being in great condition. It's about having the experience of doing that. And that bothered me because you can see

like what a talent he was. I mean, he dominated, you know, dominated. Do you think he can bounce back? Yeah, I think he bounces. This can't, this won't break him. No, because it wasn't a beat up. Right. He didn't get beat up.

He just collapsed from exhaustion. So hopefully he's going to be strong enough to do that. And because, again, because he turned pro at such a young age, he also didn't have all that experience that he could have garnished the way Lomachenko with his 300 fights or any of these guys, you know, Breeland back in the day, you know, 110 amateur fights. You know, Howard and Otis had 150 and 120 each amateur fights. Lemieux had like 80, 80 amateur fights.

There's a certain experience you garnish from that fighting all around the world. He turned bro early. You needed to get that, learn how to do it. And he had had so much success because of how skilled he was that he wasn't learning that, okay, let's go. We've got to do rounds. I'm going to win without. And that was the argument I had with Lemieux all the time.

I said, you've got to learn to win rounds when you're not knocking guys out. You have to learn to win those rounds without knocking them out. You have to learn to win fights without knocking guys out. And that's an art, bro. That's an art that, you know, a lot. lot of people don't pay enough attention to, I think. Have you ever thrown in the towel and then your fighter got mad at you afterwards for doing that? Lemieux kind of got mad after the Rubio fight, but I think he was more mad at himself.

Never to the point where someone was like, I don't want you. No. Okay. Because it's more of a thing in boxing than MMA. In MMA, it like never happens for various reasons. But in boxing, there seems to be an understanding between the corner and the fighter that like, if this happens, this happens. Wilder used that as an excuse.

Yes. if you will, when Breeland stopped it. Yes. You know. Fired him, did he not? Yeah. Yeah. The result, you know, fired him.

But the reason of firing, if you want to fire the guy, that's one thing. But firing it because you'd rather die in the ring than have the corner stop the fight. It seems a little silly to me. You know what I mean? Like that's just now, you know, and I don't play with that because you see that fight there? Yeah. That Duran-Lennard fight, you know, as great as it was. And it was a classic.

Like it was a real matchup of. talent like this is pure talented guys in there always i feel somber on the anniversary every year of june 20th 1980 because what people don't remember is i believe it might have been the first fight of the night you know cleveland denny died you know well collapsed into a coma that night against gaitan heart and i remember it was raining that night and rain at a fight always bothered me rain rain rain always bothers me on the night really why is that well just because it reminds me of that Got you. Got you.

So when I hear that kind of stuff, you know, that bothers me when fighters say that because, yeah, you say you'd rather do that or you want to do that. But, you know, I find it disrespectful to the fighters who actually ended up dying, you know. So when a trainer stops it, and I never blame a referee because the coroner has the power to do it. That's the one thing that a coroner can do. You can criticize, I criticize a referee for stopping it too early, you know, and they say, oh, I'd rather be early than late. and when I criticize, if a referee lets it go, you have three people in the corner,

or at least the chief second, who can stop the fight himself. He doesn't need you. He needs you to count the 10. He needs you to enforce the rules. I'll take care of stopping it. I know my guy. But sometimes they don't do that,

and guys are subject to taking a lot of punishment that they shouldn't be allowed to take. I'm putting you on the spot here. At the beginning of the show, I said that Katie's retirement fight, the way it all played out, 83,000 people in our home country in that stadium, the win,

the pomp and circumstance, the post-fight interview, the whole thing, I think might be the greatest retirement in combat sports history. It wasn't bad, huh? It literally checked off everything. Usually it ends on a somber note, on a depressing note, you get carried out. Or a loss.

Yeah, is there a better one? On the spot right now, I can't think of a better one. No, I can't think of a better one. 83,000 people, the fireworks. It was incredible. I don't know what happened when Marciano retired, you know, because he retired. No.

You know what I mean? No, he beats Archie Moore and then announces his retirement. After. She said it beforehand, so there's all the emotion, all the pressure, all those people there, kids in attendance. Yeah. It was amazing. What's the only thing that could ruin that?

The loss? No, she comes back. Oh, yeah, of course. She doesn't strike me as the type that comes back, right? Me either. But yes, you're right. You're right. I mean, it's sort of like Michael Jordan, his last shot, but then he came back, so it's sort of devalued it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that the ring? Is that the Hall of Fame ring? I'm going to cheat. I could lie to you and say, yes, it is. No, don't. But it is the, it is a, it is a, it is a, it is a, uh, remake of the ring because I wanted to keep the original, you know, in a safe place for

whoever my airs will be down the road. And I didn't want to lose it or get it scratched up or banged about. So the original is, is at home. And this is my friend who's a jeweler in Montreal. He made a, he made a copy of this for me. So when you were when you were there in June, among those greats, among those giants, the people before you. And I've heard you say you don't put yourself in the same category as the fighter. You're you're you, you, you, you, you, you understand your role in this, but you are very deserving. I believe just the third Montrealer to be nominated, right? Yeah.

To be inducted, excuse me. Inducted, but the first, the first trainer. First trainer, right. So that's not bad. Um, like, how do you, how do you put that, how do you digest all of that? How do you, how do you come to terms with all of that? You've, you've far exceeded probably any dream that you've had in this sport. Now here you are being.

That was my line. There it is. Wides, widely recognized among the greats, the giants of this sport. sport. You know, I mean, obviously it's special, Ariel. I mean, come on. You know, I mean, it is, you know, being the first Canadian trainer to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I mean, of course, that's special. How can it not be? Right? And, but I was happy. The thing that made me happiest was, again, and I tried not to leave anybody out. They allowed just to make two speeches. One was at the dinner at the banquet and one was at the official induction ceremony. And it meant a lot for me to thank the people. who made it possible for me to be here because they gave me a chance, they worked with me, when I was a nobody,

you know, when I was nothing, they came to my gym, they let me train them, they listened to my advice, they, we won fights, I built,

as we won, I wanted to do more and wanted to do more. So I was happy that we had like 120 people who came down from Montreal, most of them being my former fighters, former amateur kids, you know,

not even the pro guys, You know, the former amateurs who came, I even had my chemistry teacher from school who introduced me when I had him come in because I wanted to say thank you for giving me that chance that you didn't know what you were doing at that time. You didn't know what that was going to lead to, but as a result, it got me to hear,

and so I wanted to recognize what those people did. So I got to do that, and that meant the most to me that I got to do that. And Otis' name will forever be in the Hall of Fame because his name is on my, plaque as well. This one right here. Yeah. That's wonderful. So I'm I'm kind of happy that that's their. Your father, correct me from wrong, no longer with us? No. What do you think he would have said about this? I don't know. I think, I mean, there's no doubt he'd have been proud because,

and he used to get along with all of all my fighters. Like they go, oh, Mr. Amber, Mr. Amber, you know, and I take him up tomorrow, to our country home or whatever and they'd meet them, Howard knows, he got along great with all of them. So, you know, I think he'd have been in shock. I think he'd have been in shock. Yeah, he would have been in shock. But he'd still be pissed at the Expos didn't win a world season. That would bother him more. Was he at Blue Monday? What's that?

Was he at Blue Monday, 1981? I don't know if he was there. My dad was a guy who, everywhere in the house, we had the schedule. He was a radio guy. Even if the game was on TV, he would sit on the balcony, smoke his pipe, read the newspaper, whatever, listening to the baseball on the radio. Jacques Doucette. In English, though.

Oh, in English? Okay, all right. Dave Van Horn. It used to be Dave Van Horn and Russ Jackson. And then Ken Singleton. Ken Singleton, Dave Ann Horn and Duke Snyder. That's right. So he'd listen to it.

And if there was a controversial play, you know, he'd come into the living or into the living room and look on the TV to see the replay and then go back out. I love that. He listened to baseball on the radio. That's so funny because I was listening to the Blue Jays. I like the Blue Jays now. I've had to, you know, grow up on the radio in the car. My kids were like, how do you listen to this? And I was like, would you believe that there are people?

I swear to God, I said, who choose to listen to baseball on the radio over TV because there's something romantic about it all, the way it's being described. So your father being that guy. Yeah. And the real talent of a great play-by-play guy in baseball is to bring you those images as if you're sat right there, as if you can see the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, you see everything happening. The way they, if you listen to old broadcast. Oh, yeah. And Scully, those guys. When they tell you, you don't need TV, bro.

You don't need it. You know right where the third baseman is standing. You know how the infields move, how it shifted when the next batter came up. There's a big difference. I'd love to talk to Lou DeBelle about that. I mean, I don't know if he's a junkie. Lou is tremendous. Yeah, I think he's got two or maybe one now minor league teams.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if he loves the game or he loves the business of it or he loves the game. That's a good point. But me, I love the game. To me, it was my first love was baseball because of my dad. Hockey, I loved, but that almost became because we're. We were in Montreal. You can't like, you know, you're winning Stanley Cups all the time.

When we were kids, people say, hey, are you going to Stanley Cup array? No, I'll go next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's like it was, it was a given, right? It was a given. But the expos weren't a given. And that was special. And to listen to guys do broadcast on baseball, it's, it is the best radio sport in the world.

100%. I feel like I got to live out a bit of a dream here myself. I was saying this at the beginning of the show. I remember coming home at night, you'd go maybe, to St. Laurent Street with your friend, St. Catherine, and I would turn on TSN and in this corner would be playing. And you and the late Darren Detention, may he rest in peace, what a lovely guy, and others as well.

Like, you helped introduce me to the sport of boxing. And that show was so great. And I wish that Canada had more of a presence in the boxing media scene. Because I remember the logo in this corner with Russ Amber. You're not only a training legend, fighting legend, but a broadcasting legend, in my opinion, as far as Canadian TV is concerned. You know, I love doing that show.

It's tremendous. You have no idea what it meant to me to do that. Like, I was the voice of boxing for Canada, you know. And there was a lot of boxing going on. And we, you know, we brought that every day with a, every week with a passion and a love for the game. And it was just two guys talking about boxing and how much we loved it. And Dutch he really loved this where I know he'd be proud of seeing what I'm doing now,

you know, in the game. But I always bothered. me that, you know, TSN with five networks that it has, you know, we have to have hockey on everyone. And I used to say, I know, remember they used to have the saying hockey lives here? Yeah, yeah. And I used to tell the brass over there, I said, I know hockey lives here, but can you rent boxing a room over the garage?

You know what I mean? It's 30 minutes. Just give us an hour, yeah, a week. And we were, we were popular. Like, we were at good ratings, you know. I love that show. But I learned about you through that show. Like, to me, you were first the TV guy and then I learned about everything else.

Yeah, so many people said the same thing. Like, you know, we were. that we were, you know, Bill Tibbs, you know, the same thing. You know, we were the place for boxing. There was nowhere else where you could get that information. And being able to do that was just, man, it was fantastic. I just loved it. I'm so sad that that ended because that might have changed where my career went.

Because if we continue to renew the show, I'd be doing less and less actual boxing stuff, like train or work or cut man stuff. And when they canceled the show, well, then I, you know, reverted back to being back in the gym with fighters. Sliding doors? Yeah, might have changed. Might have changed it.

I could talk to you for, I'm way over time here. So I'm going to let you go, Russ. This has been amazing. This is the book right here. Russ Amber, unrivaled. Can't recommend it enough. There it is. There's a little blurb on it, but you can get it.

Where can people get this? You can get it on Amazon everywhere. You can get it at rival. Yep. You can even get the ebook is coming out. It's either coming on Amazon. It's either available now or just coming out. And a very fun thing.

There's a bunch of QR codes throughout the book where at the end of a chapter, you point and click and there's a sort of like companion interview with yourself talking about stories. That was Neil Suttlewood's idea. Well done. Yeah. I wanted pictures. He said, no, we're going to do that.

No, I've never seen that before. Very, very fun. Yeah, that's his idea. You like that. You like that. Congratulations. Thank you for coming in. So great to do this for the first time.

Thank you to Matt as well for setting it up. Congrats on rival and everything that you're doing. And always gives me great pride to see you in the corner of any sort of international fighter. I say that's one of us from the 514. I love it. So thank you for having me, man. And you've made it. You're in New York City, bro.

You've made it. Thank you. I appreciate it, Russ. We'll take a quick break. We'll talk to Thomas Cardi after this break. Don't go anywhere. Russ Amber here. What a great pleasure again.

Get the book and we'll be back right after this. All right, that was my conversation with the new level last week, aka the New Day, Kofi, and now Austin Creed, formerly known as Xavier Woods. Russ Amber was amazing. I went way too long there. And so without further ado, let us say hello to the man who was a part of the co-main event on Saturday night, Katie Taylor, Flora Pee, co-main event was Thomas Cardi against Dave Allen. Unfortunately, it ended in about 90 seconds time.

Very, very unfortunate turn of events. And I wanted to talk to Thomas to get his side of the story as to what happened in that unfortunate scene at Croke Park. I'm sorry for keeping you waiting, Thomas, but I do appreciate you coming on. First things first. Most importantly, how are you feeling? How are you doing just a couple of days after the accident? Yeah, I'm good to see you again. Yeah, and about Saturday night. devastated and frustrated after Saturday, to be honest with you. Since speaking to you for the first time, I've had a bit of run of bad luck. It was just days after I spoke to you the first time that I actually did my knee in MSG.

And since that, I've had my comeback fight 11 months after. And then Saturday night was meant to be my next big breakout moment. And that bizarre incident happened. So tell me what happened. What did you feel? In the moment, you see maybe a shot that could be to the back of the neck, or excuse me, to the back of the head, another one. But then it all happened so fast you falling through the ropes and you don't really quite understand as a viewer as to what you're going through. So tell us what you experienced.

Yeah, so basically before it was going well, the first round going well. I'm reflection. I watched it back for the first time last night. It was pretty happy with how it was going. And I did get clipped in the back of the head the first time. and thought none of it, got on with it. As you can see in the clip there, it came back with some noise shots

and ended up in a clinch. And then just at that moment, I got caught with another punch as a back of the head within a couple of... within about 10, 15 seconds. And next thing I knew I was upside down, falling out of the ring. And actually from the clip there,

you can see even when I was falling, I didn't even get a chance to put my hands out to catch myself. So we don't see what happens when you fall out. when you fall through the ropes right there, do you hit your head straight on the ground? I felt, so it basically went down upside down. In the moment, I can't recall,

I'm only going off what I see here from the videos for. I remember hitting a bench or something on the way down and then again down onto the ground. And what hurts when you're down there? Is it your head? Do you hurt your shoulder? Do you hurt some other part of your body? The back of your head and then my neck.

Gosh. And do you have any idea where you are in that moment, or are you completely knocked out? The whole thing is a bit of a blur. Clearly, I'm not knocked out because my eyes are conscious enough, but I was more frazzled. Okay. It was actually the ringside doctor that called a halt to the fight.

Were you trying to get back up? Yeah, I attempted to get back up. If you see in the video there, I don't recall, but you've seen the video, I'm caught in a stool as well. Sorry, you're caught in a stool. your leg is cut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

And so when you try to get back up, what are you feeling? The whole room, everything was, everything was quite, I suppose the whole thing happened so fast that there was a lot of people. I just remember looking up and there was like 20 people in the ring looking down. Photographers looking. Right. You'd ring side doctor's looking about 20 different people talking. And my coach is there as well.

I saw your statement in which you alluded to the fact that the ropes were a little bit loose, did you feel like that was part of the problem as well? This is what your team put out. Yeah, but I'd actually missed the top rope, so regardless whether they were loose or whether they weren't, I just think somebody else fell through the ropes earlier on in the night,

but I think regardless of the ropes, I was gone through the third one. It completely took me at the waist, you know what I mean? I don't think the ropes would have made a difference whether they were tired of loose anyways. Okay. The first shot, and maybe we could replay it one more time. The first shot I can see because where it lands and then you sort of point to it after he hits you.

The second one seemed like it was a little bit to the side and I'm not trying to like judge what you experience. But I'm just wondering which one felt like it was worse because obviously you're moving and it's hard. Would you say that this one was the one that hurt more and the other one was just sort of the icing on the cake? What would you say? I wouldn't say either one hurt more than the other, to be honest with you.

Okay. And in the claims, both of them were that they actually replayed. You can see the clip on one of the media outlets. I've seen the clip. As he throws the punch, I see it coming, and it does land on the back of the head. Do you think he did it on purpose? I don't know. I don't think he necessarily said, right, I'm going to punch Thomas in the back of the head, but that's what happened.

Yeah. Well, do you think he was trying to fight dirty? I think, like, old man tactics, he's obviously trying to clip me around the back of the year. but it was just just unnecessary one, completely unnecessary. I've heard you say

that you've received a lot of abuse online because of this. What is the tone? What are people abusing you about? The tone seems to be that from the fight

I didn't fancy and I was looking for a way out. What is your response to that? What parts in the whole fight for the short time that I lost did I not fancy? Because as far as I could see,

having watched the fight back, it was me trying punches and landing, and the only two punches that got caught were in the back of the head. I have seen, you know, I mean, you see a bunch of stuff online, but you see people say like, oh, he was trying to throw the fight. He was trying to, you know, get, when you read this about yourself, how do you react? How do you respond to that? It's just absurd, to be completely honest, you know. I haven't been sidelined for so long after being injured.

I haven't been sidelined for so long. it took so much effort to get back so much commitment from not just me but my team you know what I mean my team

has sacrificed so much time alongside my own time financially it was a massive commitment to get back from the ACL the trainer that we put in

you know the pay isn't amazing at this level of fights so to be honest with you I was gambling on getting the bigger fight after this one and I was fully prepared

and fully ready to take this one I thought I'd be sitting here today planning the next move and all I can think about right now is getting the rematch. And in a way, like this isn't, this would be a sort of disaster situation if it was happening in any arena, but there's 83,000 people, the whole country is watching, right?

I would imagine, in addition to the pain and whatever physical ailment you may be dealing with, it's got to be tearing you up inside that this amazing moment ends like this, right? Absolutely. It's an absolute killer. And the thought that people could think or could try to fight, having trained, having first about called for the fight, having trained for it, I've done absolutely everything possible to be in the best shape for that fight. It's just an absurd claim to make. It's funny, actually, to be honest, all I can do is laugh about it because it's just so outrageous and far-fetched.

How do you think Matchroom handled it? There's not much handling to be done. What handling can even be done? Well, I guess, you know, I saw a bunch of interviews with Eddie afterwards and Frank Smith, and it seemed like they were sort of like stopping short at saying anything about it. If I were to try to read between the lines, they obviously seemed upset that it played out that way because you don't want the co-main event before such a big moment. Yeah, of course.

Listen, the fight was supposed to be a spectacle. Me and Dave would have matched up well. The fight was heating up well. It's gone exactly how I thought it was going to go. And what happened was just, first of all, unnecessary, but then an absolute stinker as well. It was the co-main event on the big. biggest card in iris box in history it's a killer i guess what i was asking with that previous

question was did you feel as though they were mad at you that they were blaming you for this there's there's no blame there's absolutely no blame with me the blame couldn't lie with me and do i feel as though they're blaming me no i don't think so it's a complete bizarre incident that started with an unintentional fail whatever you want to say about it there's there's not really much more say or I don't know where you put the blame like I'm 120 kilos you fall outside the ring you know first of all punches in the back of the head are so dangerous to begin with and then for something like that to happen off the back end of it what can you say you know fire's held even when you do everything right in boxing it's still so dangerous never mind doing

anything underhanded you know we're going to talk to Dave in a few minutes, but I've seen him say on other platforms and in other interviews, he's not interested in the rematch. What is your reaction to that? Obviously, I'd love the rematch. Dave said he's no interest in the rematch. Obviously, I'd love the rematch. I absolutely want the rematch. I know he's not interested, but it's something that I'd be really keen on. I'd be so keen to go and do it wherever they want me to do it. Are you surprised that he's not interested because it ended so unceremoniously

and so so abruptly? Yeah, like we try and I try to 12 weeks specifically to fight Dave Allen and the fight lasted a minute and a half. Right. So is there a part of you that's thinking like, well, isn't it like a natural? Shouldn't we just try to finish this?

Let's try to run this back. Absolutely, absolutely. We're fighters at the end of the day. Fighters fight. Simple as that. You know what I mean? Of course I want the rematch. He's gone some stick for, I guess, his appearance, for his shape.

What did you make of the shape that he came in at? It is what it is. You know what I mean? Dave's experienced operator. People say what they want about a shake. Experienced operator. Obviously, the heavy is his theory, I've seen him say, is he can absorb shots. He doesn't hurt and he hits hard.

So that's the tactics from Dave's side. Did you go to the hospital after? Went straight to get a brain on Neckscamp. And what did it say? Thankfully, all came back clear. Okay, and how are you feeling a few days later? Frustrated is probably the only emotion after what happened the weekend. Absolutely frustrated, but motivated to get the rematch on.

I definitely want to get the rematch on wherever they want it. But physically no issues? Physically, no. Back of the head, neck is sore from falling on top of it. thankfully no blade on the Brian or anything. We had Russ Anber in studio moments ago, and he was talking about how he feels as though rings should have a table, like there should be a table all around the ring,

not just where the commission sits or any type of official, for situations like this, and it's happened to other fighters. Mick Conling fell out of the ring as well, and others too. Now, after experiencing this, would you like to see that, something to help break the fall, because you guys come out of the ring,

through the ropes, and everyone gets out of the way, and then you're left to like kind of like you know land on the cement yeah like there wouldn't be a bad idea and it happens very very seldomly but still it does happen and you know I'm sure you can pick a couple out in your memory I can as well it does happen at the end of the day and yeah maybe maybe something introduced like that but it does happen in freak instances

but they still happen yeah by the way I was surprised that you didn't sign with Zufa boxing because I you know that when you came in studio that was a Sean Loughler card, and it felt like that was sort of the precursor to Zoufa boxing. Did you ever talk to them beforehand? Yeah, yeah, I've been speaking with Tom, and been speaking with Tom quite a lot, actually. I did the training camp from a comeback fight in March. I actually did in Vegas, and was at the launch night of Zuffer boxing, and spoke with Tom, and spoke with Dana, and it's definitely something that's not dead in the war.

How come you didn't sign with them, you know, after your comeback fight? Because this opportunity was coming in Crow Park. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this opportunity was coming, and I put my whole life on hold, but absolutely everything on hold, the time plus fight. So more than ever I want and feel like I need the rematch.

Anywhere. Anywhere, anywhere, absolutely anywhere. Okay. Well, I appreciate you coming on, Thomas, and sorry this happened. I was gutted for all of you involved. No one wants to see a fight in that way, and I know that some people have been trying to say that, kind of questioning your character and whatnot

and that probably adds insult to the injury as well and I'm sure that's not very fun hopefully you're not reading too much of it no man no man you get trolls regardless regardless what way your fights go or the lead up that's the game we're in and people will always talk it is what it is

but at the end of it is just talk and fighters fight and that's what I want to do I want to get the rematch on all right well I appreciate it Thomas get well soon hopefully this will be put in the rear view mirror and and it could all be sorted out on your end And thanks for coming on and clearing the air. Cheers, Ira.

All right, there is. Thomas Cardi, kind enough to join us to talk about his side of the story of what transpired on Saturday at Croke Park, a very unfortunate scene in which, as you saw, multiple times there, he fell right through the ropes onto the concrete. And the fight was stopped. I believe it was 82 seconds. In a matter of moments, we're going to be joined by Dave Allen, who is going to join us to talk about his side of the story. And again, very strange and very unfortunate considering the fact that so many people were watching, especially in Ireland. RTE came out and said that 1.6 million people were watching just on their local broadcasts. That does not include the DeZone broadcast.

And obviously, you're the last fight right before the big Katie Taylor retirement fight. And so there's going to be a ton of interest. When they talk about that many viewers, the vast majority are going to be around that time because everyone's waiting for. for the main event, sort of like what happened with Taylor Serrano, too, and the Tyson Paul fight. Without further ado, let us talk to Dave Allen to get his side of the story and see what he thinks about what transpired in that co-main event on Saturday at Croke Park. Do we have, Dave? Yes, we do.

Hello. Hey, Dave, how are you? Yeah, I'm very well, mate. How are you? We were just talking to your opponent from Saturday. What a strange scene that was. Can I ask you? I mean, obviously, you didn't suffer an injury of any kind, but no one wants to be

involved in a weird one like that. How are you feeling about what transpired a few days later? Yeah, I'll be honest, Ariel. I couldn't care less, really. It was a mad, it was a mad situation, a bit bizarre, but it's been and gone, and it's done and over with, you know, is one of the things. I'm never going to talk Thomas Downs, because I think he's a nice guy, but as far as I'm concerned, it's over and done with now.

So, yeah, I'd love to talk wrestling. I'd love to talk all kinds of things. But in terms of Saturday night, we'll chalk it down to a freak accident, and that's that. Did you feel that way right away, or is it just because we're catching you a couple of days later? Yeah, at the time, I weren't really sure what was going off, to be honest. You know, it was half a round. Yeah, it was half a round, and they went flying out of the ring, and weren't really sure what was going off, went sure if it was disqualified,

I wasn't sure if I won the fight, it weren't really short at all. you know, within a couple of minutes I was backstage and I was talking to his dad and his brother and it is what it is. It's unfortunate for both of us, but it's been and gone. Honestly, Dave, do you think he looked for a way out? I don't believe so. I don't believe so.

I spoke to Thomas and he told me that but he didn't. So I'm inclined to believe him as a fighter and I have to believe what he tells me. so I have no, I have no hard feeling towards him. And that's that really, yeah. So I know they want the rematch. You don't?

Not really. Why not? There's nothing in it, for me. I took the Croke Park fight because Eddie offered me a deal for some of my fighters to box on the shows. I've got six slots. Starting with Joe Howes at 719 for the co-op on the park, Brown Undercard. followed by Pagemey on the Benwick, Grundycard, followed by Joe Hayden and the Dolance

for Fundycard, 23 4th of October, Sheffield Arena, with three of us to follow. And that was why I took the fight. That was the only reason as well. So, yeah, unless ADF has been other 12 slots. Not really too fuss, you know. And I know you said you didn't know much about Croke Park when it was offered to you, but 83,000 is 83,000.

What a scene that was. That was amazing. It ends in a sort of, conclusive way, is there any part of you as a sportsman who just wants to say like, all right, let's finish this? Not really, no, not really. Not at all, no, not really, not at all. Yeah, not at all.

I'm an older gentleman now. Sure. I've lost nine times before. It could have gone into a good contest. We'll never, ever know. You know, I don't need to. I've got a few days now since the fight I don't need to talk anyone down

No no and I'm not trying to get you to do that right I just wanted to get your side Can I ask in terms of the shots To the back of the head Yeah Were any of them in your opinion Those two shots Um

The first one Both of them wasn't There wasn't intentional I can tell you that I'm a rough fighter Not a dirty fighter I'm pretty rough Um

Half of the time I'm not looking where I'm punching I just want to eat you the first one I think went around the back around the back of his head but he's ducking into the shots the second one he's coming

he's rushed me and he's put his head down and he's turned into it on the back of the head and after that it's up to people's interpretation of what happened it's not up to me we've all got our interpretations of what happened

only Thomas truly knows so what's your interpretation my interpretation my interpretation is he went out of the ring and my interpretation of that is that Thomas only knows what happened, no one else. And whatever Thomas tells me, I'm inclined to believe. It's a mad one, right? I mean, right before such a big moment for a fight to end like that, what do you think?

What do you think Eddie was thinking? I know what Eddie was thinking. I spoke to a tweed about it, so I don't know what Eddie was thinking. You'd have to ask Mr. Hearn. Ah, come on. Since when are you so tight-lipped, Dave? I can't dive all the private conversation. He seemed upset.

My read on it was that he was upset. I'm not sure it was upset. It was Katie Taylor's night. Sure. That night wasn't mine in Thomas Kye. It's a big deal for us and our families and our friends and supporters. But realistically, it was Kate Taylor's night. And that's that really.

You know, honestly, I'm in a great mood today. I know. What are you watching? What's on TV over there? I'm watching a fight from 2008, actually. I'm going to pause it actually because it keeps catching my eye. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Which fight? it's between Danny McIntosh and Rod Anderson no idea where I'm watching it I've been watching I just watched a bit of boxing in my spare time Well you threw it off

It's on YouTube or on TV or like where It's on YouTube Yeah it's on YouTube I just I watch See the boxing, wrestling I watched a lot of interesting things I am MMA

Not so much Not so much I used to watch I used to watch a bit I watched the ultimate five With Richard Evans in Yeah The one that he won at

The one that he won at heavyweight Yeah became a bit of a fan in the years after that. But not so much. After when McGregor had the McGregor boom, I followed McGregor, but after that, not so much. Okay.

Did you get a chance to watch Katie's fight in the aftermath? No, no. I wasn't allowed back in the stadium after the fight, in case people, yeah, in case people, you know, had an ill feeling towards me. Oh, okay, okay. So I went back to the hotel. I got hot chocolate, I had some belly pork and chips.

Fries in the UK. Yeah. And I had a splendid time. I had some pineapple juice. Went down lovely. I had a bad belly the next day. Do not mix hot chocolate and pineapple juice. Very, very bad.

What a scene, though, right? I mean, that, in my opinion, might have been the greatest retirement fight in combat sports history. It was incredible. And she's an incredible lady as well. I've been fortunate to meet her numerous times. One of the nicest, sweetest people you could ever wish to meet. And it was a privilege.

for me to box on the undercard. Of course, it was unfortunate what happened. But it's happened. You know, I've got a couple

of fights left. And there won't be against Thomas Kye. Okay. Who won't. So, and I'm the kind of fella.

I do what I want to do and I don't want to do some of it. I ain't doing it no matter what. So there'll be no rematch. I'm sure they'll push for it and they'll want it

and whatever else because it's the biggest fight for him. And I like the guy, but I ain't playing. So, A couple of fights left. I spoke to where De Earn.

I'll probably have one fight at the end of the year. I love the British title fight. That's what I would like to end on in a bit sure defeat. So I've only got a fight two left. If you can get the British title fight next or the one after, amazing, then I'm gone. Is there any part of you that doesn't want to do the rematch because you feel some sort of way about how it was handled? You don't want to grant him that?

No. I I know you say that you don't want to talk down on him but it feels to me like you're saying I don't want to give you this because of the way this was all handled and how it all went down I want to win the British title

okay that's it that's all that's left for me so I will never ever speak negatively about him I like the guy I spoke to him I believe two days ago he's a nice guy I suppose on the phone wonderful guy you call them

I understand you want yeah he called he called I sent him his number he called me I think he's a lovely person, and I understand he wants to rematch, I understand that's the biggest fight for him. If I'm the Ariel Helwarnie show.

Come on. He's big. You know, that's the Dave Allen effect. You know, he's on the Ariel Helwarnie show. You know, and the rematch would be big, but I'm not interested in big. I'm interested in the British title. I'm interested in being in good fights

with new opponents and new challenges. And I can't get out of bed. I'll probably turn up at 22 stone next time. I'm going to put 20 stone. I'm probably 22 stone next time. I have to have a real, especially at this point in my career, I have to have a real desire and urge to get to the gym. And that fight won't do that for me.

So I wish him all the best. I wish you nothing but the best. I hope next time I'm in Dublin we can go out and have food and have a laugh about what happened because it was an amazing, crazy turn of events. But I ain't boxing again. What about that? What about the physique and the weight?

May against Hergevich 248 pounds 112 KG June 20th 125 KG 276 and then July 25th your last fight prior to this one 283 pounds 128

Why were you So this one 126.8 KG 279 What do you say to the people who say that you were not looking like your best shape out there? First of all June 20th July 25th

and last Saturday. I weighed in with my clothes on with my phone, wallet, and there's a lot of money

in that wallet arrow. You know that about me. Oh, it was full. It was brimming. So, yeah,

like, I've got to be training. I'm weighing heavy, but I'm not as heavy as I'm on the scales, but we can probably take off 8 to 10 pounds.

I wear the Air Force ones. I've got big shoes on. Put some weight on. Definitely put some weight on. I'm not going to deny that. You can see me in the ring. I look terrible. But for the carty fight,

I trained hard, I spired hard, I spard really hard I spied hard than I had for years I didn't take carty lightly he's a good fighter he's a good fight he's got a good job

he's very sharp and I took him serious I don't really like South Ports we've got a southpouring I spent a fortune on sparring I took him very seriously

yeah I was heavy but I was better me from the Karty fight would have beat me from the Hergovich fight no questions about it I was much better not to say prepared

but the weight when I'm heavier the weight is better you know I'm not a great move I'm not the fastest but I'm very strong I'm very powerful and I'm very durable

so them three things are better with a bit of weight on probably somewhere between 1710 and 1913 it's probably this sweet spot but um so yeah I was fit I train really hard

it took me a while to get up for it to be honest I didn't really I wasn't won the carty fight I had no interest he turned the fight down Eddie said he don't want the fight I went away, put some weight on. He came back and said

the fight's on now. I said, I don't want to do it. He said, there's some slots for your fighters. I said, there you go, I'll do it, sound. And I did it. That's the truth. That's what happened. That is the truth. I promise you. Okay, I know. I believe it. So, so that was it, yeah.

So, yeah, people keep one of me to say bad stuff about Thomas Kyle. I'll never do that. I wouldn't speak ill of anyone. You know, it's not really my way or my want to do that. I think he's all right. and the next time I go to Dublin, I would very much like to go out for food with him and be friends with him,

because I think he's a nice person. So I'm never going to sit here and talk down on him. I love the fact that you showed up a little bit later in the week because you had to take your daughter to school. Yeah, it's more important than anything. My kids, boxing's great, you know. I look at that picture. My favorite picture.

Look at him. Look at that. So, yeah, my kids come first always. I put my daughter from school today. She come running out. She's very happy to see me. I do have chocolate in mind every day when I'm waiting at the school gate. And she came over and some boy came over in her class and said,

bye Betty. And she said, Dad, can he come to my house to play? Oh, oh. And I thought, amazing. She made friends really quickly. I'm really proud of her. Her brother's only two. He's doing amazing.

And that's the thing. Like, people keep asking about Thomas Carty, Thomas Carty. The fact is been and gone. I don't even think about it. Like, I'm in my house. I'm doing my thing. I'm watching boxing and wrestling from the early 2000s, putting my kids to bed.

I'm eating lemon bonbons from Dublin Airport, which I would love more of than I can get me any. I'm just enjoying my life. I'm no interest in talking about boxing. Okay, okay. I'm really bothered. You know what I mean, though? No, I understand.

Which wrestling are we watching? I've watched a bit or everything. You know what I like the hardcore title, you know, circa 2000 to 2000, around 2000, 2001, really. Crazy. Steve Blackman was like Steve Blackman was the guy. And overnight, Raven became the guy. Like, Crash Holly was the guy before.

That was really weird period of time. The big washman, I think, held the title for a while, hardcore Holly. You know, there was a Battle Royal, I believe, at Somerslam. Not a Battle Royal. It was more of a timed thing, a 15-minute time, and the title changed hands numerous times. You know, so I'm into wrestling.

I'm into Pokemon, not play Pokemon for a while. I'm into football manager at the moment. Soccer manager, to you. you guys. I'm into all sorts of things. I'm boxing. I'll be honest, my own career, way down the list. I'm not interested in talking about Thomas Scott every two minutes. I'm not bothered. I get it. Did I punch me in the back of the head? Did I do this? Did he jump out the ring? Who gives? Well, you can understand. I mean, there was a lot of attention on this card. You were in the co-made event slot. It wasn't like you were the curtain jerker. But I understand

where you're coming from. You know what? I'd like to see, Dave. All this talk about A.J. and Fury, Fury calling everyone out. Why does it decall up old Dave Allen to take AJ's slot if he can't make the fight happen, right? Yeah, that'd be nice. Yeah, that'd be very nice, yeah. I mean, we've done the Ussick fight twice. Let's get something fresh. I mean, he beat me up, like,

but if I want to pay me a fortune, I'll let him do it. You guys could headline MSG. I feel like you would do just fine over there on Netflix. Yeah, that would be a fight. I could probably get me teeth in too, but I keep telling people all the time. There's more to life than boxing. Sure.

There's more to life than boxing. and there's more to life than back and forth. I'm 34 years of age. I'm 34 years, five months and nine days old. I'm not sitting here arguing with a fella that I've met a couple of times. I happen to think it's a nice guy. I'm not going on the internet going back and forth.

I'm not interested in anyone who thinks I've punched people in the back of the head. I'm not interested. I couldn't care less. I'm sad today. I've got my fan on. I've turned the fan off for yourself. I've always got the fan on.

I've got some peanut M&Ms. I'm relaxing. I'm enjoying myself. I'm not interested. I spend the last, this month, 15th years of pro, you know, I'm just enjoying my life. No, no, for sure, as you should. I've been a very long time and now life's great. I'm Saturday.

I've got a great settee, you know, sofa, couch, you might call it. You could fit seven people on this bad boy. You know, it's all to myself tonight. So I would never turn down the Earl Helwine show, but I knew it would be about Thomas Caheb. And I'm all respect to him. And I hope he gets a big fire off the back of this. but I'm not interested. I would love to talk to you more about SummerSlam 2000.

I would love to talk to you more about loads of things, but that's just not one of them. Somerslam 2000 was a great one. Was that putting me on the spot? I mean, Rock, Brock was 2002. That was a great. Yeah. Remember that?

Somerslam 2000 was the Rock Triple H, K-angle, triple threat. I never liked the triple threats. You know, I never liked them. Too clunky. That was a great. that was a great triple threat because you had the old Stephanie angle angle he kissed on the smartdown before before the pay-per-view

you know looking back I think that might been you know Edge Christian Hardies and the Dudley boys was that I'm not sure if that was TLC 2 maybe 2 right because TLC 1 was when when? Yes maybe WrestleMania 16 I'm not sure 17 X-7 was it said oh well it must have been like a lot

no you know what you're right it was 16 The right to censor was on. The rights of censor was on there. Right to censor. Legends, Ivory and Stevie Richards. Valvinas, the good father, Bulbuk Cannon, who became B2. Wow. Your knowledge.

I know my stuff, yeah. By the way, you're right. It was WrestleMania 16. I'm wrong. Yeah, I know my stuff, you know, like anything. It's wrestling, the original Pokemon, the original 151, not these new ones. They're about 8,000 of them. But I know my stuff, you know, like, I've got my interests.

Did you go to Wednesday? Assembly last weekend for AEW. No, I've never watched AEW. I've never seen it, no. I was 45,000 people there. Yeah, I'm loyal to the WWF slash E. Yeah, still, till this day? I'm not watching it for 23 years, but yeah,

I still feel that way about it. But you have such a passion for it. Why don't you watch it now? Because Kane took off the mask. Simple as that. It ruined it for you. I took the mask off. I was gone.

You know what? I watched it for three months after. He had Shane McMannia by the testicles with the electrovised testicles on the ring steps. And I thought, this is a bit too much for me at 11 years old and it kind of peered out for me a little bit.

Did you ever go live to live event? No, no, never. My dad used to shame me for watching it, to be honest. So there was no chance at all. Mine too. Every time he would come down, he would see The Undertaker on TV, my dad would be like,

you're a smart boy, why are you watching this garbage? This is stupid. I would have to change the channel like I was doing something wrong. I actually changed the channel but I wasn't watching wrestling Okay Different channel

Different channel in the UK 9-06 All the people are watching They will know I'm not familiar with that one Can I ask you Okay You say you

I hear what you're saying About your boxing career Yep Yep But you do agree with me when I say this I think when it's all said And done for you Dave I think you could be

One of the great pundits In boxing Will you transition over I feel like you'll do A great job of doing that I sure hope so You know Maybe my achievement

My achievements aren't the best. You tell it like it is. They're all world champions. You know, I do a lot of work with talk sports. Shout out, talk sport. Very fortunate that I get to cover a lot of boxing with them. I've done a bit on the zone. Not sure I'll go back on there.

I'm not sure they'll have been back on. I'll probably be too forthrighted my comments on some on there, to be honest. I still box on there. I love the zone. Get me back on if you want. I'd like to. I think you do a great job. Every time I've seen you do stuff.

And so can I ask you in that vein, what do you make of the whole Ben Davison most of the Talma stuff? You know, it's difficult. You know, Big Phil, my friend, Big Phil Hurgovich, who texted me the other day, actually. I've got an amazing text off, Big Phil, after the fight on Saturday.

He sent me the funniest text I've ever seen and laugh my head off. What do you say? What do you say? Can't live all this private conversation. Oh, jeez. All right. It was a good one, though.

It was a good one. I mean, you built it up, so I thought you were going to give it to us. Yeah, no, I do that, though. I do that. I always build things up and let people down. That's what I do. But yeah,

Atama is incredible. He's the best every way in the world over six rounds right now. Give it 18, 24 months. If he comes back from this and he builds on it, he was the best headweight in the world and probably for the next 10 years,

is incredible. Hergavich just knew a little bit too much for him, too tough and too experience. Ben Davidson, I know through my friends working with him that is a very professional guy. He works very hard, he puts the time in,

they put the hours in, they do things right, maybe not the most experienced. a man yet, but hard to knock him because I know the effort he puts in. Do you think it was too much too soon for Moses? Of course, yeah, with hindsight, we know that. Hindsight's 2020, of course. We all thought of Time would win before.

I saw Phil, I saw Big Phil at the wane, and I saw Big Phil, and I spoke to him, and I thought, ooh, I'm not so sure, but I'll be honest, I thought of Tomer would win the fight, as did most of us, so it's easy to say that now, but congratulations, a big first. and hopefully a time will be back. How are they doing over in Doncaster? The team over there? What is the club called over there? Doncaster Rovers, a headline there against Big Phil, actually.

Yeah. I'm not sure how they're doing. I'm not sure. Oh, you're not a supporter? I don't really follow the soccer. Football, don't really follow it. You said you do football manager? Yeah, well, that's 2019 edition.

You know, yeah, I'll play the 2019 edition for seven years. now because I know all the tricks. I know all the free transfers. I know who to bring in. I know who to sell. I know everything about the game. I know inside out. I'll just complete it.

Well, I do the 30 years every couple of weeks with the new team. And I go to bed and feel good about myself. The first time we spoke a couple chats ago, you had the world exclusive revelation that you like to urinate in the sink. Everyone was buzzing after that one. Are we still doing that once you revealed it to the world? Yeah, I'd do it. You know what?

Like, I would say in public I do it 50% of the time. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say any of the establishments that I do it in. But in some establishments I do it in. Some of them I feel like they know what we do. You know, there's a big community out there of sink urinators. There's a massive community of us. I know for a fact there is. Some establishments are these restaurants and that.

The sinks are so small and so low down. You know, it's difficult because I don't want to urinating them. But, you know, if you know, If it's a good eye, if it's a good eye and the tap's wrong for me to wash it all the way, I'm going in there. So this is actually new news because the first time we spoke, you said you just did it at home. I didn't realize you were also doing it in public. Yeah, I've branched out now. Yeah, I've branched out.

One of my friends actually sent me a video. I didn't see his gelatalia, but he sent me a video of him doing it in a restaurant, in a restaurant sink. And I thought, yeah, I want to be that guy. So I've done it a few times, yeah. Why? Why do you want to be that guy? It's difficult because I feel like, I don't know really. I probably shouldn't be that guy. Yeah.

How does your missus feel about you saying this publicly? I don't think she likes me that much anyway, really, so I don't think I could be any low in her estimations. Was she at the fight? She was at the fight, yeah, she was at the fight. Yeah, you know, I like a good laugh at me. I like a good laugh. So a lot of it's for comedic effect. sure sure like people laugh

if I can't make you laugh hopefully they've disgust you no no yeah of course I wonder what the first time was like when she you know when she learned that you were one of these people I'm trying to think

when the first time would have been I've been with a five and a half five five five five and a half years ish a bit longer actually five years seven months okay yeah she she's aware

she's aware of what I am you know I'm pretty normal guy now, but not always been that way. We dragged up and we pissed where we wanted. You're the every man. That's why people love you. Yeah, some would say that, but some people

look at me and just think, ooh, what is that? But yeah, so I'm happy, you know. I were happy for a long time. And these days, I've got my kids. You know, I've got me, I get on with 95% of my family. I'm really happy. I love to hear it.

What do you want to say to the people who are giving Thomas some abuse online? Should they stop? Yeah, definitely stop. Yeah, definitely. I saw the same from his team. But I understand it. I get the game. I get it.

I get it. I think he's a nice guy. I think he's just trying to secure a rematch. And I understand it. Yeah. That's the thing. I don't share things about him, you know, derogatory things. I don't make derogatory statements.

I don't come out and say I thought he jumped out of the ring. I don't do that. I don't want people to do that either. I think he's a nice guy. He's just a man trying to better his life and his family's life. And I'm all for that. So you definitely, definitely don't do that. But no one listens to me anyway.

You know which one I fancy for you next? Go on. Andy Ruiz. Yeah, I think he might be too good for me, you know. Even still. Even still, he's a top-class fighter. And he had a lot of time. He bought it.

He box all right. The fight that I'm interested in, I would like the British title if that could be a possibility. I like the Pranga fight, the guy that bought Joshua last time. Yeah, yeah. That's a fight for me.

I like the Pranga fight. But right now, I'm just enjoying myself with my fan and my M&Ms and my telly. And I'm happy doing that for a little while. I've got a busy few weeks come up for the fighters out of training and manage. So I just want to,

I just want to not be a boxer for a while, you know? What are you watching, keep show over the last? there? Is that what you're watching? Peep Show? You know that show? I watched a bit of Pete show. Yeah, I watch Pete Show. Love that show. Very funny guy.

I like The In Between, I believe, being a new film. In Between is a great series. Only Fools and Horses. You know, The Simpsons. What else do I like? The original office. Not the American one. I've never been an office guy, you know.

Okay. Never. Really? Never. Never, I never really been into that. I'm trying to think of other things that I watch, a bit more left field. Like, like, I went through the last time, my wife and kids one-on-one, you know, fresh prince.

Legendary. Going further back, Keating and Kel, Moesha. Oh, yeah. Taina. Saved by the Bell. You ever watch Saved by the Bell the new class? No, no. I'm not into that, you know.

I'm not really into that. What about the college years? I don't even like the old class, really. Yeah. The theme song, the theme song irritating me. Why? When I wake up in the morning. The thing is going to be.

I don't like it. I didn't like it. I didn't like it really. But as I got older, I probably wouldn't like it. But I always refused to watch it, always. What about the Mean Street Posse? Mean Street Posse. Yeah, Joey Abs, Pete Gass, the guys.

Yeah, the lad. Same a man's voice from, I believe, from Greenwich, Connecticut. Mean Streets. The Mean Street Posse or the Mean Streets of Greenwich, Connecticut, which I really is quite nice. They were fun, right? Yeah, a bit before my time, you know, like Briscoe and Paterson. you know, all part of the, all part of Vince McMahon's little gang.

Yeah, I'm, I've watched everything from my era, you know, 90, probably 99, 2003. There's not one bit of wrestling. WWF, that came to me. I've not seen. Okay, let me ask you a question. SummerSlam 2000. Yep.

Tell me who competed in an intergender tag team match for the WWF Intercontinental title. That would be China and Eddie Goren. Aero against Chris Jericho and the cat. Valvinus and Trishatis. Oh. Come on, Dave. But what about when China was feuding with Chris Jericho for the Interconsensile title?

Maybe the European as well. Yeah, no, no. That did happen. That was it in the year. Joe Wight, Billy Gunn. I believe he's still going in AEW. Yeah, Billy Gunn. Bad ass Billy Gun.

Remember the radicals? Oh yeah, that was fun when they all showed up. Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero. Tell me the other two. Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, but I believe Perry Saturn's got a good YouTube channel right now, as I've been told recently. Yeah, he had some hard times.

Maven has a good YouTube channel, and he found Perry Saturn. Yeah, yeah, so. Who was in the Stink Face match? Do you remember that? The Stink Face match. Who was that with? That was the cat with Al Snow

against Terry and Perry Saturn. Can you remember the Kiss My Ass Club? That was so funny, weren't it? Who was the first man to kiss Vince's ass? Oh dear. I don't remember. Tell me. I think it was William Regal, I believe.

Oh, my God. Sir William Regal? Maybe, yeah, it weren't many. It was the Undertaker. Remember when the Undertaker turned on everyone? Wait, he was in the Kiss My Ass Club. And he got J.R. He got J.R. to kiss Vince's art.

Oh, it was awful. It was awful. And then the Rock. thought, got Vince to think he was going to kiss Trish's ass and I can't remember it was Rikishi. It was a bit... Remember when Rikishi ran over Austin? Terrible, yeah. That was a big buildup to No Mercy 2000. I was in attendance, Dave. No Mercy 2000.

I drove from Montreal to where? Oh, St. Louis. Close. Albany, New York. Who won in the main event? The main event was Cat Angling as the Rock for the WWF time. Catonville. After Rikis. After Rikishi, accidentally kicked him in the face came in. I thought that way, that was crazy.

That was crazy. Yeah. I love how you're such a big fan of this random period of pro wrestling. Yeah, it's really odd, in it? Like 2000, especially 2000, 2003, there's not much. I'm going to get a few things wrong, obviously. I do know a lot of stuff, I guess, yeah, quite sad, really. You're one of a kind, Dave.

Appreciate you doing this. Thank you. Thank you very much. officially put it behind you. Now you're done with it. Yeah, there's no rematch, you know. They can carry on, they can do, say, whatever the one. I couldn't care less. All right. Just not interested, no.

No, I understand. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate you coming on. Well done this past week. It was a phenomenal 82 seconds, one of the best I've ever seen. Thank you very. Yeah, I've had a few good 82 seconds shifts in midtime. It was up there.

They were top five probably, yeah. Well done. Thank you, Dave. All the best to you. Thank you, mate. Thank you. All right, there he is. The one and only Dave Allen, hailing from Doncaster in the UK.

He's nonplussed about the rematch, and so he is moving on. Let's turn our attention to UFC Paris, and tomorrow we're going to have a bunch of fighters who competed on the Paris car. But I wanted to talk about the big man. We'll stick with the heavyweight theme, who improved to 4 and O in the UFC with his win on Saturday. He defeated Ryan Spann via TKO in the second round. He has become one of those names in the heavyweight division right now, ranked number ninth in the meta rankings, 14th in the media rankings. Who the hell knows what it all means? But he's 13 and 0, eight career wins via KO, one via sub, four via decision, former LFL heavyweight champion.

That's an organization based out of the Netherlands. He's originally from Portugal, now living in London. You'll recall the sort of switcheroo in the post-fight interview way back when when he first was introduced to us. He's Mario Pinto, and he's kind enough to join us right here now to talk about the big win from this past weekend. Hello, Mario, how are you? What's happening there? It's nice to see you. Thank you for coming on.

Look at all those medals behind you there. What is that? Some of my accomplishments back in the day. You can see the Dane and White Contended Series gloves in the back. But where are they? I don't see them. Just in the corner. You see the blue gloves?

Oh, that's right. That's right. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. One of the kind of. I'll get them back. I love that. I love that.

Congratulations on the win. How do you feel about the fight against Ryan? I feel good, man. You know, he's experienced fight. You know, he's beat like former number one contenders, big tough guy. You know, a lot of people wring him off. They didn't realize how tough he was, how much experience he has.

But he gave me a hell of a fight, you know. Yeah. Call me a big uppercut. But I feel good, man. I feel content. You know, I'm a perfectionist, so I wasn't too happy with the performance. But I got the job done. I found a way to win, so I'm happy.

What weren't you happy about? I mean, like, as you alluded to, you had to dig deep. It was a bit of a comeback win for you. Were you happy? Were you unhappy you got hit? Were you unhappy about certain things that you did? What were you unhappy about getting hit? Especially at heavyweight, man.

We know how it goes. But definitely, it was just the start of the fight. You know, I think I was a bit too, I just wanted to trade leather. You know, I'm a bit more careful, usually with that. But I wanted to make up for my last performance in UFC London, you know. But again, it was just more cage time for me, more experience going over a big heavyweight again. But, you know, I can't be too hard on myself. Last performance, UFC London, that was a win, but are you unhappy you went the distance?

That's your lone decision win in the UFC. Nah, I enjoyed the cage time. It was a unanimous decision, you know. I was able to control a guy with my jab. You know, a lot of people didn't like that. Obviously, more for the casuals. They wanted to see me knock someone out. He came in a lot lighter.

He was a late replacement, so it was a lot more difficult, especially like he had nothing to lose, you know. So he wasn't really giving me much to work. It was almost like an MVP moment. So meta rankings, as I said, 19th, 14th in the media rankings. Yeah. What do you make of this? I don't know, man. You know how the meta rankings are.

I think at one point I saw it put me as champions, so I'll take that. Where's my belt? Yeah, they're wacky, those things. Yeah, it's just all odd now. I think it's all over the place. But for me, I just want to keep fighting, keep getting experience, you know, keep racking up the winds. What was the scene like at the Akka Arena in Paris?

What a crowd it was. It was electric. It was amazing, man. It was so bright, so, like, you know, so loving. They were cheering me on. I wasn't getting any booze, you know. But, you know, nothing beats the crowd in Brazil. That was different for me in Rio.

Why so? Just, oh, super hostile, man. Super hostile. Obviously, I was getting, they were throwing at me saying very nasty things. You know, I don't want to repeat. You know, they let me know. They wanted me to die for sure. Yes, yes, yes.

but you like being in enemy territory. You like being the bad guy. Of course, man. You fry from it, you know, and that's what I did that night. Yeah, that was a great performance. I mean, your run so far in the UFC couldn't be going any better, I would imagine. I mean, maybe you say, oh, I get a knockout here or something like that, but four and so far, you feel like you're in a good spot.

I feel like, as I said at the top of the show, I feel like the heavyweight division hit a bit of a lull, but now there's an influx of great young talent that's coming in, great personalities, great athletes. it feels like you're a part of that movement. Absolutely. I think the UFC understood now they're trying to get a different type of heavyweights in a new type of hybrids of heavyweights, former athletes in different other sports.

So it's great. I always said now, though, the heavyweight division is almost at a point where it's a lot harder than it was before because everyone's well-rounded. No one's like, there's not much specialists anymore. Or they're not good at one thing before. It was more strikers, more grapplers.

But now everyone can do everything. So it kind of can't do everything. So it's a lot, it's not, how can I say, the heavyweights it's not as easy as it used to be that's why it's you see in the fights are like some more fights are going to decision or they're getting harder you know but it's just exciting times man you getting different personalities now as well at a heavyweight division so you know let's go are you in your mind very far away from fighting those those top guys how many more do you think you have in you before you get to that i like definitely uh for me potentially five more i'm in

a rush man a lot of people want to rush to the belt okay you know I've seen the sport for a long time for what it is. And sometimes people get given the wrong fights or they take the wrong fights. They're not protected and, you know, their trajectory goes down. And obviously, I know you've got to take risks and jump on when you can. But, you know, you've got to protect yourself in this game, man, because it's full of shocks. So you want to take your time. You don't want to be pushed at all.

You're not anxious to get there and the bright lights, the paydays, the belts, all that stuff. No, I'm all good. I'm all in for the paydays, but that all that has its place. It will come when it comes. Okay. And can I learn a little bit more about your past? You were born in Portugal, right? Yeah. How old were you when you moved? I was born in Lisbon. Okay. How old were you when you moved? Far early, like 10 months.

Okay. So you're sort of your affiliation, like what were you feel strong? Do you consider yourself more British or Portuguese? I'm both, man. I'm in the middle. I represent both. Okay. You can obviously hear from my voice, but like I grew up in a Portuguese household. My family speak Portuguese. They spoke Portuguese to me in my house, my cousins as well. I went back loads of times to visit, but I also grew up in, you could say I was forged in the UK. Both your parents from Portugal? Yeah, yeah.

Why did they move to the UK? You know how it is, man. Better life, better opportunity. Okay. And do you go back there often? Yeah, I'm going back there in a couple of days for a wedding. Okay. Yeah, my cousin's getting married.

And you speak fluently. in Portuguese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You pulled the old switcheroo on us in that interview. I make some mistakes here and there, you know. It's not perfect, but it's definitely, I do speak fluently. So if it's ever Portugal versus England in football, who are you reading for? Maybe Portugal.

Wow. The place where you only live 10 months over where you were worn and bread. I was wrecking both this time. I was just changing in between. Okay. Has it happened? Has England versus Portugal happen on a big stage? It happened recently, fantastic.

Okay, okay. That would be a tough one. But I'd imagine your parents, your family members would all rep Portugal. Yeah, yeah, but definitely like when I'm at home, when England's playing, when England's playing, he supports Portugal. Okay. And which part of UK did you grow up in? Right in London, center of London. Oh, wow. Okay. So what are you? What are you? A Spurs fan? Chelsea? Arsenal? No, funny enough, man United. Man United. Interesting. I'm just a glory hunter, though, because I grew up with a lot of friends that's supporting. them so I jumped on the bandwagon.

Have you been to a match? Well, a united match. Yeah. Maybe a long time, yeah. Okay. And my friend asked me to go to one recently, but we'll see. Maybe one day you get to fight at Old Trafford. Could you imagine that?

Yeah, it would be a dream. That would be. And so how do you get introduced to mixed martial arts? Oh, I started so, it's when I was watching a lot of strike force when I was younger. I just come across it. I don't know if it was on FX. Not FX, it was definitely. Strike Force?

Those people say UFC. You say Strike Force. I started with Strike Force and Pride. Come on. Serious. I remember watching, I think it was Frank Shamrock. He's the first person I saw a fight. Wow, that's random.

Frank Shamrock, who, against Kung Lee? I think so, yeah, back in the Strike Force days. And I was just like, I was watching. I was like, this relates to me. This is something I want to do. I used to watch a lot of K-1, like Badahari, Remy Bonyaski, Kokansaki, a lot of those fights. And I was just so interested in it, you know.

And then it followed it into it. the UFC but I started early days with boxing. I did a bit of boxing train. I was young. Did a bit of like traditional martial arts, but then I transitioned to MMA, probably around 17. So when you're watching these strike force fights and whatnot,

you have no martial arts background. You just like... No, but I just understood. I knew there was like some guys were coming from, keep boxing, some guys were coming from grappling, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, so I had an idea of it. And, you know, I felt like, even without the training, I always looked at it and said, I think I could hang with these guys.

And so then when you go into a gym and you're quite raw, what is it like in the early days? Oh, I remember the first bar I had, I went with a jiu-jitsu black belt. Obviously, I was able to box him up a little bit, and then the coach looked at me, he said, he's going to get you down and you're going to drown. And I was like, nah, no, he took me down. I think he tapped me like 20 times. Wow. I was like, oh, my God.

I was like, well, what have I put myself in? you know, I was like, I'm definitely in the deep end, you know, I felt like I wasn't good enough for the sport. I was like I was way out of my depth, but the next day I just went to Jiu-Soo, and I said, let me give this a try. And you stuck with it. You weren't deterred. Stuck with it. Yeah, 100%. I read and correct me from wrong, used to work as a bouncer, and you were spending time at homeless shelters as you were trying to make it? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, for a long time, I was bouncing for like seven, eight years, And then I also, during that time, I was working in homeless shelters, like, just like security concierge and, like, you know, doing 12-hour night shifts, which was killing me.

And then I'll still go training in the morning. Oh, my gosh. During those shifts, though, it just gave me a lot of time to watch a lot of MMA, man. Watch a lot of old school boxing, lots of MMA learning, different fires, what they did, their experiences. I watched a lot of fatal. So I look back at those moments, and I really do appreciate them. How difficult was that job? I was difficult. It was just very, like the security was, the bouncing was difficult just because obviously you're dealing with different individuals and, you know, people at their worst when they're drunk, when they're intoxicated. You see the worst sides of people, people treat you like dirt. By the same time, it taught me a lot of patience, you know, and being calm and, you know, turning the other cheek.

People try to fight you? Oh, all the time, but you're like, one thing I learned, never fight for three. Ah, smart. A real prize fighter. Yes, sir. And so when you're doing the overnight shift at the homeless shelter, is there a lot of activity or you get a lot of time to yourself? I was lucky to fit out a lot of time for myself, like a lot of time to myself. Obviously, when it's a 12-hour shift, you're like, oh, my God, I've got to count the hours.

I was watching bombing things, but then it just gave me a lot of time to just to think and reflect on, like, my training and my style. I was watching a lot of UFC then. I wasn't even, I think I was still an amateur, and I was like, oh, what's the goal? How am I going to get here? I'm like, I can't wait to get to the UFC or have a fight there. And then, you know, Lord and behold, I'm here now. So is this also, like, surreal to you?

You're 4-0 now. You're a veteran. You're winning on these, you know, big cards. How are you processing all of this? It's definitely surreal, but sometimes I don't appreciate it. Like, it's only, I think, this coming up to-bo, it's been two years, I think, since contender series. Yeah. And I'm like, like, at the time, I was so excited.

I was like, I couldn't believe it. but now it's gone like a flash. And one thing every other fighter tells me, like every veteran I meet or fighter who's been in the ranks or former champions, they always say it goes so quick. So you have to smell the roses. Of course, of course, because they're like,

it goes so quick. One day you're having your debut, then one day you're thinking about hanging up the gloves, man. It goes so quick, so trying to appreciate it. So sometimes it is a bit surreal, but I always, you know, I'm telling myself, I deserve to be here. You know, I'm here.

hanging with the big boys where I should be. Do you have moments where you think you don't deserve to be here? Like where you have this imposter syndrome. How the hell did I get here? Of course, that happens all the time, man. Even right now it's a bit of imposter syndrome. Why is that? Talking to me?

I used to watch this all the time, man. Like all the fires. I remember you had an interview with Fado and with his translator. That's right. Yes, in the studio. Yeah, now I'm here. And now I'm talking to you now. It's crazy, man.

It is crazy. But you've earned it. You're here. I asked to speak to you. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate a lot. Yeah, but I understand what that's like to dream of things. And then all of a sudden you look around and you're like, holy shit.

I mean, this has happened to me in my career and you're like, is this for real? And then you start to question if you deserve it and how the hell you got there. So I actually think this makes you very relatable that you would admit this because I think a lot of fighters might not want to admit it because it doesn't make them seem like an alpha male. Of course, man. It's hard in this sport. But like, you just got accepted, man. I tried to be a bit stoic, you know, about.

Man, I'm grateful, man, and I recognize, you know, imposter syndrome is a real thing, you know. I struggle with it every day. Sometimes, like, I'll finish having a UFC fine. I'm like, was I just in there? Was I supposed to be in there? Like, did that just happen? Or I'm at the press conference.

I'm like, why is everyone asking me all these questions, you know? Wow. And I'm not like people giving me credit for my wins. I didn't want to hear people saying, oh, you beat that guy, you smashed them up. I'm like, no, I don't want to be filled with all that, you know, compliments. So it doesn't turn into arrogance.

You know, doing this a long time, I don't know if I've heard a lot of fighters admit this. I would imagine a lot of them do think it, but I give you a lot of credit for actually saying it. Thank you, man. Yeah, I feel like a lot of them, you know, it's hard there. A lot of them are in denial. They struggle to share or open up about it. But, you know, like, we're willing to let the world see our failures, you know. You saw the tribulations I had in that cage with Ryan Span.

Yeah. You know, and the struggles. I'm like, the whole world got to see that. and all the comments and all the memes are being made. And I'm like, you know, I've understood now what comes with being an MMA athlete at a professional level, not just UFC, whatever promotion you're in. You have to take the good, the bad, and the ugly. How do you think you will handle, you know, eventually everyone loses, unless you're

maybe a hubby, but if you're feeling this way now on a winning streak, you're still undefeated in your career. Do you think about that a lot? Do you feel the pressure of that zero? Of course, man, all the time, even in the last one, but I realize you can't, you can't get too attached to it. Like, everyone loses. There's a few outlines, obviously, like, you could say John Jones

if you don't class the disqualification. But, you know, especially in MMA, it's very hard to be undefeated. There's too many styles, especially when you're fighting. Like, usually the best have to fight the best. But at the end of the day, you have to detach from it. I understand, this is just sport. And a lot of people, unfortunately, in MMA, when you lose, like you lose on your own,

you become public enemy. Everyone forgets about you, but losing is a big part of sport. And you don't, these fighters don't give themselves enough grace about the hard work they put in training camp. And just getting to the fight itself is hard. It's a win, getting to the fight,

showing up to the fight, you know, we're going with so many injuries or setbacks. So we need to give each other more credit for it. And if you lose, you lose, man. As long as you've got your family with you, and they love you, God loves you. what do you really have to worry about? When you were saying that and mentioned,

even in the last fight, are you thinking about these things as it's not going your way early in the fight? Yeah, I do. Is your mind wandering to these places? Yeah, I try not to get disheartened too much. Even when he had me in the guillotine, I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to lose in front of everyone.

Wow, you're thinking of that in the moment. Yeah, I was like, oh, I guess I'm going to be a failure. But I was like, well, I guess I'm going to have to die, you know wow that's why if I can keep sorry it's got you off no no go ahead please please please if I can keep moving forward and I keep breathing I'm not going to stop so I might as well keep going forward that's what I think like you know and like had I lost on Saturday yeah I would have been sad I probably would have been a bit miserable but end of the day like look at where I'm fighting you know the creme de la creme

creme de la creme like what people this is so I don't want to Cursebar, this is one thing I've learned. And Roger and Floyd said this a lot. Most people don't know shit about fighting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing that is true, you know? So I tell people don't take it personal when people have their opinions and say, like, even after the fight, everyone wants to give me advice and this and that. And I take, you know, everyone has an opinion.

I can take constructive criticism. But a lot of people are like, oh, you should have done this or why do you knock him out and all this? I'm like, it comes with a sport. Like, everyone becomes an expert after you fight. I read here You attended the University of Heritage Heritage Fairture Oh god, I blew that

I'm sorry I'm sorry Graduated with a bachelor's degree in sports and exercise science What did you want to do with that? I was even potentially thinking about being a pundit or sports analyst Okay, I think you still do that I don't think I needed the degree to do it

No no It didn't help you know I learned a lot of things being at university and obviously doing lab reports, doing my dissertation. So I was proud of that. I did my dissertation on mental fatigue on combat sports athletes. Okay. Yeah. I don't know how I got through any, but I did.

And you graduated? Yes, sir. Hell yeah. And also in LFL, which I talked about, eight-man one-night Grand Prix you competed in, N-Wan, right? Yes, sir. What was that like? So I guess if my math is correct, you would have had to fight three times.

Yeah, three times. I was it five minute rounds? No, no, the rounds were adjusted. Okay, okay, okay. How difficult was it though? I think mentally it was more difficult, but I was fortunate to have my coach, Austin with me, you know, had a good team, helped me for that training camp. The main thing was just not getting disheartened and telling my, like,

you have to make sure you don't get injured, like, I can't go in there and smack my shinbone, it breaks, and I'm like, oh, I can't fight the other fight. what was good was dealing with different types of fighters, different styles and different body types and just staying mentally strong, you know, and I think that day changed a lot for me. You know, it's interesting about your spot in the sport. I think you have a great personality,

you're entertaining, you're fun, great on the mic, although you have no social media presence. I don't want to say no, but like, I don't think you have a Twitter and you barely post on IG, right? Yeah, tell me. about it. What's the problem? You got to get yourself out there.

You got to promote yourself. I know. I'm working on them. Get someone to do it for you. People are getting behind me. I think that's the problem I had early on before. I'm getting behind it more. I got my YouTube channel, Mario Pino, MMA.

Yes. There it is. There we go. Barsh, thank you guys. No problem. But I'm getting more behind it. I'm pushing it. Now, obviously, a big issue I had before again was the imposter syndrome.

And, but now, no. Mario, you're a, you're a foreign-owned the damn UFC. the heavyweight division, you're undefeated. Fuck that imposter syndrome, all right? You're the man. I've got to get on my ceiling, so when I wake up, I can see it. Come on now. I mean, this thing that you said on Saturday,

big boys, we used to be called Titans. Now we're made a mockery of in this division. Bloody disgusting. We were once kings. Monsters among men. Give us some respect. The heavyweight division just got great again. Tell them, tell them.

Bosh. Come on. Look at you spinning fire after a fight like that. This is good shit. The division was something. different back of the day, man. We were seen as definitely seen as kings, man. I don't know what happened. What did happen?

UFC 146, the whole main card was heavyweights. Could you imagine that now? Be a disaster. Heavy days, man. Heavyways, they break the rules. They break the rules. One punch changes everything. Yeah. So you're trying to bring that back?

Bring it back. It's coming back. It's coming back. Trust me. What do you think of Tom and Cyril and all this stuff? I mean, I feel for Tom, man. I feel like we've got probably one of the best heavyweights ever. Fast, agile, can grapple, can strike. But, you know, he's got an eye injury. I've been poked in the eye before.

I've been hitting the eye, and I'll tell you now, it's one of the worst injuries you can get. Eyes are not designed to be hit. Right, right, right, right. The first protected thing. So it's very unfortunate for him. I hope he recovers, but I can't wait for them to fight again. But I think now it might be Alex Pahara and Cyril gone too.

Nah, I don't know about that. I mean, he called for it, but I can't see much of a push to make that happen. Might not make too much sense, but you know how it is these days. If the matchups make the numbers, sometimes you set up. What do you make of this Josh Hokid character? I mean, I think he's good for the sport. Yeah. I mean, he listens, he talks a lot of shit.

But guess what? He backs it out every time. Right. You know, and obviously some things, he might go a bit overboard or cross the line a bit. And it's funny because a lot of people like it, people don't like. A lot of people tell me you need to be like that, but I feel like you'll see through it. You'll see the fakeness if I pretend to be something I'm not. No, no, no. I feel like you just got to be 10 times a bit more than yourself. I don't think you have to be that guy.

No, no, definitely no, I'm not that guy. I can't be that guy. I'll self-destruct. It's too much pressure to keep up the facade? Oh, of course, man. You see it, man. Eventually people crack. Sure. They crack. Their soul starts bleeding out of their chest. But I think just your personality, I mean, you've, you've, you've, you've, you've, you've, You've got a great vibe to you. So just be yourself, but you have to put yourself out there to get people emotionally invested in the Mario Pinto journey.

They have to back you. Of course, man. I feel like it's growing now. The train's getting bigger. You feel it. Everyone's hooking on, man. And look at me, I'm here now after that performance in Paris. Listen, I'm just the ordinary guy doing extraordinary things.

Those medals behind you. What are they for? Some of them are for my MMA fights, like different competitions, jiuts and sports. Jiu-Jitsu camps. You know, some of it is just for athletics I did when I was younger. I love it. I got a few of my rosy breeds up there as well. Your what?

What is that? My rosary beads. Rosary breeds. Oh, okay. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Who gave you that? I get in myself, someone from my family as well.

My mom. Are you religious? I'm trying to be. Okay. You want to try to be more in touch with God? What do you mean when you say? Yeah, I feel like I have my personal relationship with God. Yeah.

You know, I'm not big on trying to push religion on other people. But, you know, I've definitely opened about it. I'll say I try to follow Jesus, you know, but I won't push that on other people. I feel like if people are just trying to be good, then bless them, let them go their way. Where does Bing Bang Bosch come from? I don't know, man. I just thought about it. And I was like, you know, especially because of the finishes I was getting.

And I was getting bang when I was hitting people. It's a little joke I got going with one of my teammates, Tom, Tom Bennett. And then I just added the Bosch because I started saying it after every conversation. And is this because of Big John Fisher or the original Bosch guy? What's the original Bosch? Yeah, definitely, definitely. Which one?

Okay, because there was a guy before him that started saying it, right? Yeah, I think I can't find it, but I remember another mate of my Bertie got it from him as well. Okay. And I started saying it. After every, I would do it. I'll take someone down or I'll hit him with a jabberd. He's fighting in a couple weeks at the copper bosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is that near you? Yeah, not too far. Stratford. You should go. I mean, Zoofa boxing. Get me some tickets. You want me to put in a call to Dana and them? Hey, get me some tickets, man.

Okay, I'll work on that. I'll work on that. They need to have you there front and center. You sit there, you take a picture, put the fist up, yeah. Bash. There is. Mario, pleasure to have you on. Congratulations on all your success.

Four and O undefeated in your MMA career. It's great stuff, very entertaining fighter. And like I said, I think you're a part of that new breed of heavyweight that is going to make heavyweight interesting once again. So well done to you. And looking forward to the next one, want to fight again this year? Or you think you're done? I'd like to, but we'll see, man.

You know, I'm all about, I want to, I like to improve. I don't want to rush back into fights, man. But I just wanted to get your take on it, man. Any advice or any tips you could give me? Okay, on what? On life? From what you've seen from like younger fighters during their career and what they've done, mistakes they've made, what maybe I can avoid and how I can protect myself.

Okay, wow, what a question. I don't know if I've ever been asked this live on the air. Well, the first thing that I would say is get rid of the imposter syndrome, and I know that's easier said than done. You are here, you made it, you did it, you belong, you're undefeated, you need, don't let that consume your soul. There are a ton of impostors in this world, you're not one of them. Certainly not with what you're doing.

Number two, the key to being a star in the sport, obviously number one is winning, but you need to get people emotionally invested in your story, in your journey. There are a lot of fighters that have had great success who aren't as successful in terms of like, or I should say talented as others, but they get opportunities, they get pushed, they get prize, you know, they get paid because people love them, right? They really get behind them. And so if you shut yourself off from the public, there's not going to be a lot of, to be a demand to see you fight and no promoter is going to want to pay to put you in top

fights. And so you need to surround yourself with people who are going to market you the right way, build you the right way, put out a sort of story that they want, you know, the public to be attracted to. And it doesn't have to be you, by the way. You should not be the one who's posting all this stuff. You can get someone to do it on your behalf. But that's a huge thing, the emotional investment. Like look at Katie Taylor on Saturday, 83,000 people. She brought us on a journey from the very beginning of her career and that's that's a whole big part of it look at patty the way he connects with people right because he you have to put yourself out there but ultimately it's wins and losses so to me what i like about you is you're you're not you're not someone with a big head you're not

thinking you're a world beater you're humble you understand four and o's great but you still have a lot of work to do you don't want to be push you don't want to be fast track i think you're going to be just fine as long as you surround yourself with the right people which it sounds like you are and you're down to earth and you believe in yourself, just do me a favor, get yourself out there. And I'm not saying, when I say get yourself out there, I'm not saying talk trash and be a character. Just let the people get behind who you are as a person.

Because there's a lot of people who aren't all that interesting. You're an interesting guy with an interesting backstory. So let people find out about it. Oh, man. I'll get on it. I really appreciate that. No problem. No problem, Mario.

All the best to you. The first of many chats, hopefully. And looking forward to your next one. Definitely, man. I'll see you again soon. Bosch. At the same time. Nailed it.

Well done. There he is. Mario Pinto. Kind enough to join us on this Tuesday. That was like when you do one of those with someone and it hits perfect. You know that, Frank. My man. That was the Dap.

Wait, that's what you were trying to say? Crispy Dap. You're talking about a Dap? I was talking about the Arnold and. Arnold and Carl Weathers. Yeah, but they're still dapping up. That's a Dap. I was at the gym this morning and two guys.

guys near me dapped up and like it echoed throughout the gym. I was like, what a way to start the morning. Good on you. I thought you were going to say you were at the gym this morning and they were talking about Mario Pinto's win over Ryan's. Well, that was later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys at the squat wreck.

We're like, what does you big Pinto? What's crazy is he is such a, like, his post-write promos are fantastic. I'm surprised he's not more like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, he pulled the switcheroo with that promo and you're like, oh, this guy thinks his shit don't stink. And actually, you find out like, he's the complete opposite. And even this latest one in.

It was fantastic. It was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. Just if he had more volume, if he was just out there, like, you know, Josh Hoked as an example,

is just tweeting every five seconds. Like, if he just had more volume and showed people, I think, I think the sky's the limit. He's fantastic. We've been doing this a long time. I don't know if I've heard many fighters openly talk about imposter syndrome like that. You know, like openly talk about, like, do I really belong here? Am I really that good? I would say you actually hear it more at the higher level.

You hear the guys who have. already kind of achieved it, that they're like, yeah, I face that every day. The younger guys are usually more brash and like, you know, I'm going to tear through everybody. Yes, yes, yes. I love that. It's great. It makes me like him more that he's not putting on the facade, that he's not saying, I'm going to kill everyone. You want to fight the top guys? Nah, give me three or four more fights. Let me get better. Respect. At heavyweight, he doesn't have three or more fights. He's going to be fighting a top guy in two fights. He might have one more. Yeah, that's true. I mean, honestly, like, I was thinking him versus Anthony went.

That isn't. Too soon? The prospect versus prospect is always like, you know. Yeah. I just think they need to put on fun fights, but you're right. There's old guard guys that they could be facing. To sort of like weed out the... You clean, you clear out.

Okay, we have a lot to talk about guys because it is a Tuesday, but it does feel like a Monday, as I've said a few times. We kind of have to put France to bed, Paris in particular. That was a really, really good card. the UFC continues to be on a role what a run they've been on with all kinds of finishes Axel Sola he'll be joining us tomorrow on the show

that was an impressive win improves to 131 and 1 that's a name and it was interesting to have two Frenchmen fighting in the co-main event I was curious about how that would be scary The knockout was terrifying Oh my god his eyes were open

Frizyam's eyes were open Like knocked out eyes opened On the mat Face First on the mat vicious stuff. So that was really impressive. Michael Venham Page, what do we say about MVP? MVP will join us next week on the show. He's enjoying his honeymoon. He gets the win over Nerseltan Ruzabayev. And, you know, there's all kinds of debate. First, we should say that John Morgan, who I guess is a part of the media rankings committee posted yesterday that they were sent a

notification that he is not available to be ranked, which would lead to one believing that he is no longer going to be a part of the UFC. That was the last fight on his deal. This is the tweet right here, that he is no longer, you know, he's been removed from the rankings. I did ask his team. They have not been told that, you know, no new offer is coming, but you would be, you would be foolish to not at least think that this is a sign of, at least, you for now, at least for now, the UFC isn't interested. Now, it could just be, by the way, the UFC saying like, look, you're no longer on their contract. We're not going to have you ranked until we come to terms on a new deal. Does anyone think that the UFC is going to offer

him a new deal that the UFC is going to resign Michael Vennon Page? No. It's unfortunate, right? I feel like this could have been better. This could have been, this could have gone differently. this just feels like a relationship that was doomed to fail. Because of? Because the UFC never seemed to support Michael Venom Page in the way that he needed to be supported. Slash is not the promotion that allows Michael Venom Page to be the best version of Michael Venom Page. Whether that be, they don't really do custom walkouts and celebrations, right? That's a key to the MVP experience.

So at the UFC, you're going to lose that, right? He tried it in the very beginning. It was the, what was it, the Undertaker walkout. it just never hit, it never connected. Two, I don't think they did him any favors with the matchmaking in terms of fighting a bunch of young, not necessarily even young, but like guys who are not going to do a lot to advance him up the rankings should he get wins over them. And he was very successful in doing that.

Kevin Holland and Ian Machado, Gary felt like, okay, they're trying to put MVP in position to succeed. From there on, it kind of felt like not. And then on the MVP side, he just was not the guy that we had grown, to love and enjoy and Bellator. And we have to acknowledge that. And he will be the first to every interview. He kind of talked about it. He was not getting the finishes.

The exciting style that he had was no longer there. The activity was very low. And part of that might have been the opposition. Part of that might have been a lack of motivation, right? I'd find it hard if I was MVP to be motivated in this scenario. It just felt like they never were on the same page and never jelled. And maybe UFC was not the place for MVP. Again, we don't know if he will end up coming back.

I would be very doubtful of that. I'd be skeptical of that at the moment. But it just felt like oil and water. And he could probably be very successful elsewhere. I just, I don't think any of the outer cage stuff would have helped with the performances in the cage. I love MVP, but unfortunately, like, the fights just weren't exciting. We saw six decisions while he was here. On Saturday, 12 significant strikes over the course of 15 minutes.

And across the six fights, he never landed. more than 43 significant strikes. The volume was never there. We never saw any finishes. The excitement just didn't match the hype of the prospect. And I imagine he moves on to another promotion after this. Okay, so you said a word right there that I wanted to zero in on. You said prospect. It's not like he was an unknown commodity. That is correct. The UFC knew what they were getting. You know, he was in his mid to late 30s when they signed him. So if they were, and I agree with what you said, Rick, but if they weren't into all of this, why did they sign him to begin with? He was getting finishes beforehand. The

antics and the excitement and the pageantry around his fights were matched with exciting fights, which we just haven't seen yet in the UFC. I imagine some of it was the fans wanted if I recall

correctly, when MVP showed up in the crowd in the same way that they did with Usman Nirmagamadov, the fan sentiment, the fan reaction was like, oh shit, MVP is coming to the UFC. This is going to be fun. This is going to be exciting. And I think they were going with that. then the fights kind of played out.

And I don't think the initial fights, like the Kevin Holland fight was not nearly what we have seen in the recent run. It was a good fight. The Ian Machado Garry fight, right? He's one round away from potentially beating Ian. If Ian doesn't go to the grappling there, MVP can very easily win that fight. It just degraded over time. And I can't help but think that part of it was just a lack of motivation and feeling like I was not getting a fair shake in the UFC. If I'm MVP and I'm sitting there and I'm like, I used to be the big fish in the pond and all of a sudden I'm this guy who just like they don't have any care for or respect for and don't want to put in these big positions despite the fact that I'm winning, I could understand why you wouldn't be giving your best effort.

And that's not an excuse. That is not me saying that these performances were exciting by any means. I think we can all acknowledge that they were not. But I can understand why if the justification is, yeah, I just lost my motivation because I'm not doing what I want to be doing. I'd understand that. PTC, what do you think? If we go back to when he was signed, the one thing that everyone said was that,

oh, he's about to get shown now. You know, and I'm not here to say, like, it was so exciting. I don't know how people didn't see it. It wasn't. But he leaves five and one in the UFC. And I think the vast majority of fans didn't think that would be the case.

I don't think he's a busted flush in any regard whatsoever. I just think he needs to find someone that will match his enthusiasm when it comes to putting on a show. And I think all those, things are part of the experience, as Rick said earlier. And I imagine, like, I can remember

him coming on after that debut with the under-taker thing, and he was hoping that he could keep pushing out the boat. I think all that stuff kind of excites MVP. Even down to the music, you used to have different mixes, people putting together his entrance music. I just don't think he got his juices

flowing here. I just don't think anything along the way made him really excited to be here. And not to mention the fact, like, he was really well paid. He was one of the stars there at Bellator and I was at those events and the entrances and all this stuff and whooping on people so badly to just quit standing there like you know he was so untouchable that wasn't the kind of performance he was putting on here but all in all I don't think he's

going to be too mad about parting ways with the UFC and I don't think they're going to be too angry about it either I think a lot of people want to be in the MVP business and I think he can probably put on the show he wants to show somewhere else 12 wins in uh excuse me 12 wins via finish in belator 17 wins total, five decision wins in the UFC, no finishes, five and one in the UFC, the lone loss to Ian Machado Gary. And I guess if you are a fan of MVPs, you could say, well, like some of the matchups weren't style friendly. Maybe the last two.

He was upset about the San Patterson booking, but, you know, he could have knocked out San Patterson. It wasn't like San Patterson was just trying to take the fight to the ground. The Nershotan-Rizabaya fight felt like. But honestly, Nerseltan didn't really do much in that fight either. MVP's a counterstriker. And so if you have someone that is not going to bring the fight to him, it's going to be hard. And Leon Amichita used to get killed for this all the time, where people thought that he wasn't engaging enough, that he was boring, that he was afraid to take risks.

But in his earlier days, he was getting more finishes. So people were falling for it. They were thinking that they can knock him out. They can bum rush him, all this stuff. from where I said on Saturday that I felt like this was the type of fight that we were going to see because there was too much at stake. If he took a risk, what's the point? He knows the UFC doesn't like him. He knows the UFC probably isn't going to offer him a new deal.

What's the point in taking a risk and potentially losing so that your market value goes all the way down? Get the W. You're on a winning streak and hopefully Scott Koker or the new MVP slash PFL is interested in you. I knew, of all his fights in the UFC, I knew that this one was going to be this way because there was literally no reason. for him to take a risk whatsoever. I don't even think if he would have gotten a knockout, the UFC would have been interested in him again. Yeah, absolutely.

It just felt like they never could get on the same page, no pun intended. When did that change? Because he got the Sharra bullet flight. You know, we're talking about a guy who won four fights and lost won. Yeah. You know, like, there is a big kind of drop off in terms of sport now. Like, that is not what we're after hearing this in the UFC.

That is not what MMA is about anymore. It's about excitement and things like that. And I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. You know, like, I get it. I get it. Like, it's great for social media and let's, but like, at the end of the day, we want to see who's the best fighter in there. Who wins the fights?

He won five out of six. Very close fights with Ian Gary, one of the best fighters in the world. Made Ian grapple him because he didn't want to strike with him. I mean, I think that needs to be said too. Like, five and one, and we're talking about this lad, like,

he's ruined, like, you know, like, he's done something terrible here. It's crazy. Forget social media. Just, again, publicly traded company every week we hear Mark Shapiro saying some craven thing about the business. Would the UFC rather pay five figures to somebody from Dana White's contender series who they know is going to go out there and swing their heart out, whether they have any technique or not? Or do they want to pay six figures, seven figures to a guy like MVP and get this result? It's just a dollars and cents thing at this point in time.

It's not just the UFC that feels that way. You see it on Contender Series every week. They sign it. But then you go on social media and the fan engagement when it comes to Michael Venom page. I mean, people are celebrating this dude getting removed from the rankings. Yeah, but, you know, sometimes I feel like that's this small vocal minority and it's not real life. Ultimately, in this sport, knockouts help, finishes help. I still feel like this could have gone so much better.

The UFC didn't do him any favors, right? If you want to position a guy differently, you can. we did it on Thursday Ian Machado Gary decision machine just absolute decision machine he was in a fight with Michael Vennepage that became an inflection point

where from there Michael Vennepage got done no favors and Ian Meshado Gary got put on a path to a title shot there are wait now let me be very clear Ian Machado Gary is a more exciting fighter than MVP at this point in time

there's no doubt Ian Machado Gary fights a better style of fight but decisions have just just become this thing that it's like taboo. You can't be in any decision fights. And it's just, it's just not the sport. To Pizzi's point, there has to be a point where winning matters. And Michael Vennam Page wins fights. He's a counterstriker. I mean, as soon as Israel-Asaunia versus Yoel Romero happened, despite the fact that Israel-Asonia was tearing through everybody, they're like, this is the most boring guy in the world. Fuck this guy. He's boring,

boring, boring. The fans just flip on these guys and it never comes back. I'm not saying that Michael Vennon-Page's fights were exciting, but I'm saying that there are things that can be done to mitigate this and there are ways that he can be positioned that it is different. It just never, they never got on the same page and it is what it is. I agree with that, Rick. And another thing I'd say is MVP has a vision for what his career is he had a vision for what his career was going to be here. He's a guy who's made a lot of money.

He's had a lot of success elsewhere. I think the vast majority of time when the UFC come to someone, they say, you're fighting this guy. They go, okay, no matter how they feel about it, that's just how the business is doing with this company. I doubt MVP was saying that's great all the time when they were coming with these guys

and I think they probably felt a certain way about that Okay but he will tell you that he was asking for everyone Remember he exactly? No, but I'm saying he's pushing back Yeah pushing back against these guys And I don't think they're interested in that kind of discourse But like this is the guy you're fighting Don't really care how you feel about it

Right and he wanted to tell them how he feel about it So what do you guys think? There's two spots Maybe not There's Coker There's the new MVP, PFL and then I guess there's just like we're not going to karate

combat route, are we? I mean, with all due respect. I think it's PFL. I think it's PFL. I think the best thing for MVP would be to copy the Mike Perry formula. Go to, what's the biggest show that's happening each weekend? Whatever that is, let me try and find a way on to that. Kind of be a mercenary,

kind of be a free agent. Hey, I have a built-in fan base. I have people that will come in the tent to watch me fight. I can be exciting for you. Let me put on the theatrics. Let me do my thing and I promise you that the results will be there, that's what I think you should do. Mike Perry kind of has

that home base with BKFC, maybe he finds a home base, but I think he has to just kind of pick and choose these opportunities where he can come in and really just give an enhancement to something that's going on. He's done BKFC. He fought Mike Perry. It's actually hard to believe. That's one of his best fights. One of his best fights.

Him coming in having, what did you say, 12 finishes out of his 17 Bellator wins, and then, you know, he had the great fight against Mike Perry. And, you know, he had the great fight against Mike Perry. and now we're saying he went 5 and one in the UFC and it's just like, Bon voyage, on to the next one. It's hard to wrap your head around.

Worth noting he is 39, by the way. Yeah. You know? Do Mike Perry on MVP and M.A. Sure. If you're MVP. I'd watch it. Oh, yeah.

Misfits or somebody could put that on, maybe. I'm into it. Could that be a reason for the decline and finishes is that he's approaching 40 years old now? To a degree, I think you just have to be a little bit smarter and more methodical, but I still feel like there's juice left in Michael Vennepage. In fact, call me a sucker.

I think the next one's going to be very interesting. The next one is where it's like, all right, were you not motivated in the UFC? Were you not feeling like you could be yourself? Now, if he could debut somewhere, whether it's MVP or Coker's promotion, which in less than a week we're probably going to find out the name so we could stop calling a Coker's promotion,

and maybe more about the promotion, and maybe they'll even announce that MVP is a part of the promotion, along with who knows, Cyborg and others, if he could come out and get a win there and get a like a scintillating win, a knockout win, a finish, I think all of this will be forgotten about. And then I think the narrative will be like, ah, he was being stifled in the UFC,

he was being handcuffed in the UFC, they weren't motivating him enough. The next one is the most important one for MVP, and I know for every fighter, the next one is the most important one, but I hope you understand what I mean. He has to debut somewhere and do something spectacular.

I still feel like there's enough interest in them. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm naive here. Let them on dance. Let them get the music. Let them do his thing. You know what I mean? Let them do the whole fucking thing.

Amen. Here's Ben Folks over at uncrown.com who says, if this is it for Michael Page and UFC, it's one of the most successful, unsuccessful runs we've ever seen. You're some kind of pissed that, folks. Jesus. Five and one, and it's just see you later. It's a crazy thing.

It's crazy because it's MVP, right? Like, I remember... He was a known commodity. Well, when Taylor Lapilus left the UFC, everybody was up in arms, right? Because he was very successful. This feels even like a step removed from that and even crazier because MVP was a guy that everybody was excited to see. I'm with Pizzi, though. Like, half the MVP experience is the walkout, is the theatrics, is the thing that he's doing, the dance.

And we just lost it. It sucked all the life out of him. Bring that back. And whether... Look, he doesn't need a knockout necessarily. He just needs to get back to his own form and be exciting. And to the point you made earlier, the UFC could have matched them with somebody who's just going to put their head down and windmill at him, but they didn't.

And so it says to me that like there just was a level of investment in each other that they didn't have. I really do think if the UFC wanted that, they could have produced that. And for whatever reason they didn't. Curtis Campbell is a great character. He got a win. We'll actually talk to him tomorrow on the program. What about that celebration from Losini Keta?

Am I pronouncing his first name correctly? Losine. Lucini Keta. Losita. Yeah. Lozini Keta. Tremendous knockout and then jumps into the crowd and just sits,

crosses his legs and crosses his arms. All time celebration. I'm going to say greatest right now. I'm sitting here right now. Greatest celebration. If you're Nymov coming too, and you're just like, yeah, what happened?

And they're just like, the dude you're fighting is out in the crowd, cheering himself on all time. Really unbelievable. That's his way he's been held? Yeah, yeah. We deal with this? Worth the $2,500 fine if that were to have.

Just do it. No, it's only Nevada that seems to be doing it. Yeah, only Nevada seems to be sticklers for this. Boo. Alt, it's the greatest. It is truly the greatest celebration I've ever seen. Man. And by the way,

creativity off the charts. Can we talk, like, I keep saying this every week. The amount of finishes, what about the amount of finishes in women's MMA? I feel like, can someone get into that? Someone has to have done the research. I feel like this year, there may be. Finishes are up, you're saying. Yes.

There's been like 20 women's fights. There may be. less fights, but I feel like we're getting more finishes in those fights. I feel like finishes are up, period. That Delphine fight? I mean, that was crazy. Crazy you didn't get a bonus. Yeah, people were mad about that. I don't know. Overall, I thought it was a great card. Another good one. The UFC's on a roll. They've got Nocha UFC coming up on Saturday, which will lead into Ryan Garcia versus Connor Ben. The crowd was great. And we finally got the answer to the mystery that had been plaguing us for quite some time. And That is the main event for UFC 332.

Can we talk about this for a moment, guys? UFC 332, it has been officially announced. We'll take place at the Delta Center in Utah in Salt Lake City, to be exact. The main card is going to air on CBS. So this is the first time since the Paramount Plus deal went into effect January of this year. Entire main card on CBS, the I network, the Heidi network, as prestigious as it gets in this country. Main card on CBS, for the first time since the Fox era, which ended at the end of 2018, there'll be a UFC title fight on broadcast television.

For the first time in this era, obviously a UFC title fight, there was no UFC title fight during the ESPN era on broadcast television. They had a few ABC cards, but no title fights. And the first one is going to be a vacant women's flyweight title fight pitting Natalia Silva versus Wang Kong. They announced on the broadcast that Valentina Shevchenko is injured. She's going to be out for several months. She has vacated the title.

And so as a result, Natalia Silva versus Wang Kong is your UFC 332 main event. Title fight. Vacant title. Not interim title. Vacant title. I've reached out to Valentina's team multiple times, no response, which is rare for them if I'm being honest. And so I'm really curious what happened here.

I'm curious if she's happy about this. I would imagine maybe just based off the no response, is there a disappointment? Is there a sense of disrespect? I don't know. I don't know. But it is rare that I, I mean, this happened on Saturday. It's Tuesday and I still haven't heard back.

And that's rare. I just want to know what happened. I want to know what the injury is, what the conversations were. Here's the bottom line. The bottom line is Valentina Shavchenko hasn't fought since November. of last year when she beat Zhang Wei Li. The reason why she's being stripped of her belt

is because the UFC needs a title fight to headline this card. And I guess when you say need, it's not like there's anyone like standing behind Hunter Campbell and Dana White and saying we need a title fight, but this is just sort of their rule that numbered events have to be headlined by some sort of belt. And so we've seen the BMF title get resurrected

and interim title fights and Fugazi titles, you know, being defended or, you know, vacant titles and all this stuff, and this is one of them. If they didn't need one, they didn't need a title fight, Valentino Shuchenko would probably still be the UFC women's flyway champion. My understanding is they looked into an interim light heavyweight title fight, couldn't come to fruition. There was no talk of an interim or vacant heavyweight title fight, but there weren't that many options. And so they went this route, and people are very upset. And I said on social media guys afterwards, like, you better get used to this.

And people were like taking it out on me, like, I'm the one making these decisions. Of course I'm not. And of course, I want the product to be better. But once we entered the no pay-per-view era, this was inevitable. And it's been inevitable for quite some time. But there is no difference between UFC 332 and UFC Edmonton. In fact, someone was actually getting mad at me online. I saw and I went and checked myself, oh,

numbered events cost more. And so I went on Stubhub, and I looked up two tickets for UFC 332 and two tickets for UFC Edmonton, which is like two weeks later. And yeah, the 332 prices, it's like right now I think the cheapest one was 200, and then the UFC Edmonton, the cheapest was like 130. And so, yeah, there is a difference there. But I would argue there's some names on the 332 card, and maybe the number. like ticks it up a bit.

But if you did a fight night at MSG, I can assure you that the fight night at MSG would be more expensive than a show at, you know, a numbered event at T-Mobile or something like that. And what I'm trying to say is, we need to get rid of the idea that the numbered event is some special thing. It's not some special thing anymore.

It costs us the same as a consumer. It literally costs the same. It's still part of the same subscription. And there is no pressure anymore from the UFC to say we need to load the debt. deck here because we're about to charge people $7,99, $9 to buy this show. And not only that, this time, like, they're not even putting it behind the subscription paywall. They're using this as their way to get people interested in the UFC, which is a bit of a weird one, if I'm

being honest, like, why, of all the cards, would you put this one on broadcast television as opposed to one of your, like, more premium fight night events? But I guess maybe for those you want people to subscribe and you're sort of acknowledging the fact that no one's going to subscribe for this one. So this is the one. that we should put out there for free. I guess if you were to break it down, that makes sense. But the days of the numbered events being that much more special, of course, numbered event at MSG is going to be special,

T-Mobile is going to be special, whatever, whatever. Those days are pretty much done otherwise. And so I don't know why people are getting so upset about this. Like, are you surprised by this? Were you not paying attention? Did you not notice that the cards were getting more and more watered down? I know there's a breakdown, numbered, premium, fight night, in a location, like an Edmonton or Sacramento, a little bit more premium, apex fight night,

a little bit less, contender series tough. That's the breakdown. But by the, I guarantee you, by the end of this Paramount Plus deal, I guarantee you that will be more of these. There has to be more of these, especially when you have two numbered events in the same month. There's a numbered event three weeks later with two title fights on it. Why they couldn't put one of those on this one?

Who knows? Timing didn't work out, whatever. But I don't, I guess I. I don't really understand the hysteria here for the fans at home who are so offended by this number. Please be clear. I am not defending it. I'm just saying, we saw this coming. And you're being asked to pay the exact same amount for this one as opposed to the Madison Square Garden card or Noce UFC or even Ben Garcia.

So why are you so upset? Why are people so upset about this? I don't get it. Couldn't have said it better myself. The writing was on the wall with this. I have one question, though. Yeah. If this is the case, which we all know it to be,

why the fuck do we need a title fight on every card then? It doesn't make any sense. This is like an internal rule that they have. But there is no... And guess what? There's no difference between these cards. That will get phased out too. Parnas and Hooker is a much more intriguing and better fight.

No title attached. No title attached to that fight. It could have been on this event. It would have had no title attached. It would have been fine. 332. Parnas Hooker. Now, obviously, you do that in France.

It makes a lot more sense there than Utah. But why do these two need to be fighting for a title when it has no significance? That's the only part that I still rub up against. I kind of feel like it's ingrained not only in the fandom but also in the UFC that the numbered events are the premium events. I understand they're no longer pay-per-view, but up until this year for 323 of them or whatever it was, the 324 was the first one of the year, It was always pay-per-view and it was always the premium event. And I feel like it's just jarring to some of the fans to see this be the main event. And I agree with you that it costs the exact same.

We're going to see this further dilution of the numbered event as this Paramount Plus deal goes on. But I think it's just the fans are kind of like, damn, this is where we're at for a numbered event. No, 100%. I mean, it's a far cry from what we used to get. I guess what bothers me the most is like someone like Valentina, unless we hear from her that she's going to be out for another year, and I want to hear that from her, why did this have to happen?

Like, I hate the idea that a legend got stripped because we needed a title fight in the main event. There was no push. I think there was a push to see Natalia Silva fight Valentina Shepchenko. There was no huge push to see Wang Kong fight for a belt. None, no. And I think you can make a case that if it wasn't Valentina versus Natalia, if it was Natalia versus someone else,

that there would be other people that the fans would get more behind. her fighting, Natalia fighting. And I think they would be more behind the idea of an interim title fight. Now, let's be honest. Valentin, I think her cue rating has gone down a little bit. I think the last few fights have left fans feeling like there's something to be desired there. That being said, she's a legend. She deserves to lose the belt on her own accord.

I just don't love the idea of like, oh, we need something. Let's take a belt from here. Like, this is everything that's wrong in fight sports. when you start creating titles and vacating and stripping this person just because you need to like fill a hole. I hate that. This is kind of my point though. These two things happen separately. I know.

You can water down fight nights, sorry, numbered events to the point that you're putting on what's equal or even sometimes lesser than a fight night. And you don't need to strip Valentina and Shevchenko to put on a title that makes no sense. It doesn't, these two things can happen independently. And the Valentina aspect of it never even needed to be in the equation. Just do that fight. If you're going to put that as the headliner of the card, put that as the headliner of the card. And you don't need to mess with the title. And it's the whole reason that they're not just like, we're scrapping 332, just Abu Dhabi will be 332 now, 3334, is because Utah had to pay for UFC 332?

Yeah, they had a whole deal. They had a little deal that they announced, what, like two years ago where they were going to bring X amount of shows. The owner of the hockey team and the jazz was all excited. excited about it, I believe his name is Ryan Miller. So yeah. I can't imagine he's very excited anymore. Yeah, you know, this would be something to dig into, like, how are ticket sales? There's a lot of people online that love to look at the ticket sales.

I can actually tell you right now, Noce UFC 215 get in price, 222 get in price for 32. Okay, so it's not that much of a difference. It's the exact same. So all the people who are saying it costs more for a number of event aren't actually being true. They're not, it's not actually. But theoretically costs more typically just because it's a high. higher quality fight card. But I imagine this is going to be a fairly low good impact. Sure, but also it's not like a blanket thing. It's just historically, it's at

T-Mobile, it's at Madison Square Garden. So yes, historically, but they're not asking you for $1,000 to get it. This is being treated as a fight night. I don't know how you get the tickets, but get in price for the Apex shows is not, it's not low. I thought it was $25. That's for Contender Series, brother. Oh, that's right. What is it? 377 to get in the ROSS one. Really? 368 to get in Allen Duncan. Is this a secondary market? This is secondary market.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Maybe it's a scarcity thing. Okay. So my take on it is, yeah. Underwhelming main event, no doubt about it. Yeah.

But the rest of the card, there's actually some stuff here. Like, again, I actually think if this was UFC fight night, Salt Lake City, no one would bat an eye. No. So Natalia Silver versus Wincon.

If it was a fight night with a title fight, I don't think anyone would care. But like, oh, cool. But for some reason, like, why did it have to be a number? membered event, just because they sold it as a number event. That's what I'm saying.

Peyton Talbot versus Davis and Figuero, great fight, right? Great test for Peyton. Curious where he's at. Figgi's the man. Ateba Gotee against Roman Coppilov. Down. King Green enjoying a renaissance against Esteban Riebivitz, down. The debut of Roberto Soldich.

Now, is this three years ago when he decided to sign with one championship? No. But it's still freaking Roberto Soldage. If you're a fan of MMA and like a hardcore fan, you've got to be excited about that against Chaos Williams. That should be fun. Johnny Walker, Mick Parkin. Okay, cool.

And now you get, you know, Cort McGee retirement fight. If you're from Utah, you're excited about that. Alex Fernandez against RDA. I'm excited about that. Marcus McGee on there. Like, there's been worse cards.

Yeah, but now we're just reverse engineering it. We're going from, this is supposed to be a numbered event. Well, there's stuff I kind of like on it. When in reality, if this was just a fight night, we'd be like, well, this is on it. All right. And moving on.

We don't need, the numbered event shit is over. It's over, as you said. You know what this reminds me of when people would get mad about someone being on the pay-per-view or being on the prelims? Remember that whole thing? Big time. First of all, you don't have to pay for the prelims, so you should be happy about that. If you're a fan of your riah for you.

Remember people would be like, Yariah Fabers on the prelims? Who gives a shit? And they're not getting paid any different if they're on the prelims versus the pay-per-view. And so this is one of those things, which, to be fair, it's been what? 23 years of numbered events feeling like there's something but once this deal started it all became the same

it's just a marketing thing at this point UFC 332 is a marketing thing as opposed to UFC Fight Night Salt Lake City that's the only difference platform you click the same tile it's all one thing it's all exactly one thing at this point okay but to be fair

you said 23 years so like there's been an expectation for all this time for this to be the premium so it takes a while to break that in the year by the math is all In addition to that, all title fights still take place on number of events. So you still expect the best fights to be on number of events. This really is just like a, we have nothing fucking else. Like we have nothing else to put on this card.

So we're stripping Valentina and we're giving Wang Tong a title shot. Yeah. The only ones who I feel bad for are the Salt Lake City fans. Oh, God, I said it on the boys in the back on Thursday before this was even announced. I'm like Salt Lake City. They're the only ones I feel bad for. I don't feel bad for any fan at home. I don't feel bad for the media.

I don't feel bad for anyone except for them who's like, oh, this is the big show that's coming, and this is the title fight that you're getting. Especially when you're paying that site fee, and this is what you're getting. Yeah, I feel bad for the... Any chance that the hockey owner, Ryan, whatever, is just a diehard wanktong fan?

Why do you keep calling her wanktong, by the way? Is that how you pronounce her name? No, that's how they say it on the broadcast. Is that true? Golly. So I've been saying it wrong this whole time. Look, man, you better brush you better brush up. that could be your UFC flyway champion

in just a matter of a few weeks. By the way, if... Can we talk about the stripping itself? The stripping sucks. All of it sucks. But just the fact that like, Valentina's fought more recently than some other champion.

Oh, well, that, yes. There's never been a rhyme or reason to any of that nonsense. It makes no sense. No, there's never been a rhyme or reason. Well, the rhyme and reason is we have nothing else. Yes, exactly. And we owe Salt Lake City a numbered event

and we have to have a title fight on a number of event. So Valentina, give us the belt. Tom, you're up. Can I speak on behalf of all MMA fans? Sure. If this is the title fight that you're giving me, I'm good. We can keep the belt up. You can keep the belt of the champ.

If this is what you're going to give me as the title fight? I'm good. I'm good with it. I don't need a title. What about Wang versus Valentina? They have a history. Oh, the rematch. They have a history.

Shades of Izzy versus Pereira. Come on. This is the embodiment of shut the fuck up and watch the fucking fight. Tell us, Dana. Shut the fuck up and watch the fight. Thank you, Dana, I will. The part that. Feed me that slap.

The part that drives me nuts is this is a good fight. It's a fine fight. I got no issue with the fight itself. It's when you artificially try to pump it up instead of just calling it what it is. We don't need to bullshit around it. There didn't need to be a title attached. You could just say this is a number one contender fight. It's a fantastic fight.

When Valentina Shovchenko comes back, she will fight the winner of this fight. And it doesn't have any of the built-in expectations that you're automatically making people get disappointed. it. You don't need it. You don't need it. You can do this fight and everybody can go, okay, I'll watch that fight. Wang Tong has been on one, she has been on one main card in her UFC career and that was a card in China. The rest prelims. Now she's headlining a numbered event. Hell yeah. Talia Silva. This is the American dream. Zero main event. She's been on main cards. No main events.

Yeah, and they haven't gone, like, like, how much do we know about these people, right? It's just there, like, it's not like you've been, as I was talking about with Mario, like, invested in their journey like oh they're finally getting a title fight they're just sort of there you know like i feel like i'm more invested in fatima klein than uh than wang at this point i mean it's six and eight watch along host voids show it's going to yeah yeah are we doing that Pete yeah we were just talking about this is gonna on-air production meeting this is going to be fascinating are you guys doing it it's gonna be sick oh my god oh man hang on are you not that you're not doing it you're not doing what i'm asking i'm asking them about the watch party we they have to sit there

for three and a half hours. Wait, when did you say it was October 30? Who's the check? Yeah. Oh, fuck, man. You got a thing? He's got a thing. On the night of 332.

Oh, my gosh. Poor Payne Talbot. Yeah. The jury is, you know what? Undecided. The jury's not out. Okay. But we'll let you know later.

Wow. Hung jury, huh? Not wait. All right. Let's not go there. What was that one in the case? What happened? Yeah, no, no, no.

All right. All right, well, there you have it. Everyone's very upset. And again, to be clear, I'm not defending it. You just sort of have to read the tea leaves and come to terms of it. It was fun to see the hysteria. And like, what was the tweet? Can't Miss Card?

They were just taking the piss with that tweet. They were just laughing, like, go on. They were like, dude, we're going to get ratio. But like, fuck it. This would be hilarious. Oh, my God. Also, like, Paul Felder being like, I think his exact words were like, From the opening prelim all the way through the main event.

It's a stacked card for you. Oh, my God. All right, Paul. He's not lying. Listen. You got to sell the card. You got to sell the card. All right.

So that's the UC 332 story. Everyone very upset about it. Let's go through a few more of the news and notes. So we talked about Katie. We talked about Alan and Cardi there. That was a weird one. Gosh, it seems as though Dave Allen wants nothing. about it.

Dave didn't really say that much. Dave didn't want to talk much about it. That's all he said. More into pissing and sinks tonight. Wanted a bit more of that kind of action. Yeah. Can we talk about SummerSlam 2000? 2000.

Oh, I take a piss in this sink. Intergentor tag team match. The fight happened, bro. I've moved on. It's been 70 hours. Yeah, I know. He's looking forward to get some food. He's going to get food with Cardi next time.

He's got the pineapple and the hot chocolate. Barry Hearn, the father of Eddie Hearn, had one of the great promos of the weekend. He was asked. by IFL about the state of AJ Joshua, and I thought he spit fire with this promo. It was really just an answer, but I thought it was like the best encapsulation

of where things stand. And this is, I have to say, anytime a Tyson Fury video pops up on the feet, I'm just like, I can't do it. Because it's all, we know what it is. These guys are saying we want the fight to be in the UK. This one's saying he shot at the bed. This is, oh, my God.

I still love the fight, and I'll be sitting there front row wherever the hell I am, maybe on my couch probably, watching it. If you were front row on your own couch, that'd be rough. Yeah, I was going to say front row at the arena, I'm like, nah, probably not. But it is like, it's sucking the life out of me. Holy shit. Anyway, here's Barry Hearn, father of Eddie Hearn reacting to it all.

Can Eddie make it happen? No one is trying. And I don't think we've seen the proper press on this because I'm out of the mix. So I can tell the truth because I don't give a flying whatever. Yes. We are working our socks off to bring this fight to England against all the odds. We're up against Netflix, 330 billion pound company. We're up against TKO, Darner White, whoever he might be in his own world.

And we don't give a monkey because we are there to represent not just Anthony Joshua, but the British box in public. We want this fight in Wembley. Now, I can't say as a guarantee we're going to do it. What I will say is, unlike other fighters that might be involved in the main event, we're fighting for a course. We're not just jacking in and start calling everybody a pussy. We're fighting where it really matters.

And most men will understand that. We're not talking about fighting. We're fighting. And we're gambling the future of our company. We're upsetting Saudis. We're upsetting Netflix. We're upsetting TKO. And we don't give a monkey because we're fighting for what's right.

And if the British fight fans don't appreciate that, then they're on their own because they've lost a real champion in Eddie Earn. And I'm biased because he's my son, but I know what's right. This fight belongs to Wembley. And we're doing everything in our power to make it there. At the risk of not having the fight at all, because we believe so strongly. And we are so lucky to have the 100% support of Anthony Joshua, who wants this fight more than anything, who's getting paid a shedload of money.

And he says, Wembley, England, somewhere, deserves this fight. We've waited 10 years. You know, I don't want to swear. It's fuck all to do with the Americans. Yes. What a mic drop there from Mr. Barry Hearn. I love the monkey line. We don't give a monkey. I love that.

Non-plus, I love those terms. I think this is actually from a PR standpoint, PT. I actually think this is the best thing to ever happen to the Hearns. Because they're being they're captain UK at this point. We're fighting for the people. They're not fighting for the people. We want this to be in the UK. It may not end up being

in the UK, but we are going to fight and stand ten toes down, and we're going to do everything our part to make this happen in the UK. In the end, will it happen? We don't know. But we are team UK. It's great for them. And I actually think that a lot of people are getting behind this. A lot of people are loving this out of them.

And so I love that. I love that from Barry Hearn. That was great. By the way, speaking of his son, Eddie Hearn, very emotional watching Katie Taylor make the walkout. And again, I think this helps as well in this battle of like who's invested, who isn't. Look at that. Like a proud dad. with the tri-com.

Like what we just saw with Katie. How could you not want that in the UK? I was going to give it that one. You could almost just like... It looks like the president of Ireland. Right. By the from he's wearing an ivory close flag. But yeah.

Yeah, he gets told about that as well. Stuff. Yeah. You need to do the old switcher room. The Barry Hearn, up until the end, was like a master class and sounding like he had cussed 15 times without saying a single cuss. Monkey. Work and I sucks off.

He was incredible. Good. Eddie Hearns saying that he is threatening to serve TKO because of some things that he doesn't like that they're doing. Take a listen. Can I just say what you're doing is unbelievable, standing firm to these people? And I'm like, well, how about making some noise about it? I'm talking about people in the media.

And other people in the media are just going, oh, just sign the contract. You know, like, but the reality is everyone knows where it should be, but we're kind of the only ones with a backbone and the balls to say it and stand up to these people. And now it's working. So all I can say is to everybody that's Appoyed, and AJ's, you know, these people, these snakes went around the back again a couple of days ago to try and lure Anthony Joshua

into American fight. Really? Yeah. And sell-or? No, TKO. Oh, wow. And now they've been served, you know, they will be served with a legal letter because these people are just trying to ruin the fight. And I don't even know if Tyson-Pueri wants the fight. But one thing I do know, and one thing that Anthony Joshua feels, is the support of our country,

them saying thank you for standing firm for British boxing and it's made AJ even more determined now to land that fight in Britain so all I'm saying to you is just if you want this fight in Britain get behind AJ get behind Matcham

because we're the only ones pushing it and now we're being heard the people are being heard because people these people they read the comments and Fury's like he's just kind of combusting and having a stinker

I mean if you had make of the AJ post about? Oh mate, listen, if it, do you think, you know, there's a lot of videos that people could post about Tyson Fury. It's so petty. You know, and the reality is, is if he had a PR team, they'd be having absolute seizures watching this because it's a PR disaster. Not saying he really cares.

You've only got to read the comments. But we're not interested in that. We just want to make the fight. And we want to make the fight in Britain as our contract says. So thank you to everyone for the support. And let's try and get this over the line. The clip he's talking about is Tyson Fury posted a couple. clip of Anthony Joshua during the 2020 Black Lives Matter, George Floyd era of him talking about,

you know, support black businesses and people thought that it was divisive and, and don't support the other businesses. And Tyson Fury posted this on Friday, I think. And it felt like, I don't know, it felt like digging up some old stuff. By the way, as we were talking about, like, predicting what people are going to say, Can I, like, can I just put it somewhere in the world that at some point Dana White is going to be asked about UFC 332 and he is 1,000% going to say, how can you say that a card is bad before it happens? How can you say, see it play out first? How can you say a card is bad before it happens?

Not ever understanding the concept of being like, on paper, this isn't a stellar card. It may exceed expectations. It may have some fun fights in the end. but on paper this isn't the standard that we have been, you know, accustomed to. I can guarantee you at some point he's going to do a press conference between now on October 3rd, and he's going to be asked that question. He is going to say, how can you judge a card before it plays out? It'll be tonight.

It might be tonight. Yes, that's right, contender series. Anyway, here's this sound from Eddie Hearn saying that TKO gave them 90 minutes to decide. I haven't seen this one. Let's watch it together. Yesterday, TKO went around the back again to try and offer Joshua. money to do the fight in America. And it's a dirty, dirty game, mate, to be honest of you.

And like, it's made it even harder for them now because Josh just ain't about that. You know, you've got an hour and a half to make your decision. It's like, mate, what don't you understand? I sign to fight in Britain. I want the fight in Britain. It's not, you know, you can't buy everybody, right? Especially the ones who it means something to. And you know, the crazy thing is, is the more support, you know, the more support, you know,

AJ's getting because of his desire to stage the fight in Britain, the more determined it's making him to do it. Okay, this is more of the same, so we don't have to listen to it, but the 90 minutes thing was interesting.

So we don't have to rehash all of that. Let's see. As of right now, we still don't know Eddie Hearn banging the drums saying Wembley or Nowhere on Instagram. Here he is posting this, so he is not backing down, Wembley or nowhere.

I don't know if that's AI or not. I mean, the picture might be real. I think they may have taken this picture back in the day, but he is thanking everyone for their support. Tyson Fury saying, Eddie and AJ have shot their pants. That's what Tyson is saying. Excuse me, what was that?

Seems like some two have shot their pants. That's a great start with me. AJ, totally weak-minded, grow a pair of nuts. You guys have had three of your last four fights outside of the UK, and you guys were happy in 2021 for the fight to happen in Saudi Arabia. So there you have it. Tyson Fury has called out Alexander Usik. Alexander Usik has responded.

Let's see what Usik has to say. It's true. Hey, Tyson, I come in for you, my brother. You'll be a bit better. He doesn't seem too bothered. He's almost done. He'll be all right. We mentioned Mr. Andy Ruiz earlier.

Damien Kniebba did beat him at the Prudential Center on Friday. Those T&T cards, I don't know if you guys watch. They're great. The desk is great. Adam Lefco does a great job as host. Here's the fight. The fight was all right. Ruiz lost, got battered.

Not even sure how you survived this right here. Holy smokes. He was all over the gaffe. But the crowd was great. The broadcast looked great. And in particular, the desk is great. Lefco is host, Terrence Crawford, Sean Porter and Tim Bradley.

It just feels bigger. It's the closest that we have to like a big time event. It feels like at least here, state side. And at one point, they had Boots Ennis up there and Terrence Crawford up there, and they were going back and forth. It was tremendous theater. In fact, I was loving it so much that I even tweeted about it. And then 25 seconds later, there I was my tweet on the broadcast. So I had to pause it, rewind it, call my son Walter into the room and say, look, Walt, look at me, on TV, on TNT. And his response was, aren't you on TV all the time? Why are you so

excited about this. I was like, I don't know. I just, I'm hearing my PJs watching this and there I am. There's my little emoji guy, the action Bronson. Got to agree with Walter. I thought it was cool. Life is good to do. You don't get that low from the UFC. Yeah, I don't get the, I don't get the tweets on TV.

Yeah, no, but there's videos of you like in the ring with Anthony Josh. I fired this thing off 25 seconds later. Whoever is gathering their tweets does a stellar job. You're the Ryan Frederick of T&T boxing. You're the Korean John of T&T boxing. I got one up there.

I was up there twice until they realized those friends of Ariel. Yeah. Bianchuk, remember? That was a good run. Great round from Andy Ruiz. I've got it to nothing. Yeah. As an aside, another great line from my son Walter this morning.

I was making his breakfast and I had my phone to my side here. And Roman Raines posted a video last night on social media. And it was like a selfie video of him talking. So I was like, oh, Roman Raines doesn't have. really post this type of stuff. So I kept, I had it playing to the side while I'm making the bagel, right? He walks in, he sees it and he goes, bro, at some point you got to ask yourself what you're doing with your life. I'm like, what? I'm like, what's wrong? He's like, what are you watching? What is this? This is not real. What are you watching this for? I'm like,

Roman Raines has a special announcement. He's telling us about the state of everything that's going on with Penta and all that. He's like, it's like being a child and your dad walking into the room where they're watching wrestling all over again. All over again. I'm going to say, your kids hate wrestling now. They really think it's not cool. I think it's because of them being in middle school and high school. Yeah, but when I was in middle school, and you know what, take that back. 1994 to 1997, I actually fell out of the wrestling game. So maybe they're going through that. They'll be back. Yeah, they'll be back. Anyway, Boots Crawford. In case you missed it, here's what happened. I'm going to be messy.

First of all, go birds to show you that we're alive. My guy, Gilly and Wallow, you call this man Easy Work. So he's right here four people away. What do you think about that? What I think about what? Do you still believe he's easy work? For sure. Anybody that, y'all has men.

If somebody get y'all list, y'all ex me, y'all exes who are these guys who you all think? It's easy work in competition. It's not a competitive thing, you feel me? Can nobody in this game do what I do, and I feel like I'm the best. And they say his name,

your name, your name, I'm going to say easy work every single time. You know what I would have did to you if you would have got hurt in that last fight. You get hurt all the time? Step, step, step. You got hurt by game, boy, you got hurt by...

Step. I think about hurt my manager. Step. I step too. That turned me up. Step. Yeah, I stepped too. Yeah, I stepped too.

You know, Dan Rayfield, with curmudgeon Dan saying this is awful TV on Twitter. Are you out of your mind? Crazy. I thought that was riveting. Oh, because you just like the WWE. No, I like fun.

Terrence Crawford and Boots Ennis on a set together arguing about who's better is fun. I'm sure you've seen them where it continued after, right? Oh, yeah, when he walked up to him. Oh, great. Unbelievable.

Please. You don't like that? The fuck out of here. What do you prefer? I know Terrence is retired, but like, don't? He's coming back. Don't retire?

I don't believe I don't believe he's retired I don't believe he's retired I refuse to believe he I know but the money that it will cost to get him Would that be the fight wouldn't it That would be the fight

If boots could win like two or three more Two or three more Do it now fuck that Who cares? Two or three more I'm with Rick, do it now Oh 100% But I think it has to be bigger

He has to be a bigger name I know but Terrence is getting up in age Like he wins two or three more Netflix then says This is the next great American fight Yeah I mean I'm down But I he's not that

guy just yet. He'll beat Josh Kelly, maybe the Ortiz fight, maybe one more now it's like, holy shit, he's 30 something and O, and this guy is 40 something and O. You're right in terms of his stature, but my fear is that now Terrence will be so far removed

from the game. Like, not that... Oh, yeah. Not that I don't think Bud is in the gym, not that I don't think Bud will be good in two or three years, but it would be so much better now. Turns 40 next year. God, it'd be good. It's happening right now. The tweet of the weekend, guys, came from our good friend Danny Rubinstein,

who in fact sent us this tweet and asked for it to be nominated as our tweet of the week, asking if we still do this segment, which we've never actually done this segment, but we do have to give him props. It's a great tweet, UFC tweeting out, where are you watching UFC Paris from? And he just tweeted a picture of Victor Wimbunyama's head right in front of him.

A bit rude, if I'm being honest, of Victor, to sit in the front row, ignoring the fact that he's 7 foot 6, but he was all over that broadcast. So shout out to him. Losin Quinta had the Keta, why am I having so much trouble with that name? He's victorious

and then he gets on one of those e-bikes. Was it an e-bike or was it just a regular bike? I don't know what it was, but it makes me a little bit nervous and he's on his phone on the bike. What is wrong with you? No helmet either? Come on, man.

We've got to do better than that. You can't be doing that after the win. Still wearing the uniform track suit too. He got into a cage fight. I think he can bike without a helmet. it'll be all right. I reacted to the Silva Tong news. I guess we found out.

Thank you for that. G.C. Chris Cyborg reacting, saying that, you know what? To heck with all of that. Kayla Harrison deserves to be stripped as well. Judy Kayla's last fight was on June of 2025. Yes.

Bullet Valentina's last fight was November. If they're making Valentina vacate her belt, then Bo should lose the title. All right. I think the difference is there's no one for, well, there's no one that Amanda would want to fight. and then there's no one else. It is a weird one, you have to say.

Anyway, Palo Costa reacted to all this, saying that he wanted to fight. Yeah, it's really inconvenient. The UFC doesn't have a consistent standard of behavior or set of rules. They use double standards all the time. Another thing is, why on earth is Alex still ranked at light heavyweight after fighting and losing at heavyweight?

And why is he ranked fourth at heavyweight without a single win there ahead of Joshua Hokit? It's not a bad shout. UFC stripped Valentina of her belt due to injury. Also, Carlos Ulberg is injured and maybe fight second semester of 2027. Put the light heavyweight interim belt on the line now. We'll come to save the light heavyweight division. UFC refused to put the light heavyweight interim belt on the line.

Why? I don't know. Well, I think they would not want to put him in that fight because he has one fight left and they can't put him in a title fight. I have only one fight left to become a free agent. If there are no belts in line, I'm going to fight someone else for three rounds and get out of the UFC contract. Feels like we're headed to a divorce here. I think there might be one more.

more from Palo. UFC two standards like always. That is to my... UFC 2 is in the event? You know, I actually made that same joke earlier today, PT, when we were reading that. Ilya Teporia has emerged, guys. He came out with a video

in reference, of course, to what happened, but it's a letter to his son. I've been thinking about you the last few days. I'm not going to read the whole thing. You've probably seen it by now. But this was his big return, if you will. saying, we are back. Character is not built

when everything goes your way. It's proven when it doesn't. The only victory no one can take from you is your character. We are back. Does Iliate Tuporia fight again this year? I've asked around, probably next year. Against two?

Too soon to say. Patty? I don't know. Please, God. Patty. That's the one. Speaking of people who lost on that White House card,

Alex Pereira has reemer. yesterday calling for a surreal gun rematch. Anyone interested in this? Here's Alex Pereira saying, what's up, everyone? After much time, after resting, resting what I needed to, and after much work, after my last fight, many people are talking with who will Alex fight? And I'm seeing many opinions, but I think the fight that makes the most sense is Seril Gun.

That's the fight. I'm going to work on that. And from what I'm seeing, it's something that's going to happen. You guys interested in that fight? I don't hate it, but I would rather see Hokit versus Alex or Hokit versus God. No. No, we just saw it at the White House. It was a conclusive ending.

Nothing about the shots of the back of the head. That doesn't change anything for you. No, not for me personally. Is this interesting? Does he know something's going down here? Does he know there's a potential gap here to have this kind of fight? That's what I don't know. I don't know.

I hope we get Gunn v. Aspinol next. That would be... Hokeet Pereira? Not bad I'm in for. I just don't want to see Pereira gone again. I'd like to see something else. Yeah. Hokeet Pereira.

Yeah, I love Hokeet Parrera. Sign me up. MSG. Yeah. Same way. Utah. Utah would love that shit. Would you have...

Would you have been okay with Pereira Hocit as the 332 main event? Yeah. Huh? No? No? That a legit question? Yeah. Of course.

What do you mean? Oh, right? He was one of the biggest stars in the sport He thought he was going to say no there The way Rick was going No but isn't that obvious Like We're getting a flyaway title fight that nobody asked for

Put the heavyweight BMF on the line Oh You mean this heavyweight BMF that I just created That's a great freaking idea Yeah I pulled this one right out of my ass I didn't think of that Guys RAF was in Moscow Jordan Burroughs won

And then he called out Isamachev Isamahachev, which he's done before and including on this show, said, congrats on your win legend in the cage anywhere anytime. Now, I know we're not a lot to criticize, but like, he called you out in wrestling. He's not an MMA fighter. Is that not a bit weak? What do you mean in the cage? He called you out to wrestle.

He doesn't fight in MMA. You have said that you can, like, take this guy down, that he's got just with the single leg. No? No one wants to say anything. I think he's just got the double leg is what he said. Oh, the double leg, sorry. Yeah. Jordan Burroughs said as much.

He's almost 40 years old. He's not getting in the cage. He's not fighting. Yeah, no, so how is that the appropriate response? See him in the cage, man. All right. What else? Connor Ben fight this week.

He's looking great. Skeletful. There he is. That's not great. He doesn't look at his own. Look at his own guy is. He looks phenomenal. He's loose.

It's like 10 pounds off there as well. I can't wait for this. He's going to look fucking mental on the scales. Yeah, he is. Both of them look very skinny. Damn, look at that. Some kind of body. The best thing I saw all weekend, though, guys,

the Rick Flair, Patrick Ewing, co-lab. Did you guys see this? Did you guys see this? Look at them kicks. Look at them kicks. Wow. How do I get those? How?

Do I get those? I have a feeling you're not going to be fighting many people off to get them. You're going to be able to get them for $59.99. Bro, those are phenomenal. How the hell is there a Rick Flair-Patrick-Ewing Collab? This is like your world's colliding. It's literally my world's colliding. The pink.

No, Walter's going to say something when he goes downstairs. Come back on, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Walter, check these out. Yeah, that has already happened when I saw it. I'm the one that put this in the chat. I said, Walt, come over here for a second. You got to stop going to Walt, man. He said, what are those? He hits you with the water of those?

Oh, no. Those are awful. What are those? To be the man, you got to be the man. Oh, my God. Genuine question. How did this happen? Actually, like, I need to pull back the curtain here.

I need this for my own, for my own sanity and edification. When you're calling over Walt, part of you knows what's about to happen, right? I do, I do like when he clowns me a little bit because he's really coming into his own as a character and he, and I get a kick out of it. Yes. But I thought maybe there was like a small part of him and would be like, all right, fire. All of you. I'm saying there's part of you in there that's like, oh, he's going to clown the fuck out of me. Take the Rick Flair branding and viewing branding all.

Well, no, but then you can say that about everything. You can say that about everything. I know, because there's still something that looks. Get a pair. Get a pair and make a video of you. You know what? I would freaking love that. Make sure you get it like a size and a half too big. So they're just clunking around.

They're so clean. So clean. They're so nice. The tongue of them are as big as your head. You got a, you got a real. It looks like a shin guard. Yeah. I love them.

I love everything about them. These are built in MMA shoes, Pete. see. Gentlemen, tomorrow we have a great day. O-TN, aryanawani.substack.com is where you can

submit your questions right now. Axel Solo, the aforementioned, going to join us. Keith Conley guy is going to join us. I've been trying to get Keith on the show for quite some time. He's the one that broker...

He's a joke! I can't get Connor Bent on the show. We used to get him all the time, but we can get Keith Conley, and I'm excited about that. Curtis Campbell going to join us. Paulo Costa going to join us. Roberto Salditch going to join us.

So it's a big day. It's a big day. the program. So a little something for everyone. We got to tape a episode of the M-A-beat, which will be on Amazon Fire TV. Shout out to the Uncrown Beat. What did I say? The M.A. Beat. Yes, the Uncrown Beat.

Old Habits die hard. Shout out to Fire TV. Shout out to Fire TV. Will you be able to find the episode? Who's the check? But we'll still be recording it. For now, though, we're at a ton. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck you.

God. This is the long day ever. It's so funny. Just blame the booker. By the way, I'm never taking Labor Day off again. Never. I can't do this. Man, enjoy Labor Day.

Isn't Ariel? Oh, yeah. And that too. We have to talk about that. Jordan, we'll be talking about that at the, what of the thing that you guys like? Those like quarterly reviews. We'll talk about that.

Isn't Ariel the boss? Why would he be invited to anywhere? You guys did nothing wrong. F you! Especially wearing those shoes. Especially wearing those Rick Flair. Oh, fuck. Imagine if Hwani pulled up to the end of summer party in the Rick Flair Ewing's.

With Walt. Oh, my. Standing away from... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joke all you want. Jake from Windy City. Ariel, what are your thoughts on the whole Clippers bomber fiasco from Pabletori's reporting? ESPN officially gave up on a best state of journalism.

I mean, you know, I don't know what really happened there behind those walls. a stellar, stellar turn of events for Pablo Tore, an amazing year for him. The fact that he single-handedly was the only one reporting on this and advancing the story while others were very quick to try to refute it or get the sort of easy rebuttal side and not do any more digging. I mean, every step of the way he advanced the ball, advanced the ball, advanced the ball, a great, great day for him when it all kind of came to a head and essentially confirmed everything that he had reported on.

I know a lot of people are coming down on ESPN, but I just don't know. They don't have those investigative journalists on staff. Shams isn't that guy. He just isn't. That's not his job. Now, I'm not trying to defend him at all, but that's what Pablo does.

He devotes his life to these stories. And thank God there are still people like Pablo in the sports media space. To me, the big story was, what Pablo was able to do. The ESPN side, I know they came out and said they didn't think anything was going to happen and whatnot.

Yeah, but everyone else did as well. Everyone else essentially said the same. Dodgers better watch out and then I saw Pablo tease something about Jalen Brunzel. No. And we need to put a kibosh on that. He said that a long time ago.

We're good. Jailen ain't that guy. Christoph, assassin. The striking of Parna, it's bien-mereur than what you quiet. The striking of Sardin Parnasse is a lot better than

all of you think. I mean, I think it's pretty damn good to begin with. Oh, we've just been saying? Yeah. A really good strike. It wasn't the whole fucking thing. Mofo says, what's your opinion on two countrymen fighting each other on events like the France card? I would avoid it. I would avoid it. But, you know. I love it.

Not on the French card. I think it's more fun when. But I get it. A bit of a turf war. I get it. I would avoid it, but I understand sometimes it happens. And it and make for some lively debates. Here's Mofo again. I've seen people say,

why hasn't Tom or Carlos had their title stripped or vacated your guy's thoughts? Well, Carlos was April. And there was some talk of an interim light heavyweight, but it hasn't been a year. And Tom, maybe that's a sign that something's going to happen. Here's Tristan, who says, go the rhino, much love from down under. That would be to the white rhino, Mr. Dave Allen.

And here's a Super Bowl who says it's obvious MVP signs with MVP MMA. Shout out FMA. What's FMA? Frank Mowbs, us. Okay. Oh, fuck. Good one. All right, now we're really out of time. Ariahawmani.substack.com is where you can send in your questions for tomorrow.

It's been a great day, but it is time to go. And I skipped over a bunch of stuff. Yeah, I regret to inform you all. Labor Day being off is canceled. I mean, we just, it's just too much. It's too much for a Tuesday. It's too much for me to handle. You guys cool with that.

Yeah, man. All right. It's two birds of one stone because it'll be like... I don't understand. A chance of us throwing ahead of the summer party. Oh, that's a good point. The cake, though, was phenomenal. It's what this is all rooted in.

Yep. It is by revenge. He's constantly Labor Day forever because of this. Forever! Yep. Oh, Alex Pantosia looks great. He's not having any cake. We could actually do some of these while we're saying goodbye.

I think that makes a lot of sense. Awesome. Makes a lot of sense. Look at Pantosia. Wow. out. It looks great. Ian Gary popped up over the weekend, Pizzi,

saying that he wants the Michael Morales fight. Think he gets it? Yeah. Yeah, that's good stuff out of you. Thank you. What about Chamsa Chimae of pinning Tyron Woodley in about two minutes? Did you guys watch that? Did you have that on a second screen at the old croaker?

Third screen. Third screen. Oh, here it is. Here it is. And the kid getting a selfie afterwards with the phone being there? Oh yeah, that was a picture of Tyrone Woodley. Yeah, that was great. I did see that.

Man, R.A.F. on fire. Moscow. And did you guys see the Rick Flair, Patrick Ewing, Co-Lab shoes? These were phenomenal. Loved everything about them. They are clean. They were clean. Yeah, there they are. Ah, shit.

Thank you, Celadine, Russ Amber, Thomas Cardi, Dave Allen, Mayor, Pinto. Back to Rase, Tavis. I'm out of here.