The Ariel Helwani Show - The Craic: The Rumble in the Jungle at 50, Richard and Jack Shore from Edmonton

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

On the latest episode of The Craic, Petesy is joined by Uncrowned’s Chuck Mindenhall to discuss the cultural resonance of The Rumble in the Jungle on its 50th anniversary (05:42). Legendary father and son duo Richard and Jack Shore join the show from Edmonton ahead of Jack’s bout with Youssef Zalal (40:45). 

The crack is back, my friends. How are you all doing? Did you have a happy Halloween? Did you eat lots of candy? That's what you guys call it, right? Candy. We call them sweets. Candy. You have it your way. What a fantastic time of year. That's what you guys call it, right? Candy. We call them sweets. Candy. You have it your way. What a fantastic time of year. One of my favourite times of year, actually. I love Halloween. Unfortunately, I was drafted in to work as the children of Blanchardstown were coming to our doors looking for their beautiful treats.

New York Rick cracks the whip, demands I'm on the boys in the back. And what a pleasure it was to make my debut. UFC Edmonton is tomorrow. Ariel Hawane all week. Yay, Canada. Won't stop about it. He's absolutely buzzing. Mike Malott with a great appearance on the crack.

I mean, on the Ariel Hawane show, should I say, during the week. Actually very excited for his fight. I'm also excited for Moreno v. Albazi. Nami Yunus v. Blanchfield, The Black Beast v. Dinez. But most excited for a man that will be joining us later on in the show, Mr. Jack Shore, as he takes on Yusuf Zalal. It's on the undercard, but it's an absolute banger of a fight. Jack Shore, an underdog. I mean, I don't know how long it's been since Jack Shore has been an underdog. This guy, I don't know how long it's been since Jack Shaw has been an underdog.

This guy is a champion ever since he was a teenager. First with IMF and the amateurs. Then he goes to Cage Warriors, wins the bantamweight title there. He goes to the UFC, has an amazing run at bantamweight there. Loses to Ricky Simone as he's getting into the kind of title mix

in that situation. Goes to featherweight. Has the fight with Makwan Amirkhani. And if you remember, one of the great moments in UK MMA is when Jack Shaw wins that fight. His dad, Shakey Shaw, obviously his head coach is in his corner and he calls out a head kick, I believe it was. It kind of begins this finishing sequence for Jack and then Jack gets on the mic and talks about his father's cancer diagnosis thank god Richard is now in remission he's doing great he is also going to be on the show Jack and Richard I mean who gets this stuff me that's who so absolutely buzzing for you to hear what those boys have to

say but Jack Shaw is another dog. It got me thinking. Thinking about the guests we've had on the video edition of The Crack. Paul Hughes was the first one. Went in against AJ McKee. Nobody gave him a chance. And what happened there? Paul Hughes wins the fight.

Next guest, Lerone Murphy V Dan Ige Lerone in in fairness he was the favourite going into that fight but a lot of people were like oh people are sleeping on Dan Ige

I saw his in the comments when we put out all our picks should have picked Ige, Pizzi all this stuff Lerone survives a very tough first round with Ige

the power puncher and wins the fight. So basically what I'm getting to is, never mind the fact that I'm batting 500 on my underdog picks, every guest that has appeared on the video edition of The Crack is a winner. Am I jinxing this? Who knows? Funnily enough, Jack Shaw, who I mentioned already, he is both on the Edmonton card and he is an underdog. So maybe he can get us back to winning ways with the underdog of the week. Who knows? I'll tell you at the back of the show if he is that guy. And maybe he can continue in the form of all winning guests on the crack.

Who knows? A lot has happened since last week. Obviously, 308 came and went. Ilya Tapuria becomes one of the biggest stars in the UFC's books, which we... We had a feeling would happen, let's be honest. Shumayev, another European star. I mean, it's all popping off over here.

Bilal Muhammad, out of his fight. Who's going to replace him? Will it be my boy Ian Gary? Will it be Jack de la Maddalena? Will it be Leon Edwards? Who knows? December, not so far away though, so we'll have to see what they do there. Before we talk to Jack Shaw, I saw the comments.

All of you want the man in the hat. The legendary journalist. The grey feature writer. Chuck Mendenhall back on the crack. So guess what? He's here, ladies and gentlemen. If you have not seen it, he has wrote an absolutely brilliant feature on the Rumble in the Jungle. Ali v George Foreman. It has to be the most iconic fight of all time. Ever since I'm a kid, I know about this fight. I know about the rope-a-dope. I know everybody was writing off Ali's chances. Of course, he wins in the eighth round. Spectacular fight. Foreman, the immovable object, downed by Ali, a man who was considered

to be walking to the gallows that night in Kinshasa, Zaire. I can't think of a fight. That has more cultural resonance. And there's lots of crossover here. Like in terms of today's sport. When you think about. Mubatu the dictator. Essentially buying that event. So it would happen in Zaire. And appeal to the world.

And show Zaire is this brilliant country. The entertainers that were there. Like B.B. King. James Brown. A big concert beforehand. The cultural imprint on boxing is very pronounced still to this day. So anyway, Chuck will say a lot better things about it than me. He's far better with words. So let's get over to the man in the hat, my good friend and one of the greatest feature writers of all time, Chuck Mendenhall. I have been inundated with comments on all these episodes.

When is Chuck coming back on? When is he coming on? You better get Chuck on. Well, ladies and gentlemen, once again, I've delivered. I just keep on delivering. Call me the postman, Chuck Mendenhall, because here he is,

one of the greatest feature writers of all time, a man who has wrote a brilliant piece about the subject we're going to discuss now, which is the rumble in the jungle, the most iconic fight of all time. Chuck, welcome back to the show, first of all. A pleasure as always, my good friend. Make sure to send the check to my home address this time, not the P.O. box. Thank you, Pete. No, it's great to be back, man. This is my favorite show right now, all right? The Crack is my favorite show. I feel very comfortable here. You're a good host. Thank you. You're a

crackhead? Yes, I think that's what,. You're a good host. Thank you. You're a crackhead? Yes. That's how you can interpret that. Fantastic. This article, there's something about this fight. It's not just with me. It's with everyone that has an interest in fights. This is something we were talking about before we went live. Every bit of this

fight seems to have a bit of poetry to it. It's like fine art. It isn't even like a fight um all of the stories surrounding it of course it happened in conchasta's our year in 1974 50th anniversary as we already said um this is the dumbest question i've ever asked but i've got to ask it what is it about this fight chook man and all what is it about this fight man you know and this is i i spoke to you're mentioning the article that i wrote this week i spoke to jerry eisenberg who was a a great chronicler of the heavyweight that golden era of heavyweights back in the 70s and 80s and even before in the 60s liston and all those guys like he's he really had the beat on it he was there i think one of the reasons

that it stood the test of time is that it had such great chroniclers it had the eyes of the world wanted i think that speculated that there were a billion people that watched this fight there were 60 000 on hand um it was such an an exotic adventure for boxing right like it's in the heart of africa um there were these storylines which you knew Muhammad Ali as a firebrand in the boxing world was going to make the most of. Like he was able to go out there, celebrate it. The fight was actually backed up six weeks. It was supposed to happen in September and ended up getting postponed due to an

injury. And James Brown and this whole festival took place in the time it was supposed to have happened. So there was this whole preamble of setting the vibe, the tone, man. And I think that it just captivated. And I think the chroniclers, and this is from my perspective as a writer, I'm not sure I would be writing about fighting as much as I did. Or I wouldn't have had the inclination if it weren't for guys like Norman Mailer writing the fight or George Plimpton and his kind of like takes on everything and Eisenberg guys like that who are there. It should have been Hunter S. Thompson as well, but he kind of I think he got in a drug

a drug haze at the swimming pool never wrote anything, but yeah, so it's like I think it's the chroniclers themselves, but that's what preserved it in real time you're talking about one of the greatest underdogs who everybody's the world's eyes were on him going against one of the deadliest scariest men on the planet at the time was only i think 24 years old at that time had never been beaten had looked absolutely devastating the call was already famous down goes frazier this guy was like it's very similar in a weird way to the Holloway-Teporia fight that just happened, because you had a guy who's 32 years old. That's how old Ali was going into this fight. A former champion trying to reclaim kind of like this glory and the world kind of waiting for it.

Like, can he do this? Like, this is one hurdle too many, with toporia but i think foreman was like that times you know magnitude of 10 because he's a heavyweight and uh we saw the result i think and then you get the rope a dope you put you plug all the like the little mythologies that are going on around it and just it had all the makings of just one of the great stories in the fight game man you mentioned like the chroniclers the the great writers um you know you mentioned norma mayla the fight i used to read that book on every trip to vegas before i went to cover mcgregor i was like i'm i'm in a moment like this of course i was never i was never in a moment like that but although although it was close man i suppose i suppose but um then there was when we were kings that when you see it and i can remember watching this as a child.

Well, not as a child, as probably a young preteen. And my uncle showed it to me and being absolutely bewildered by it. This romanticism we have around the journalism at that time and the romantic feelings about fighting that they provoke. What is it about that generation? Because we talk about this stuff all the time. You know, the book I constantly used to mention on the ring around me at the fights with all of those chronicles.

What is it about that time? And how did we get all these brilliant writers who could have wrote about absolutely anything, who were writing about absolutely anything, fixated on the fight game? It's an interesting question man and i think in a strange roundabout sense some of them looked like they might have thought they were slightly slumming it to be covering the fights originally and i think that guys like aj liebling um who are like earlier you know the kind of predecessors to the whole kind of that now the golden era of pen i guess with the guys like mailer and all those guys who came along and they kind of you know dipped their toes

in the fight game it was a it was a time when literary things mattered i think it was at the high point 70s were like a very high point in my mind for good literature anyway like there are a ton of good books a lot of uh really good movies that are way darker by today's standards because they went in for more of a literary feel. And I think that that was the key. They just... They were trying to tell the truth. They weren't afraid to mythologize. They weren't afraid to do these things,

but they were trying to find the truth. They were not trying to make friends with their subject matters. They were incendiary. I just think that you look back on that time period and it kind of echoes what was going on with those heavyweights but with those heavyweights the exact same array of them ken norton um you know liston uh take any of them any of the guys from the 70s like and plug them into today's world of social media would it have seemed

as romantic what would the coverage be and obviously it wouldn't so i think that the the you know just the coverage is what kind of solidified it in the minds of all of us who can't fathom that much great mind energy onto and the singular events it's just crazy man but i i really love it and obviously that's where i came from like you come from this this type of thing where you're like, I want to do that. I want to capture things for posterity, you know? And that's kind of like, I guess, how I've alighted on this journey. Well, thank you to all your predecessors for getting you here at Chuck Bennett Hall. Jerry Eisenberg is 94.

94. And you're interviewing him. And I don't want to ruin the ending of it, but it's a kind of a beautiful ending because he still has that romantic eye on boxing. Like, it's such a beautiful scene he paints in the parting note of that article, of that piece you wrote.

What was it like to speak to him? Like, can you still see the shimmer in his eye when he's recalling those nights in Zaire? You know, the is i did he's 94 i wasn't sure what to expect to be honest man when you're dealing in guys in their 90s even 80s right like you're like i hope um that they're with it i hope that they're completely what what i've always known you know about them uh that they're just this rich source of history that you can tap into they're still living there they're still telling the stories and he was that man and it was crazy to uh to listen to those stories i was telling you just before we started taping i'll reiterate it here i had i i had set up a zoom which was like 45 minutes and i'm like that should be plenty

i'm probably going to get half an hour or less you know but he was mid story at the 45 minute mark and it just cut off and i felt so bad i was like oh he's talking about this uh this whole list and thing that went on um with ollie and everything i was like listen i was like i could listen to the guy for hours obviously like he's got stories and stories and stories stories within stories and stories within those it just keeps going and um but it was just like you would expect like the guy still holds i feel like he could still sit down right now and write something that would blow our socks off, man, because he's just he's that good. He's that with it.

He was calling. He was recalling things, you know, within that fight that I was just like, how, like, how, you know, how do you keep all these little details like all the details? I can't remember. You could ask me about a fight that happened in 2021, and I'd like i watched it but i don't know you know i wouldn't remember anything so um amazing it was just it was a great experience man i was very i felt very lucky to talk to him yeah i'm sure you are a fanboy and out like i've heard you and ariel talk about jerry so much over the years i've read it myself, but you boys are absolute fanboys. One thing he said, and I've been thinking about it since I read the article,

and it's true, but it also feels like almost dirty to say it, is that this wasn't a great fight. And I'll tell you what that did to me when I read that line from him. I remember it was either my granddad, God rest his soul, or my dad. And I think it was the 30th anniversary of this fight. And they were showing it on BBC. So it was like seven or eight. And I was watching this fight. I'm not impressed by what I'm watching. And my dad or my granddad, i can't remember which one it was was

like telling me all these stories around the fight but i'm a child so i'm just watching what's on the screen going what are you talking about and the ending of course is one of the most spectacular things you'll ever see but do you agree with that statement have you gone back and watched the full eight rounds and um do you think it's accurate what jerry said well i think there was it's so this is like two this is kind of a two-parter because how did it seem in real time versus how was it matured in the eyes of like people who look back on it like what can they see a different fight you know i think as it was happening it probably did not it's probably seemed anticlimactic

because you had a guy basically leaning on the ropes, just getting thudded to the body and just kind of talking and stuff, but not doing much. And you get another guy who's just driving forward like he doesn't have, like just on animal instinct almost, just trying to put him away, pulverize him on those ropes. There wasn't much of a theatrical sense to it until the end. And then it becomes like, oh my God, what did we just see? Right. But this is all I was.

I wasn't watching it live. You know, it's way too long. So it's like one of those things you're like, you know, you look back on it and you're like you knowing the outcome of it changes how you might see it. And also just the whole rope-a-dope thing and the backdrop being what it is and everything you watch it with a certain kind of romance now it seems more interesting because you know the ending and i think but in real time i do think that probably as people were watching it it wasn't a good fight like when he mentioned it you know if this were just in cincinnati or

new york or someplace regular i would have probably walked out and i was like that's crazy you know and i think that that's kind of a general sentiment like honestly i think a lot of people felt very similar about it uh who were at the fight so it's a it's a very strange thing and how it's kind of you know been deified over the years and how people see it now one thing that always strikes me and the resonance of this fight like you could talk for days about and we'll try to hit as many as we can here but the context of this fight is so important and i'm not talking about the geographical location in zaire i'm talking about the idea that ali is headed for

demise that night like it seemed like the whole world feared what they were about to see, like to see him get bludgeoned by Foreman. And in When We Were Kings, you see Cosell, who was a great friend of his, this reporter that, you know, he has this amazing relationship with, and you can see it in their interviews. And he's saying this is the end of Muhammad Ali before he's even got on the plane to Zaire for that initial date in September. Hell of a proclamation. You also have George Plimpton saying it felt like we were sending him off to the gallows, Muhammad Ali. In every recital of this tale, and I say recital because it does feel like a poem every fucking time one of these guys talks about it the world gave this guy no hope at all so when when i when i thought about that i was thinking about when we get a pick wrong right like poirier and uh sandini and everyone's going oh how the fuck

did you guys do that like they're missing the point if this was not the context of this fight, the magic is gone. Right? Exactly right. Yes. Exactly right. And you know, man, I think that that is the, that's really, this is where the greatest thing, you know, intervenes, where the greatest whoever was, right? Like, this is a guy, like, you think about the context. It really matters in this case because, you know, he was banished from boxing for three and a half years for the whole drafting people hated him at one

point of his career i think when he came up you know the louisville lip uh cassius clay always barking he was the guy who showed up at sun you know in vegas with sunny liston and was like barking a blue streak and people like who is this this guy's like you know treading on the sanctity of this game even though it's like boxing, right? Doesn't have much sanctity in terms of like all those periphery, but he was just playing a different game. And, you know, you go through

all of that and you get to 1974, 32 years old, and people did think that he was good. I think that that's more of a testament of George Foreman, like being as scary as he was, you know, like i can remember like one of the one of the great lines was norman mailer basically saying something along the lines of the the room where they were waiting to walk out you know they're so they're in the locker room whatever it is had the had

they feel and the energy of like a you know waiting room at a hospital where they're waiting on news of an operation that's going on of a loved one. I was like, what a great... I mean, if that doesn't kind of paint the picture of exactly how dire it seemed. And if you've seen any of the subsequent videos that came out where he's just like, guys, why is everybody so scared? What's going on? Let's go dance.

We're going to dance. He's like, he's just... I mean, it's amazing. It just packs so neatly into this aura that he has right and i think it gives rise to any underdog story like you can find anything you want in that in that whole fight in that whole event anything you want even even today and you know we're dealing with putting our minds around saudi arabia and like kind of the sports washing and all this stuff well Well, this dude, this was at a this was a dictator run country of Zaire, you know, Mabutu and like, you know, human rights.

Like he's violating all this stuff. This is a true dictatorship that they were going into. There were guys with machine guns, you know, at the entrances and things like that. They had a huge poster in the stadium of them, you know, like a huge banner of his face. I mean, it's just you look at all of that and you think, my God, this couldn't happen.

But in some ways, there's little echoes of it all over the place, you know, and I think it's still relevant to this day, like for those reasons, you know. Yeah, that was what I was coming to next. The resonance in that regard, this is essentially sports watch and what we were seeing happen here. As far as i know don king had promised foreman ali a purse of five million but he had no idea where he's getting it from right and i think eventually other parties convinced mabutu this be a great way to

showcase so here they're pulling money from all over the place libya like all kinds of different all kinds of different that's right i know know. Rumored to be involved. Crazy. Maila describes in Voodoo, I believe it's in the fight, as an African Stalin. And he talks about the soccer pitch, which you reference in your article. It used to detain thousands of people underneath it. They used to use it as a prison. And before they had this influx of people from the western world going to Zaire there began to be problems with people coming from different parts of the world they began to rob them so what Mbutu did was according to Mailer he rounded up the a thousand worst criminals

in Zaire he put them into these detention cells where the fight was going to be held whenever after. And he took 100 of them out and killed them in front of everyone so they could see this is what will happen to you if you mess with the tourists and the influx of media, pop stars, everything like that that come in here. Can you imagine? Could you imagine covering this? Could you imagine covering this?

Well, it would become i mean obviously you had like these great literary figures who 100 delved into all of this oh yeah but in today's world you know with the deadlines and social media and you just have to be posting little gifts i mean like uh you know this would be a whole different feel just for a second gravity of this i know it's like and you would have that you know the you know you would have those people that are like why aren't you talking about the dictatorship and you'd be like man i don't have like how am i supposed to ladle all this out like there's too much to unfold here so much there's so much in this point um you mentioned the entertainment thing look we talked about like how you can draw a line from this to saudi and all that stuff as well um of course you can as well the entertainment sort of

like these gigs they were putting on james brown bb king like massive thousands upon thousands of people here and that's just to name a few of the the artists that were there and we can see that today as well like if like think about these concerts that we see at every Saudi event. Eminem, yeah. It's like, how is this so relevant? I guess the Saudi event he performed in was LA. But yes, you're right. I mean, they have the exact same thing. They're doing the exact same thing.

It was Missy Elliott the other week. I know. Affliction had mega death, you know, way back in the day. Everybody's been trying this for a while. I still don't really. That thing, you know, the whole thing with the Rumble in the Jungle was it was supposed to be like more of like a festival like, you know what I mean? Like a several day festival leading to the fight and that's kind of a cool idea in a weird, you know, like just

if you could pull that off, but it's certainly I feel like some of these guys like obviously the UFC we cover most of the UFC mma like they travel all over the place but in terms of just strictly exotic locations where you're like just really crazy places i you know there aren't too many of them they're going to mostly um you know sydney australia or you know what i mean they're going to rio they're not really going into the interior of of africa which which just like i guess that part of the of the adventure is just crazy on its own, you know? Just like that whole visual or imagining what that must have been like. Yeah, there's a lot of, again, just this great journalism written about the location.

And have you ever heard Plimpton tell a story about when the local, he went to visit a local village. I think it was before, I think the fight had just been postponed, right? So Foreman gets caught and the journalists decide to stay there, right? Because they're like, well, everyone is staying here. We may as well stay here. And I believe Plimpton went to a nearby village, you know, you're talking African village in Central Africa. I mean, a very different landscape than

he's used to and he's told by an elder that a succubus is going to touch George Foreman and it's going to

take his soul and apparently that's what Plimpton said to the other writers on the eighth round when Ali spins him and he starts cracking him

Plimpton turns around to the rest of them going it's a them going, it's a succubus. It's a succubus. Because he's obviously coming back to the hotel or whatever. I forgot that. I do remember that. I also remember him saying, I mean, this is what's great, right? It's like all the color that came out of this and all these stories.

But I remember Plimpton was saying that Archie Moore, who was in Foreman's Corner, and at this point, and this was another Eisenberg thing where he was saying, they were like the three loneliest men on the planet, him and his cornermen, because everybody had turned against them. They're all chanting for Ali to kill him

and all this stuff. And he was saying that Archie Moore, going back to your original point about the context and how people felt, the kind of sense of dread. He was saying that archie moore was in the back before they went out praying for all these life this is a guy in foreman's corner praying for his life like just um praying that he didn't get punished to that extent i was just

like that i mean it's just it's just crazy like that whole thing right the plimpton the and all of them are slightly different than each other which is great like the plpton, all of the Plimpton stuff that came out of it, the Norman Mailer stuff that came out of it, and obviously guys like Eisenberg, they all had kind of different takes on it a little bit. So it just paints such a great picture. It's incredible. It's incredible. I wanted to ask you about one of the conspiracy theories.

All right. The fight was supposed to happen in September. Foreman gets caught. You're mentioning that line about them being the loneliest people in the world because all of Zaire and the world, it feels, wants Ali, the four-to-one underdog, to win. Yeah. Do you think that prolonging Foreman's stay in that environment,

in Zaire, where Ali is essentially lifted up as a king that extra five weeks he has to spend there do you think that messed with him mentally before he went into that fight foreman yes yes yeah 100 and I was this is actually I couldn't make the article because Eisenberg talked for 45 minutes and I was like you had to just kind of take what you could like fit into the relevant the relevancy of the piece whatever 45 minutes, and I was like, you had to just kind of take what you could fit into the relevancy of the piece, whatever the essential war was. I was like, all right, I got it. But he was talking about one of the things he talks about, and I think he even wrote about this in the chapter dealing with the Rumble in the Jungle in his book, Once There Were Giants, that Ali was planting those seeds throughout the whole thing. He basically told the authorities that, hey, George is going to run now.

Now that there's time, he's going to run so they they station guards like outside of his room like outside of the hotel taking it sort of literally and turning it into this thing but you know this this whole thing about george foreman um wanting to flee you know a hostage situation like that yeah and i'm like i think that his theory you know is that he was thoroughly in george foreman's head by that by the time and i think that you know those those extra that extra time that extra uh whatever was six weeks is why you know um he was a very like at the time you've seen that you've read about him seeming very serious quiet the bib overalls just you know just a very like a texas dude who'd seen some weird stuff growing up been

involved in weird stuff but i i think that he wasn't sophisticated in the sense of like dealing with ali for that amount of time with him in your crosshairs and then him playing the mental games he did um yeah i think that he was affected man over that course of time i 100 the fight essentially ruined him for decades and then he came back of course and wins the heavyweight title as the oldest heavyweight champion ever that's that's you make up a great point the thing the craziest thing is that it's aged in perfect ways right this fight has aged george foreman over the course of 28 years, almost 30 years and two different stints where he was basically a champion,

right? Like he fights, he becomes a champion only got knocked out once fighting the best over the course of that time. Like, you know what I mean? Like I know you have that huge gap, but then he returns as an old man basically and still lays waste to guys who are way younger

than him and strong and all that stuff. Only got knocked out that one time out of all of that. Only five losses, but the others were decisions. I'm like, isn't that crazy? That's just one of those things you're like. It just ages in such perfect ways for Ali and this figure that we've kind of made. Like what did

Eisenberg say? He's a statue that's been built like in the face of reality or something along those lines. We erected this thing. But at the same time, it's hard to not see him that way at times because so many of the things aged that way for him. Yeah. I've got two more for you, Chuck. I could talk to you about this all day, honestly.

Call Jerry. Yeah, sure. I've got a Zoom membership. I won't run out here. It'll be perfect. I need to get one of those i was trying to do that mid like at the very end i'm like nope i can't i can't you know it's impossible yeah um is the genius of ali's fight in the mental warfare or is it in the rope-a-dope like what what do you put more weight on here because it's actually unbelievable to watch this guy when everyone is nearly in tears talking about the idea

of this fight happening his confidence he has some of his best lines it's the wrestling alligator stuff it's i'm so bad i make medicine sick all that stuff is from the press conferences in this fight he's magic so what is it like what do you put more weight behind his his mental majesty or his punching prowess ah it's just such a it's such a cop-out but it's it's it's got to be a combo i think that honestly like you this is something i like as i watch it i do believe he figured it out I don't think he went in there thinking I'll lay on the ropes I'll lay on the ropes and as a mailer said kind of absorb whatever

these punches are send them through the ropes and the vibrations through the ropes you know send it down through the turnbuckles like I'm gonna I'm gonna absorb and put the share of that of the brunt of the punches through the whole ring you know I'm not gonna take now you could say that was very poetic. This is all very good.

But I do think that it was a revelation within this fight. I don't think that he went in there with the intention of doing that. I think it was a revelation that happened. He was like, you know what? I could go back here and let him punch himself out a little bit. And just when the time comes, I'll spring into life and we'll have our offense. And I think that, you know, he wasn't getting hurt. In fact, he was talking, which goes into your other point here, saying,

is that all you got, George? Is that all you got? And I think after the seventh round, it's like that famous thing where he's like, Foreman was basically saying that he was walking back to his round and saying to himself, yeah, that's all I've got. That's all I've got that's all i've got i don't have any more i you know um and i mean those types of things are just crazy but i think that the rope dope thing has taken on a life of its own um it's not the greatest thing to watch but it was so effective and all he wasn't about to be like he wasn't about to take you know he wasn't

about to diminish um whatever people wanted to believe about it. So he let people believe what they wanted. But I do think it was more of a revelation in the fight that he could get by with it. But it goes hand in hand, right? It goes hand in hand with everything. Every single thing that he does, whether it's him planting seeds, kind of talking. The reason we loved Conor McGregor is because you could make these connections to Ali. That he was winning a mental game before he ever stepped

in there to make the fight. That he was beating Jose Aldo before Jose Aldo even got his shoes off. He was already beating him. And I think that that's true of Ali. You can find examples of this all the way down the line. What's my name?

That fight. The whole thing. You can find examples of this in almost every one of his fights if you really go and look at them. I've got an even harder one with you to finish off this topic. This is good. We've gotten more sophisticated because you started with, you said, the dumbest question you've ever asked. Now we're at the hardest.

All right, here we go. Yeah, this is the way I planned it out. And this is a very difficult question because i was pondering it myself before i talked to you what is muhammad ali without the rumble in the jungle oh god man because he already accomplished so much like this guy is a is i don't know man you know he had accomplished so much that the fight of the century in 71 was already the high point of anybody's career. I mean, that was the hottest ticket, I think, in sports of the century. Like, it was just...

Frank Sinatra was there, like, yeah. And, I mean, the who's who that was there was so ridiculous. The ticket prices. I really don't think that the universe paid attention to one singular event like they did that one. Until, maybe, Rumble in the Jungle. And then Thriller Manila, like afterwards, you know, probably takes on its greatest import because of this, right? Like, then you get the trilogy fight. It's in Manila.

Again, the whole mental warfare. These guys are the greatest rivals. They become the greatest rivals over the course of time, maybe in sports. sports you know it's right up there with any rivalry that you can point out and uh it's such a hinge piece the this this particular fight and there was so much to it you know him trying to regain the title him going up against foreman who seemed invincible um the setting you go everything we've kind of gone through i just don't know i don't it it's almost impossible to imagine how his career would have played out if that didn't happen you know it's like i feel like he still would have been a he still would have been a um a legendary figure i feel like but i don't know if it would have reached these proportions it was it's a three-part

thing in a strange way you know with the three fights we just mentioned um and and what each one of them symbolized and what they've come to symbolize over the course of time. And this one was so pivotal for that, you know? So I'm not sure where he'd be, honestly, man. I just want to get drunk with you and watch when we were kings the next time we see each other. Oh, God. All right, next time we're doing it.

We're doing it. Any thoughts on Bilal Muhammad before you go? I mean, he's out at 310 as we found out Thursday. Oh, God. Ian, are you going to get the slot? Or is your boy from Dunbury coming in? Well, if it's Pereira, I mean, they don't like Shofcott. Or maybe it's vice versa.

I'm not sure at this point. Shofcott's his own crazy thing. It's a bummer, man, because I was looking forward to this. Weren't you? I mean, this is one of those weird ones that I'm like, I want Shavka getting, you know, he's such a quiet, weird, enigmatic fellow, but he's going to get the shot. He's been so dominant.

And Balal kind of surprised me. This might actually be like a really crazy fight. I don't know what they do. Even Gary wouldn't be a bad. I hope that they do something like that and not Usman. Don't just plug Usman in there. We've got a few Jack Delamont Lane. There's loads of guys that could put him. Jack, don't. That's what I was going to say.

That's fine, but Della Maddalena would be my choice. I'm like, why not? Throw him in there, man. Throw him in there. It's such a momentum's colliding type thing. Ian Gary would do the same thing, but preserve him, I think. Throw Maddalena in there and then Ian can sort it out when everybody's ready.

Well, look at that. He does it all. Boxing, MMA, on the spot. Chuck Manilow always delivers. Chuck, that was an absolute pleasure, mate. I honestly could have talked to you for another hour about that fight. All those old boxing things are the greatest ever, man. I should pay more attention to today's boxing.

I'm starting to get back more into it, obviously, with Uncrowned. But it's been kind of a gradual um re-accessing like you know what i mean like kind of getting back into it but we're kind of in a little bit of a golden era again i think so long live boxing long live jerry eisenberg and long live chuck man and all thank you so much once again chuck all right brother the great chuck man and all i know I nerded out there big time. I'd like to think me and Chuck were nerding out big time. Honestly, if you haven't, if you're a reader, go and read Norman Mailer, The Fight. It will make you want to be a sports journalist,

as it evidently did for me and Chuck. Chuck's probably pulled it off a bit better than me, to be fair to him. And if you're not into books, go and watch When We Were Kings. Probably the greatest sports documentary ever made i think it won an oscar and again all these characters we're talking about mailer uh george plimpton they're all in this giving their first-hand accounts of this much of the stuff we're talking about during that conversation is in when we were kings. Just a brilliant, brilliant

for you. I honestly could have talked to Chuck for an hour about it. As I said, and not to belittle the next guest, because I absolutely love these guys. I've been covering these guys for a very, very long time. And I'm just so happy to see, you know, the pioneer of Welsh MMA, a guy who has meant so much to that scene and continues to mean so much to that scene. Richard Shakey Shore in remission, healthy again. We were all very worried when we got the news. We probably got the news late 2022 or early 2023. I'd say late 2022 that he had got a cancer diagnosis he's been through chemo been through radiotherapy i have an article coming out about it on uncrowned over the weekend

um where he really delved into and i appreciate that so much such a personal thing to talk about but so good to see him so healthy back to himself absolutely buzzing i know i was talking about the jack shore underdog thing it did suddenly occur to me that against brito he was an underdog against ricky simone his last bantamweight fight he was an underdog but um i don't know dude the pedigree of jack shore is overlooked by a lot of people like this guy has been doing this a long long time and he hasn't lost an awful lot i think uh ricky simona and brito are the only fights he's ever lost um certainly as a professional and really the brito one which we'll get into i'm sure

was controversial because it was stopped because of a leg cut and look Richard and Jack aren't saying like oh it was about to win the fight it was a tough fight Brito's a beast he was chopping his legs through but everyone I talked to like fighters coaches at the time were like well that's that's the way you'd have to fight Brito like you would have to let him exert himself in a furious manner over the first two rounds of the fight and hope you can just pour it on the third and honestly Jack was surviving and that's a tough thing to do against Brito and you could see Brito starting to wrestle and you're like maybe this could turn unfortunately the doctor stopped it Richard was incensed like I mean I don't think I've ever seen Shakey as angry as he was

after that fight he's calmed down now I think but just a great duo the most iconic duo in Welsh MMA history here is Jack Shaw who takes on Yusuf Zalal in Edmonton and his father, the legend

Richard Shakey Shaw I am now joined by the most iconic duo in the history of Welsh martial arts. Two legends are on right, Richard Shakey Shore and his fantastic son Jack, who is fighting Yusuf Salal in Edmonton this weekend. Lads, an absolute pleasure. Yous have always been on my shows. It's great to finally get you here on the Uncrowned Network. Ariel Hawane even texted me to say he's absolutely buzzing to hear what you guys have to say this week. So very happy to have you here.

Our pleasure, buddy. Always happy to have a chat with our favourite Irish journalist, mate. Is there any other? I'm on your mess. Favourite journalist. My favourite journalist. I'll have all the magic flags. Stevenson will have you

on the DMs now i could all add these davidson um jack first of all i spoke to your dad yesterday we have a feature coming out about his uh his amazing amazing journey with cancer his remission all this stuff um but before we get into this fight and everything like that i wanted to ask you what is your take on Edmonton, Canada? Because Sheikhi didn't exactly pull any punches. We don't have this part of it recorded, thank God, but a few criticisms, to say the least, from Sheikhi yesterday. Yeah, it's all right.

You've got to bear in mind that the only places you like is Ablirion Tembi, so you've never once had anything good to say about any way we ever travelled so you've got to pay that in mind when you're mastering Dublin was alright you've got to pay that in mind when you're

mastering for his point of view on the city but nah it's alright couple of couple of shady characters hanging about the bus stops and the street corners

every hundred yards you've got to step over a junkie but yeah nah it's a nice it looks nice doesn't, it looks nice, doesn't it? It looks nice,

but don't look down. Tricking all the junkies, picking up faggots. Oh my God. I was actually thinking about this, Jack, because you, you've,

your son is a year old, right? And most of your fights happen in the UK. And now suddenly they're doing the Jack Shaw world tour. As soon as this happens. Unbelievable, right? Every time without fail. Yeah. Yeah. Brazil, the uk and now suddenly they're doing the jack shaw world tour as soon as this happens unbelievable right every time without fail yeah yeah brazil and then canada well it's mad because when we go march to nemesis being like oh canada it's not too far away it's like one flight and it was

fucking quick to get for us to get to brazil and i was a 12 hour flight so yeah we haven't found a bit of a run around but um at least least we get to see the world a little bit i suppose it's uh you you bring up brazil and i don't want to mention the war because again previous conversation with shaky he got all kinds of worked up i mean we took a 15 minute interlude from what we're talking about just so he could air his grievances on the brito fight but you know like he has a lot of, there's a lot of substance to the argument here. That cut on your leg,

the doctor fingering the wound in your leg and then deciding, you know, we have to call this fight off. And I agree with your dad. Like he's kind of saying, I've never seen a fight stopped on a leg cut before. You looked, I watched the fight back today now when I was going to speak to you you look absolutely like I cannot believe this is happening you're

you're walking around aimlessly like surely this isn't the end of this fight um how hard is it to get over something like that because Brito obviously a fantastic fighter and when I was speaking to coaches and fighters after this fight they were like this is the only way you can fight Brito you you've got to let him exhaust himself you you seem to be doing that he's starting to wrestle you when the when the are attempting to wrestle you when the referee stops the fight um how annoying was that considering the travel considering everything you guys had been through to get to that point yeah it was really annoying um obviously you're out of the cage you get matched to a guy like brito who's a big scary dangerous motherfucker and it's like right so you're going there you're going to his back garden and yeah like we've never

ever once claimed that oh i was fucking dominating the fight and they stopped it and robbed us but the game plan as we keep saying to everyone, was like you said, you can't fight him head-on and meet him in the middle. The people who've tried to do that, Andre Feely and all that, they've been clipped and put out. You can't do it. You've got to suck him in and let him tire himself out. And when we watched

all his footage, we knew that when he gets tired, he defaults and starts to wrestle. And I know I've got really, really good takedown defence so that almost was the plan to let that play into my field

because the more he tries to wrestle the harder it's going to be him to take me down the more tired he's going to get and he was starting to do that

and when they stopped I didn't realise my leg was cut to be honest he was leaning on me on the cage and I seen the blood and I thought

oh perhaps I must have clipped him on the way in and cut his eye cut his cheek whatever and then they stopped and I looked down like oh my leg's bleeding so I just expected the doc that they come in check it and be like yeah all good especially some of the cuts you see you know on eyebrows and stuff like that they let the fight carry on with and they they they I can I don't speak Portuguese but I can see that they're on about calling the fight off. And like me and him are going off.

I'm like, no, no, no, I'm right. I'm right. And then they start saying it's fractured. It's fractured. I'm like, well, how can it be fractured? I'm walking on it. You know what I mean? I'm walking, I'm fighting normal.

And then after the fight, they walk us out the back. They're like insisting on person is in a fucking wheelchair that we didn't need. Yeah. It's just frustrating especially to have all that time out to come back and I felt good

going in there to then sort of get our game plan finally going in the second round and then just to have the rug pulls when I knew

it was a tough one to get over it took me a good couple of weeks couple of months to be honest it was a weird result because it's a

loss but it's like i don't know how you approach it to i don't know what you do mentally i've never overcome anything like i'm mentally because it was like it's a loss but it didn't feel like loss at the same time right right and shaky so they come to you with this fight in edmonton is there any part of you kind of thinking, I don't necessarily want to fight outside of the UK or somewhere close, given what happened in Brazil? Was there any reluctance on your part? Listen, you

look back to Jack Sweeney, I see we have never ever turned the fight down. We've never once declined an opponent. If you have a look at his CV of fighters that we've arranged to fight the fights that haven't even Uman Ergomedov

we'd signed on that one that fell through we had a where was the fight when we had four opponents in nine days Fight Island Fight Island

we had four opponents in nine days we signed for everyone we signed for an opponent on the the day before we flew on the connection when we got off the flight.

That was Vegas. Yes, I've checked the email. This guy's pulled out, they've offered us another one. We've took that, and when we landed in Vegas, we had another opponent. And we've always fought anyone.

So, to be honest, I just think, as Jack has said in other interviews, we've fought the Brazilian, in Brazil, with a Brazilian referee that I've never seen before. I thought it was

inexperienced, cost us a fight, and a Brazilian doctor. I sent a letter off to the commission, not asking to overturn the result or appeal it, but just wanted to have some accountability for the way the fight was stopped. And just a load of bullshit back off him saying that doctor's experienced and he felt the shin was fractured and that was the end of the matter. But now we're going to issue Canada. We've been to Canada

before with Marshman. It was a different opponent. We had a different opponent originally. Again, an undefeated fighter. That one fell through and we took Zalal as well then straight away as well so

nah it's a good fight it's a tough fight as well I think it's a really good fight they match up well but nah listen we've been everywhere haven't we

we had a show in London a few years back one week and they sent us to Long Island in New York the following week didn't make any sense

but we don't complain we just get on with it you know yeah and look there wasn't anything wrong with that on with the piece you know yeah and look there wasn't anything wrong with that leg right like when you guys went to the doctor

outside of a cut leg there was nothing right no four stitches and sent back to the hotel four stitches and a bit of sweat telling Rich

nine times out of ten everyone's kicking a calf like everybody's nine out of ten nine out of ten fights these days I always come out of ten fights these days.

I always come out of fights with banged up shins and feet and legs so within two, three weeks I was back in the gym obviously working around the healing

of the cut because of what it was but there was no issue walking or anything like that. I was back normal. I'm interested, who was the most

irritable that night when you're unwinding the two shore boys yes he did he looked straight at you shaky honestly honestly god i had to be restrained case i genuinely because i was off i don't know i i flew off parker my um my other coach said to me he was saying shit shit you've got to fucking calm down because we're gonna get in trouble we're in the room i don't go on twitter no more because i just don't like twitter and nobody likes twitter jack he's reading me 50 fucking thousand tweets so i

said this and so i don't care so i don't hate he's just off the fucking wall for about three days yeah I'm alright though was he was he shit talking you at some stage in there shaky there was a part in the first round where Cormier's

commentating and he he actually said a fucking word he said he said something I don't think it was people think it was

a rest but it was somebody behind this that he shouted to in Portuguese and I think people assumed they were talking they were talking to the corner team, but it definitely wasn't because he wasn't making eye contact with us. He was eye contact with somebody behind us.

I couldn't fathom what the idiot was doing, to be honest. It's funny you mentioned the thing about not wanting to fight a Brazilian in Brazil because that is what everyone says. And even as this fight is happening, Cormier is saying this. He's like like i don't know if i'd want to come in and fight a brazilian in brazil um listen if that role was reversed would they have stopped that fight if brito had a cut shit i'll categorically say not in a million years would that affect that fight to be stopped if the injury was reversed not Not a chance. I just wanted to see you on that Manchester card and I don't

know how you felt about that guys because... No, we couldn't do it. What was the reason we couldn't do that one? It was my son's birthday there two or three days before. Yeah, it was your son's first birthday. I think it's a big thing. I will say, you've got to have the balance right. I wouldn't

want to miss his son's first birthday you know it's a big deal for me so that's why we ended up just moving a little bit further on into the year I wouldn't say

you're all too disappointed that you didn't fight there because I was there obviously for the fight and I've never seen a crowd

so dead in my life like I mean Paddy had a big explosion they got up for tom like as in that you could feel them trying to to get up for tom and they gave him a massive ovation but by the time main event started lads were falling asleep it was a video wouldn't they done um like a collage of uh images around the venue during the main event and it was hundreds of people sleeping you know it's like i understand

they've got to do money in the pay-per-view and all the rest of it but come on they're not making the saudis fight in the middle of the night really you know um and i just think it ruined the experience for everybody because you know they're giving you eye masks they're giving you earplugs you're trying to sleep during the day it's impossible it's a hotel it's constant noise going on fortunately for us with O-Ban he was one of the first fights so I think we fought

like 11.45pm which isn't too bad but I honestly think Leon Leon's performance was jaded

because of the time of the night that he had a fight with Torres I've seen Aspinall do an interview it might have been with Ariel actually

and he said I think he said something along the lines he tried to get on the sleep schedule a week

and just found it impossible and I think he said fight day because of nerves and stuff

he woke up at like 8am so he said by the time he thought he'd been awake

he tried to nap it's like fight day when your adrenaline's going I think he

said he was up like 18-19 hours by the time he was at like 18, 19 hours by the time he was making the walk of the cage and obviously it didn't affect his performance but he said

had it gone into the later rounds who's to say that I wouldn't have played a factor yeah it's a ridiculous idea if I'm honest yeah like the

the fights that you've had in London the magical nights it's all taking place at local time and that adds to it Ousmane and Leon was a pay-per-view and they got that magical nights. It's all taking place at local time and that adds to it. Ousmane and Leon was a pay-per-view

and they've done that UK time and I just think it's shit on the UK fans as well. You know what I mean? You know, they come to the UK

once, twice a year and all of a sudden then, if you're watching it at home you've got to wait up until 5am and it must be an honourable experience for some of them supporters in Arabia. I was expecting a lot of trouble, to be honest.

I thought it was a bad idea. You know the British culture is like everybody drinking all day, narcotics flying around. As it was, I don't think it was much trouble, was it? No trouble? I didn't see any trouble. It was in bed. I just think it was a really bad call for the UFC

to do it at that time. Yeah, I think the reason why there was some trouble is like what Jack's saying. I think people were ready for bed. Like, honestly, they were leaving like, I need to go to sleep now.

Shaq, what is your scouting report on Yusuf Zalal? I want to hear it. He's good everywhere. He's a really neat and tidy kickboxer. He's got

decent takedowns. His last two fights he's won by submission but I think predominantly we'd probably think he'll probably come and strike a little bit more

due to Jack's wrestling but I'd agree. But no, he's a good well-rounded. He's got a decision loss against the champ, hasn't he?

I know we shorten all this and all that but he comes from that factory ethical really really well established one of the best

teams in the world so under no illusions this is like a 50-50 fight but it's the UFC and how they match in the NBA

they're all 50-50 fights we don't get no gimmies that's one thing we've never had in his UFC career but we're looking

forward to it we've seen a couple of his interviews he's a respectful kid in fairness he's talking respectfully about us and Jack and the team so I'm looking forward to it it'll know, we've seen some, seen a couple of his interviews. He's a respectful kid in fairness. He's talking respectfully about us and Jack and the team. So I'm looking forward to it.

It'd be a good match. I think it's a really good, I think it's one of them fights for both lads where you'd probably be looking at a top 15. The winner would be looking at the top 15 opponent. I've seen some people, Jack online talking about, Oh, this guy,

this guy's got some great rear naked chokes. And I'm like, do you know who this guy is fighting? Do know who jack is i mean have you been have you been impressed by his rear naked choke game as a a master of the submission yourself yeah no look he's um i say i wouldn't class him as like a grappler but he's one of the you know like like some of these guys, they've got like, not a one trick pony, but they've got that one move that they specialise in.

And it seems to be, it's a takedown. The guy gives up their back and he's lightning quick to get in the oxen and jump in the back. And when he does get it back, more often than not,

there's the finish. So yeah, his setups are really good. I think something we've looked at. Yeah, how he sets it up and does it is a little bit different

from how I do it up is and does it's a little bit different well how i do it but um no is it he's very slick with it you know you don't really want to give him an opportunity because he's got those long limbs as well he's a lanky guy and they're always tough when they get the body triangle get the back it is tough to shift i mean if they don't get a finish it can be a bit of a nightmare position so he's very yeah he's good he's good in that area what's the return to featherweight been like how's the feeling there with these guys um obviously you're absolutely surging up anthem way we're over here now we have the which we've discussed um but how does it feel like does it feel like much of a difference for you

physically i mean like a lot of my spinearring partners are featherweights and lightweights anyway so like physically doesn't I just feel in myself I'm a lot stronger I'm a lot healthier at the weight whereas when I was down at bank the way my entire camp was just focused around making weight I was out running in the morning run before sparring run out so every every sparring session I was going into I was depleted and compromised whereas now I'm going into a sparring session doing my fight simulation rounds where I'm

fully filled and feel fit strong and happy and I just figure if moving me up a level you know like MMA fans can be a little bit

fit though like I lost a brief and all of a sudden everyone's saying you need to go back to bantamweight it's too small for fair weight

yet when I beat Mark Wan a year before and when I beat Mark Wan a year before, and when I beat Mark Wan, I hadn't put on the muscle and stuff that I had now. When I beat Mark Wan, I was grateful for his career,

he looks more better than ever in fairway. Um, but yeah, I feel brilliant. Um, I mean, he's not as small,

I don't know where they get it. He's a massive bantamweight. Fucking massive. But he's a, he's a decent size fairway. We're matching up, you know, we're sizing up some of

the guys you'll tell I'm sure you won't mind me saying me and Charles are quite friendly

I've seen him fight last time I saw him we both fought on the same card he's like

we've swapped weights he looks me up and down and goes you were bigger than me

when you were abandoned weight we've seen him again in the just looks me up and down and goes, you were bigger than me when you was a bandit. He's like, oh, fuck, why the fuck do I have a bandit weight? And then we've seen him again in the workout room last night and he's like, grabbed mine and was like,

yeah, you should never have been a bandit. So, yeah. Like, we checked in with the weight yesterday. One, five, nine pounds, you know. That's not a small featherweight on fight week you know it's 15 14 15 pounder cut ready for the boat like sounds like you need to move the lightweight if anything i uh i tell people like the amount of weight i used to have to shift fight week for band and weight it was just it was just an horrendous five days we would walk back in in excess of one fight fight on the back of me. I remember,

I can remember seeing you, and I like talking to you guys a lot before I went to see you fight in Cardiff against Ekendeo, and I can remember that way cut, and I was like, holy shit, like, you guys were like rushing out of the places, like, fuck, we need to get this guy wrapped in cotton wool, basically, for tomorrow.

So it was no surprise to me that you had to move up, you know? And what was that, like, six years ago? I was 23, 24. I mean, now I'm 29, pushing 30. As you get older, you naturally get bigger anyway. Weight becomes hard at the shift. Do you know what I mean?

I think we always sort of knew it was coming. It was just a case of when it was going to happen. I would have done it, and you'll tell him this, probably three fights before he did I was at him constantly but like he always says in the interviews

it's easy to forget how horrific the cut was when you keep winning and I think like after the Simone fight I think and we're not offing it you know

Ricky won it but the weight cut was horrific the trip was horrific to New York everything about the hotel was wrong everything was off and I think that impacted on his performance you know the weight cut The trip was horrific to New York. Everything about the hotel was wrong.

Everything was off. And I think that impacted on his performance. The weight cut was taking so much out of him. It was impacting. So then he's done all the testing. And when he's gone up and done, what do you call the scans and the blood tests? They're like, mate, you're big for a featherweight. You're going to end up dying one day making these cuts.

And that was it, wasn't it? You're going to end up, your kidneys are going to fail. Something's going to end up dying one day making these cuts and that was it you're going to end up your kidneys are going to fail something's going to go radically wrong so I needed them to say that because I'd be looking for three fights saying we need to move up

you know I see how he sizes up against these guys but I think it's alright moving I think on Saturday I think everyone will appreciate just how good

he is now because Mach 1 was our first one we did have a lot of time to really prepare we've done a lot of work with Paul Reid up in Liverpool around like

his body composition muscle mass his diet and Paul's done a brilliant job every year you know he's filled up into a really strong powerful featherweight now

As a dad does it like you know Richard was just mentioning life balance as a dad now as well you know much easier trip for me

I don't enjoy it don't get me wrong I want to enjoy it I don't like him cutting away the featherweight and watching him fight I'll be relieved when the fight's over

but the bantamweight it was great and I said there's a couple of times I can't keep doing this I can't keep watching you go through

what you go through to make that weight and a couple of times I've said to a couple of lads in gym I just can't do it. I can't do it no more. And then when he's moved up, it is, isn't it?

It's a lot more comfortable. His mood is much better. Like, at Banterweight, he wouldn't leave the room, would he? He'd just be curled up on the bed all day for the entire week. We were walking yesterday, stopped at a coffee shop, had a drink. It's night and day, the preparation for the fight. It's how a fighter should be preparing for a fight. It's getting ready, honing the skills skills a little bit of weight to cut rather than just killing yourself

day in day out over the last couple of weeks to make sure you make you at one three six pounds and and you would like fraser as well jack like you probably get the you know you you're probably a lot more active than he used to be as a bantamweight like you get to basically enjoy his time right up until you have to leave it this way. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, definitely. You know, like for the last,

like when I was at a bantam, the last like, I don't know, four, six weeks of camp, it was, it's a grind. I,

every single day can waking up and just repeating the process. Like when you go a little one, you know, running around the ocean, you don't want to, you don't want to be in a, in a, in a frame of mind where you think,

well, I've got to get over the gym and rest and do nothing now until the next session because you're that exhausted. It's just given me a new lease of life with training. I enjoy training a lot more. I got to a stage where I just used to drag going into the fight camp.

To be honest, now a fight camp and just normal everyday training is a lot different other than the intensity of the sparring rounds and it's a bit more structured um life's just so much better for me now at this at this new class as a dad as a as a as a fight as a person in general you know i mean i'm like life is just so much like even i'd have a fight a bunch of me i just i'd just be on a timer thinking like when are we going to get off of the nets right now? What's my weight? Keep my weight down. It was just a constant 24-7, 365 on my mind, whereas now it's just totally different.

And I think a lot of the top guys now is going in the same direction. Do you know what I mean? Just even at the top of the video, I know Max Holloway's massive. Like Toporje and Volpanovski, they're not massive, massive monsters at the weight, but they physically fit strong and healthy, making the weight comfortably.

And it's shown in their performances. I think it's the way forward. I want to touch on what you just said about him being a father now. Ask him if he'll let his son have a fight. Jack? Not a chance. Now he knows what I've had to put up with for the last 20 years. I want to ask you about you mentioned the america county fight

and i know yous are probably sick to death talking about this i only spent a long time speaking to shaky about it yesterday but that moment is probably the most emotional i've been uh watching a fight um when you took to the mic after a brilliant performance uh shaky had called out what essentially led to the finish just before it happened and it was very emotional scene and after speaking to shaky yesterday i realized that not a lot of people knew about his cancer diagnosis at that stage and obviously as i said massively emotional i can remember the outpouring of on lion afterwards um how good does it feel for you jack like this i know he's a an mma legend i know he's all these things but he's your dad how good does it feel to to hear that he's in remission now and and and things are back on course yeah it's just um it's just like as

if life went back to normal for a couple of months it was kind of like and i know like he was obviously like he caught it early and all that but when you hear like when you hear the word cancer you automatically assume the worst you automatically worry and panic like i didn't want to do that fight you know we got that i think we we'd we'd had the okay before christmas that they were going to put me on the left and then card and then we found out about that and i was like right well i just just won't fight until after this is all sorted. And he kind of pushed me. I was like, no, no, no, I'd rather you do it. It'll be better for me.

It'll give me something to focus my mind on. But, like, people don't... I'll always see an interview, and I don't think people fully understand. Like, he was generally... The first, like, three weeks of January, he was going through chemotherapy. So for me to do a training camp

whilst he's literally at the house on death's door, and then even after that, even after the chemo was done, he was still rough as can be for weeks and months. Yeah, he had a radiotherapy then as well. I remember seeing him, I remember at the time of the fight, I was thinking, oh, he looks a lot, he seemed a lot better than what he did two or three months ago. But then when I look back at the pictures from that fight week, he just looks horrendous. He looks, lot, he seemed a lot better than what he did two or three months ago. But then when I look back at the pictures from that fight week, he just looks around us. He looks, even then, you know, like how many weeks had he finished it?

No, I think he finished the week before that. He just looked fucking terrible. You know what I mean? He looked, he looked. It was a fight match, wasn't it? Yeah, he was. He was blown up because of the steroids and the treatment and all that. He just looked not well at all. But for then, obviously you get the news and stuff treatment and all like he just looked not well

at all but for them to obviously get the news and stuff that right we're all good we're all in the clear it was just like so you can't even put it into words really it was just like uh because obviously what people don't understand as well is like he's put on a brave face but then like i'm i'm not not to make it about me but i'm having to deal with my mother and my sister you know crying every other day, going up to see my mom and she's crying and panicking. So I've got a fight in the back of my head and I've got to try and keep these on the mental straight and narrow. Then you factor in,

it's not just I go worry about them, he could potentially be fucking dying. They could say to us in 12 weeks, this hasn't worked, it's only going to get worse. So it was a lot going on a lot to take into it to be honest but I'm just glad

it's all fucking done with when they asked I was proud of how we managed it because as we said we kept it quiet for him to prepare and put on a performance

like he did psychologically it must have been a screen so I'm proud of how we managed that period as well inside and outside of the gym he sent me a video of uh during that and uh i can imagine he wasn't always just a ray of sunshine to be dealing with he's not a fucking ray of sunshine anyway let alone when he's in the midst of people it was funny that video he said to um my my camera guy joe caught it on camera and he said i didn't know we've been filmed and he said i was filming it he said and i was just he said he was going and i was petrified

that he was gonna look at me and be like are you fucking filming me he said i got it so slight i might be catching now i might be in the firing line it's absolutely brilliant I know you guys have a lot to do today I'll let you go just after one more as Ariel Awani would say

is this going to be a y'all must have forgot moment for Jack Shaw on Saturday in Edmonton I believe it will be absolutely

absolutely like we keep saying we're under no illusion of how good this guy is. He's very, very good and, you know, all respect to him. He's got some good wins.

The guys he lost have been good, but I genuinely believe I don't get the credit I deserve for the level I'm at. And I think this will be a good, not a coming out party, but it'll be a good chance

to remind people that, ah, you know what? He is as good as they used to say he is. And I fucking know you are, Jack Shaw. Richard and Jack, two legends. I love the both of yous. Have a great time over there. Stay away from those

lads messing with needles around Edmonton, alright? And everything will be fine. Best of luck and thank you so much for coming on, lads. No problem. Thanks, man. Thanks, Pete. Cheers, buddy. Catch you soon, pal. There they were, the legends the shores incredible i mean what about that story i do i look i knew shaky was angry i didn't know he had to be physically restrained

by one of the coaches great crack with the l Look, it's a pressure situation for Jack. And he seems as cool as the other side of the pillow. I actually think it is very funny. He makes a great point. After Amerkani and the brilliant win that he had there, everybody was like, wow, Jack should have moved to featherweight, you know, years ago. And then the Brito fight happens again,

ended in a controversial way. And everyone's like, oh, he needs to go back down to Bantamweight. He's right. It's a fickle, fickle sport at the best of times. Let's be honest. IT is at the top. Jack Shaw is my underdog of the week. Come on.

Of course he is. Can he continue the winning run of crack guests? I mean, this is going to be some crack, boys. If this keeps happening, I'll have a queue out the door with people trying to get on. Chuck's going to win whatever the hell he's competing in this weekend,

I can assure you of that. Yeah, so that's the episode for this week. Jack Shaw is our underdog of the week. Enjoy UFC Edmonton. The lads did a great job of breaking it all down yesterday. GC, the man, the fast hand with the bets, as always.

But it's a really good card. i'm looking forward to watching it all of the crackheads i will see you next friday please check us out again we are loving the fun we're having here um big thank you to the great oscar locef big thank you to the great Oscar Loseff. Big thank you to the great Frank, Mysterious Frank, that is. And Jordan, I mean, on air Jordan, are you seeing all of this beautiful stuff he's doing with this? This is just me sitting in my office

talking shite, and he turns it into a piece of art every week. Shout out Anton Evans. What's this Antoine stuff about? I saw he made a comment, the British thing. Come on, mate. It's not a good game to play with the Irish people. You know this. Just stuff about? He made, I saw he made a comment, the British thing. Come on, mate. It's not a good game

to play with the Irish people. You know this. Just because you're a unit, you think you can do this, right? Just because you're on steroids and are juiced out of your mind now, you feel like you can talk down to me. It's terrible,

but I love you too. Thank you to Ariel. Thank you to all the boys. See you next week. Enjoy the fights.