The Ariel Helwani Show - Sean Strickland's trash talk going too far? Khamzat Chimaev responds to threats | The Craic

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

The Craic is back with Petesy Carroll, Chuck Mindenhall, and Ben Fowlkes at the helm. Sean Strickland is back in the headlines with controversial trash talk aimed at upcoming opponent and UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev. The trio break down the impact his latest tirade is having on the perception of MMA (4:18). Another fight potentially on the horizon is Islam Makhachev vs. Ian Machado Garry. Does Garry’s style present real problems for Makhachev (40:45)? Welterweights take center stage at this weekend’s UFC Perth card, where Jack Della Maddalena faces Carlos Prates in a potential firefight, but will the lads be tuning in for the early start (46:19)? After spotlighting Ben Fowlkes’ latest Uncrowned piece on Sonny Liston (1:03:15), they close the show by getting to your Super Chats (01:12:23).

Crackheads, how you doing? It's Friday. You know what that means. It's a crack. Yeah, we're back again. I know it means a lot to you guys to tune into us and talk to us on Fridays, and it means a lot to us as well. And I've got to say at the top of the show, because I've forgot to say it for weeks. We have our own feed now on Spotify and Apple Music. Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, one of them. So please go ahead and like and review the feeds, the crack with Pizzie Carroll it's called, but you know it's not just with Pizzie Carol. But a couple other guys who I'll bring in now in a minute. But before they come in, there was a huge deal. The Crack Podcast signed just a couple of days ago, which means I need to plug the big show

the guys are doing May 8th in New York City. Tickets still available. It sells out every time. Okay, we couldn't come to a deal to get me to New York City. I mean, we were going back over it over and over again. but believe me, it's still going to be a good show. The other members of the team are really good too. It's not just about me, okay?

Ariel Hawani will be there. I mean, they called the show after the guy. I mean, he's pretty big deal. G.C., Rick, Mysterious Frank. Jordan, who is back on the crack today, back on the crack, and there is also special guests. Watch the crack first, then go to that show, okay?

Everyone stays happy then. Lads, how are he is? Like, you know, Jordan's been on vacation. He brought us in a bit too early there, I feel. You know, I wanted to set it up a bit more. Oh, here's Ben, here's Chuck. Doesn't care. He's just come in.

He signed a new deal to produce the crack. And honestly, I think it's gone to his head. He's just run it the way he wants to do. These are not the special guests. These are the weekly host, Jordan, okay? It's just been two months, mate. Okay? Chuck, how are you, mate?

Dan for Broncos. I mean, Denver Nuggets. No, man. I like to think I'm special. That was rough stuff last night. I'm not feeling too good today. But I'm going to, I know that I think Ben has, like, He had some problems and he came on here a couple weeks ago and I know you've been hung over a couple times.

I'm definitely not going to miss the show just because of one stupid season that just got blown up. You know, and maybe a team and a dynasty that just got blown up. I'm over that stuff already. You know, Ariel always says like once you've won one, he hasn't, by the way, with Bill's or the Knicks. Yeah, I wouldn't have known that. Yeah. He says, once you've won one, it doesn't matter anymore. Do you feel that right now?

Are you like, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I won one a couple years ago. You're looking good. You guys talking about basketball, the sport of basketball? They still do that? I didn't know. Is that still going on?

Not anymore. Season is it last thing. Let me tell you, I'll just want to know this. Are they skating full speed and launching their shoulders at one another's heads? Because that's what they're doing in the NHL playoffs, my friend. Yeah. That stuff gets heated over there. That's, I sent you, Pizzi, some videos as I'm trying to get you in to the NHL playoffs,

get you into NHL. hockey in general. And the thing is, every time I watch the playoffs, the amount of just abuse these people are heaping on each other, I don't understand how there's anybody left to play the Stanley Cup finals. It's absolutely insane what these people are doing together. I also like it because it is one of the few sports out there where you can see like a 35-year-old man, adult father with kids and a mortgage, and he's out there yelling at a 20-year-old. I will kill you just stealing it over and over again and it's perfectly acceptable everybody's like yep that's just part of the game you know what it's an incredible segue you've just gifted me with there

with these outlandish statements always hockey players are saying because we've had some outlandish statements ourselves not just this week but in general across m m mary uh sean strickland is the guy this week guys um not all too surprising if you know sean strickland's thing i know it says it says in the the subject line of the show has it gone too far evidently not I think we're all clear that this is, this is power for the course now in MMA, but in case some of you have not seen what Sean Strickland has recently said about Hamzachamai.

Let's give them a bit of that, please, Jordan, if you can. He's already talking about, though, if you guys run into each other, you know, blah, blah, like he'll have his friends with him, you won't have anyone. I'm going to do, I'll pull my gun out of my shoe. I love ghosts, dude. You know, goat tastes good. He loves goats.

We have that in common. I just don't fuck him. He would have come up to me like a man Say you know Sean you said some things about my dad Kradaroff And I'm like well you know what dude you hoard yourself out not me I want to settle this I would say let's settle us like a man But if you come up to me with three fucking go fucker Chechnya's don't speak English

I'm gonna pull my gun and I'm gonna shoot each and every one of you Alright well I think that's a fair You've been said if you jump him he's gonna shoot you guys and stuff like that Has anything you said pissed you off or upset you Bro, he didn't shoot any chickens in the world, bro. How are we going to shoot a human? Strong? Are there any security concerns for you leading up to this?

Have you talked to your team about, like, you know, watching your back a little differently? He's, you know, obviously made some serious threats. Ariya Hawanee was even saying like, hey, we're worried about how this can go down. Um, where's your head at? that's just all noise I don't know I don't think so the guy wants

real war outside of the cage so if he wanted he would be dead already positive stuff here we should say there has been some tweets recently thank you to New York

Rick for garnishing with them do we have them Jordan the Strickland tweet and subsequent reply or shall I read them oh here it is great the UFC is trying to limit my interactions with the dog.

Listen, I will say this now. I will not be controlled by a third world dog. If I find there is unequal treatment between our camps, I will walk to the lobby and wait for him. Control your whore or don't. I don't care. Let the chips fall where they may. This is America.

And a reply to a comment that says, Sean is never one to hold back. This fight week is getting intense already, exclamation mark. Sean says, the fight week will be me in handcuffs. The fact there is this goat fucker who shouldn't even be allowed to be in America

making threats, you think I give a flying fuck about some stupid goat fucker. And that just in the last 30 minutes or so, guys, well, you know. I enjoyed pizza. He had to read this. I just had to sit here and just report all this

like it's serious stuff. One of my best reading segments, I feel. I really nail that kind of stuff. Maybe this is my speed. Chuck, you wrote a hilarious article about this. And I think the tone of it was right because, you know, I think we're far beyond like clutching pearls with this stuff. This is kind of commonplace.

But you've put it in a way that had me LOLing, as the kids would say. Please go and read this article if you can. But what is your reaction to this, this Sean Strickland's latest toirate against Hamzachimai. I mean, it kind of feels like you guys tell me like the Thelma and Louise moment, like where it's like at the end and she's, you know, we're just going to go out and a blaze of glory type thing. It almost has that feel to it. Like he's like, I'm going to walk out of there in handcuffs. You know, I'm going to be, you know, all the stuff he's saying.

I'd like to think. And I'm the point I was thinking when I was writing this piece is I saw Ariel and the boys kind of and you talking about this. And, you know, you're almost like torn between. Should we be concerned? or is there something bad's going to have me? You start remembering, obviously, the most obvious comparison, which was Habib versus McGregor and how dark that fight got. This one hasn't really tipped over the yet, but we're not even to fight week,

and we're already having this discussion, right? Like, we're still like, what, seven, eight days away from it, and we're having this discussion. I just don't know if we built up an immunity towards him. Like, I really think that we have to an extent, because when you go back, man, I was, when I was writing that article, I was like, what, I mean, you kind of forget. It's almost like the Trump administration. Like, you have to kind of like, okay, wait, there was this, this and this. And that's how we got to hear. Like, it's one of those type of things with Sean Strickland because, you know, you forget, you know, event to event, like the thing that happened in Toronto with like, with Alex Lee. You know what I'm talking about when he was going at him and saying he was weak and all that stuff, the reporter. And you kind of forget each step as a go. And you kind of forget each step as a go. and there's always this kind of redeeming moment. He goes on Theo Vaughn, and he talks about like his rough childhood, his father,

being a boogeyman in the house, and his sentiment kind of swings a little bit at his favor. And then you get right back into this. And it just kind of reopens up. So I just don't know if I take it so seriously. I guess that's why I wanted there to be a levity to the piece. But there should be a little bit of a concern from the UFC's standpoint of the sense, like we've seen things kind of escalate in the past where it's like, you start dragging in religion,

you start dragging in, you know, national stuff where your families, you start dragging that stuff in, that can play a man's emotions, even as calm as Shemai have looked in that piece of video, but B-boys look pretty calm too.

Up until the moment he, like, talent swooped, telling Dennis off the cage, you know, and I'm like, those type of things kind of fester in a guy. And I just,

your whole thing now is, and maybe this is a stroke of brilliance on some level for the voyeurs who love to see the sport from a certain angle, what happens during their encounters during fight week? I mean, that does, to me, seem like part of the drama of this whole buildup. But as far as Sean Strickland stuff, nothing he says at this point should shock us. And honestly, just like anybody else who's very audacious with their opinions and what they're saying out there,

you've got to let it go in one air and out the other, right? Like, you just, you would not be able to piece together why the guy is able to do this in the UFC if you didn't see the whole picture the way it is with Dana and everything else too. Yeah, it's, it's, it's commonplace. You know, we had the Bryce Mitchell, Hitler's thing, uh, just not so long ago, right? And that was another kind of hot, hot topic moment where everyone's kind of weighing in on it.

And it's funny today because when we were having this conversation with Ariel on Wednesday, we were kind of talking about all of the threats and things like that. One thing I asked, I was like, what does this do for the perception of M. when things like this constantly happen here and they don't seem to happen in other sports. And he was like, well, it would confirm any detractors what they think of it.

This would just underline and confirm what they already think. I saw a clip today before we came on and I knew we were going to talk about this. And it was like a short on YouTube. Do you know when you're just scrolling? You know, the way they have your brain these days. And it was like, you won't believe what this soccer player said after he gained promotion for his team. And it's this guy and he's like,

like smoking a cigarette doing an interview, smoking a cigar what he's doing an interview. And at the end, he was just like, I just want to say I fucking love my teammates. And that was the shocking moment. He said, you know, and I was like, compared to what we're going to be talking today, this is crazy. And that's what I'm thinking, Ben. I'm like, when I was growing up, if you, if I met a kid, like, I'm from a working class area, if I met a kid and he said he was a big rugby fan, that would say to me that he was from a middle class background, he's from an upper class situation.

And if I meet a guy who says he likes dogfighting, I'm like, oh, well, this guy is a schoonbag. What does it mean that this sport, this is commonplace? And it has a lot of support for it, too. Like, even from our conversations here today, you look through the comments. You guys are weak for saying that this is a bit aggressive. What do people in America think of when they think of MMA, do you think in general, outside of the MMA bubble? I guess my thought was what do they hear when they hear, what do they think when they hear stuff like this is they mostly don't hear it. A lot of this stuff stays inside the MMA bubble.

And there are a lot of times over the years, I've been very glad that we are up to weird shit in the MMA bubble. And the general population, for the most part, does not know that. They don't know what we're up to. And it's good that they don't know what we're up to because some of the reflects poorly on us. The thing I do wonder is a little bit about. about like, where's the UFC at on stuff like this? And what are they telling themselves behind closed doors? Because they used to take a very different approach to shit like this. I remember very clearly, Chuck, you were around that. You probably remember this.

Where during the sort of ongoing on and off feud between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mear, Frank Mear, Frank Mear got on a lot of trouble at one point because he said that he hated Brock Lesnar so much. He would like to see him be the first person to die in the Octagon. He would like to kill him. And like, and Brock Lesnar had said something about Frank Meera. where he's like, I want to fucking kill him. And I remember I did an interview with Frank Mere for a story on Sports Illustrated, and I asked him about that where I was just kind of like, do you think that people are overreacting to those comments?

Like he said something, you know, like we're used to this trash talk where it's just, is it a different thing to say, I'm going to kill this guy to where then you say, I'm going to actually literally murder this guy? Like, are those just different things? And we talked about it a little bit. He was kind of saying, yeah, I don't see what the big deal is. is and the UFC got really upset at him. It seemed like basically maybe the UFC had told him, don't talk about this anymore.

And then he did. And I remember the UFC PR people called me up to basically be like, did Frank really say this? And I was like, what do you think I'm fabricating this quote for the for this story? Like, not only did he say it, I got it on tape that he said it. Like, of course he said it. And it wasn't anything any really provocative, but they were that upset about it. And I think he lost his WEC commentary gig over it. they really took that stuff very seriously.

And that was probably, you know, 15-ish years ago. And now they got to a point where they just kind of went, to hell with it, you know, like let them go. And I don't know how much of that is that the UFC got tired of policing this stuff. The same way for a while they toyed around with the idea of a code of conduct. And then they seemed to decide, well, if you put out a code of conduct, then sooner or later and probably sooner, you're going to have to enforce that code of conduct against somebody

you don't want to enforce it against, somebody that you want out there selling paper views or selling tickets for you, and you're going to be called upon to maintain some consistency there. And they didn't want to do that. They wanted to have the freedom to decide, when do we act outrage and care about this stuff? And when do we just say, hey, freedom of speech, brother, tune in, see them get their ass kicked if you don't like it.

And they seem to decide that that was the way to go, like just really hands off, let it run and let it take you wherever it goes. And then also let the blame fall on the individual fighters when it gets out of hand. They managed to do that very well to like kind of step back and be like, hey, that's on them, you know, for getting out of hand with some of this stuff. And I do think that at least some of it has to be that just culturally, broadly in America, there's been a huge shift in what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable. behavior speech viewpoints, all that stuff. I tease this to you piece when we were talking earlier about

the idea of the Overton window, which basically refers to us an idea that a policy analyst Joseph Overton came up with where he was just sort of like there's this acceptable range of viewpoint, of ways of speaking of ideas that can kind of be introduced in polite society. And the window can shift.

A window can widen. It can narrow. It can shift in one direction or another. But there are some ideas where it's just like, you know, you come out there and you say, hey, I think we should be doing school funding slightly differently. And you're like, okay, that's very middle. Like, no one's worried that you have an express an extreme viewpoint out there. But if you're just like, I think all the races should be kept separate, they're like, okay, nope, that's not a thing that we even feel is worth discussing. That is a radical viewpoint. You're outside of the window. We don't even need to talk to you. We don't need to listen to you. And for a long time, that's how like, especially a media

environment operated and it just doesn't anymore. It just the, the window has shattered to the point where it's like you have people on TV talking about crazy stuff. Some of it is, I'm sure, like a technological platform issue where for all the stuff that we would talk about the downsides of like de-platforming, there being these sort of specific platforms that people could be kept off of or invited on to. One of the upsides was that it allowed you sort of like a little bit more control over not letting crazy ideas enter a mainstream, like serious debate.

And I think we saw, once we went through the pandemic, we saw how there could be some people were just like, I don't believe any of this is real. Other people could just be like, I've made up my own medicine. I will take that instead of something else. And we saw like, okay, there are very real effects to having these conversations that just go in all different directions. And it gets a lot harder to be like, hey, this is some. shit you shouldn't say. This is some shit that is dangerous. This is some shit that we've decided,

like, hey, this is not how we should be talking to each other. And we've completely abandoned that idea now. And you see it now with the UFC. The Bryce Mitchell Hitler stuff was where we saw the UFC was going to take the approach. Hey, whatever they say, that's on them. If it makes you mad, maybe it'll make you more interested in watching. We're going to bet on that anyway. It's the easier way to go for us. The thing that's crazy to me about sitting here talking about shooting each other with guns is some like my dudes you were in one of the rare lines of work where you get to hurt each other you get paid you get rewarded for hurting each other the whole point of stuff like fight sports and and martial arts is so that you can you can engage in this sort of combat and nobody dies

the idea that like you are going to spend all your life training as a fighter and then you're going to show up with a gun a few days before the fight and shoot the guy well first of all you you don't get paid then. That's the thing you can guarantee. The other thing is that then you go to prison instead of getting paid to hurt him in a sanctioned fashion. It's just dumb. It's dumb.

And like it, especially at a time when like one of our big problems in America is gun violence. And you have a guy out here being like, I'm so mad I'm going to shoot him. And people are expected like sit around and be like, awesome. That's a great headline. Let's go with that. That'll get attention. That'll get clicks. the UFC, the people who are responsible for putting on this product, are just kind of going to sit back and be like,

all right, I guess we'll try to keep him apart until it's time for them to fight in a cage. You know, like, it just seems dumb that of all the people who shouldn't have to resort to, I will kill you with a gun, it should be pro fighters. You're going to get a chance to hurt him with your body in a fair, sanctioned, relatively safe environment. Is that not enough? Like, to me, if you're out here saying, I will shoot this guy with a gun, it tells me, are not confident that you can beat him in a cage fight because that is the part that you guys are paid to do.

Is he just saying stuff, Ben, like when he says this about the gun? I mean, just saying. Yeah. I mean, that is some classic just saying stuff. Like, I don't think that you really plan. If you did plan to show up and murder Hamzaa Chamaif before the fight with a gun, I would say you probably would not broadcast that intent beforehand. You'd probably want to catch him by surprise.

You also, like, you just made it. into a first-degree murder beef. You're going to have a hard time claiming self-defense after all this stuff. So, like, yeah, he obviously is just saying stuff. The thing that I guess is telling is that he's just saying stuff in a way where he's going, this works, right? Like this, I, and you can see it with Sean Strickland. You can see it with Bryce Mitchell.

You could see it before with Colby Covington, where you have these guys who are sitting around and they're going like, I'm going to get attention for myself by saying, like, really extreme stuff. And then they also, you've definitely seen this with Sean Strickland. they get to a point where they feel that attention flagging. They feel it slipping away because we go, we've heard this extreme stuff. We're not shocked by it anymore. We get used to it rather quickly.

And then he goes, well, then I have to come up with something more extreme. I have to come up with something like crazier than the last thing. You can see Sean Strickland over time doing that. And it seems like an intentional choice and like a conscious effort that he's making. But it kind of leads us here to where he has to like threaten murder in order. for it to feel like he is continually upping the ante. Do you think that poor Miguel Torres, like, is like years? Yeah, there's a good example.

Yeah, it's like a guy who basically got canceled by the UFC for whatever he wrote on Twitter, right? Like, it was just a, it was a couple of tweets or something like that. And then you cut forward this amount of years and here we are. It's crazy. I remember when that deal with Fox, so there was that there was that chase for legitimacy within the sport for the longest time that everybody was in on. And when they got the deal with Fox and they were going to do that first show, I remember writing a piece, it was like 2011, I think, at the very end of that year with Deo Santos and Velasquez writing a piece basically that says with greater kind of mainstream

access and like the more eyes and the more scrutiny that will come to the sport, right? And then you're, I remember, you know, you're mentioning the Brock Lesnar stuff that was going on with Frank Merrin. And remember thinking of stuff like that, like, this won't fly anymore. You won't be able to, you won't be able to get by with some of the things that MMA could happily kind of conceal within its own bubble. like you just thought that that stuff would be weeded out. What we never could have anticipated was that as time has gone on,

that the world would meet the UFC's wildness. You know what I mean? That's kind of what's happened. It's just a, it's a great. Like I always think about Miguel Torres because, and I think, I feel like there was a couple of others. I know that Forrest Griffin.

Nate Diaz, right? Like he had a home phone. Nate, yeah, Nate, yeah. And I remember Forrest Griffin got in trouble for a minute there, like for something he said. And I mean, it's just, it feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah. It's like, you know, I'm listening to both of you guys speak here.

And I'm kind of reminded that even when we were getting into this sport in the early 2000s, it was an outsider kind of thing. And as Ben says, there was things that happened in MMA back then and maybe not like speech wise, but there were certainly things that happened in a sport where you'd be like, this couldn't happen on any other sport. Like this is kind of the beauty of it. Is there any chance that like it's just all. always just been this joke and we're kind of aging out. Like, you know, like we're turned into

these kind of older heads and the younger people are enjoying it for the same reasons we are. We just can't void with the things that this guy is saying. Or is that too simplistic of you of it? It might be a little too simplistic. I just don't remember. I mean, I talked to a lot of fighters back in the day like, you know, you do these big features because that was the thing. They didn't ladle out their personalities and their lives on social media. So that's what our job was. You'd go talk to these guys. And I just don't remember hearing people kind of take it to such sadistic kind of extremes. You know, I don't remember people doing that. You always would come across the kind of guy who, you know, you could tell was a little more sinister minded than the normal pro athlete, you know,

but there were more pro athletes. And either of they're putting up a facade. I do think there was a little bit more of a fear of repercussions. They did not want to get in trouble from the UFC, which was the only game in town once they snapped up. strike force and all that. Like I think there was play by the rules, but we don't really know what the rules are. And there was, you know, those spot examples of guys getting in trouble. I just don't think people want to jeopardize themselves. But like Ben mentioned, I think somewhere around the pandemic, you know, probably to do with, probably to do also with just the presidency, like the lunatic nature of so much that goes on in the world,

much less a sport that Dana White was at some point just was like, hey man, I'm not going to be the one policing this. And I think you're dead on, by the way, was saying like you can't, if you hold that standard with Miguel Torres, now you got to do that to Connor McGregor. You know, and I really don't think that the UFC was prepared to deal with. Because remember, Connor was saying crazy stuff too, man. There's a very dark lead-up to that fight.

And, you know, the UFC just kind of stood by. In fact, they used the, you know, as part of the B-roll and they used a lot of that animosity to build the fight. I mean, that's just kind of where we're at in this sport. Well, that's a good point you've made there, Chuck. And it's a great, it's a great segue into a conversation about that fight, Conner Gregory v. Habib and I'm going to make off is the biggest UFC fight of all time. My biggest pay-per-view cells, most cited fight ever probably due to the sinister nature of the buildup

and then the aftermath, which saw Habib swooping down. on Dylan Dennis, as you said earlier. I thought Rick made some great points when we discussed this on Wednesday because the reality of the situation is this is compelling more people towards this fight. More people are now interested in this fight

with a looming threat. Is it tongue and cheek or is it not? You get into that in your piece, Chuck. But like, does this, is this the problem, Ben? This sells the fight in a way that we've seen done before on the most successful, hyperview of all time for the UFC. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about it in terms of Armand Saurukian,

right, and how he has managed to make himself a thing with the stuff he's doing completely outside of the UFC. He's not really getting a ton of emotional help by the UFC. They seemed like they're content to ignore him to a certain extent. And he has made himself into a thing. And part of that thing is you want to see him at these wrestling events or you want to see him show up and have these face-to-face interactions with other fighters because you don't know what he'll do. He seems like he is not at all worried about consequences. He is not worried about the laws of man or God. And he is out there just doing whatever. And that does create interest for people on a certain level. You know, that's, that's the whole thing that he's done. I also was thinking about it when I saw a video of him,

like an old video that resurface of him and Bobby Green, King Green, I think he was still Bobby back then, getting into it in a hotel lobby, as UFC fighters will often do in many hotel lobbies across the land, almost knocking over a Christmas tree display at one point in the hotel lobby. And I remember watching it and being like, at what point does the UFC start to have trouble finding hotels that are like, yeah, man, we don't care about the group rate or anything. It's not worth it. It's not worth it to have you guys. Yeah. It's just like, you know, guys will be in there in the breakfast buffet throwing things at each other, hitting

each other with hand sanitizer. They're brawling in the lobby. There's some businessman from Wichita in town for a conference and he's checking in and he's looking over and Bobby Green and Armin Sruki and are brawling with all their boys in the lobby and he's just going, what the hell is this?

And they're like, yep, UFC's staying here this weekend. That kind of stuff where I was just like, I understand how it's an appeal where it feels like, who knows, what these guys are going to do, you better tune in Saturday night and watch to find out what the hell's going to happen here. It seems like this thing is a powder keg waiting to go off. And yet, at times, it does go off in ugly, bad ways. And I just, I don't know, you're going to, you can only do this for so long before something really bad does happen. That Connor McGregor

thing with the bus was a great example because you remember Dana White's reaction at the time where he was just like, would you want to be in business with Cona McGregor after today? I'm disgusted. It was terrible thing I've ever seen in this sport. And the answer was, we're dying to be in business with this guy. And you know what? The bus attack won't even end up being the worst thing he's done and we still want to be in business with the guy. And of course, we're going to use the bus attack footage to promote the fight, all this sort of stuff.

And I understand that if you're a promoter of fight sports or pro wrestling, or whatever, you look at what they give you to work with and you go, well, we're not going to waste good heat, you know? If it's there, we're going to use it. That's just like page one of the promoter playbook. But at some point, people are going to turn around and look at you if something bad does happen and they're going to be like, so this was all just like a slowly brewing thing that you watched and highlighted and did nothing to even try to like tamp down and then it blew up.

And you're going to have at least something. something to answer for there. You know, it helps a lot when it's a, you know, if it's, if it's Sean Strickland, he's going against Duplese and he's talking like this, which I know he did, there's going to be a low grade of like, ah, who cares? Because the fight itself isn't that compelling. It really helps, you know, when Chale Sondon was going after Anderson Silva and he was saying all this crazy stuff about Brazil, he was picking on a guy who was the goat, you know,

like he's going against a guy that it was inconceivable in some ways that he could beat. And then you get like the same thing with Conn McGregor and Habib, right? Like you've got a guy mouthing off. He's kind of poking the one bear in the realm that you're like, you don't want to mess with this guy, man. You just do not want to mess with Habib. And I feel like if this has any similarities, it's in part because of that. I don't know what the line is on this fight, but Strickland has got to be a fairly sizable underdog. And he's doing the exact same thing to a guy that people view is kind of the boogeyman of the division right now. And that's like, when you're talking about like the psyche of it.

If it trickles into a larger sphere of people, they're going to be like, oh my God, this is crazy. We'll see because come fight week, I feel like we haven't even seen anything yet. We're going to see whatever this looks like. But part of it is what starts to stand out is like, hey, isn't, you know, isn't Hamzot the, you know, the best dude? Like, you're going to start to have this feeling among casual audiences. Like, that guy's supposed to be invincible.

Why is this guy doing this? And that is part of the reason, right? Because he doesn't fear is the consequences of it. And I feel like that when you have a guy who can talk like that and he jumps in and he's, there has to be this moment of reckoning that's coming up on Saturday night and new, you know, it's like that becomes a compelling reason to tune in. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point though, Chuck.

Because I remember I remember my, uh, CMEE co-host Chad Dundas bringing this up when, uh, Connor was doing it to Habib. And he was saying, hey, some people don't play. Right. So, like, you're doing this thing where you feel like and like, what we. We heard Conner say on kind of the hot mic moment during the fight where he's just like, oh, you know, I'm just selling the fight, mate. Like, it's just all for like promotion and everything.

And Habib is being, it's elbowing him in the face and being like, you want to talk? Let's talk now. And there was a reminder that, you know, you're out here. You're kind of seeing this as like, this is part of my characters as part of what I do. Some people don't play that way, bro. And people who grew up in Chechnya might be some of those people. They have been in some situations that you. haven't been it. They have seen things that you haven't seen. They don't play that way.

I mean, I'm born at a plane to Dublin to confront Connor McGregor. Not only did he, not only did he fly to Ireland, got so mad he flew to Ireland. To hear him tell it, the reason the plan didn't work is because when he got off the plane and they're like, so business or pleasure and he's like, I have come to beat up Connor McGregor. And they were like, well, kind of feel like we can't let you in now. Uh, you know, like, wouldn't be doing. my job if I just said welcome to Dublin remember we drive on the other side of the road here you know like so but like in answer to your question though pizzi about like how is this a new thing

or we just make it too much of it because we're the old heads I mean I will point out like it's not like boxing has never seen this stuff before I I don't want to do they wilder I do yeah I don't want to wait outside of the outline or anything here but I got a piece coming up soon on sunny Liston sonny Liston pulled a gun on Muhammad Ali in a casino know because he got sick of him. And I mean, he, an actual gun. He, and he did not do it, uh, you know, because he thought cameras were there or because like he thought it was going to help hype the fight.

It was because Muhammad Ali kept following him around chirping at him. And he went, I've had enough of this. And Sonny Liston was one of those people who does not play. And so, yeah. And that stuff can easily go too far. The thing I wonder, especially about Hamza and Sean Strickland is you're doing all this stuff. I didn't understand what Hamza was saying about how he, didn't shoot chickens so he wouldn't like I don't I was like if that a reference I'm not getting

um but it was lost there there is a chance when you build up this this intensity beforehand and then when they are in the same room in the same hotel and in you know at weigh-ins and and stuff like that neither one of them is going to want to back down and you can get into some really dumb shit really easily. Yeah. Just because nobody wants to back down. Everybody has to be the tough. It's the same way the UFC wisely realize like,

don't let anybody put their hands on anybody else at weigh-ins. Because even if somebody else, one guy goes up and shoves the other, even if you think it makes for good B-roll to help sell the fight, the other guy is going to feel like, I can't let him shove me. I have to do something greater than that in a response. And it's just this like tough guy bullshit that they get into and they can't,

not engage when the other guy comes to it. So I think that that's where you can find yourself in some real trouble. And especially find the UFC staff. And I'm like, okay, so this is all good promotion and it's good hype. And then you're going to want me to throw my body in between these guys. You're going to want me to like my whole week has to then become make sure they don't happen to share an elevator or running to each other in the hotel lobby. Because that seems like a nightmare, honestly. Remember Dave Schaller like his big moment between.

Poor dates. Do you ever see that that? You're saying like there are certain guys who don't play around. And I always think of that that Key and Peels, whatever their name, though, the community, where they're like, they're talking. And one guy's like, when you're breathing through a tube. And he's like, wait, he knows we're just talking, right? Like it says, that's sort of reminds me of it.

I'm a sick fuck that I want to watch this for it more because of this. Yes. But you're not alone. I feel like that's going to be like, I feel like we haven't scratched the surface. I mean, what Ben just talked about is why Fight Week will be sort of entertaining is just because how do you want up what's already been done here, you know? And if you get into this kind of stubborn, like a standoff where you're, I'm not backing down, you know, I feel like something is likely to go down. It would almost be anticlimatic if it's a quiet fight week now, right? Yeah.

And I feel like that Sean Strickland is holding himself to something here that we'll at least try. He will at least try to make this into something. Also, you mentioned what are the odds on this fight? Hamzot's about a five to one favorite. It varies a little bit, according to the sports books, but Hamzot going off at about minus 500, you could find Sean Strickland in a round like plus 410, you know, somewhere in the plus like high 300s or something like that.

But odds makers don't expect it to be a terribly competitive fight. And so doing all this, like I hesitate to give Sean Strickland credit for two. much strategy because it seems like he is is just saying stuff is just out here trying to say the wildest shit he can think of. But I'm like, are you thinking, hey, if I make him mad enough, maybe he'll forget to do the stuff and like the, he'll forget to take advantage of the very obvious technical aspects of his game that he has that I don't really have as much. I don't, I don't know. If so, that's a big gamble. We saw how that went for Connor McGregor. You might

might just get held down and tenderized for a lot longer than you need to. You might end up in a what's my name situation, as long as we're referencing Muhammad Ali. But I don't know. I have a hard time thinking that Sean Strickland was just like sitting around going, this guy is going to wreck me. I need to make him so mad that he makes a mistake. I don't really think that's it.

I think that Sean Strickland has just bought in so much to this idea of himself. And he can't not do it. On the flip side, if he does win, right, Strickland does this, if he draws more eyes and he builds the kind of thing we're talking about and goes in there and wins. Can you imagine the 180 that people do again? Because they did this a little bit with the Izzy fight. Suddenly he became almost like this cult figure for a minute, you know,

where we're like, oh, we got him all wrong, you know? He's a misunderstood fellow all this. It's going to switch so bad because we haven't seen something like that, right? We haven't, the guys that we were talking about, Sonan came close, four and a half rounds before he went up. That was one of the reason that was so epic. But Connor McGregor didn't really, you know, he didn't really compete. You know, he didn't really took that takedown, man. He did.

And I mean, technically won a round, right? So I guess there's silver lines to be found. But, I mean, if Sean Strickley actually goes in there and does this, it's going to be very interesting to hear how, you know, to partake in how this all unfolds. Because I feel like he's going to get that kind of thing again where suddenly people are going to, to like him for being audacious again. You know what I mean? It's going to switch. It is crazy, though, to think about some of the stuff

Chelson said about Anderson Silva and about other Brazilians. And at the time, we were going, whoa, man, you're kind of stepping over some lines here. He did not feed that bus a carrot. Yeah, the feed in the bus a carrot thing, the thing that used to say about Anderson Silver, where he's like, oh, this guy wants to bow to people. He doesn't come from

a bowing culture in Brazil. If you bow, they knock you on your head and steal your wallet. All this kind of stuff. You know, he was doing that, and we were going like, oh, I don't man, watch out. And it's like, that is so tame compared to where we are now with some of that stuff. It's a sign of just how much the culture has shifted. Also, though, all his talk about Brazilians did lead to one of my favorite moments of him in Vanderle, Silva, riding in a van together. And it was a classic where Vanderle told him, in Brazil, we have a saying. And I went,

oh, here we go. Here comes. I love a Brazilian saying. And the saying was, if you have respect, you get to keep your teeth. I thought it was, I thought it was so much. Sometimes a man's milk at his nose broken. Is that no what he said? Well, that might be a different one. I mean, there's a few different. I mean, the one I still don't understand is I think Jose Aldo maybe was talking about playing dead and about how sometimes he have to play dead so that you can. And I'm going to clean it up for him a little bit.

Sneak up and sodomize the grave digger. And that's the clean version. Yeah. That's a good one. If you guys heard the one about the lion? the lion on the hill and all the little lions come up and start bothering them

nipping at his toes did you know I had the pleasure going back and rewatching that and it was like oh my God it's ridiculous when you actually read that make sure you go and read Chook's piece

to get to really get into that because it is fantastic lads another fight this time a title fight happening in a division where Shemoef and Strickland used to plow their trade it's a welterweight division. Of course, we know that Islam Makashchev is the champion of that division.

It seems as though Ian Gary is hinted towards him being the man who has got the title. You saw the boys in the back yesterday speaking about Morales. Where does he go from here? Because all signs point towards Ian Gary getting to challenge Islam Makashv for the welterweight title. I think he is very deserving of this fight. I'm actually really, really intrigued about the fight from an IQ point of view because I think the one thing that Ian Gary has shown me that I wasn't. wasn't really so much aware of from his days before the UFC is that he's just an outstanding IQ. He finds a way to win fights. But that is easier said than done when you're coming up against the best pound for pound fighter in the world that is Islam Makashiv. Ben, first of all, do you think it's the right fight in Gary to fight Islam? And do you think he has a chance? I'm going to answer

the second part first, because I feel it is easier to answer. And the answer is probably not. Probably not. I mean, you're seeing crazy stuff happening in this sport. I know I've definitely been way wrong before where I think somebody

doesn't have a chance and then they go out there and they win. So it has happened. When I look at just like stylistically, it seems like that's an uphill climb for Ian Gary.

I understand the matchmaking, though. I can understand why you would choose that right now. Especially the UFC's title fight matchmaking seems to have shifted a little bit this year. and in recent months, just going and thinking,

who has a name that they can bring to this fight? That seems to be one of the most important things. The rankings, the rankings matter except for when they don't. And they're looking at it and saying like, all right, what can we sell? What can we plausibly put out there that we can hype and get people interested in and maybe sell some Paramount Plus subscriptions? And I can understand how Ian Gary fits some of those bills. I close my eyes, Pizzi, I try to picture a path to victory for Ian Gary.

What does it look like? Does it look like five very careful rounds in which he gets to do his stuff from just outside the reach of Islam Machashev? Or does it? I mean, that's got to be it, right? And then, but the problem is, is that, like, Islam is so good everywhere. Yes. That it allows him to be very, very aggressive. in a way that not a whole lot of other people are.

And I think it gets a lot tougher to do that. Like, I remember somebody once making a great, like this flow chart about fighting John Linnaker, who would always be so aggressive and so hard hitting. And it was just sort of like, all right, he's right in your face. He's pressuring you. What do you want to do? And you're like, well, maybe I'll jab and move. And you're like, nope, he's still with you.

What are you going to do now? And you're like, well, I got to hit him with something hard to make him respect me and back him up and you do that and the next thing you know you're in a brawl with john linnaker which is the last place you want to be and it's kind of like that with his amokshunders who you're just like he's not going to consent to letting you stay on the outside and avoid him he's coming to get you wherever you go and so then you're going to end up in a situation where you're like do i either deal with that and try to turn his aggression into my offense or do i try to do something that makes him stop and makes him back up because we've seen people try both and none of it has come anywhere close to

working. Yeah, do you guys get the sense that, you know, if you see in the first couple minutes that is maybe the first minute that Islam just does something very simple, like take him down, that you'd be like, oh boy, here we go, because it feels like one of those things, right? Like you're like, okay, I got something special for him and then right away, that specialness goes out the win-y-o. I feel like-like, when Drichus duplecy, right? Isn't that how you, because that's how I felt I was like, he's going to do a little better in the wrestling? than people think. Right.

Nope. That's what I've got. No. We talked out about that. I do think Ian has like got a decent like take down defense, you know, but at the same time you remember the Shavkat fight like where it's the couple of takedowns resulted in something like 12 minutes of the fight time was in his control. And it's just that vision in your mind, right, of that fight.

And I know that's a very super tough opponent as well. But you're like, you think about that and then you think about the custody that the Dreecus was in, in that fight or the title fight with Islam. And you're like, ah, it's tough. tough not to see that, right? Like, you're just like, it feels like this is a recipe for the same thing to me. Yeah, yeah, obviously what he did against Jack Della as well. And we're going to be talking about Jack Della soon with Pretches. It's a really, really tough fight for Ian. And honestly, like, the biggest issue I see for Ian is he hasn't even fought that type of wrestler before.

You know, when you look at his UFC opponents, they've mostly been playing in his, in his wheelhouse. You know, they've been trying to strike with Ian and he's so slick from the outside as we've pointing out. I just haven't ever seen him fight a guy who was predominantly known for just taking you down at will. And I guess that is the big question coming into this. Of course, he's been working diligently with shoot the box and

Damien Maya, but these Dagestani dudes, man, especially off that Habib lineage, it's like Jiu-Jitsu does not work on them. It's like, no, no, we're playing a different form of grappling here today and your Kamara will not work on me. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how a shake said, if

that is the fight that we think it is the next welterweight title fight. There is two fantastic welterweight fight this weekend in Perth. It's very early for you guys. And Ben wrote in his mailbag this week. And very, very kind of illuminating passages I was reading in this mailbag. You guys can check it out on ground. But the question was posed to Ben,

will you watch this fight? And Ben spoke about the beautiful experience he had in Melbourne. I was there also during that fight. similar experience. I was like, well, the whole day is ahead of me here. You can probably imagine what I did with the rest of that day. But, Ben, you mentioned a blonde, a blonde teacher that you met. And I'm like, I can't, I can't just, I can't just rush over this. What the hell happened there? You know, I'll tell you, I'll tell you the full story over a Guinness someday, but, you know, once, what I discovered is that once the fights, if they start early on a Sunday morning,

and you finish up in time to have a nice leisurely lunch, and then you realize like, oh, I could go see some of the nightlife in Melbourne, and maybe you make some friends. Maybe you have some memorable experiences. That's all I'm saying. The question was, will I set my alarm to get up and watch this one?

And I was like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Just he's avoiding the question. He's avoiding the question. Listen, there's a good version of the story that I can tell you, and then there's the version of the story that's fit for the crack, and you just heard that version of the story.

I enjoyed Melbourne. I had a great time in Melbourne. I would be happy to go back someday. The thing is, you ask me, like, will I wake up so early in the morning to watch this thing? And I go, I see this as an opportunity. This is a great thing for me. It's a great thing for the Australians to finally get to watch some UFC on their own prime time Saturday night and get to see what that feels like. we've been asking them to do this Sunday morning and stuff for so long.

But I go, hey, what you're telling me is that I could wake up in the morning and the fights will already sort of happen. And I can then, I don't have to like wait around all day trying to like avoid spoilers. You know, it's, you know how that can be difficult. You're like, oh, should I like open up a social media? No, as soon as I do, I'm going to see some spoilers or whatever. I don't even have to try to avoid the spoilers because I can wake up. I can make a cup of coffee.

I can sit down, I can watch the fights, I don't have to go to any effort to avoid finding out what happened, and I get to skip through the enormous amount of filler that is on these Paramount Plus broadcasts of the UFC fight night event. I just get to go straight to the fights and sit there and watch it.

To me, it's kind of the ideal way to watch it. Sit down, a cup of coffee, maybe a muffin, watch some fights. I like a good muffin. Get into some lemon poppy seed over here. here. Sit down there, watch it, skip from one fight to the next, and it's no problem at all. Like, I think it works out for absolutely everybody, and I'm totally into them doing it this way. Chuk, are you going to wake up, set your alarm to watch UFC pair?

My son wants to, you know, I think he sees the adventure in that, but I don't really do the adventure. I still don't see the adventure. I'm doing every fucking weekend. I probably won't. I probably will do something more like what Ben is doing. I really enjoy with Paramount. Like now you can just go on their app and do the fight selector and just be like, okay, let's see what I missed here. Let's see what I missed here. This is the way to do it. Because you mentioned the filler, man. That just, it kills me after a while. Yeah. To sit through these long 20 minute interludes between fights. And then a lot of times the fights themselves go the distance and they don't have a lot of drama to them. And it's just,

it becomes like a slog. So I will probably be a little bit behind the live feed here. Do you know what? Like, this is the thing. I'm hearing you guys talking with the filler and oh, I get to skip all this stuff. Guess who drew live blog, Judy, for the first time this weekend. You're nervous. This guy. I've never, I've never done it before. Our brilliant editor is going to talk me through it.

All of you are going to be sleeping and I'm going to be destroying the website that you built. That's what in my head. I was talking to a line about this morning. I was like, I don't know how to do this. I would not trust me with this. And she was like, no, I wouldn't either. Here's my advice to you having done a couple of these live blogs is the the entries need to be rapid.

They do not need to be a particularly dense. There doesn't always need to be a ton in there. You can go things like that? Yeah. Well, I mean like you find a clip from social media that you can embed in there. You talk to just like some update about what's happening. But that's what's going to save you in the long. lulls between action is go and find some of these clips that you can then post in there.

Because like, like Chuck said, sometimes we're going for like a, there's a big chunk between when one fight ends and the next fight starts. And there's only so many times we can throw it back to the desk. There's only so many times you can watch the same four commercials on Paramount Plus. You need some help there. Just the AI commercial for the White House card again. Yes. Yeah.

Do I have to say they're back at the desk now when I'm doing it? It's. They're talking. might give people a sense that like don't worry if you were rushing back you're not missing anything right now i'll let you i'll let you know when we get back to throw in leather you know what this is all good advice and I appreciate that another thing you mentioned Ben was how it was a bit of a brag it was a bit of a brag like I mean I was I was reading this you know we're hearing about this blonde teacher

we're hearing about his misadventures and the land down another and then he just starts fucking bragging about his doiled-in sleep schedule and I'm like alright take it easy mate I don't sleep very well and this is offending me man you got to get the sleep schedule doubt I mean first of all let's just be honest and say for you pizzi it's probably not going to happen it's just you the the geographic reality for where you live and and what business you're in it's probably just not going to happen for you and I'm sorry it doesn't mean that the rest of us especially if you start watching hockey playoffs yeah you get you get my reluctance

I have the subscription I have the zone they show it here I'm like oh if I fucking open this kind of one I'm fucking done I'll just keep sending you the highlights man via Instagram DM because otherwise, yeah, once you get your sleep schedule, especially, look, I'm 46 goddamn years old. The sleep schedule is pretty important at this point because it's just like, once you get to that point where you go to bed around the same time every night, you wake up around the same time every morning, everything kind of clicks. If I start messing with that, if I do anything to mess with that, I'm going to feel it. I'm going to feel it for the next couple days.

I fought against that reality for a few years. I was like, no, man, I'm still young. I can still hang out late. I can roll right in here on four hours sleep, whatever, and still do the damn thing. And then I had to finally face the reality. No, you can't. You can't do it anymore. The sleep schedule is pretty damn important.

You need to respect it. I'd like to imagine you with one of those, like, long nightcaps and like a book of poetry. Fucking that. Just for example, like, I woke him this morning at 10 a.m. Day before. Half, five 30 was the day before. Day before that, think about eight. Like, I don't have, there's nothing.

And I don't, like, once I'm up, I'm up. I don't, could have went to about three and woke up a half of five. I'm like, this is just the way it is today. You can't do this, P.C. You can't live that way. I'm only 23. You got, yeah, it's stone. So basically.

23 stone. But I get, like, when I get to this age when I realize I can't do this anymore, I'm just going to have to retire, just call Ariel and be like, listen, man, it's a good run. my buddy's shutting down now. We had some tough ring. Remember those ringer shows? It's like you would be like two in the morning.

They're like, all right, let's go to the calls now. We'd have to do like a live like one hour thing where you're talking to me. I was like, I don't know how we did that. Look at that. I remember people ringing in genuinely emotional about Lee. Yeah, and Edwards victory. Like grown men are in tears calling the show and I'm just like, hurry the fuck up. I get it, but Jesus Christ.

I can't sit through another one of these. Yeah, it's a great fight, though, I have to say. I'm actually really excited for it. And I heard the boys talking about it yesterday, and I've got to say, I agree with GC and Rick, who are kind of saying, I don't know why. I'm just really, and it's not because it's in Paris, but I'm really favoring JDM in this fight.

And I don't know if that's because of the Ian Gary fight. I don't know. I just feel like he's more dynamic, you know? I think protest is very, very slightly favorite, but it is almost a pick-um. But yeah, I mean, I also, I lean JDM, but I think he's in a tough spot, man, just because a year ago was the Ballal fight, you know, where we kind of went like, all right, we can kind of get excited about JDM. He didn't seem like the next logical pick as a title fight opponent, but we're into him, you know, like, let's see what he can do. And he shows up and he wins and he becomes champion.

And we went, oh, holy shit. And then now you fast forward a year later, and he's an ex-champion, he's on home ground. trying to sort of defend his spot in the rankings against a guy trying to come up. And all the pressure is on JDM here for a couple different reasons. Because, you know, if you lose, suddenly you've lost two straight. You go, how did I, I was the champion. Now I'm on a two-fight skid for the first time ever. And the UFC.

And like, then you, you turn around and you kind of go, people are going to look at me like I'm on the way down. The next thing, you know, you've seen fighters. They get into that headspace where they're just, They then start going out there and being like, I can't lose again. And that's a, it gets to be a tough place to be. You want to show, I'm still on the mix. I'm still up here as one of the top gold weights.

And also, you're the hometown guy, kind of. Like, the home crowd is in favor of you. They don't want to see you come out here and get your ass kicked at home. And you know that. You've been dealing with that. And, like, there's a lot of pressure on him, whereas I think protest kind of gets to roll in here and just be like, this would be great for me. If I win, if I lose. Like, if he loses to JDM, I don't feel like he just tumbles completely out of the picture.

We still go, he's a fun guy to watch. He can still beat a whole lot of these people. He's going to show up smoking the Marlboro's and still put on a good fight. Like, people are into it. Like, I don't feel like there's nearly as much pressure on him as there is on J.D. You know who's not worried about their sleep schedule or hanging out and partying? Carlos Pratchez, that's the guy right there. He's going to show up just like you said.

That's, it should be a form. I do agree with you, man. I think that if Carlos were to lose, I really don't, I mean, I don't think that that puts him back that far, just given who he is, like, the way he fights. It's one of those situations where J.D.M. kind of had to burst on the radar, right? Like, he had to kind of come through for us in a way they're like, all right, we got to, because I think I was picking against him just about every time. And then all of a sudden, he's a champ. So it's like, he's at this point now where you lose a couple. And he kind of goes back into that woodwork. You know what I mean? Like I, I could. see that happening for him. Especially this one's tailor made for him, you know. I mean, it's a tough opponent, but putting it in Australia and, um, you know, you're not going to get the advantages like this again.

Mm. My advice to him. If you lose, immediately start smoking cigarettes and interviews immediately. Just start ripping heaters. Listen, I'm going to be back next week. Pouring himself a little something. Yeah. Yeah.

Just get the people on site is all I'm saying. Now, it is quite a packed weekend. We have a big super fight in Japan. We have Benavides and in a huge fight as well for Cinco de Mayo. PFL Sue Falls. Okay, and now Ben's excited about Logan Storley v. Florim Zendelli. Huge, huge fucking fight there as well. And of course, we have the one we just mentioned.

Ben, you wrote about Zendelli, right? What was his, what's the story with him? Yeah, what was that? Uh, what now? The hood's, uh, I don't know. I don't know. I just, I was wondering if you ever heard of the guy, that's all. We avoided banning.

You know, I've written a lot of stories. It's hard to keep track of them all. That is true. There are times we talked about this. There are times I go back where you're like, okay, what about this guy? And you look, a little research and then you realize you pull up your piece from like years ago. Yeah. Oh, shit.

I guess I do know about this guy. Yeah. So what are you looking forward to the most? Chuket of all of the beautiful action that is ahead of us this weekend? I mean, I think the Perth card is going to be fun. It's a good card. And I, what is the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, against that kid.

Like, I think that that's a great piece of a... Yeah. That's great matchmaking, man. And that dude's on such a fiery role. Um, that should be like, that's a big test for him.

So that should be a form one too. I'm excited about the, the, anyway fight, honestly. I just can't wait to see that venue, Japan getting a super fight. It's on nice and early too for me,

which I'm very excited about. Nakatani, like I know, I know Lou De Bella was on with Ariel saying he can win that fight. So I'm just excited for these, kind of early mornings of action. Like, I'm going to be wrapped up on Sunday after UFC Parrott,

ready to watch United Beat Liverpool. It's going to be absolutely fantastic. Ben, what is your pick up the weekend? I got to go with Tai Tweed Bossa versus Louis Sutherland. There it is. Somebody had it. Somebody said it. I mean, I'll tell you, one of these saddest moments I've ever seen at a live

MMA event was at that Melbourne one where Ty Tui Vasa got choked out. I think my Sergei Spivak got like taken down, head and arm choked. And then he's walking, you know, bummed out out of the cage and there's a fan standing in the front row with a beer in one hand and a shoe in the other. I was trying to offer it up.

Like, uh, uh, and he was just, and he gave him a look like, bro, I can't do the shoey after I lost. That is sad. Like I can't I can't do it. And now here he is, what is it? A six fight? Losing streak that, uh, that he's on now. He put him in this fight and you're just like, And at this point, Taijuibasa is not going to become a different type of fighter.

He's not going to adopt a different style. He's going to go out there and try to do the thing and see if he can knock this guy out before he gets tired. And that, I feel like there's a level of human drama to that that I actually am looking forward to witnessing. I hope that it's one of those heavyweight fights that gets wrapped up in two or three minutes of the first round and not the other type of heavyweight fight. I don't think that that'll play to tie to Evas's strengths. But yeah, that's it. That and when I looked at this, the PFL Sue Falls card, which I would like to think, if I was trying to make fun of the way PFL is just all over the globe from like Europe to

middle of nowhere America, I would come up with something as funny as PFL Sue Falls. But you look at like the fight card, especially like look at it on Tapology where they show all the fighters and they show like their national flag next to them. And you're looking at this thing, man, you've got. Russians, Argentinians, Brits, Brazilians, Germans, Albanians, all this. And I'm just like, this is going to be like if the UN came to Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls has never seen this level of just international diversity. I look forward to that by Sue Falls, brothers and sisters.

Now, I do need to say, before we get into this late segment of the crack, Chuck Mellenhall has places to be. He has to go and interview USC champions at some point. So, Chuck, if you need to dip out. All right, I'll let you guys know if I need to bounce out here. Jordan, you can do that, right? You're capable of that. You remember what we do when that happens, right?

Just making sure. Um, it's something computer stuff that you do. You can do the computer stuff. Okay, well, you just took, you let him know. Okay. To computer stuff when you need to go. Okay. That's as simple as that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I can do that. We should come up with a code word like computer stuff. That's my safe word. I'm doing computer. other stuff on Sunday. I don't know what the, you know what I mean?

It's very, it's, yeah, yeah, a bit of blue. What if I'm trying to watch a bit of the blue and that's on one screen and a pair of on the other screen, you know, my brain will be, anyway, it's for another conversation. Ben, yeah, I don't want to throw in an embed of a bit of blue into the fucking, you know, that wouldn't be good. But, um, Ben, you have a big piece coming out this weekend. We, um, we don't know, we, we thought it might be up, uh, before the crack. But Al-Shadi said, no, no, no, no. We're keeping this for a weekend supplement kind of piece.

And it will be that it is about Sunni Liston, who is one of the most captivating characters in heavyweight boxing. He is often overlooked in terms of storied careers because he was on the wrong side of those Muhammad Ali loss. But please, if you can, wet our beaks with what we can expect from the sunny listening piece. Yeah, I'll tell you like this, one of the many fascinating. things about the mysterious life of Sunny Liston. I'm pretty sure he's the only heavyweight champion, maybe of all time that you can say this about, and certainly of anything resembling the modern era.

Nobody knows for sure when Sunny Liston was born or when he died. That is wild to me, that he was born in a rural Arkansas at a time when you didn't need birth certificates for everybody, and he was born at home in what was essentially a shack on what had been a slave plantation. And then over the years, offered several different birthdays and several different years of birth to the point where, you know, at one point he's asked, you know, and a lot of times the early days of him being asked how old he was were by police who had arrested him. And they were, you know, he's, he's 21 this year and then two years later, he's 20. And the same thing kept happening to him in boxing where it's like, you know, 1950. He'll

tell you he was born in 1928, 1960, he's called before a U.S. Senate committee to testify and says I was born 1932, all this kind of stuff. So like nobody really knew for sure. Yeah, nobody knew for sure exactly even what year he was born. They got a little closer on the death, but even then, you know, as far as we know, it seemed he died alone at home in Las Vegas, even though there were plenty of conspiracy theories about that, about whether he was, in fact, alone, whether he was murdered, all that kind of stuff. But even then, they didn't know exactly what day he died. It was, you know, his wife had been trying to reach him. Uh, she was out of town visiting family. And when she came home, he'd clearly been dead for some days. And that is just sort of

one of the many mysterious things about him. Especially if people, every once in a while, people ask us for good stuff to read, you know, good books. And, and I will say maybe one of the best boxing biographies I have ever read is The Devil in Sunny Liston by Nick Tosh's. It's just an amazing level of research. gets into really great writing and storytelling and, you know, not like super long, like pretty packed into a pretty tight space and just some fascinating stuff where you can tell at certain points where, you know, in researching Sunny Liston, he has learned interesting things about the criminal underworld of the 1950s and he's got to throw that in there because once you come up and you find out like, oh, there was a mob boss who was mostly known as the gray.

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the gray. There's audio tapes where somebody is like wearing a wire and being threatened on behalf of the gray. And you can get a sense of how intimidating it would be like when they were talking to somebody and being like, is that what you want us to go back and tell the gray that we came here and you said no? Think about that. And you're going, shit, I don't even know anything about the gray. And no, I don't want that. I don't want the gray to know that he should be mad at me.

You know, fascinating stuff in there. It's incredible An incredible story And I think the one thing I always think about with Sunny Listen is like he's such a stark contrast to you know a poster boy for the sport

He was everything that boxing probably didn't want as a champion A guy who was rumored to be connected to the Mafia and just a just a fucking vicious dude right Like just known as a bad motherfucker basically And so yeah I'm really really excited to read it

We have to bid farewell to the great Chuck Mendenhall Who has to do some of that Yeah, you know what? Usually these guys are delayed by like 10, 15 minutes. This guy is already here. So I will see you guys later. Computer stuff. Look forward to your piece, Ben. Yeah, yeah. I'm very much looking forward to it, Ben. Thank you for staying with me here. You know, it's tough out here on the prairie by myself, you know, but I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have someone to talk to. How are, you know, these ice hockey playoffs, right? Chuck's team have gone. That kind of allocates me some space. Okay. Okay, so if Chuck's team are out, they always compete at the very latest fucking slut as well at Denver Nuggets. I mean, Jesus Christ, I tried to stay up for the last game. I text him this morning and I think it's partly my fault that the Denver Nuggets have gone out because the Knicks game was such a blowout, to an extent that I've never seen before on a basketball court. I was already kind of, you know, tired watching the Celtics and the 76ers.

But the time the Nuggets came on, I was like, you know what, I just can't put myself through it. So I have a slotto. Who are my team? I know I asked you this last week, but who is the series to watch right now? If you, if you want to to follow another Chuck Mendenhall team, you know, the Colorado avalanche are looking pretty good in these NHL playoffs. You know, the fighting takes on a very different kind of tone in the playoffs because they will still definitely do some fighting.

They'll do it in a different way. and in a weird way they get away with it a lot more. Because normally in the regular season hockey, the fighting is done either to sort of settle scores, show you know, you're not going to put a big hit on one of our star players. There's going to be consequences for it. Sometimes it's just done to fire up the crowd. Hey, if we're losing five, two at home,

we've got to give these people something. And then you'll see it sometimes when they're miced up. You'll see a very congenial exchange before a faceoff where to, your tough guy and our tough guy are kind of sad. up next to each other and being like, hey, will you give me one? And I'll give you one. And then we're going to, yeah, and then we're going to, as soon as the puck has dropped, we're going to throw down the gloves and we're going to get after it.

The playoffs, it's different. We don't, we're not doing each other any favors by fighting in there. But what we're doing in a lot of these series, it's a seven game series, the best of seven series. And hockey doesn't do that during the regular season. You might play a team twice in a row during the regular season. So to see the same team over and over and over again night after night, it introduces this dynamic where they're going, look, we might not win this one, but we're going to go out there and lay the body big time tonight.

We're going to punish them physically, and maybe it'll start to pay off later in the series. And it just creates a ratcheting up intensity that you see in some of these series. And the example that you saw really recently, it's one that I sent you, the clips from the hurricanes and the senators where you're just, you know, a guy is getting laid out. and then the other team's tough guys during the break coming over to the other bench and being like, next shift you get on here, I'm fucking you up. You know, there's stuff like that going on. But it's crazy that almost after every whistle in some of these series, guys are tie it up, throwing hands, reaching out and just sort of, you know, taking the hockey glove and just reaching out and just

rubbing your face with it. That kind of just mean stuff that we're just doing to each other. Yeah, there's just tons of that going on. and the referees are just, the poor beleaguered referees are out there just trying to keep some semblance of order. And it's amazing, they can stand there,

watch a guy, reach over, pop another guy in the mouth and they'll just be like, hey, knock it off. Well, stop that, you guys. See, that's a sell. Like, I watched the Knicks last night, they were like, oh, that forward motion he made after the skirmish, that's going to get a foul. And I'm like, they're just shouting at each other. They're just kind of pushing and shout, you know?

I don't like that. I want violence. Is Mike Milott's brother a good player? Yeah. I mean, you hear his name. You know, he's out there. He's doing it. So, like, he's, there are no not good players hanging around in the NHL playoffs at this point.

So I'll say if you're looking for the series to get excited about, I would say either tonight you can catch the, well, you can be asleep. But the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Montreal Canadiens, they're locked in a pretty tight one. The Buffalo Sabre. and the Boston Bruins, the Bruins are still hanging around in that series. The Buffalo is very, very excited about that one. They haven't been in the playoffs forever. Now they actually have a good team and a good team that just sort of like early in the season didn't look good and then they just decided to get good.

And now they are and some exciting stuff happening there. But don't worry, the Chuck's Colorado Avalanche sailed through their series. They're onto the next round. So you'll have a chance to get excited about them. maybe I'll just relieve myself of the sports for the weekend. You know, just get ready, get prepared myself for UFC Perth on the live blog. Please join me on the live blog. And don't forget, of course, that we have our own feed now.

And I know I've only said this this week, which is pretty bad, because I know the boys in the back of them plugging their feed for a long time. So please go to the crack with Pizzi Carol, it's called, but you know, Ben and Chook are also here. They're also the host of this show. So please go and rate it and say, wow, these guys are really great. That would mean a lot to me. And don't forget about May 8th, that live show that will have. happen directly after the crack.

But before we go anywhere, and I hope Jordan's ready for this, because he's been out for a long time. Jordan, is there any super chance? Yeah. Oh, fuck. I get him. Big up Pete C, hat man, and big time, keep rolling. Well, Joshua Vaughn.

Thank you. That's really, really nice. I really appreciate that. I like how we all have our own separate nicknames there. I guess I get to be big time, so I'm going to take it. I don't really have one. It's just like a variation of the spelling of my name. They've been doing this for quite a world.

It's kind of cool, though. I like it. Some people spell it P.T.C. As in S.E.A. I like that one, too. You know what I mean? It's an interesting one. And some people just spell it PTC, which I like as well.

You know what I mean? It gives me many different outlets. Maybe I should create like Cactus Jack, different, you know, different kind of styles for each one of them and appears as different ones and each one has a different personality. What do you think, Jordan? George, he's just, what is he doing? Okay. Thank you. Oh, you likes it. I think that obviously Pete C. SEA is your mariner.

You're a pirate in that one, you know. Or a scuba suit. An old-timey scuba suit. One of the, we have like the giant dome helmet with the hose coming out of it. Yeah. I like that. I like all of this shit. I'm fucking terrified of this loit blog.

The more I think about it. It's going to be fine, man. It's going to be fine. It's really not that hard. Train me in. And please everyone join me on the live blog if you're awake for UFC Perth. Is that our only super chat this week, Jordan? Oh, fuck. Okay. Daniel Munoz, D3J, 10 of the US's finest. Not a huge fan of Strickland, but being threatened by four people in general is clear

case for legal self-defense, even more so in Nevada. Both are saying physical threats. We seem to only focus on Sean. That is a fair point. I guess Sean... Is it so? Is it so? I'm saying if they roll up on me, I'm going to shoot them. I didn't hear, you know, in fairness, Shemoyev, in his retort did say he'd be dead already or something at that extent, right? I don't know. Are we being unfair to Shawnee S? No, man, he's always out here talking about how he's carrying guns with him everywhere. He's going to shoot people at the mailbox shit like that.

He's out here calling this guy all kinds of horrible names and it's just like, you know, I'm going to go down in the lobby and wait for him. Like he has, if, if you're worried and you're trying to make a self-defense case, you probably don't put yourself in a situation intentionally to run into that person. I don't know if that's going to work for him. That's fair. Another fair point. Both of you sparring there, Mr. Munoz, Mr. Folks, I enjoyed it. I'm staying out of it.

Okay. I'm excited. You know, for some fucked up reason, this started talking and I was like, I'm going to have to watch every media thing next week. You're always excited until something happens. I always remember when Habib scaled that fence. And we're in my apartment at the time, just a bit of moiled this way. And my dad was there and my brother was there and we're all watching and I didn't travel to the event.

And I saw Habib going over that fence and I was just like, oh, I'm not sleeping to me. No, as soon as I saw that, I went, oh, yeah, there it is. We have shit talked a little too close to the sun, it seems. And the results were kind of predictable. And the problem is like it was 6am in Ireland and then every news desk in Ireland is ringing me as the M. going from Ireland being like, can you go on a radio show in 10 minutes to say, is this a sport? And,

Phil O'Connor rang me yesterday. He had to do one of those is MMA a sport things in Sweden yesterday. Because obviously Shemoeff there is a rooting interest. And he's like, do you want to come in and talk about Shemoy F and Strickland? Hadn, seen any of it, just drove in. And they're like, oh, let's listen to this clip from Sean Strickland. He's like, ah, God, here we go again. Yeah, no, it is a sport, guys.

Okay, sorry. It's still a sport, even though this shit happens. I'm preparing myself for a lot of that for the next week. Anything else there, Jordan? Pizzi, your mic always louder than Ben and Chucks. That's a you thing, Jordan, all right? I'm sorry Hedukin, a taco. Jordan, explain yourself.

What? Oscar, I'm not blaming Oscar for this. I'm blaming Frank, because Frank is just calling it in all the time. He has that contract with boys in the back where he can't appear on this show or appear on any show. He's so guarded about his personal.

you know what I mean sorry about that Oscar that was Jordan being back and blaming you they try they they try to hamstring us in any way they can but they can't stop the crack crack once it gets into your your blood and into your body it's very hard to shake it off as people have said for many many years famously so yeah we're all crackouts here Jordan anything else last one ptsy you are the real pq winner in our hearts can anyone explain that to me, Slito, thank you very much for that. I don't know what that mean. The PQ winner. Is this a young people

thing where they're laughing at me now saying this out loud? It is, isn't it? I don't know. I'm the wrong guy to ask. I have no idea. Thank you, Slito. I'm sure I will find out in my mentions very shortly what that means. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the crack with pizza,

Carol Ben, folks, Chuck Menon Hall. Chuck Menon Hall had to go off, gallivanting there. He's interviewing. Can I say he was interviewing? Will I say who's interviewing, Ben? Will I say? Will you say? I don't know. Joshua Van. Flyway champion of the world. That's what he's doing.

No. You know what I mean? Too big time to hang around here with me and big time Ben, folks. Thank you to Chuck Menon Hall. Thank you to big time Ben folks. Thank you to Oscar Losef. Why am I holding tape? I don't know. It's because I have to tape the light here and sometimes it breaks off.

Anyway, that's not the point I'm trying to make. We love you so much. Enjoy the fights this weekend. May 8th, going by your tickets. Make sure you watch the crack before you go to the show, though, of course. join me on the live blog apparently on Sunday morning we love you all so much big

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