The Ariel Helwani Show - Should the UFC cut Bryce Mitchell, Conor McGregor’s racial slurs, UFC Saudi Arabia | The Craic

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Petesy Carroll is joined by Uncrowned’s Chuck Mindenhall and Ben Fowlkes to discuss Bryce Mitchell and Conor McGregor’s latest controversies.The trio discuss Bryce Mitchell’s outlandish statement about Adolf Hitler being “a good guy” (3:11) and consider whether Dana White’s reaction to the situation is sufficient (04:16).Then, they look at differing reactions from the MMA community, with Jan Blachowicz offering to educate Mitchell (23:44) and Conor McGregor offering compassion to the featherweight (25:11).The conversation then moves onto the vitriolic tweet from McGregor, laced with racial slurs, going after his old foe Khabib Nurmagomedov (36:01) and question what the Irish fighter has left to give to the sport of MMA (46:02).Finally, the trio gives their thoughts on UFC Saudi Arabia (50:26) before giving their picks for the main event (59:08). 

Welcome back crackheads, it is your usual Friday injection of fun with me, Pete C. Carroll, and we have quite an amount of things to talk about today. A lot of stories breaking over the last 24 hours, a lot of outlandish statements over the last week, I would say. First of all, we're going to be talking about Bryce Mitchell and his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, one of the most deplorable human beings who ever lived. And then later we'll be moving on to racial slurs from Conor McGregor, which happened earlier today. We hope to get onto the UFC Saudi Arabia card,

but as I've said, it's been quite a week. Even by MMA standards, we've had reaction from Dana White to Bryce's statements. We have the great Ben Foulkes on the show, who wrote an article recently about this, which is fantastic. And we also have Chuck Mendenhall, who's wrote some fantastic pieces about the aforementioned UFC Saudi Arabia, which we hope to get to at the back end of the show. But I am

very grateful to be joined by two of the most thoughtful journalists in the history of this sport. As I said already, Chuck Mendenhall, Ben Foulkes. Lads, I am so happy, literally so, so happy that you are joining me to attack this smorgasbord of news items. How are you, first of all, Chuck? I'm well.

I think that when you said fun off the top, you meant freaking unearthing Nazis. Is that what that stands for? I don't know what we're... It's all good, man. I mean, I feel like every time we do one of these Friday shows, we catch all of the madness that happens toward the end of the week. So it's always a fun time to join you guys and to dissect all the weirdness that's going on. It is quite a sport, Ben, and you summed it up very well in an article we will be talking about later on. But how are you, sir? are you having a lovely day you know every time i'm on this show it's the

first time i was on it was right as we were hearing the guilty verdict for conor mcgregor and his civil rape trial in ireland the second time honestly kind of tame by comparison is when we were talking about the last ufc pay-per-view and the main event got scuttled right as we were having the discussion we were trying to figure out uh and then this time talking about some literal Nazis that's just can we just have like a normal week where we just talk about fights and whatnot is that not possible can I can I like uh break the fourth wall and just say that we talked about like hey what should we discuss on the show and our original plan was what pizza? What were we going to do?

It just seems so silly now. We were going to do a GFL draft of the top 10 points we could make. Can you imagine? And we thought it was going to be so much fun. I was like, oh, this should be a bit of fun. I mean, well, that's going to be fantastic. Then like, even this morning, I was like, are we still doing this GFL draft? And then of course, you know, common sense took a grip. And then of course, uh, uh, you know,

common sense took a grip and I was like, no, no, we cannot do that because as I mentioned at the top, um, I think it was yesterday. It surfaced. I don't know how long his first podcast,

uh, by the way, episode one, episode one, um, a video kind of service of, uh, Bryce Mitchell.

And he, we, we don't want to play the video again i'm sure you've seen it if you've been on the internet and you're a fan of mma over the last 24 hours i don't know how you could have missed it but um bryce mitchell essentially says that he wouldn't mind he would like to go fishing with adolf hitler and he thinks based on his own research i should say that he was actually a good guy this man who of course attempted to genocide a whole race of people um six million Jews of course dead um in World War II during the Holocaust and Bryce thinks he is a good guy

um what we'll do first I guess is we should probably go to dana's comments on this because as the caption says we will be primarily talking about the ufc's reaction to this so if we can on air jordan can we have a bit of dana white's reaction to the mitchell comments i've heard a lot of dumb ignorant shit in my day but this one's probably the worst um when you talk about Hitler, he was responsible for the death of 6 million Jews and he tried to completely eliminate a race of people. World War II was the deadliest war in history. 15 million military deaths, 45 million civilians, and 25 million soldiers were killed in World War II. Second of all, Hitler is one of the most disgusting and evil human beings to ever walk the face of the earth, and anyone that even tries to take an opposing position is a moron.

That's the problem with the internet and social media you provide a platform for a lot of dumb ignorant people we've obviously reached out to bryce and uh when we read what he said and let him know how we feel about it um i don't even we're beyond disgusted so for those of you that don't know what's going on good you're lucky for those of you to do that's that's what i have to say about it who's got the first question hey it's obviously not a fun topic to talk about the bryce stuff i think that's a great statement that you just gave does bryce face a punishment from the UFC for saying what he said? That's what everybody wants to hear about punishments. Free speech. I don't have to love it. You don't have to love it. You know. I agree with that. The free speech sentiment. Is there a concern though,

right? If he goes out and wins a fight and gets a mic. Well, that's the beautiful thing about this business. For all of you that hate Bryce Mitchell, you get to see him hopefully get his ass whooped on global television. I mean, what do you want me to say about it? You know where I am with free speech. We're disgusted by it. I think he's probably

one of the dumbest, literally one of the dumbest human beings. Let's not forget that this is a guy who took a drill through his nutsack, then had to reverse it and put the drill back out of his. That's the that's the level of stupid that we're talking about here. And I could probably go on for 10 minutes talking about how dumb Bryce Mitchell is. But guess what? Bryce Mitchell has a podcast. I believe this was episode one.

What a way to start. But that's the world that we live in now. Dumb people, people who are really stupid and really ignorant, can have a voice. We don't have to agree with it. We don't have to like it. I'm giving you mine and the UFC's position on what he had to say you know and this is no different than than things that i've said about strickland you know but i will say this out of all the dumb ignorant shit i've heard in my life this has to be the dumbest and most and there we

have it dana white and i will say it's a strong statement like he has come out stronger than i think he usually would and of course that's understandable given the context of what bryce is talking about but well i won't say but i'll say ben tell me how you feel about i want to hear what all you guys think about what dana said in reaction to these outlandish statements. Yeah, you know, at first, my initial reaction was pleasantly surprised that Dana took it seriously enough that he brought it up. It wasn't that he was asked about this. He clearly came. He had some notes in front of him there.

He came wanting to say something about it. Not like a lot of other instances that we've seen recently where he's at a press conference we know something big has happened or something controversial has been said or done by a UFC fighter and we're just waiting for his next press conference appearance until somebody asks him about it to get some kind of reaction like this is one where he showed up being like right off the bat I want to talk about this and so and it was very strong language to to condemn it which i thought was good and necessary it's the part where then of course the next question obviously is going to be what does the ufc want to do about this and his answer is basically nothing that he sees it as free speech which again people love to do this people love to throw around free speech as if it

is a blanket just immunity that means nothing can ever happen as a result of things you have said and that's not you know they're going off of like a constitutional understanding of free speech was is that like you can't be arrested for it and it's not that you can't suffer any sort of consequences for it which then it kind of makes you wonder like like, are you saying that a UFC fighter could say absolutely anything? And the UFC would, through its own policy, basically be powerless to take any action against him because I don't believe that. And we've seen that in the past. We've seen people have action taken against. We've seen people cut from the UFC.

We've seen people lose commentary positions based on things that they've said, sort of extracurricular. You can't say absolutely anything and not have your employer react to it. Everybody understands that. And the UFC would be no different you could imagine a lot of different things somebody might say as a ufc fighter either on a ufc broadcast or on a podcast or whatever where the ufc would go okay well we can't have that because at some point even if you as a company don't want to take action sponsors broadcast partners other people are going to put pressure on you and be like how are you okay with? How are you not doing something about this? Because even if you come out here and you say, I'm disgusted by these comments, very

strong language there by Dana White saying Bryce Mitchell's an idiot for saying this stuff. We absolutely disavow it and distance ourselves from it. But he turned right around, and this shows you why Dana White was born to be a fight promoter. It took him no born to be a fight promoter it took him no time to be like well the next time Bryce Mitchell fights you can tune in and hope to see him get beat up and like you we're already turning it into a sales pitch for the next Bryce Mitchell fight and it does it seems to me like really what the UFC has decided is that it doesn't

want to set any kind of standards that will kind of limit what it can do in the future or force it to do something that it doesn't want to do because if you say hey we're suspending bryce mitchell he or we're cutting bryce mitchell he can't say that he he went too far and we are so disgusted by his comments we don't want anything to do with them then what happens if you turn around and somebody who is a much bigger draw says stuff that's similar or even worse later on, you've set a precedent that you then have to follow. And I think the UFC has learned from experience that they don't want to have any of those precedents. They want to be able to just make up their big sporting companies, whatever it is, have treated any allusion to the most base idea of racism or hate speech, anything like that. Through the course of time, man, even just an illusion, just one little slip up, whatever it is. We've seen people get suspended in other sports.

We've seen people be expelled, cut from teams, all of that stuff, because they still are a reflection of that franchise, of that league, etc. It's a very crazy left turn when you can be as blatant. I mean, this is maybe the most blatant i've ever heard an athlete a pro athlete on a professional roster like this just go in do you remember brandon sailing remember this dude who was uh he was part of the strike force roster maybe in like 2011 i think it was on the columbus card that tate and rousey fought he somehow slipped through you know because they would book these kind of local regional guys he kind of slipped through he had a very checkered background he also had like some neo-nazi tattoos which became evident as he was fighting and it was like

this mini storm back then this is 2011 ish and i remember scott coker that was one of the big things you got rousey on this card but one of the big things being brought out of it was hey man uh did you guys know about this guy what is going on here and he had to i mean it was like he was dealing with toxic weight like he was dealing with toxic weight like he was like i don't we don't know anything about it we didn't know we didn't vet this right um and he was gone it used to be like that it used to be if you had any kind of um affiliation to this kind of you know hate group or whatever it was it was dealt with immediately i can't understand okay go, go to the free speech.

You labeled all that. You talked about all that. And you're like, okay, I understand that. But you can't let your fear of being a hypocrite keep you from doing what's right in a situation like this. Being hypocritical to what you say, I get the free speech stuff. But dude, this is not, you have people on your roster. You have like you know jan blowvich who's uh you know tweeting out basically responses to this you have people on your roster this or this you have people who work for the company journalists people fans everything it's associative the whole way through i'm a little i was a little i was with you on that man like as he came on and he was using the strong language i'm like all right let's get to that second tier. What does it mean for

Bryce Mitchell? And it was kind of a letdown, man, because you're just like that. The precedent being set is that you can be an absolute idiot, a complete fool, a hateful moron. You can say whatever you want and you'll deal with the consequences,

but they're not going to force consequences on you. Ben's article is up on Uncrowned at the moment. The headline is, if Bryce Mitchell's disgusting comments are free speech, is there no such thing as too bigoted for the UFC? Ben, I read the article. It's a great take on the whole thing. But, you know, as you said, I agree with what you said in terms of the fear of setting precedent when you have stars like Conor McGregor, who we'll get to soon, I'm sure, constantly unhinged when it comes to his output on social media. Given that, and I think we all agree on the fears of the UFC setting a precedent in terms of internally, like, will they have to punish all these guys the same way?

Given that it seems that MMAma is the sport of donald trump donald trump is now the president of the united states of america does this in any way continue to happen and impact the ufc or as i've seen in my comments today when i told people we're going to talk about this it seems to be a lot of people saying look dana said, Dana said that he's going to let these people speak. And this is just the way it's going to be. Or do you think there will come a time when they have to act on this because the image of the brand that question because I think that there are some ways in which the UFC has really benefited from making itself the sporting platform of the American right wing. And I think that, for instance, the Bud Light sponsorship situation is a good example of that where when Bud Light felt like, oh, we're in trouble with the right wingers in America and we want want them to drink our beer we need to do something that's going to get them back on our side and so they went signed a new sponsorship deal with the usc and got dana to go out there and really proactively be like hey bud light is cool don't be jerks to bud light drink bud light uh all that kind of

stuff like it is a way to get somebody who will help you provide cover so that you can kind of get back in there with that don't forget the way that bryce mitchell got on to talking about this again episode one episode one he's like i'm gonna start a new podcast by you know by the end one way to get people to pay attention to your podcast i guess yeah but by the by the end of episode one we will get into just like Nazi apology. Like it's crazy. But the way they got into talking about that was they were talking about Elon Musk doing the hand gesture, which one of like three hand gestures in human communication that you know you can't do unless you are down with that. They started out

talking about that and you know you see elon musk showing up at uh ufc events right there with trump and tucker carlson all this so it's like there's already some aspect of some of this ideology which like you said would have been unthinkable would have been like it used to be i can remember when i was a kid it was just like that was the one thing we could all point to and be like well if somebody exactly expresses any sort of fondness for the nazis that's like that's uh shirtless in the uh gas station parking lot 3 a.m behavior you know not to take it seriously you know you don't even need to stop and hear this person out that's what it used to be and And now that has moved toward mainstream. Arkansas, though.

Let's just be, you know. It has moved toward a mainstream level of the discourse where it's like a guy like Bryce Mitchell can show up and be like, so I've been doing some research into Hitler and I've decided he's actually not bad. Which, by the way, that part alone, because he kept talking about his own research, not the public education that he had gotten his own research into Hitler, his research that I was up late researching Hitler. And everybody has to be like, why of all the things that you could be like, I need to get to the bottom of it. That's what you decided. Because that's telling right there of its own. And it's like a lot of that conversation at all has drifted toward being like

more of a mainstream conversation, which seems troubling broadly but i also think that there's some part of the ufc that's just like we know some people out there in our audience probably agree or at least don't think it's quite that bad we don't want to anger those people i think mainly what it is is that i think that they don't want to be like hey we've already said the reason we're not doing anything about people who say stuff that creates a lot of controversy is because we don't want to police fighter speech. And once you staked out that position, then you kind of have to stick to it. Otherwise, you have to go back on it and establish some kind of code of conduct, which I think the UFC doesn't want to do.

I think they want to just be able to make whatever fights they think will make them money, hold on to people who they think will make them money, get rid of the ones who won't. And to me, it's a little bit surprising that you look at somebody like Bryce Mitchell, not a top featherweight or anything at this point, and you go like, well's that guy you feel is worth sticking by in a situation like this and always saying dumb shit always he's said a lot of dumb shit before this and so therefore even when you were pointing out i think it was you on twitter that you were like you know normally i would just skip over the bryce mitchell thing but i had to tend to take a look at this and that's kind of the way i looked at it so i was like ah i don't know man nobody needs to know this stuff but it was just such a uh you know an egregious and transparent um conveyance of whatever he believes but it was just i can remember it's it you know it would have been unfathomable even in the days before this became semi-mainstream or even touched that

world where we were everybody was trying to get it and celebrating the Fox deal and everything. Even before those days, it would be crazy to even contemplate. But ESPN, you think about ESPN and the association, and ESPN has so staunchly kind of always come down on anything that looks remotely off. Do you remember, we used to work at espn um and i did mma live with max bredos max bredos once made a comment where he said during a jeremy lynn package do you remember this whole thing and he's like if there's a chink in his armor oh yeah blah blah blah do you remember this whole thing he got endless hell and

this was just and you know full disclosure i know max he's married to an asian woman it's like this it's a very i still believe to this day it was a very innocent thing but he was suspended and i mean he dealt with that for a long time it just tells you in that amount of time whenever that occurred a decade ago how elastic this thing has gotten so quickly you know how like how different the world is trying to operate i made one i know I know you, you, you tweeted about this too. I made one small tweet just saying, you know, baby, I don't know if I trust,

uh, Bryce Mitchell's, um, you know, research and dude, I've been flooded, flooded with, and now it's either one person with like a thousand burner accounts,

or there's a thousand people out there like that just come to life waiting for this type of thing. It's a weird thing. It's like you kicked over a rock and now you see all the, the worms and shit. You're like, Oh boy, oh boy here we go well that is one thing that i thought that dana said where i was like okay he's making a good point where he put a lot of this on the internet and technology in general where he was like this is what this is the problem with the internet and social media is that people can say this dumb stuff and broadcast it out and spread it out and in a way like he's not wrong about that i like

i remember once doing a story about how fighters interact with social media this was a long time ago when it was still fairly new and i remember misha tate saying social media has given a voice to a lot of people who shouldn't have had one and that's true yeah and so like i i don't disagree like i think that is part of what's happening in our cultural moment is you have a lot of people who would have been shirtless in the gas station parking lot at 3 a.m saying this stuff and it would have been easier to brush off and be like there's no reason for me to listen to that and then instead you have them with the tools of mass media easily accessible able to spread it out to each other and they all sort of like whip each other into a frenzy over this stuff and like gradually it becomes a thing that people sort of talk

themselves into believing and i i do think that that is part of the problem the the the issue i think though is that when dana white says the internet gives these people a platform, and that is true, but also the UFC is giving them a platform. We wouldn't have heard Bryce Mitchell's podcast if he were not a UFC fighter. He would have just been another dude with a podcast that we didn't need to listen to is the the usc has to accept like some responsibility for that because even if he's not saying it on a ufc broadcast yet uh that he is sort of platformed by the ufc you you have to understand like that guy even if he's out there saying it on his own podcast he's one of yours people associate him as one of yours. When TMZ Sports runs the story, it's UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell said this. So it's going to come back to you.

And if you are going to take this hands-off approach to it, you're going to just keep dealing with this over and over again. And you are, in fact, whether you like it or not, whether you want the responsibility or not, you're part of the platform. I was going to say, obviously, there's been a lot of reaction, as Chuck has spoke to, in his comments about Bryce Mitchell's research. As you were saying there, just the amount of people online now and the difference of opinion. We have two examples of that here.

We had Jan Bohovic, who I know is a real history buff and has spoke to Ariel about this before in the past, given where he is in poland and i'll read you these tweets very quickly he put up a thread of four messages directed at bryce mitchell hi bryce mitchell since you are so good at research i invite you to take a little educational tour we'll start in wassau which was nearly razed to the ground in 1945 you will see many memorial plaques commemorating the public execution of civilians we'll take a walking tour of the ex-ghetto area by the way we'll go to the palmary sorry go to

palmary where the nazis executed 1700 people including olympic champion janus kuzininski we'll then go to auschwitz where 1 million people were murdered you can reflect on each prisoner separately. I will also share a personal story because Wachla, my father's brother, was in the camp. Jan Bednarek, in turn, is my grandmother's brother who died in Buschenwald camp. My grandfather was held in a German prisoner of war camp. I invite you to Poland to see all this with your own eyes. We'll see if you'll still consider you-know a good guy um very strong from jan there which was expected but we also had a tweet now deleted um i believe which is his current trend from conor mcgregor i believe we have that

as well jordan don't we and it's quite a long one um but basically he is saying a prayer for his God fearing brother uh Bryce Mitchell and very very interesting take that of course is now deleted and we did see McGregor and Bryce have some kind of uh engagement there at the Trump inauguration where they were joined in prayer for a moment or two. Very, very interesting stuff, as I said, and quite a situation the UFC have on their hands. What I wanted to say, like, in terms of Dana White kind of laying out, as you said, like, you know, this, turning this moment into a spectacle to some degree, Ben, where he's like, you know, you can tune in and watch Bryce Mitchell fight. Like I know Chuck, you've suggested endless Evloev as a, the answer to this question. Yes. But like, is that what they're going to do? Like, I know, like, it seems like a joke the way he said it kind of throw away,

but I wouldn't be surprised if they do have a booking situation here with mitchell and it's not a great matchup and there are people like wow dana look this is the way the ufc deal with their stuff this is this is how you should really deal with a problem get out into that you know uh forecourt and slug it out like men when you have a difference of opinion um are you expecting this to be followed through on by dana and the brass joke is this what they're going to do i mean traditionally if they've got it seems like more more in the case of if there's a guy who uh they want to kind of cripple on his way out um with his standing his status right as a free agent or something like that or if they just know a guy like cranky edgar who's been a legend they they want to kill him off in the right way so they can kind of pass the baton on to somebody

else or give them that juice you don't usually see like a punitive um aspect of this but i would if anything if if there was anything that came of that dan and things he's very peeved that he has to even be up there addressing this kind of stuff you know like that he's got these idiots on roster that he has to, you know, personally go address because they keep causing problems. And in that sense, you know, just seeing Dana in that mood, yes, I think that they will give him a hard matchup. I think that'll be the way it goes. What'll be very interesting to me is by the time, you know how this works, you know, we can come on here the next day and talk about this and think that we're operating within basically a majority of common sense out there but there's always a strange backlash to this and you're like will people support bryce mitchell how will this look you know by the time it comes around like will he will he have fallen so far out or will it be a

weird thing where you know where he's kind of like held up now as a uh a poster child for a certain kind of thing and i'm like that's going to be very interesting to see play out and then how does the ufc deal with that if that's the case is there any sport like a sport league in america like a mainstream one like i mean dana's up there talking about i'm not competing with the gfl this i think it's from the same press conference the slap press conference he's saying i'm not competing with the gfl i compete with the the nfl the nba soccer uh when a big movie comes out on saturday night that's who i'm competing with i feel like in every single one of those industries if someone said something like this it would be game over for them so i mean at what point do you start behaving i mean look at gina carano right

like just kind of going over and all the fallout from what happened with her um just being bringing her politics into view and how what happened to her in hollywood essentially i mean it's just it's been handled so differently over the years um to what's happening right now that it's almost unprecedented you know i just think that that type of it like intolerance has never been as tolerated as it is right now you know what i mean it's just it's a strange time and i think that's what catches all of us off guard it's like it's very surreal to see this stuff and to read about it and to contemplate it and like in ben's case to sit down immediately and try to write about it it's like those these things are like it it's happening at a rate that you can't really keep up with and that's that's alarming to me yeah that i mean this is a conversation that uh

my good friend chad dundas and i have on a podcast every once in a while and are basically our rule is that if you want to like a fighter try to learn as little as possible about that that's where social media screws us all up used to be able to go and dig into their lives yeah and so that is like sort of like is it easier to like jack dempsey because he didn't have a podcast right you know and even he you don't have to look too hard to find some stuff you know where jack dempsey is talking about. Imagine how insufferable Muhammad Ali might have been with a Twitter account. Come on. I do think that there's probably something to that is that it's easier to hear every thought that they have.

In fact, sometimes harder to avoid every thought that they have. Because you would think, especially for people who they like watching Bryce Mitchell fight, they think he's an interesting guy or whatever. There's no reason for him to be talking about Hitler at all. There's not a single reason why Bryce Mitchell needs to A, research Hitler and come up with his own alternative theories or then go out there and share those proactively with people and it does feel in a way like i don't want to say that we're all sharing sharing in the responsibility here but there is a weird part of you that goes like okay didn't we all sort of chuckle and shake our heads when he was like the earth is flat you know and we did you know and then he will come out and be like gravity isn't real and we just go oh oh, Bryce, you're incorrigible.

And then the next thing you know is the Holocaust ain't real. And Hitler was a good guy. And he said part of his quote there was he was like, he got carried away, basically, is what his argument is on Hitler. But all he wanted to do was fight for his country. He said he wanted a pure country. He wanted drive out the quote greedy well yeah that's what he wanted turning everybody gay and you're just like what are you talking about there's not a single reason why we need to hear this from bryce mitchell and that that part is completely wild to me and it's wild how not that surprising it is it's it feels like he sort of baby stepped up to that it's not like it came completely out of nowhere where you could

have been like i can't imagine bryce mitchell would have these views like if i told you somebody in the ufc had these views and i gave you five guesses i think you'd get there yeah you know that's right and it's the the ufc's decision like not to respond to it like dana white he mentioned in it when when he was making the free speech argument he's like it's like sean strickland and it is kind of like sean strickland and that like sean strickland found a following in part by some of the stuff that he was willing to say. And it was just like wildly misogynistic, homophobic stuff. And there was a lot of people in the UFC's audience that agreed with them.

And then a lot of people who were like, just from him saying that stuff, you saw people making shirts that were like Sean Strickland for president. And it's based on, he hates the same people I hate. He, he, he, he has some of these same views that I have, which is, that's a wild thing to base sort of like a political belief or just sort of cultural identity on to me. But that does seem to be where we are just generally broadly in the culture and the UFC's hands-off approach to it. I think like maybe they're hoping Dana White comes out strongly enough, suggests that he called up Bryce and yelled at him, at least.

At least we're doing something that shows people, hey, cool it. Don't make me have to come out here at a press conference and talk about you. And they're hoping that'll be enough. You know, we don't need a suspension, we don't need to fire the guy, anything like that.

I don't know if it will be. I think that if you ask what's going to happen next with Bryce Mitchell, probably it'll be around six months until he fights again. He just fought. By then, who knows what other UFC fighters will have said what. Or come to his defense. Yes. And and also man just just to add on this that's like just the sort of you know just the kind of legacy of people in podcasts and you know you got joe like joe rogan is associated to our sport but joe rogan likes to you know talk about the what's fact and what is not um loves to entertain these ideas this probably

comes from his original stuff with eddie bravo you know what i mean like these guys there's been a lot of this in our industry for a long time this just kind of uh disputing fact and history as it's recorded and being in on some kind of truth and i gotta say i live it's a it's i've known about like kind of the backlash of this kind of thing or like the the the people who think they've been duped or that we're being duped at all times because i live in connecticut not far from where sandy hook took place um not far at all people around affected you know because it's a small area here like there's a lot of people affected i can still like to this day i remember ronda rousey making a um casual comment about like

it being a hoax you know based on basically alex jones you know like the whole thing just going through these processes this stuff has been kind of brewing for a long time this kind of like i we don't you know don't lie to me i know the truth and it's crazy when you actually do know the truth so like when i see something like the jan blowvich thing i'm like it's it's it's this rare moment of sanity and voice in a situation where you're like my god i'm being drowned out right now by people who are just they're living in a in a different world than i am you know they're just i don't know what these people are doing like that on twitter recently it was just coming in about well do your own research you'll come to the same conclusion that bryce did

this i was told this a hundred times and i'm'm like, dude, I'm history buff too. I know a lot about what happened in this situation. Obviously, you have people that you know and grandparents, their generation, and all that stuff who fought. It's a crazy thing for somebody to tell you that you don't know what the facts are, and that's kind of where we're at. Right now, that kind of obfusc're at now right now like that's that kind of obfuscation effect i know it's a broader topic but that's really where we're at we're at

that kind of crux of like oh we could just argue you could see somebody get slapped in the face like no you didn't you know people tell you didn't see that it's just uh it's very different right like i feel like that's why it's kind of going in the direction it's going it's just such a confusing time man really really is um yeah absolutely and let's go from um we'll go from anti-semitism now we're going to move on to islamophobia and some racism now that can we see uh conor mcgregor's tweets that have now been deleted jordan if you please um as we can see here we have some racial slurs blurred out here. Pretty damning tweet towards Habib Nurmagomedov, his deceased father, the location of Dagestan in Russia. Very, very bad stuff. Quite on brand for Conor McGregor, who I thought would be reeling from his earlier stuff this week, questioning the Irishness of Paul Hughes which has believe it

or not and I know I've said it couldn't get any lower but brought him to a new low once again in terms of Irish perception this is actually funny because this is what we were talking about to some degree Ben like if you punish Bryce you then feel a lot of people would come out, well, punish him as in remove him from the company. If you suspend him, if you do something, if this comes out the morning after, people would be like, well, Dana, what are you going to do about this? Like, is this in essence what the UFC are afraid of? Yeah, I think that just other instances where the UFC has tried to draw a line and then had that line thrown back in their face as like a proof of hypocritical behavior when it suited them. I think probably Dana White regrets ever saying that thing about how putting your hands on a woman is one thing you never come back from, right? Because it's been thrown back at him first when the UFC went all in on Greg on greg hardy uh then when dana white was caught

on tape hitting his wife and so i think that he went from that to saying like we don't want to say this is a thing you can't say and still be employed with the ufc because what if a huge star says it and we have to fire that guy and then we're basically giving him to a competitor we don't want to be put in that situation so we don't want to draw any lines whatsoever and the the connor think first of all this tweet was this before or after he expressed a desire for peace and freedom for all humanity and no moments among people okay moments moments later because it's directly in opposition to the sentiments he expressed. What, are you trying to call him a hypocrite? What the hell? It's strange, but okay. I need you, I think, Pete, to explain to me what happened with the Paul Hughes thing.

Because I wasn't even sure what we're doing there. I saw his comment where he was saying, take the flag off. And I was confused as to what was even happening there well what that what mcgregor is suggesting there is that anyone who lives in the six counties of ireland that are occupied by the by great britain they cannot consider themselves irish and that is one of the most disgusting things you could say to someone who up there in particular who have who have gone through atrocity after atrocity and who had to to fight for that identity you know to like you know they are in many ways more Irish than me because of how hard they had to fight

to get that recognition and particularly the people of Derry are famed around Ireland you grow up hearing about the stories of the Battle of Bogside. You grow up hearing stories about Bloody Sunday in 1972, the anniversary of which was yesterday. And he made those comments about Paul the day before that. To say something like that, it's actually unfathomable how any Irish person could hold an opinion like that. And after he said that, he really, you know, I've said before, like, you know, when he lost the civil rape case to Nikita Hand, like that was definitely a watershed moment for how the

country feels about him. They could publicly could have announced whatever disdain they had for him this seemed to be a different a different um how do i say a different portion of the irish population uh came out and forced to be like this is this is too far you've crossed a new line now um this is a man who we constantly see being put forward as uh not by Irish people I'll have, you know, but by a lot of people as a future president of Ireland. Like, and you don't recognize the people in those six counties and the struggle that they went through to simply call themselves Irish, to have that identity,

to carry a tricolour as proudly as Paul Hughes does. To say that kid or anyone in that situation is an Irish is one of the worst things you can say to an Irish person. Like, I mean, I can't underline that enough. It's like you are attacking their whole identity up there and remarkable people, really. I have seen, I've never seen such a vocal reaction to what he said.

And I thought this would be a moment where whoever's in charge of him, even if he has friends, like if, if, if you friends see you acting like that and see people turning on me in such a way, they should be there to be like, yo, what, what's going on here, man? Like we, we need to talk about this. There's, you know, you need some help with this situation and i do think he needs help i think he needs a lot of help based on what i've been seeing and how erratic he is um so to see this today i'm just like like what what is going on he is he is consistently unhinged at this point and i don't know i feel like part of that too is just like just based on the most petty of

all things which was here overhearing paul hughes say to the to the dagan standing corner corner basically like i'm not the other guy you know literally i think it's just that's what spawns the whole response right like that kicks in this whole thing is just that uh he's like i want to kind of dissociate with that guy please don't't look at me like him. Look, this is something that Irish people, like, and I often think about, like, Conor is the most famous person from Ireland. And the fear is that people are equivocating the Irish identity to what he is putting

out there publicly. And what he said about Dagestan there, we weren't going to read it out because it's utter drivel as usual. I think what Paul is communicating, and i haven't got to talk to paul um just a few texts back and forth after the fight but i haven't got to talk to him specifically about that but my understanding was that paul is saying to him we don't think dagestan people are like that we don't we none of us in ire Ireland believe that and if you

wrote if you as if you read any of the articles I wrote in the lead up to that fight it was specifically about that like we need to move the page on from this guy because first of all every Irish fighter if they are if they are emerging from McGregor's shadow constantly Irish people won't give them a chance. They'll be like, we don't want to have anything to do with that guy. And if Paul Hughes is in some way attached to that guy, we don't want to get behind him.

So what actually happened there with this fallout between Conor and Paul, Paul has been put on a pedestal because he reacted to it in such a classy way as well. There was no name calling from him a man 10 years connor's junior no name calling just i cannot believe you said that where is your head at to be saying things like that and what he said on ariel was was brilliant in a way where it's like this is what he does now this is just what he does he tweets madness that's pretty much all he does as anymore why would i be offended by it but he's done for a while now right i mean for some time it's been

his sort of game plan is whoever is fighting that weekend and for a while it used to be kind of innocuous it would be somebody would win a fight at welterweight and he would tweet right afterwards like good showing maybe me and this guy link up in the future and we we have ourselves a battle right same playbook and it was just a way to sort of like get in the headlines based on whoever is the last thing that we saw and it's kind of the same thing except way uglier and more negative now and i'm glad you brought up pz some of the stuff that you wrote because you you had a good column about how you gotta stop doing this with all irish fighters where you know pfl are definitely doing it because it's a way to sort of hype the fight where they say hey remember this big fight that happened between an irish fighter

and a fighter from dagestan we're doing it again brother like we're we're finding a way to kind of get that shine to rub off on our fight by saying it's ireland versus dagestan too and you were saying hey paul hughes has enough going for him as a fighter he performed well enough in this fight certainly that he deserves to be evaluated on his own merits as his own guy and not as like here's a guy picking up that torch and trying to get one back that Conor McGregor lost. Like it's a completely different situation. And so, and it made sense for him to try to like tell those guys like, Hey, I understand you guys had this beef, a very, very emotionally charged beef for this guy.

I'm not part of that. And that's a, that's a totally fair thing to say. And for Conor McGregor to react that way about it kind of tells you that that is where he's at now, where it's just like he's going to try to get in on whatever is in the news, on whatever's happening, get himself in some headlines, and mean, what do you guys, like, how do you, what do you think McGregor is going to give the, the, the fight community from here on out? Outside of like BKFC, you had a massive event in, in Philadelphia, more asses and seats than they ever had. I'd say more commentary online about anything they've ever had before. Like, like what, what is his association to mma giving mma at this point shook he seems like he's a uh you know how there's like a an i used to always call it like a hysteria that happens on fight night he seems like he's a a maestro when it comes to fight night hysteria like he

can just show up place goes electric they forget everything oh look at there he is my god look at him you know i was hearing theo vaughn kind of talking about his suit being so tight like all that stuff he kind of has this magnetism that i guess just doesn't go away he's just that big of a star but he's also a monday morning shame like it's like it's one of those things like you always think about afterward and you're like oh that guy but it's like so you you kind of have like this duality with him at this point and i don't know what to do with it because honestly like what what it really comes down in the fight game and price fighting is who who's gonna you know who's gonna raise the bar who's gonna be that business who's gonna continue to give that business that's why people are still around him and that's why he can't even damage his own brand enough at this point like he's

he's going to hang around the game I we I was talking to you about the we I bring this up every so often now we did this piece you and I basically for the ringer where we'd said, this is going to be a timeline of, of Conor McGregor's, you know, doings and whatever he's been up to since his last fight with Dustin Poirier. This thing started out, we were going down.

It took us a while to compile all the stuff. And a lot of it was legal stuff that he was dealing with, uh, getting in trouble, you know, hurting the mascot in Miami, all whatever it was it was like those things but we kept adding to it and finally when it looked like he was going

to fight we're like i told the editors over there let's run it i think this is happening dude we weren't even halfway through like since that fight has gone off it's like there's a bit we could have added another 3 000 words to that to that piece it's crazy to me um that we as a you know as he's not been relevant really in the fight game truly in the fight game the way it's been set up for a long time but yet he remains a topic in the fight game given where he's at i don't know what it means man i don't know he's got the two fights in ufc eventually i know he's gonna show up and he's gonna he's gonna have to fight those fights but it. But you can't even predict anymore. You were the one last year, I think, coming into last year.

You were like, I don't think he fights in 2024. And I remember laughing like, dude, he's definitely going to fight in 2024. We're in 2025 and he still hasn't fought and I don't really know when he will. It's almost like launching endless alcohol things is counterintuitive to an athlete's career you know it almost seems it almost seems like a bad idea yeah i don't know if you fight gabbard yeah i i don't know if he'll fight in a real like a ufc fight again like you even hear him talking like oh i'm into this influencer stuff now like the mcgregor of 2016 could you imagine how like how much he would detest this idea

of these YouTube guys getting in and doing a McGregor act? Like I think it's born out of, I think we all agree, this whole thing is born out of Mayweather v. McGregor. I think Jake Paul has admitted it much. Like this is where this concept has come from. I don't know, man.

Like I think, like, I feel like it's nearly like self-sabotage at this point. You know, like when you look at like how outlandish this stuff is, like he can't possibly be putting this stuff out thinking like, oh, this one, this one's going to go well for me. You know what I mean? Like, at what point are we like, you know, is someone going to check, check in on Connor? Like this, this behavior is so erratic. It's, it's actually worrying. And if he wasn't spouting the vitriol he is, I think we get there a bit quicker because I think a lot of people just lie in the outrage of the comments he's making and not think

about like, why, why, like what, what type of state of mind do you have to be in to be doing this kind of stuff? Like, am I, am I reading into it too much, Ben? No, I don't think you are. I was sitting here hoping that maybe we would find some time to talk about actual fights. Oh yeah. The fight night we got coming up.

That's nonsense. You know, whenever there's a rare instance where we got a fight night card that is honestly on paper, on paper pretty good. I don't want you guys trying to take us off the rails. You know what I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. That's for the fans out there.

We will. Do you know what? We will move the conversation on. In our last 10 minutes, let's have a quick chat about. Let's have a reluctant conversation about these fights. Well, I would have loved to just get on and talk about them for an hour, but here we are again. Yeah. Chuck, you roll about Imavov, and you also roll about these fights. Well, I would have loved to just get on and talk about them for an hour, but here we are again. Yeah.

Chuck, you wrote about Imhovov and you also wrote about Izzy. I don't know if the article is just out yet, but the Imhovov article, you're talking about his Dagestani roots to some extent here. Israel, obviously, in an interesting situation, given that he hasn't fought in a non-title fight in six years. He's in this main event in Saudi Arabia against Imhovovovov tell me what do you think of this french slash dagestani man's chances of undoing the great soilbender he's so like you know so vanilla and so like anti charisma and all that stuff that it's almost like it feels like it just can't have the ceremony we're used to with a with an izzy fight. It almost doesn't feel like it's just creeping up and they're like, oh, shit, Israel-Essania fights. But I think in part that is because, A, it's not a pay-per-view.

It's in Saudi Arabia, all that stuff. But, B, it's because of Nasruddin, I think, just kind of being that guy. I don't think he's ever going to engage in any kind of mental warfare or anything like that. I get the sense from him though it's that weird quiet you know focus that he's he knows what it's about he knows that this is a big fight for him he knows this could catapult him like all that stuff he's just not very dynamic and talking about it but you can see it you know just in his demeanor that that's what it's about and i and that piece it's kind of like it's it's weird that you have a guy who emerges in the fight game,

especially in this day and age, who's from Dagestan, but that's kind of just more of a detail. Like, oh, he moved from there. Where he learned to fight was in France. That seems really weird. So I was kind of trying to point out in that piece, it's kind of crazy that he went there and learned basically fighting, but I still think

there's something in the water man like that comes from dax tan that you see in his fights um and he's got that name right that ends with ov so you're always like it feels like a very threatening fight i don't know what the odds are like for this fight but you know this is this is one of those crazy very quiet fights that could either does away with israel at a sanya in a big way you know or it gets them back but it's just for those kinds of stakes you would think that we'd be talking about it a lot more i'd feel bigger than this right it is like i i appreciated chuck in your article about i'm talking about that that aspect of moving from dagestan to France and it being France where you learned. It would be like if you,

your family moved from England to Cleveland and then in Cleveland, you got really into playing soccer and got really good at it. You'd be like, but you came from the place where they're really into it and they're really good at it.

You know, and it is an interesting fight for both of them because like you said, for Imavov, this is the big one where, hey, you got three wins in a row that's that's not nothing you know you've looked good in those fights but here you're fighting the one where we will know what to make of it if you go out there and you beat israel adesanya you were a capital g guy in that division right then but it's also one where for adesanya it feels feels like, you know, you mentioned how been a long

time since we've seen him in a non-title fights. So this is the one where it feels like we're trying to find out is Israel Adesanya still an important guy in the division? Or are we about to kind of close that chapter on his era of dominance over the middleweight division and it's weird too because it's like when you really think about it and think about here's a guy who knocked out alex perera not that long ago and look at what alex perera went on to do after that clearly he's still a dangerous fighter can still beat a whole lot of people in that division i think after we saw him against ddp and we were surprised a little bit at how that one went now we're in a

situation of going like all right does he still matter is he still one of the top middleweights in the world you put him in this fight night main event against the guy who seems like he's on the come up and it feels like we're going to find out that that feels like the whole purpose of this fight you mentioned that in the i believe in the article you have coming out that you think there's a possibility that you know we could we could this could be the end of israel at assania am i misquoting you here i mean you make that i was making that illusion a little bit but ultimately i doubt that's the case i I was just saying this might be the end of the vitality of the guy that kind of was like a meteor streaking through this. Because the point of the piece, I'm not sure if it's around.

By the time people see this, hopefully it's up on ground. Check it out, regardless. Yeah, check it out. No, but I was talking about it's kind of crazy because when you think about his career, including a full year off, in the seven years that he's fought, this would be his 18th time fighting. And you think about the kind of escalation of where he started, where he ended up. And I think a dozen of those fights, 12 of them, were title fights, five title defense. It's a crazy thing to think about fighting that often, that frequently, basically in-year span if you take the take away the one year he kind of had off but it's it's a crazy accomplishment um and i was saying what do you accomplish and it's kind

of the bar he set as becoming like one of the middleweight if not the middleweight goat like that this is the moment where you're like is that still in play or is it you know is the vitality of what he brought to the table in that division and made so many names? I think he made Robert Whitaker into more of a name because obviously there was a rivalry there. I think it was Alex Pereira was basically telling Ariel, he doesn't know if he'd be in the UFC. He doesn't know if he'd be where he is if it's not for Izzy. It's like the guy has his fingerprints all over it. Yeah.

Everything that's kind of happened. And this could be the end of that. This could be the, the okay this is where izzy kind of slips off the picture you know i thought pierre was right about that i think that that was i was glad that he brought that up when he was talking to ariel because he said like it was my history with that guy in kickboxing that helped him land a ufc contract when he was still pretty experienced inexperienced in mma that got people excited but UFC contract when he was still pretty inexperienced in MMA that got people excited. But it was when Alex Pereira came to the UFC, what did you hear about him? It was that here's a guy who has beaten Israel Adesanya in kickboxing. And like that was the main thing that made us interested in him and made us want to watch him from the beginning.

And so it's like that part of the history absolutely has helped him uh establish who he is in the u.s and and it's true too about uh adesanya and robert whittaker and now seeing their this friendship and training situation blossom i love it it's so great the dudes it's funny when you when we mentioned like well when they meant when for alex perot first came up they're like well this guy beat izzy adesanya and kickbox so people are now going back to glory videos and like checking it out oh man this is crazy you know this guy's coming for him at the time i couldn't help but think of what was the guy's name who cormier supposedly made cormier cry or whatever and like uh in training oh my god cummings cummings yeah yeah it kind of reminded her that it's like okay

let's latch on to something from a from a ancient backstory that um may or may not be true and just kind of sell that that's what i almost believed at first until you really watched alex put out a fight and honestly i never thought he would ascend to where he's at like it's just it's been crazy but sometimes it can be somebody brings that great i think the greatest rivalries in, in combat sports were those guys who pushed the other guy to the brink and had to like, they had to elevate their games to be the greatest they could possibly be.

That's certainly true. I think of these two guys, like I think they brought the best out of each other in the end. Yes. And we will be doing a post for a show on that, on the, on this channel tomorrow will be me, GC and um early one

tomorrow as well and it is a very great like a really really good fight night card as ben pointed out earlier uh sharabulla an mvp in the co-main at middleweight this time that should be an absolute banger i'm a bit worried about mvp i'll be honest because i feel ufc have a certain way they treat these bellator guys and you know he lost to Ian Gary narrowly lost and now he's in this fight with you know a promotional sweetheart to some degree a guy we're all as as as writers and and people who cover the sport we're all really interested in this pirate looking dude right like the UFC rubbing their hands together um so I don't know I'm just like like, will they get rid of this guy?

You know, just to underline the point. They should accommodate each other, though, I would think. We'll see. Like, I think they'll accommodate each other. It should be a fun fight, right? I don't think anybody's going to try to shoot and plant the other guy into the earth. He'll be naturally disgraced. Can you imagine this Dagestani guy is going to be disgraced if he shoots for a takedown?

I mean, where the hell did we get Shara Bulliford? It's absolutely insane. I don't know. So as I said, we'll be on for the post fight show tomorrow and before hang on can we do some pics actually for the main event i know you've talked to imav off some and you've you've done this israel piece joke so i'm very interested in which way you're going on this one i have my suspicions but uh by the way i think jordan posted he's uh is he is minus 160 per espn right like so he is the favorite going into this.

And I'm leaning towards him, man. I watched his interview with Ariel this week, and sometimes you kind of pick up little, I don't know what it is, like a gut feeling based on how they're talking, how they're kind of comporting. And I think that he seems like he's in a good space. It looks like he looked very healthy. He always does, but he looked very healthy.

I think he turns it on, man. I think uh it's a little premature to put him away so i think he i think he gets it done i don't know how he'll do it but i think he'll dig deep to find the way then i agree i think it's hard for me still to go against israel asania and to look and say like okay he's just because he's lost some of the best fighters in the division right now doesn't mean that he's fallen off and he's trash i still think he's israel hasanya he can find it when he needs it and i think he holds off him a lot yeah i'm wishing that makes a hot trick of picks for izzy make sure you're gonna do the old aerial like i'm staying out of it abstaining no i'm not that much of a big deal. No one gives a shit who I pick. It's like, all right, fair enough.

Freckles O'Houlihan over there thinks Izzy's going to win. Anyway, lads, that's all we have for you today. We promise we'll get to the GFL draft one day. I know everyone, someone's sitting there in front of their laptop going, oh, imagine if they went with the GFL draft. That would have been so much fun. And could we do the thing like that the GFL did and just draft people aspirationally

who are not even like, could I just be like Brock Lesnar versus Randy Couture and just see what happens? It has to be that way. Conor McGregor, what do you mean he's in contract? I have Fedor. Like I'll admit it, I had Fedor kind of lined up into one of these fights,

but I guess we'll wait. Yeah, but also the next time, if we do talk about GFL, we'll ask Ben for his take on the gfl rap song he has obviously talked about the ifl rap song and he used to work of course as we know for the ifl so it would be very interesting to do so but that is all we have for you beautiful crackheads today sorry it's been a bit of a heavy one one day we'll have a really fun podcast like i mean the fun i'm gonna have in store for you one day is it's gonna be absolutely insane you won't believe it but anyway thank you

so much enjoy the fights come for the post fight show tomorrow i've been pz carol they've been ben folks and chuck mendenhall thank you to on air jordan thank you to oscar locef we love you goodbye Goodbye.