The Ariel Helwani Show - The Craic: Conor McGregor’s Arsenal pitch intrusion, latest on UFC antitrust lawsuit

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

This week’s episode takes a look at English Premier League giants Arsenal revising its post-match protocol after Conor McGregor found his way onto the pitch for an impromptu kick about with Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka. The great Philip O’Connor returns to discuss why the English football club are taking this so seriously, if the club really thought McGregor could injure Saka and how the former double champion missed an open goal by not challenging Rice on changing his international affiliation from Ireland to England (03:33). John Nash, the north star on all things related to the UFC antitrust lawsuit, gives us the low down on the latest motion in the case that saw former fighters give morbid insights into their post-fighting lives as they urge the judge to settle the suit for $375 million (33:37). 

the crack is back ladies and gentlemen the last time you're gonna have an audio only crack on this feed next Next week, it goes video, baby. It's going to be a very exciting time. You have the PFL card next week. All this good stuff. I mean, the main, the centerpiece of combat this weekend is Better BFV...

That's a bit of a tongue twister. Better BF V Bivel. I saw Ariel, you know, saying that Bivel would saw Ariel You know Saying that Bivel Would win What a I mean a fantastic boxer But

Better BF's my guy That's who I'm going with He's not my underdog of the week Which we Underdog of the week segment Now Two out of three We lost only one

Kevin Jussie Former Guess on the crack You know I still think he has big things in his future but we're back baby we're back juliana penna has got us to this uh 66 batting average and we're going to go again at the back end of the show we'll do it all again um you've also got of course the ufc event this weekend which is from the acclaimed and esteemed UFC Apex, it's Brandon Royval

v. Tatsuro Taira, love that guy, he ain't gonna be an underdog, maybe he is actually against Royval, who knows, we'll have to look later on, but yeah, crazy crazy week of fights very excited for next week with everything going down

I'll speak about this towards the end too, but our fancy football team has gone to the dogs. To the dogs. We're 3-2 now. Chris Olave absolutely hung us out the drawer at the weekend. Absolute disaster.

But speaking of this week on the show, there's been a bizarre story. As MMA tends to pop up in the mainstream in the most bizarre ways, we have Conor McGregor popping up, last week this was, on the Arsenal pitch following their 2-0 win

over PSG. This has all just come out like two days ago, but the match in fact happened last week. Arsenal open arms, they're changing protocols. This can't happen again. They don't want to be, you know, they don't want to be associated with the, they don't want to be associated with the McGregor brand, according to the Times. So I got the great Philip O'Connor, World Cup veteran,

Olympic coverage veteran, like one of the most experienced journalists in the world, on to explain how everything went on there. There was a particularly interesting part to this for Irish people, which was the Declan Royce interaction. And we'll talk all about that. Declan Royce, not a very well-liked man in Ireland. After that, we're going to talk to the great John Nash, who has been the North Star for media fans, everyone who's covering this class action suit.

Just last week, a motion was set forward by the plaintiffs, which looked to implore the judge to settle for this new fee of $375 million. We had testimonies from the likes of Vandalay Silva, Shane Caron. Very depressing stuff, to say the least. So John is going to take us through all of that.

And, you know, I really need to understand this more. So John Nash is my guy. He's HeyNotTheFace on Twitter. You can follow HeyNotTheFace on Substack. That's where I'm getting a lot of my information. He's absolutely fantastic. But before we talk to John, let's get over to Phil in Stockholm and talk about this Arsenal-McGregor situation. It's absolutely bananas. It is a pleasure for me to welcome back the great Philip O'Connor. I know you all love him.

You have heard him on this podcast many times. But the reason I have him back here today is that MMA has found its way into the mainstream press this week and it's usually in very bizarre fashion when this kind of thing happens and sticking to that vein Conor McGregor shows up after the Arsenal PSG game last week I'll remind you this is this is not this week this is last week this happens, he makes a few videos of him playing football in the stadium, has a kind of a weird sparring situation with Bakayo Saka, who, you know, they're trying to protect through injury and stuff like that. Saka has to warn him, be careful as he's doing it. He has an interaction with Declan Royce, former Ireland international,

now English international, who is a very controversial topic in Ireland, which we will get to later. But Phil, I was thinking about all the people I could talk to about this, and there was one name on the top of that list, and it was yours, sir. Tell me, first of all, how does it feel to be back on the crack, sir? Peter, you have no idea what an honour it is for me to be on this show this early in the uncrowned era. It's unbelievable, Peter. I've just come back from the Olympics

and I feel like I've won a gold medal in terms of MMA and combat sports coverage here. And I want to take this opportunity to wish you and Ariel and Chuck and Shaheen and everybody else who's involved with this the very, very best of luck. I think it's absolutely brilliant what you're doing.

I think Mr. Helwani deserves huge credit for bringing all the boys with him and I can't wait to see what happens. In a near open, the media is on its knees trying to work out what to do and you guys are just going in there

going, we're not here to take part. We're here to take over as a little known Irish fighter once said. I can't even remember the chap's name at this point in time, but it's brilliant and I wish you every success with it. Yeah, it's a weird old world MMAma isn't it it's absolutely bizarre you know i saw this popping up on my

timeline and i was like jesus like where where can't this guy you know where can't he go i see like the way he posted it the first i think i think one of the frames was just a picture of two cans of Forge Stout sitting on the pitch there. So in my head, I was like, oh, this is some kind of advertising thing they've agreed to with Arsenal. How else would he be on the pitch? How else would he be on the pitch with two star players of Arsenal, one of the biggest teams in the Premier League? This had to be, you know a paid for situation but then these reports come out this week a week later from the times and they're saying like arsenal are investigating how mcgregor found his way onto the pitch um and they don't want to

repeat the event uh direct quote the club are now looking at arrangements for corporate guests to mingle with players post-match after the worrying incident. Finally, furthermore, Arsenal are looking to distance themselves from the McGregor brand, given the controversies that have surrounded the star for many years. I mean, this has been ramped up to 100 very quickly for what seemed initially, I guess, like an innocent jostling with him and Saka. Let me take you behind the scenes of a Champions League game, Peter, right? The Champions League is basically controlled by these access devices, right? You know, the accreditation that you will get at the MGM or the T-Mobile and that kind of thing, right?

There's loads of different kinds of them, right? They all have different colours, they have different letters, they all have different meanings, and they all give you different levels of access to different parts of the stadium, right? I've been in a position when i've worked for at some of the major tournaments where i've been allowed to go absolutely everywhere but the players tunnel that's the only place that i wasn't allowed to go i could go into the dressing room if i wanted but not the players tunnel bizarrely enough right for the vip like conor mcgregor

basically what you will get is the vip entrance wherever they're going to keep you your seat and that's it, right? You're not allowed to go on the pitch. And usually it doesn't matter who you are. And I've seen Samuel Atul from the Cameroon, great Barcelona forward, great Chelsea forward, fantastic footballer, scored an immense amount of goals in the Champions League and in international football.

And he has been told, I'm sorry, I know exactly who you are, but you don't have the right access device, so you're not getting in. Now, what Samuel maybe doesn't have, that Conor McGregor does have, is a personality bigger than the Emirates Stadium itself, right? You're also talking about somebody, and you know this from the first time you met him back in his amateur days when he was only beginning to train, that he is somebody who takes over a room. You feel his presence in the room before you even see him. And he's one of very few human beings on the planet who can do that and did it even before he was famous that has an effect it's one of those things where he goes down to the little gate that you let you onto the pitch

i go no mate i'm sorry i can't let you in there ah go on i'll go on you know it's only for a couple just gonna take a couple of pictures man all right and then i'll take one with you on the way back and that's it i'm not saying that's what what's happened but I'm saying that's what what happened right I Conor had effectively with whatever device he had he had no right to be there but he's Conor McGregor and he pulled a little bit of a more sort of fancy version of do you not know who I am and he got on there now the other aspect of this is the Champions League and the Emirates Stadium and the Premier League are all what they call clean brand zones right if you haven't paid to be there you are not allowed to be there right i don't know who the beer sponsor is for the champions league this year but i do know that they paid tens perhaps hundreds perhaps even billions

of euros or dollars to be there and they do not want some other beer brand being there i think it was in the world cup in south africa in 2010 that a d other beer brand being there i think it was in the world cup in south africa in 2010 that a dutch beer brand tried to do what they call guerrilla marketing by sending some very attractive young ladies to one of the holland games in t-shirts featuring their brand and they were literally kicked out after 15 minutes right this is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most important things for these organizations because if any brand can associate itself with these big tournaments with these big clubs with these big players like bukeo saka i mean if that's the case if we're allowed to do that i'm going to their next champions league

um game there i'm gonna have a t-shirt that says the crack with pt carroll on the front and uncrowned on the back and i'm going out there and i'll tell you something for nothing i'll know who declan rice is that's absolutely brilliant and this is why of course uh yeah how fill on everyone who listens to the show or listen to the ringer show will know about your vast experience covering sports as you mentioned the olympics world cups uh champions leagues you name it and this is this is very much part of your dna at this stage um You mentioned this clean brand thing, just so I can ask, like, does that mean that, like, they can only have one designated alcohol sponsor, like, and it's, am I right in saying that it's usually a zero-zero element to it now? Like, is that in

there or is that just rugby? Because I know that's the way rugby is. I can't say for certain, Peter, but I do think that that's very much the trend at the moment, right? Because in particular, in the Nordic countries, for instance, you can't advertise strong beer anywhere in sweden for a if you say that for example so you know when you've been over here covering alexander gustafsson's fights with me and you would see the back of a bus or whatever you might see you know a beer brand on it but it would always be zero zero you can never advertise anything that's what's classed as strong beer here right they make their own deals so you might have a primary sponsor you might have a secondary or tertiary sponsor but most of the time what is worth the most money to uefa to fifa to the ufc

themselves is exclusivity it's that thing of you are the beer brand you are the partner and to be honest it's absolutely ridiculous now the kind of things you know oh you're our printing partner you know you're our our transport partner you're our whatever and you know i've seen stuff to do with manchester city and indeed look the ufc has absolutely everything uh we've had manscaped has been the official partner of pretty much every mma podcast since the business was founded at some point you know so these are that's what the value is for them in it but that and that really brings with it its own sort of set of problems because when somebody who has a controversial background like conor comes along,

then all of a sudden, all these big brands go, oh, what the hell is going on here, right? It's a very controlled environment. And I'll give you one last example of how far this goes, right? There's a team played in the Europa League last week

in soccer called Ellsborg. They're from a town called Borås, which is down in Western Sweden, just north of Gothenburg there. And they were chosen by UEFA to have under-21 games there during an under-21 championship a few years ago, right? But built into their new stadium is a hamburger restaurant, which you know and love, called

Max. Oh my God. What a triumph. The ultimate, like the In-N-Out burger, the McDonald's smashed them all together and they couldn't light a candle to Sweden's Max, right? God bless Max. But the UEFA under-21 European Championship was sponsored by McDonald's. And they said, either you close that restaurant and you cover up all your livery,

all your signs, everything that you have there for the duration of the tournament, or you don't get any games. So the stadium owners, they looked into the fine print. All of these things are governed by contracts. And all of these organizations, like the UFC and FIFA and UEFA, they're all what we call rules-based organisations. They looked at it and they went,

we can't tell that guy to do it. And UEFA went, thanks very much, we're going to move to this stadium in this town about 50 miles down the road. Oh my God. So that's the level you're dealing with because if you don't do that

for whoever the sponsor is, the beer sponsor is for the UEFA Champions League when Arsenal are playing, where anybody else is is playing well then your word means absolutely nothing why on earth would i pay a million ten million a hundred million for that sponsorship deal when conor mcgregor can walk in with two cans of beer and do his guerrilla marketing there for free it wouldn't make any sense and that's why they're so protective and that is why i don't think they're too worried about bukeo saka i don't think that

you know connor was ever going to kick the shit out of him he probably should have kicked the shit out of declan rice but i'm sure we'll get to that but but that wasn't the problem for them the problem wasn't you know the player's physical health the problem was the rights that connor was effectively infringing upon by being there with his beer brand is this a successful example of guerrilla marketing then on mcgregor's you know what i think it's all is one of the most successful examples of a brand of guerrilla marketing i think connor has been very very clever i mean let's not forget for all his faults and for all the things that we could talk about he is like he's a natural hustler he's a naturally good businessman you know and he

spots an opportunity was it anthony joshua he was basically pouring the can down his gullet kind of thing you know and he spots that opportunity and i remember Anthony Joshua? He was basically pouring the can down his gullet kind of thing, you know, and he spots that opportunity. And I remember many years ago, being down in the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark and Peter, it was strictly educational. As you know, I don't trick myself, right? But I do like to know about these things. And at the time they had just stopped sponsoring Liverpool football club, one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, right? Because they used to have Carlsberg on the front of the Liverpool shirt. And I asked, how do you work out the value of that? And they said, it's like this.

We work out every single second of exposure that we get on every TV set around the world. And we put a value on that. The moment the club asks for more money than that, we're gone and we're gone somewhere else, right? So there is a tangible value to your brand being mentioned, being talked. talked even on this podcast i guarantee that if your millions of listeners are listening here at least five lads are gonna go jesus i must give that four stout ago just because you and me are talking about it and of course we're talking about it because of what connor did at the emirates

stadium yeah um one thing i wanted to kind of isolate here because obviously we're gonna have a lot of American listeners here who will be very confused. Like I think some people will be confused by the Arsenal are looking to distance themselves from the McGregor brand. I feel like that's, excuse me,

I feel like that's a very different situation in the UK and Ireland. Like the perception of Conor than it is in America. Like we've seen him trot it out at the Dallas Cowboys games. Like he was the king of Texas. You know what I mean?

Like, you know, he is given the royal treatment everywhere he goes. The VMAs, like he's at all these kind of A-lister events and he's treated like an A-lister everywhere he goes. Why do you think that is? Is it purely based on him being like an alcohol baron now and him doing this on the pitch that has violated the thing? Or do you think it's is it purely based on him being like an alcohol baron now and him doing this on the pitch that has violated the thing or do you think it's the broader issues the outside the cage issues that we've been talking about probably now for the last seven eight years

you know it's very interesting peter because you know i hate to show up unprepared when i'm talking to you and when you texted me saying look at you want to do this podcast with me i started to think in depth about connor's career right and if you think back to when you first met connor at the very first meetings with him around sbg I remember you telling me a story of seeing him at an amateur show that he wasn't even fighting at, and he was upstairs shadowboxing and talking about how he was going to be the next big thing, right? That Conor McGregor was a very simple young man. He was somebody who trained alongside everybody else in the gym. He had a burning ambition and a huge personality and that kind of thing. But his life was very simple. It was eat, train, sleep, repeat, right? The Conor McGregor of today

is a much more complex individual. We've had all sorts of allegations of things he's done outside the octagon. We've seen some of the things he's done inside the octagon. We followed every single second of his career, every fight. We've seen him make those videos and that kind of thing, right? But in that complexity, not all of it travels, right? So where America's view of Conor McGregor is, is probably still around 2016, 2017. He fought Khabib Nurmagomedov almost exactly six years ago, October 6, 2018. That is where the American perception of Conor still is. Because these other stories about Conor, maybe his legal suit that's been taken by our friend Artem Lobov against Conor over the whiskey brand and that kind of thing, that just doesn't resonate.

So the public perception of him is still pretty much the public perception of O.J. Simpson was until, you know, he murdered his wife and Ronald Goldman. You know, he was still this guy who had made a sport, who had taken it out of the back streets and car parks and, you know, Jorge Masvidal's garden and put this into the mainstream on Fox TV. And that's who they think that he is. So I think that there's hugely differing perceptions of Conor, and especially in Ireland. Nowhere is it more sort of, you know, nuanced, I would say, than in Ireland. Polarised, right? Yeah, exactly. We have heard all the stories, right?

And it's not just stories that have appeared in the media. We've spoken to police officers and we've spoken to friends of his and we've spoken to enemies of his and training partners and this kind of thing. So we have much more information to base our perception of him on. So when somebody like that then, and of course, Irish media and English media,

because we're an English speaking nation by no fault of our own, we consume their media, they consume ours. Stories about Conor McGregor, they travel across the pond into their tabloid newspapers. They get onto the radio talk shows, they consume ours. Stories about Conor McGregor, they travel across the pond into their tabloid newspapers. They get onto the radio talk shows. They get onto Sky Sports News

and various other news channels, Talk Sport, that kind of thing. So they talk about those aspects of it as well. They do not talk about that on Colin Cowherd's show in the USA, right? They don't talk about it on Howard Stern. That kind of thing is not of any interest to them because it's not the kind of controversy. They like controversy, but it's not the kind of controversy that people want to listen to when they're sitting in endless traffic jams in Los Angeles, for instance. Right. So that's where these differing perceptions come in.

But there's one thing that also struck me, Peter, what we saw and that I think was a Tuesday or Wednesday Champions League night. To me, it was an aspect of guerrilla marketing. But what it also was to me was the monumental mismanagement of Conor McGregor's career by the UFC and by his agent and to a certain extent by himself. What on earth is a healthy professional fighter doing with two cans of beer at a Champions League game and no fight booked? Who on earth allowed this to happen with one of the richest properties in sport, right? I don't care what you think of Conor McGregor. If he announces a fight in the morning,

you're going to watch it, either because you love him and you want to see him win or because you hate him and you want to see him lose. Why is he out there marketing these things and not in the gym or not on the phone to his agent or not on the phone to the matchmakers of the UFC? And that, to me, is the biggest problem with what he did, aside from Arsenal and his beer brand and everything else.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think there is a lot of frustration in the McGregor camp, especially due to the lack of kind of signing on the dotted line. That was all very well put. Sorry, you tickled me there in the middle when you said, we both speak English to no fault to no fault for Don Peter

that's very good oh my god well look this is the perfect time to bring it up we've been tickling the audience's balls here for a little while

about this Declan Royce situation so for those of you who don't know Declan Royce is an incredibly incredibly controversial figure in Ireland he played three games for the Irish football team and then he went and he played for the English football team. Ireland and England, we won't get

into it now, very controversial neighbours, you know, to say the least. Because of this, because of him wearing the Irish shirt, kissing the badge, talking about how much it meant for him to play for Ireland, and then going over there, we see him as a complete traitor. He might be the most despised football player who ever put on a green shirt, and that's surpassing Roy Keane, who in fact walked out on his country in 2002 before the World Cup. That's quite an achievement. I love Keane, by the way.

Anyway, but this is kind of shithousing from Saka, I feel, because they're all kind of standing around. Conor McGregor is telling them about how he played for the Premier League at Lord Celtic with Joey O'Brien or whatever. And suddenly, Saka starts saying, oh, Declan actually played for Ireland as well. And Conor didn't know. It seemed as though he hadn't got a clue he's like oh did you what I wanted to say was in this moment with Declan Royce did he miss the biggest open goal in terms of his PR in Ireland like as we said they have a polarizing relationship with the Irish people did he miss a massive open goal by not saying like here Declan what was that about me why is such a turncoat like

what what could have that done for him over here do you think that was the single greatest moment of redemption in martial arts history and he just let it slide by and it was just you know when he said that like and i think connor's response was oh did you yeah and that's the kind of thing the irish people are saying when we're trying to process that information go how did this happen i think i've heard of this fella hang on a second do i hit him do i kiss him what do i do with this happen? I think I've heard of this fella. Hang on a second. Do I hit him? Do I kiss him? What do I do with this guy? And it was such a sort of a missed opportunity. I mean, if they'd had the ball slightly further down there towards the goal, you know, it was kind of like, I don't know if you remember, the USA 1994 World Cup when Diana Ross had to take a penalty to kick the whole thing off.

And she missed the goal completely, you know. And it took us 30 years. And now Conor has topped that. Because he could have done something for us all that would have just put that chap back in his place once and for all. And let me say, Peter, when Declan Rice played against Ireland, as he did recently for England, they booed us every touch and that kind of thing.

But I said at the time, and I'll say it again here, identity, especially for us as Irish people, is very complicated, right? Because my own children would say to me, I've lived in Sweden for 25 years now. My own children are born here. Their mother has only ever spoken Swedish to them until they were 12 or 13 I've only ever spoken English to them they have grown up knowing that we speak English against you know but through no fault of her own they have grown up with a great sense of Irishness and a great access to Irish culture and literature and music and they've also had the same in terms

you know watching the Swedish ice hockey team and that kind of thing right I actually understand how Declan Rice can be so split because when my children say to me oh I'm half Swedish and half Irish I always correct them I say no you're both Swedish and Irish there is no separating us down the middle here right there is a time that comes when you think okay well I'm one or the other you know and people would often say to me as has happened in the past uh the women's football teams from Sweden and Ireland met in qualifying for the recent World Cup and people said to me who do you want to win I said it doesn't matter I'm a winner either way no matter what happens even if it's a draw I can walk out of there happy you know so I can understand why Declan did it was it absolutely unforgivable given some of his public pronouncements

yes but I do understand how that came to be. But again, it's very interesting that you mentioned that, actually, because of that fact of, like, what does Conor McGregor need to do, right? And I do think that, you know, when we look at boxing and when we look at mixed martial arts and when we look at pro wrestling, which Uncrowned is also going to be covering, it's going to be a fascinating dynamic there altogether, these are stories of redemption, right? Combat sports in particular are the hero's journey

writ large and put in a small square or a small octagon with the world watching right and it's how you choose to take or reject that redemption that defines you right i have always wondered with and as i mentioned the complexity of connor's character and the person that he is now i think that deep down and you could even see that when he's kicking the ball with the lads and that he's talking about playing for lord celtic and joey o'brien who himself is a great player a bit of a journeyman a fantastic career in the english game you know but i've often thought that connor more than anything else even before he was famous back in the time when you discovered him on behalf of the mma world right i think that connor like all of us wants to be loved and i think that he finds it very, very difficult at the moment because he's not in the cage,

not because he doesn't want to be, as you mentioned, right? There's an awful lot of dissent in the camp. They want him back in there. He wants to be back in there and fighting. But his life hasn't been his own for a long time now, right? It's not, you know, Conor wants to fight again, let's get him in there. It's Conor wants to fight again,

but we have a massive fucking TV deal here that we want to do. And having him on the first card of that new tv deal may be the character that gets us an extra 50 100 500 million dollars in this deal he does not own his own life if you go back to it was a 2017 when the notorious movie that was made by graham and a few other friends of ours was first released and i remember traveling to dublin and i don't know if i told you this story before i don't think i told it publicly before but i went over to Dublin to interview Conor for the Reuters news agency because partially I thought the story was fascinating I thought the film was very good and I thought that you know a big audience really needed to see this and I was the first person to

interview him so he went and he did the Late Late Show which is the biggest talk show on Irish TV and actually the longest running talk show in the world bar none forget Ed Sullivan and David Letterman and all those guys we had it first and we're not letting it go right um but he so he went there and he pre-recorded that and then he came to meet me in a hotel it's the only time as far as I know in Conor's life that he was ever early for an interview the interview was six o'clock and I got a call at 10 to 6 going he's here now and of course I was like a minute around the corner and I went in and got stuck in right that was the time he apologized for using an anti-gay slur I think it was one of Artem's fights the dance yeah yes yeah so he was caught on saying something on pole and he apologized both on the late late show but he also apologized

and I put that into the story that I wrote but after the interview was very interesting Peter because we had the Reuters news agency I was working for in the day we didn't have any sort of candid shots of Conor we didn't have ashot, a portrait that you could use as a package of pictures and offer that to media outlets around the world, you know. So we're finished with the interview. We never talked about fighting at all. We only talked about that incident with Artem and we talked about money and how he wants to be, you know, a billionaire and be richer than Cristiano Ronaldo or generate more money than him in one particular year. And then I said, OK, Conor, thanks very much indeed, but I just need to get a picture. Right. And he said, yeah yeah come on and he put his like went to put his arm around me I said no no

not a picture with you I just need to take that picture and of course our great friend yogurty Dave Fogarty a great boxer great mixed martial artist and jiu-jitsu player in his own right is Conor's photographer and of course Dave was on his boxing there recently things are going very well and Conor's coached him just to keep the border of the bay. And Dave just went, yeah, yeah, give me your phone. I was going, oh, Jesus. OK. So somewhere there's a picture of the two of us with our arms around each other.

But we had a conversation, a very brief conversation at that time, because a lot of what we talked about was how complex his life had become. And this is back in 2017 before an awful lot of what subsequently happened happened. And I was saying to him, do you know what you need, Conor? And he said, what's that? And he's laughing away, like, I'm i was saying to him do you know what you need connor and he said what's that and he's laughing away like i'm a bit of crack you know i said you should probably get like some middle-aged scandinavian woman who has no idea who you are to look after your business right because things would be much clearer if you have you know a swedish woman in her 50s going i don't care that you want to go to can this weekend get

in the fucking gym son right because i know it worked for me that's what my wife has been doing for such a long time for me the only difference being that she might be connor's business manager or is a calendar manager whatever it is and he laughed at that and he said have you ever found one send them to me no i haven't found the right candidate yet but maybe now might be time and we might get his career back on track geez that's a brilliant story like that is the like that is the opposite of what you want in any situation right like let me take a picture which that's so good but you know what peter and like when i think back it was a stupid way for me to put it because i can imagine again you know mma journalism and you know we've so many influencers involving the sport now and it's great it's bringing eyeballs

onto the sport we have the schmo we've all these kinds of people doing things and we have the great lads from the energized podcast they do things differently from me right i grew up on the smell of newsprint they wouldn't know a newspaper if i hit them in the face. We have the great lads from the Energize podcast. They do things differently from me, right? I grew up on the smell of newsprint. They wouldn't know a newspaper if I hit them in the face, a lot of these young lads, you know, and rightly so. They've their nose two inches from their phone the whole time. And people do that. Journalists will interview Conor and they say, can I take a picture? And the same thing will happen in a mix zone or the same thing will happen at a press conference. I just didn't realize that because I come from a world where, you know, if you go into an NBA dressing room or if you go into a Major League Baseball dressing room and ask a player to sign a piece of memorabilia, they will yank your credential and you will hit the tarmac outside before you know what hit you. Right. You are over. That's it's just that old school.

We do that in the UFC. I'm not really sure anybody would care, you know. And that's the way like that's the difference in culture that led Conor to believe that look at this has happened 50 times before of course the chap wants a picture i'm the most famous mixed martial artist in the world now the fact that i'm 20 years older than them i'm probably old enough to be the chap's dad might have been a sort of you know rung a couple of alarm bells but he was doing what he felt was the nice the right the polite thing to do but that's you know the clash of two worlds and again that speaks to the complexity that the man was trying to live in and he was trying to negotiate it as best he could. And actually in the same interview, he said to me about fame, he said, there's no handbook for this.

And that was the point where, you know how I am, Peter, I always try to give people a second chance. And I felt a great empathy for him in that moment, because here was a man who really was doing his best, but just not equipped by those around him, be that the UFC, his management or whoever to deal with these situations that's a brilliant insight phil and uh well said about the change dynamic of this uh media i i saw firsthand in manchester in july i know i spoke to you at length about it was fairly disillusioned coming uh off that event but uh we don't have to worry about bakayo saka right like he's okay like but or do or do you think that the arsenal staff saw that training situation that very brief friendly spire as saka has said no harm done says saka but would you say they were briefly like oh no oh god not mcgregor

and saka jesus christ do you know what peter like sports science has come to such a stage now whereby all they want to do with the players when the thing, when a game is over, when a fight is over, when a race is over, is coaches want them straight into recovery. That means getting them off their feet, getting calories into them. As you know, I've worked closely with some teams.

I've worked with the Norwegian women's team for a couple of years at various different things. And I have seen them literally getting ready for, you know, what they call super flash or flash interviews. These are the interviews that take place directly after a game. And I've seen people come up and literally sort of pour gels into them. Hot chocolate is one of the things. Girls in particular love hot chocolate or half a cinnamon bun or whatever,

just to get those calories into them so the body doesn't start to break down. Then they want to get them off their feet. At the recent Olympics, I mentioned at the top of the show, there was a norway or sorry a new zealand rower uh lisa carrington i think her name was i think she's new zealand's most successful olympian of all time and she was winning gold every day of the week but because she had a race and the next day and the next day and the next day they were literally going okay we have to get you off your feet we have to get water into you we have to get calories into you you know so for mckay isaka and for um declan rice to be even standing there i'd say the coaching staff are going jesus would you come on you know they want to get them in there they want to get them rubbed down they want to

get them in the shower get them out and get them fed and home to bed as quickly as possible i don't think there was ever any risk uh that he was going to chin sacca i don't think so declan rice now that's another kettle of fish. So you're saying basically it would be the equivalent of like the Ferrari F1 team looking out the window on Monza and someone's just doing donuts in one of the fucking cars. That's the way they would see that.

How did this person get in here? And why is there two cans of stout on that Ferrari? Well, listen, Phil, magic as always. You're absolutely brilliant. Thank you for all your help over the years. And thank you for being the guest on this show. You're one of my favorites. You're one of everyone's favorites.

Thanks so much, my man. The very best of luck. Uncrowned forever. Philip O'Connor, what a man. A fellow dub like myself over in Stockholm now, setting fire to the world as usual. He's absolutely brilliant. You know, great insights, great story there about him in stockholm now setting fire to the world as usual he's absolutely brilliant um you know great

insights great story there about him and the mcgregor situation back in 2017 i was at that premiere myself with the lovely elaine um simpler times you know simpler times it was all ahead of us back then another thing that's ahead of us is what the judge will decide to do with this latest settlement put forward by the UFC, $375 million. For those of you who know the case, it's divided in two. 2010 to 2017 covers the Lee et al. suit. And then from 2017 to 2021 is the Cajun Johnson side of things and John explains this all very well one thing he explained really well for me and based on the conversations I've been having with fighters and other people around the sport is that we thought this settlement meant

that there couldn't be greater change kind of implanted around the contractual situation of fighters, just the infrastructure of how the company goes about its business, all of which made it this massive, like, you know, massively valuable machine that Endeavor went on to buy, that merged with WWE, that all this stuff. Like, this is part of why they are so successful, is this kind of, this infrastructure, this makeup they have of how the company works. You know, this is something that a lot of people want to see change. Like, you know, hopefully that would mean more money for fighters, you know, maybe less conflicts of interest, which the sport is absolutely rampant with at the moment. So I'm rambling. Let's get a real expert on to speak about this. John Nash joining me from Minnesota.

What a man. Always makes these things so clear to me. Great to have him. Let's hear from him. John Nash is back and it's a year since I talked to this man. He has been the North Star for everyone trying to stay in the loop with this class action lawsuit situation in the UFC there was a motion put forward this week but a lot's happened since I talked to John initially he of course is at hey not the face on Twitter he has the hey not the face sub stack as well where he's keeping us all updated on this um really really it's turned into a bit of a saga this class action lawsuit lawsuit. But before I introduce him, John, I believe the last time we spoke was November 2023. So nearly a full year ago, they had just announced, as far as I remember, that a trial date had been set for April.

Since then, we had the settlement that was reached and then thrown out by a judge. An improved settlement has come forward in the last two weeks. And now this week, we've seen this motion put forward, along with some statements with some former fighters, which seem to be kind of pushing the judge towards, you know, preliminary kind of accepting this settlement. Again, I am very much a layman in this situation, which everybody will understand from that introduction. But John, thank you so much for coming back. And thank you

so much for what you're about to do, because you're going to explain to me what the hell is going on with this class action lawsuit once again. Well, I am the perfect guy to do this, because I too am pretty much a layman. I am not a lawyer. This is not, I just am intrigued by this. I've been following it for a long time. But I can really, because I am so dumb, I'm very good at dumbing it down. So I think that is my special purpose here. Dumb it down. I have to bring it to my level, and my level is pretty understandable for everybody else.

Yes. Well, this is perfect for me because I assure you I am much more stupid than you are. Well, that's questionable, but keep going. So before we get into what's transpired this week, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to get your feelings. I spoke to many fighters in July when the initial settlement was put forward of 335, I believe it was. And that was to cover both the Lee and Johnson elements in this case. I know the new settlement will just be to the Lee side of things. But when this came out, the fighters who were involved in this, I spoke to them and they were quite deflated by the situation.

I myself spoke out, you know, I thought it'd be a more substantial amount of money. Everything that I heard from the Lee side of things in the lead up to this was it not being about money, about it was more about like, you know, changing the infrastructure, the contractual infrastructure, all this kind of stuff. For a guy who's poured himself into this case, as you have, and as I said, been the North Star for all the media and fans who've been following this story, what was your reaction to hearing that initial settlement in July? Well, I went back over what I've been saying for a long time, and I wasn't completely surprised about the settlement or the earlier, although it's funny.

I always said they're going to settle. I always throw out certain numbers. And the one time I was on your show, I changed my mind and said, you know what? I don't think there will be a settlement. I think they'll go to trial. And then a couple of weeks later, I changed my mind back to, you know what? I'm wrong. I think there'll be a settlement.

But people point out to me, you didn't know what you're talking about. You said there would be a trial. And I'm like, that's the only time apparently people follow me was when I was on your show. So that really came back to haunt me saying that. But I was saying for a long time there'd be a settlement. I thought the amount would be originally higher when what's called injunctive relief was on the table. We've got to remember there's a component of this case originally for asking for injunctive relief there are two cases so i'm going to really quickly go through it because who knows who's listening maybe some fighters are listening because i always

discover fighters discovering the case they're not as falling as close as you might imagine if you fought the ufc between two december 16 2010 and june 30th 2017 that's the lee class you have the fights that took place during that period are part of the lee class if you fought in the ufc from july 1st 2017 until now that's the johnson class because the case dragged on so long the plaintiffs were forced to file a second lawsuit they can cover these additional fighters right and as soon as they did that that opened and made an opening for the ufc because under injunctive relief the court technically is supposed to only offer junk relief to those currently being damaged well the lee class being in the past no longer is being impacted by the ufc business model so injunctive relief the

people out of standing now is the johnson class So junk to relief was moved to the Johnson class. So as Lee approached trial, the leverage they had, the leverage is not just the damages. When you do an antitrust trial, in this case, they're claiming the UFC underpaid them by hundreds of millions. The average of all the expert opinions is around 900, almost a billion dollars when you put all the analysis they did together. If you lose a trial in antitrust, the court can order treble damages. In fact, they do order treble damages, which means they triple the damages. So that makes antitrust cases scary, but makes it really scary for the UFC because they make so much money now that even $3 billion in damages wouldn't put them out of business, is if the court does what's called

injunctive relief and says, we're going to order you to change your business model. And if they do that, that means they won't have the profits potentially to pay for those damages. And so that's why I thought there'd be a much bigger settlement, much better originally, because the UFC, and they've made it clear, their lead attorney, when he spoke to investment analysts that were hurting the stock at the time, pointing out that there is no injunctive relief on the table. Injunctive relief was the UFC's big concern. As soon as that was moved off, that removed a big hammer that the plaintiffs have.

Now the only hammer they have is they have to go to trial, and trials are risky. You can lose. There's an eight. This is a federal case. There's eight jurors. You have to get all eight jurors to agree with you to win. So it's possible the UFC, you know, the plaintiffs were worried. Like, I don't know if we can get all eight jurors to agree with us.

So we might not win the case. In which case they put 10 years of labor, 10 years of effort, and the fighters would have got nothing. So I'm not shocked for that reason. There was a settlement. I know a lot of people wanted much bigger numbers. But in these type of cases, there's almost always a settlement because both sides have so much at risk uh but i can understand the disappointment now the positive thing with this new settlement is the last one as you noted settled both johnson and lee together

the judge and rightly said so that those two cases are in conflict because lee wants money johnson wants money and injunctive relief so he's broken them up so this new settlement is for lee only 375 million dollars which is an improvement over the previous settlement technically for lee that's 73 and a half more million dollars for them just for their damages and only for the lead fighters and the johnson class gets to go on with their suit and they can try to ask for injunctive relief so injunctive relief is still on the table but it's for the next group of fighters excellent and and look that's just not for fighters i needed that um reminder too johnson thank you so much for that the judge in this case is a very interesting

element. And everyone who has been following the story will hear what Dana said. I went to school with this guy. He kind of threw out that initial 3-3-5, which you mentioned was going to cover both suits. And it looked as though he was kind of looking towards this infrastructure change, like let's change something for the future of the UFC that was certainly what people were saying reading between the lines of him throwing that out tell me now that this new um settlement has been pushed forward is it still his decision whether that will go through and based on your coverage of this case and his initial kind of throwing out of the 335 how confident are you that he will go ahead with this settlement? Well, it's up to him.

He still has to approve it. Remember, he's the final barrier. He kind of protects the fighters here because there's named plaintiffs that represent the fighters, but they represent them in name. But there's a thousand other fighters that aren't the named plaintiffs. So his job is to weigh it. Is it to the benefit of the fighters or to the class? And he still has to approve it. Now, do I think he will?

I think in this case he might because, one, they did one of the major problems he had. They split the classes again. They made two different cases. So we don't have that problem anymore. So the only concern is, is this enough financial for damages? It's a higher, a lot, you know, it's basically a third higher, 25% higher than it was before. So it's not as much as his damages, the low end, it's about 40% of what the low end of the estimate damages are. But on settlements, if you look through the list of settlements, often in cases, it's a small percentage of what was available, right, to win.

The other thing is there was all these declarations from fighters in support. And these are, you know, just, I think there's 56 in this one. And I've talked to other fighters who said they gave declarations. So I imagine that there's a stack of more fighters that they're either, you know, hanging on to, or they might submit this week, next week, whenever. So we should get more declarations coming, I'm guessing. Well, that actually kind of pushes the joke. It's basically saying this large group of fighters want a settlement.

And are you going to go against their wishes and not at least offer preliminary approval, which means we can then have hearings and hear from the majority of the fighters to see if they agree with it. The other problem is the UFC has already threatened to appeal. So my guess is I think he will not just appeal the decision in trial, but to appeal if the judge doesn't agree to

the settlement. So my thinking is he will look at this and say, it does most what I want. I have all these fighter declarations and the UFC has basically said they will appeal if I turn this down. I will accept it. That's my guess. Because then it goes to preliminary approval and we could hear from the fighters. If at that case there's just an uproar from the fighters that they don't like it, then he has something to go back and say, I can't approve it because the clients, the class members do not approve it.

It was interesting. And of course, we all get this information from you, the declarations from the fighters when they came out. And it is morbid, John, to say the very least, some of the testimony from Vandalay Silva, from Shane Carowind, like guys who were literally at the very top of the sport. You know, main event guys, iconic guys, and they're talking about, in some cases, I can't afford food. I can't afford to, you know, to provide for my family.

I feel like I'm, you know, I've got CTE, I've got, I've got traumatic brain injury, um, things like that. And it's interesting that this was pushed forward as like an argument why we should settle. But as I'm reading it, I'm kind of like, would you, these guys deserve way more than this? You know, even though it is a, as you've explained, like a far greater amount than the initial one put forward and not divided between two suits i felt as i was reading it i was like surely this is a case to open things up even further and make some longer lasting changes to the sport um tell me what your reaction to reading that stuff was well the longer lasting changes will have to come with the johnson case because they have standing right okay so Okay. Or potentially, who knows?

I mean, they've hinted at DOJ or Department of Justice in America, FTC. They could investigate the UFC, too, if they feel they've been abusing their monopsony power. But right now, the Johnson case, if you want changes to the sport, it's going to come outside the Lee class because the Lee lawsuit does not have the power does not have the standing anymore at the court system to ask for changes all they can ask for is monetary damages so the good news in some ways they split the class now there's a problem with the johnson class we'll probably talk about later is they all signed arbitration agreements a lot of the fighters and so they might not have standing those fighters because they might not be allowed to take part in a class action but the it's still the possibility of some sort of change to contracts change the business model still is there with

the johnson class for the league class yeah i mean you i thought you know i personally i think the fighter should get as much as possible person i think it's not outlandish that they should get uh if you look guy davis the accountant did a business model that basically said that the i think the maximum the ufc could have paid without losing money now that you know if you look at any business if you end up paying a lot of money you change your business model so you you take away from other stuff because there's a lot of like you know uh private jets for the executives and all these benefits that were expenses that could have basically been cannibalized to pay the fighters more. But I think his estimate was like $900 million could have been paid to the fighters, and the UFC wouldn't have lost money, right?

So I think, okay, let's not say all that money, but let's say the fighters at least should have doubled the income they got, maybe more than that, right? So the fighters who got $556.5 million during the uh the lee period i would love for them to have got more of that plus interest since time has passed since then that seems unlikely though i mean it's just you it's possible in trial you could do that it's possible in trial you could win and get those you know the damages that the the experts estimate and the treble damages some more. But you got to remember, from the plaintiff's point of view, the attorneys, they've been taking this case on contingency.

They're not getting paid, the attorneys. They only get paid if the fighters win. So for 10 years, they've been working free. I think four law firms, five, well over 100,000 hours of work they've done, pro bono, plus tens of millions of dollars out of pocket for experts and for flights and hotels to come to Vegas for the hearings and for data code entry people to go through the million documents that. So they are out of pocket, have no money. They go into trial. They have to get eight jurors again to agree with them. Otherwise, it could be a hung jury.

They either have to do it again or they could end up losing the case. And even if they win, the UFC says, we will appeal. Appeal process could take several more years. And as you've seen what's happened with the higher courts, especially with the Supreme Court and the Federalist Society conservative members, they are not sympathetic often to employees and business. So the big concern is that we could go through this, have an appeal process that drags on even more years and end up having a higher court overturning a win in the court here. So there's just a tremendous risk for the plaintiffs as well as the UFC's tremendous

risk of having to pay tons of money. So when you weigh that together, they're looking at and say, we would love to exit this case with a win where we give the fighters some money, we can make our money back. And this is the positive. One way to look at it positively, if the plaintiff's attorneys win here, they do no longer have this big burden

of all these hours and money they haven't received. Now they're flush with money they made on the case, and they can go into Johnson not worried about... If they had to go into Johnson, not worried about, you know, if they, if they had to go through Johnson again without winning Lee, that's years more and tens of millions more being spent that they had no

clue if they're ever going to get that money back. It's such an interesting distinction you've made there, because I think a lot of the reaction, I was even talking to fighters, former fighters who fought in the Lee period, 2010 to 2017 today. And, you know, I was even talking to fighters, former fighters who fought in the Lee period, 2010 to 2017, today. You know, I was listening to your stuff. I was updating on what I was hearing on your Substack page.

And the takeaway from this is seeing this amount even, like, while they're very happy with the improved settlement, what the UFC are offering in this case, they keep coming back to like, well, if they're paying this, we can't make the greater change. I did not realize that the infrastructure changes, all that stuff is completely reliant on the Johnson case. I thought this settlement was to make that go away in the Lee case. So that is quite an interesting thing. We can settle here, or at know the 2010 to 2017 element will be settled here but the greater change still kind of core in terms of the infrastructure of the sport yeah the the because they have standing those fighters now here's the problem here's the problem with johnson to take everybody down this is the arbitration agreements thing yeah yeah this

is all almost every fighter starting in about 2021 i believe it is the ufc introduced an arbitration agreement in their contracts because the Supreme Court obviously ruled that employees can cram anything down their workers' throat that they want. So they introduced an arbitration agreement and a class action waiver. And when you sign that, it says you cannot participate in a class action. You can't be a member of it and so basically my understanding is now the ufc every fighter in the ufc now uh except for maybe a handful i'm guessing maybe like conor mcgregor and some of the big stars that signed a few years ago and haven't upped a new contract yet although there is a little sub a little bottom a little small print of those big print in the bottom one of the clauses that says if you receive a new contract and continue to work with the UFC, this arbitration agreement applies,

which I don't think that would uphold in court, but they do have that in there. But anyways, so large numbers of fighters have now signed class action waivers. All the current fighters are probably under class action waivers. So the Johnson class right now is greatly reduced and there's probably less money available to win because so many fighters are not participants going to be participants in the class action and because you need someone who is standing to change the contracts if you can't get a plaintiff signed on that has a current contract which none of the guys with the current arbitration class action agreements can do waivers can do that means you can't really ask for uh injunctive relief and

so the ufc is counting on the fact that that the next round of johnson that the fighters could win but the damages will be smaller because so many people have signed waivers and there still will be no injunctive relief because all the fighters that can ask for injunctive relief are under these class action waivers and so the next step but this is again then we go back to the positive the judge because he didn't agree to the first settlement and has broken them up lee class can get settled but he's basically and now that these lawyers are flushed with money that they want from the lee class they can try to challenge those arbitration agreements now i don't think they're very confident they can win based on our court system but they're going to try to challenge it and there's a chance that they can get a court to overturn and throw out those arbitration agreements

and say they're unenforceable the way they were forced upon fighters. Then suddenly the group greatly increases in Johnson because all the people with arbitration agreements are now back in the class and they can ask for injunctive relief again. Wow. I mean, here I am thinking that all of the drama is coming to an end, and then you hit me what could be for the Johnson sort of things. That is crazy. And it actually seems so unethical when you think about it. You know, the fact that we're arguing that the UFC is this monopsony,

they're putting in their contracts this arbitration situation. Like, I mean, it all feels feels very very dirty and that was and some people actually brought that up when it happened they're like they're like wait you are letting people that we accused of having monopoly power abuse your monopoly power by saying you can't work with us unless you sign an agreement saying you can't sue us for having monopoly power and that's somehow legal and the courts the supreme court let it stand at the time now there's some hopefully there's some you know they have a motive attack and there's some way they can get this overturned with the ufc or who knows maybe congress in the meantime we're luck out and they pass a law making those illegal uh or greatly restrained but uh for

right now their best hope is they challenge them in court but if they do i get two ways look at it if the johnson class doesn't win uh and get rid of those arbitration agreements, then they'll probably end up having a settlement maybe similar or a little smaller than the Lee class. But if they win, then they're looking at being a much more valuable class that will get a much bigger settlement in the future, as well as some contractual changes. And probably, depending on how strong the case is, pretty strong contractual changes, especially if Judge Boulware stays on the case. Is there a possibility that he won't stay on the case? I mean, how long it's dragged out, you never know what's going to happen. How long is a piece of string?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, knock on wood about someone's health. So, you know, we don't know. But I think, I mean, the injunction related the UFC will, I think they would be more willing to pay out a lot more money than have big contractual changes. But again, their business model is dependent on having this level of control that makes it. They do not want, we saw what happened in Ghana. They don't want it that, oh my God, we could have 20 in Ghana per year. That would be, because that would radically change the industry. They would no longer, they would either have to start paying people a lot more to make sure they don't want it that oh my god we could have 20 inganos per year that would be because that would radically change the industry they would no longer they would either have to start paying

people a lot more to make sure they don't leave or they'd have to start worried about that these fighters have now built up fame and renown and people want to see them from the ufc going somewhere else and the fans following them it's it's a wild world situation and i was listening to you and steffi on your brilliant Substack page. Everybody here should get over there. I mean, this is, we were speaking briefly before we started recording here.

Like, it's such a massive story. And like, one of the biggest stories that you could fathom in this sport, you know, over the last decade, really, since the ESPN buying, you know, the company, essentially. But it was, I mean, should I say, you know the the company essentially but it was I mean should

I say the UFC selling the company for for billions and then of course the merger with WWE this feels every bit as important as all of this um just to take some quick quick uh notes that I heard you and Steffi talking about I found that that were very interesting you're talking about for the majority of fighters that they will get this lump of 30% of their, their earnings. Is that correct? Like what, what they earned during the course,

if they were between 2010, 2017, they'll be getting probably about 30% of what they earned in total from UFC. Is that correct? Well, that should be correct based on what I read in the filing. The,

if you go through it, how much they're going to take the attorneys and their fees, the fighters will be left with about 200 and almost 250 million as their remaining sum that's going to be divided amongst the fighters. The split is going to be 70% is going to go to your event compensation and 30% to your bout. The event compensation is basically all the money the fighters made, which was, we know from previous filings, $556.5 million during that period. So, well, that's a little over 31% of what the bout compensation tranche will be for this settlement. And so what you do is you take all the money you made from 2011, basically, because that was the first UFC event, I think, in 2011, until June 30, 2017, as a UFC fighter. If you're a UFC fighter, just take your win bonus, your show amount, your win bonus,

your side letter agreements that you might have, your pay-per-view bonuses, your locker room discretionary bonuses, and your fight of the night performance bonuses. Pull that up. Don't include your Reebok kit. Don't include your royalties, but that all the other stuff is that pull that up. And then you get 31% of that as part of your settlement. And then the other component is how many fights did you have during that period? For every fight you had during that period, you get about $13,800. So if you're a fighter that fought the UFC six times during the class period, made a

hundred thousand, right? You are looking at about $115,000 in the settlement. So you will actually make more in the settlement than what you earned in the UFC during that time. Now, if you make a ton of money, you will make a lot more than the other fighters, but less of a percentage of what you got. I think the highest, I think, is Anderson Silva was the highest paid fighter during this class period. And he made about $30 million during that period, which is a tremendous amount. I think he fought like 10 times, but still it's tremendous. But his, his, his settlement amount would be about $10 million. So he would be the number one highest compensated fighter from the settlement.

The minimum will be 15,000. Cause there's, unfortunately there's numerous fighters that only had one fight during the class period. They might have fought a bunch of times before, but because of the statute of limitations, when they filed, it only goes back four years. It just covers that period. So you'll see a lot of fighters that might have fought in the UFC nine, ten, twelve times, but they're only one or two times in the class period. So that's all they're going to get compensated for. And, of course, if you fought in the lead period and continued in the UFC afterwards, you get paid for the lead period but you're now part of the the uh the johnson class period it's insane i love how automatic this this all is for you i mean it's pretty incredible um and look

as i said at the start i'm seeing this information mostly through you and of course i've talked to fighters about some of the goings on over the years. We had a lot of elements kind of released to the public in this case, the Joe Silva situation, the text, all this kind of stuff, which was riveting. You know, it felt like, I remember speaking to Ariel about it. He's like, it feels like we shouldn't be reading these, you know, like, you know, it felt really dirty reading them, but you couldn't stop reading. How much of a shame, just for you personally, as a guy who's been so close to this and a guy who's read over so much testimony and talked to as many fighters as you have over the last few years,

how much of a shame with this whole situation, both cases I'm speaking to here, if we came away from this without any structural changes to what the UFC are doing? I mean, would that be a great pity and a great shame given all the effort that's been put into this and originally the goal being we want to change this sport? I mean, it would be a shame.

It's a little depressing that there's no change. I mean, personally, I'm going to just lay it on my cards on the table. I personally view, if you can go back to my writing, even before the lawsuit was filed, I was writing articles claiming the UFC had a monopsony over MMA. They attained monopsy power so uh i'm firmly on the side that the ufc has attained monopsy power and abused it at this point um not nothing personal against them i think almost anybody in boxing and mma promoters are in the business of making money off people getting brain damage so

anybody in the business would have done the same u UFC was the best at it, but that's why they're the one that has to kind of, I think, pay for this because they got to keep all the money. So that's my position. I would be disappointed there's no change, although I'm of the realization that's a strong possibility. Now, that doesn't end the possibility of change. There are avenues to do stuff. I mean, I had a Rob Macy, one of the attorney that basically started this on my podcast a year ago, talk about it. And he was basically begging people to call because he's like, I have a lot of other ideas of what we can do to improve the competition, the sport. And, you know, I don't know if it's weakened contracts or what his effort would be,

but he had a lot of, you know, he didn't want to say it out loud in public, but he had a lot of ideas apparently. And I know, you know, there's a lot of avenues I think you could attack the UFC at to change the structure. I'm not saying kill the UFC. I would, you know, I think people are fans of the UFC. I'm saying, I think it's just fair if the fighters had more leverage with the UFC or with other promoters at that, for that matter. So I think, you know, I mean, I don't, but I don't see't see you know you don't see fighters rallying to do the ali act i think it's possible going to the nlrb and trying to get employee status would be a smart move i don't think the ufc i don't think fighters would ever get employee status i don't think ufc could function as a as an employer but they would be

they would be forced basically to unwind their contracts and take out some of the provisions because otherwise they'd be ruled as an employer so i think that's a good avenue i think there's you know i mean write letters to the doj and the ftc that was a matt's matthew stoller when he was on my podcast he suggested that that you need fighters to go to those entities and say listen you need to do something too i think there's still a lot of avenues the problem is as many fighters follow this and many fighters don't follow it let's be honest many fighters have no clue or just you know just just know a little bit the surface level but

as many fighters follow it very few are willing to take any action yeah no i completely agree with you um one thing i think that's really interesting about this stuff is, and I've got a bit of this myself, and I can only imagine what you get. In NFL, NBA, Premier League, everything, every other sport in the world, the powers that be, like the FA in England that oversee the Premier League, you know, Goodell or whoever it is in the NFL, the fan base has the players back. They have their

teams back and they kind of root against these kind of all-powerful figures. But in our sport, it's completely different. And dare I say a crossword about the great Dana White, I get it in the neck from all these like faceless, nameless guys online and what's it been like for you the guy who is essentially reporting on these people wanting this massive change within the sport and there's obviously a lot of references to the ufc brass and whatnot have you got the flack of the dana fanboy online during this experience well a little bit but not many because I'm not a well-known commodity in the sport, the space, I don't think. I'm a niche cover.

Most of the people on Twitter, even the ones that disagree with me, are pretty respectful. I'm only on Twitter as my only social media in the sub stack. So most of it's pretty respectful. Most of it's people that are interested in my work, even if they might not agree with my conclusions.

So that's nice. There is a handful of people that I've ended up blocking. There's a few, you know, there's a few people over the years that seem just obsessed with countering everything I say. And it's like, well, you know, I don't know what you're, I mean, this is a court document. It's pretty hard to counter something that the UFC released themselves from their internals. Right. But I've not, but other people, I have seen that with Luke Thomas or other

bigger media presence people. They just get hammered. And a part of it is that the UFC, there was a polling company that years ago used to do these polls. They still do probably. The UFC's fan base, my understanding is not like other sports. Large majority, that's the only sport they like. They're not sports fans. They're UFC fans. And so the UFC, I think, is their Manchester United, their Yankees, their Dallas Cowboys.

That's their team, and they're always on their side. But I agree with the other point. A lot of fans don't get upset at the owners if they don't pay their star a ton of money to keep them. How did you let that guy go? That kind of situation. I see it sometimes as he is split. A lot of people were upset at Dana White for letting Ngannou go and other people were upset at him for not sticking the loyalty to their team, the UFC. So it goes either way. But I'm pretty saved from the ago and other people were upset at him for not sticking the loyalty to their team the fc um so

it goes either way but i'm i'm pretty saved from the the craziness of the uh the internet especially now that i'm when i used to write with bloody elbow the the the um the comment section years ago used to be much worse so now i don't have to deal with that you don't have those random people coming in yelling at you yeah um just a final one do you think this is the end of this at least the lee element as you said um this is going straight for settlement um there has been many shakes in this tale but do you feel like you're bounding towards the finish line once and for all john i i kind of have to estimate and say i weigh the odds and i'm weighing that yes this the settlement will be a preliminary approved then we have to estimate and say I weigh the odds and I'm weighing that, yes, the settlement will be permanently approved.

Then we have to go through the fairness hearing and see, you know, who knows, the fighter reaction might be negative. Based on my conversation with fighters, I think the vast majority would rather not risk it. Say, I'd want the money now. I don't want to risk it. So I think it will be approved. Then we'll have to see what happens with Johnson going forward. But, I mean, for my, you know, my membership, my sub stack, I kind of hope that goes to trial. I would gain a lot of people.

Yeah, everybody's got to go over and check out this sub stack. You're doing the Lord's work, John. It's absolutely unbelievable what you've been doing. I feel like there will be many subscriptions coming, especially if the Johnson element of this goes in any way like the way you've outlined here. I can imagine there's going to be a lot of interested people. I will definitely be one of them. Thank you so much again for all your information, sir. Oh, appreciate it.

Thanks for having me on. Amazing stuff, as always, from John Nash. Go and follow him. HeyNotTheFace on Twitter. HeyNotTheFaceSubst sub stack he is the man he has been doing this all the way through and really without him I wouldn't have a clue what's going on there so massive respect to John it's always a pleasure to speak to him and I'm really grateful that he made time for me as well as Phil of course a legend so yeah this weekend UFC fight night, Brandon Royval v. Tatsuro Taira, as I said at the start. Some decent fights on the card. You know,

I don't think it's going to be able to compete with Better BF v. Bivol. You know, Bivol, the stylist against the knockout artist in Better BF. I'm going, I just want, like, I just kind of bet on what I want, and I want Better BF to win this in typically sensational fashion. Like, I think he's KO'd everyone he's fought at professional, which is absolutely mental. I'm really looking forward to that fight. It's got a very nice undercard as well on it.

Fabio Wardley and Fraser Clarke going at it again. Their first fight was an absolute classic. Ben Whittaker, you know, it's very, very nice to watch that guy fight. So I'm looking forward to that too. Undercard kicking off at the early time of 12 ET for you New Yorkers and you East Coasters. Jesus.

So that's five for us in Ireland and five for the people in the UK. And then the main event to be kicking off at around 11 Irish and UK time and then six in America. I quite like, yeah, I quite like that. IBF, WBC, WBO and WA titles on the line, in America. I quite like, yeah, I quite like that. IBF,

WBC, WBO, and WA titles on the line. The light heavyweights dueling in that main event. I'm really looking forward to it. I don't want to use my underdog

of the week card on that event though. Even though Better BF is, you know, the underdog. Tyra is the underdog against Roy Valle. Yes, it's interesting. I i mean i'm trying to find something that i really oh hit uh alex morono v daniel rodriguez that's a that's an interesting one

like as much as morono could be ko there against rodriguez He has a great style for a fight like that. Corey McKenna. Do I go with the pride of Wales, Corey McKenna against Julia Palastri? Oh. Oh. I think I'm going to go. I think. Jesus.

Oh. Jared Gooden v. Chidi Njugwani is not a bad one either oh who is your are you looking at this right now? who is your underdog of the week? oh my god I'm going with I'm going with Morano over D-Rod

I'm not confident in that one that's the least confident I've been in one of these picks but that's what I'm going with let's see if we can get this back up to 75% we're on 66% accuracy at the moment with the underdogs,

which is pretty fucking good for underdogs. We'll be back down to 50% if Morano loses, but that's who we are going with. Fantasy football, we need a win. I think we will get a win. We're in against the Cooligans this week, who I believe are a soccer podcast. So, I mean, we have to beat those guys.

We've just had a rough run. You know, Aaron Jones pulled out of a game. He's on a boy week. I've brought in Tank Bigsby instead of Gus Edwards who's done fuck all for the Chargers. So yeah, that's where we're at. Undoubtedly, the week is Alex Morono. Enjoy the

boxing. Enjoy all the fights. We'll be back in video form next week. And listen, thank you for all the feedback. I'm getting it. I love it. Some of you who hadn't heard the show before, you're hearing it now. You're enjoying it. That's great. I understand some of you are like, you know, I want to hear fucking Ariel Owani. Why is Pizzi Carol here?

You know, it's a valid point. But nevertheless, here we are. And we're going to stay here, baby. We will see you next week in video form. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Phil. Thank you to John. Thank you to the great Oscar. Thank you to Phil. Thank you to John. Thank you to the great Oscar Loseff for producing. Thank you to everybody at Uncrowned

who has to oversee the madness over here at The Crack. We love you very much. See you next week. Thank you.