The Ariel Helwani Show - Tony Khan FINALLY in studio, Valentina Shevchenko in studio, On The Nose, news & notes

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Ariel Helwani kicks off the show with a look at the first faceoff between Arman Tsarukyan and Dan Hooker and reaction to Joaquin Buckley’s message to Islam Makhachev (03:19).UFC women’s flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko joins Ariel in-studio to break down her big win against Zhang Weili at UFC 322, reflect on the early days of her career, discuss how she controls her emotions, respond to critics of her fighting style, accept Amanda Nunes’ challenge to fight at 125 pounds, react to talks of Ronda Rousey’s comeback, and more (15:17).AEW boss Tony Khan sits down with Ariel for a highly-anticipated interview, touching on AEW’s upcoming Full Gear show, the state of the company, their deal with HBO Max, WWE’s efforts to counter-program their shows, their television ratings, criticism from Eric Bischoff, the absence of some top AEW stars, whether he regrets how things played out with CM Punk, and more (1:15:17).The Boys in the Back and Petesy Carroll join Ariel to answer your On The Nose questions, including mention of Dana White saying Francis Ngannou grabbed him by the shirt, Kai Kara-France being removed from the UFC rankings, dream fights for the White House card (2:36:50).Plus, your Super Chats (3:37:42).

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Eriya-Hawaii Show. Back in your life on this Tuesday, November 18, 2000. And 25, hello again, everyone. I sure hope you're doing well. It is great to be here. It is wonderful to be here. on a lovely yet frigid Tuesday in New York City, and there is something in the air, my friends.

Yes, it is Tuesday, and you know exactly what that means. That means we have a star-studded lineup for you. Now, usually, you know, when I say star-studded, it's like four, five, six guests. Today, it's just two guests, my friends. It's just two, but both are in studio, both in high demand, and dare I say, both shall produce fireworks.

In a matter of moments, we are going to be joined in studio by, arguably, the greatest female fighter in the history of the UFC, or at the very least, number one pound for pound right now. Why? Because on Saturday at Madison Square Garden, she successfully defended her UFC women's flywhite title in a romper. It was one-way traffic throughout in the co-main event. She's the pride of Kyrgyzstan. She's the one-and-only Valentina, the bullet, Shevchenko. She's going to be joining us in studio in a matter of moments. After that chat, at 2 o'clock, grab your popcorn, strap on your seatbelt, do whatever it is you need to do.

Because three and a half years later, a little more than three years, not quite half, but like 3.2 or 3 years after, my first chat with the founder, the head booker, the CEO, the president, the everything of All Elite Wrestling, Mr. Tony Khan. we meet again, but this time it's face to face. I have never met him in person. I have never shook his hand. Our first interview was on the YouTube channel before we officially launched it when I was doing the side hustle thing. Much talked about interview. I said some things. He said some things. But here we are some three years later. And he is gracious enough to join us in studio. And I have to say, and I will say to him face to face, we've been doing this a long time. And usually when there's a falling out, there isn't a falling back, if you mean. You know, if you know what I mean, like falling out, a falling in, what would be the good result of falling out? You get the point,

usually there's a falling out, and that's that. And so for three years to pass and, you know, some, I don't know, some bad, whatever you want to call it, for it to get to this point where we can have what I hope to be a good, honest, and thought-provoking and thorough conversation. It's something that I am appreciative of, grateful for, and looking forward to very much. And I know there are a lot of you out there as well who are looking forward to it. I can't wait. I can't wait for that chat. And to make today even more special, it's a Tuesday after a pay-per-view. I feel like I've settled on this. Tuesday after a pay-per-view is the best time to do on the nose because everything is very fresh. Obviously, everything that transpired

on Saturday from the fights in the cage to the fights out of the cage, the AJ Jake, Jake Paul news. What else you want to talk about? UFC Qatar. We had the face-offs. We'll show you those later. I also have some news to talk about regarding the PFL, Kaikar, France in the news. Stay tuned for that. Very interesting as well. We'll get to all of that and

more after the Tony interview at approximately 3 o'clock. It's on the nose, on a Tuesday. ariahawani.substack.com is the place to be for all of that information, all of those questions. There are already a ton.

There's a lot on everyone's mind from this past weekend in the world of boxing. Obviously, you know, Connor Ben getting the win over Chris Eubank Jr., Fabio Wardley, now becoming the WBO heavyweight champion after Alexander Usik, vacated the title of Joseph Parker in the news, unfortunately, for the cocaine violation. The AJ and Jake Paul News, there is a press conference scheduled for 1 p.m. on Friday in Miami at the Casillas Center. your boy will be there a little disappointed with Miami right now

beating the Knicks yesterday and a heartbreaker by two yes we were out OG yes we were without Jalen Brunson but still should have won that game had plenty of opportunities down the stretch nevertheless nevertheless obviously UFC going down this weekend

and yeah I mean there's just a lot going on there's a lot going on and perhaps some reaction to the conversation with one Tony Khan WW was at Madison Square Garden yesterday They're at the theater today for NXT. Just a lot going on.

Just a lot going on. I do love the face off. I woke up the first thing that I saw today. The first thing that I saw today was the faceoff between Armand Serukian and Dan Hooker. I mean, this is a word personified by both of them. Shout out to Engage, getting the first look. Armand switches, fist to the face. Hooker can't be bothered.

These two are magic. Those two are magic. I love everything about that fight. That fight in the Ian Gary-Belah Muhammad fight is big business. And in fact, it's so big that we'll be doing a post-show on Saturday after the conclusion of the card. It will be around 4 p.m. Eastern time, 9 in the UK, 1 p.m. in the Pacific time zone that's the west coast of the United States of America and Canada. But I feel like this one, this. one warrants it because it is the culmination of the the welterweight tourney i did see in the rankings earlier today michael morales has shot all the way up to three he's now the third best welterweight as far as these rankings are concerned in the ufc islam number one jack dela holds his spot at number one officially it's always weird to me i feel like the champion should be one but i get it champion and then one i always say this below hanging on to number two morales three over Shafkut.

So what have you done for me lately, sport, then Shafkat 4, Carlos Proch, 5 over Ian Machado, Gary? How is that possible? How is that possible? He beat him. But fine. One suspects if Ian wins, he will move up.

Brady 7, Usman, the unofficial number one contender, is 8. That's Kamar Usman. Leon Edwards 9, also kind of interesting, because, well, let's be honest, Leon beat Camaro twice

And then Joaquin Buckley Who I saw Joaquin Buckley saying Like something to the effect of like Hey Islam you won't dare say my name You won't dare say my name I don't know why he would say his name If I'm being 100% honest Like I get that you have to drum up some kind of interest

Some kind of excitement Some kind of buzz But you are coming off a lost Kamaro Usman So I'm not really sure why he would say his name But I appreciate the efforts he is a top 10 Walter Wade

so I guess crazier things have happened so let's see let's see a Joaquin Buckley title shot I don't know

if crazier things have happened um at this current juncture with how many contenders they have him coming off of a loss I guess

at number 10 if you saw an announcement and Dana White said Islam Makash is gonna defend his belt at the White House against Joaquin Buckley you wouldn't be like

what the fuck yeah you're right I always go back to the Alexander August of St title shot after getting brutally knocked out by Anthony Johnson. He got brutally knocked out in his home country. You can hear a pin drop and then he got a title shot off of that. Never thought that that would ever happen. That was UFC 192. That to me is the most shocking title shot of all.

But to your point, there wasn't a long queue of people waiting to fight the champion Dano Cormier at that time. So they kind of had to make something out of nothing. In this particular case, I mean, we've just mentioned like four or five guys, including shot. guy who hasn't fought in almost a year now. It's about 11 and a half months since his last fight. So yes, it is pretty shocking. Are you trying to say that he was off base with his

I mean, I love this selling yourself. You know, you get on the treadmill and you know, you won't be denied and everything, but he is the number 10 Walter Wade. He's coming off a loss to the number eight where he was controlled for 15 minutes of that fight. I was in the building for it. People started leaving halfway through the fourth round because he was getting controlled so bad.

I can't imagine the fate will be much different against this alarm. So yeah, just with his resume where he's at, I'd be, I'd be, I'd be floored, I'd be stunned. I don't know if I could continue to watch the sport if you got it done. That's it, you're done. You quit. Maybe. Maybe. You retire. It's tough. We did get some breaking news, courtesy of our friends over at the PFL, the Professional Fighters League Frank this morning.

We found out that their schedule is starting to come into focus for 2026. Remember, this is their final year on the current ESPN deal that runs out in 26. John Martin was the one who announced the news. This is courtesy of a press release that came out at around 11 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. The Professional Fighters League today announced 24 total events through 2026 with 16 global events across the year, which will be available on ESPN in the U.S. In addition, there will be eight regional events evenly split across Africa and MENA. That's the Middle East, Northern Africa regions. First four events in 2026 are PFL Road to Dubai, February in the UAE, PFL Madrid in March in Spain, obviously, PFL Pittsburgh in March, and then PFL Chicago in April.

So what's notable about this to me is that there's no exact dates attached to this. Obviously, you know, the Madrid thing is very notable because it's something that's been talked about for quite some time with the likes of, you know, Ilya Tuporia, his brother, and the growth of MMA in Spain. one suspects that Costello Ventinus's first title defense will be there because he has ties to the region. John Martin did say in the video, just a reminder, we are getting rid. We are getting rid of the tournaments as far as the global events are concerned. So none of those events will feature tournaments, but the regional ones, and it seems like they're really centered on MENA and Africa. It seems like they're moving away from PFL Europe and that the European events would just be a part of the global. events, which means best cards possible, just like the PFL Leon card coming up in December.

That features Cyborg fighting for the belt. That features Henan Faheda against Vadim Nemcov fighting for the belt. They're just going to make the European events part of the regional, not regional, part of the global circuit. And then the regional tournaments will be in Africa and Mena. And they didn't announce specific dates. I'm not quite sure why. I did ask.

It seems like they just wanted to get some information, give me. people a sense of what they're doing and where they're going for the first quarter of 2024, but it definitely seems like it's a changing of the guard. It definitely feels like it's a new organization headed up by new leadership, a new voice, and that they're changing things up as far as the American and global events are concerned. Pittsburgh is an interesting spot, not exactly a hotbed. We were talking yesterday about this Charlie Brennam and Rick Story fight when Nate Marquard tested positive and Brennan waltzed in 24 hours notice. That was a Pittsburgh. That's probably like the most notable thing that happened at a Pittsburgh event. Oh,

by the way, the Czech Congo Pat Barry fight. That crazy knockout happened in Pittsburgh back in the day. That was 2011 on versus on a Sunday night in versus. Shout out to Pittsburgh. Shout out to Sid the kid as well. I did an interview with him over at the CBC. It's up now on the YouTube channel. Do me fair. Go over there. Give it a thumbs up. Give it a, give it a like a little like and maybe a comment or two. Just like let's boost it a little bit. Let them know about the What is it the, what are you calling it? Like the Hiawani Hive? Is that what we're calling it?

Or the Helwani Hive? Is that what we're calling it? It's called the Havani Hive. Is that what it is? It is now. What is this? Who's calling this? I thought people were calling it.

The Hylwani Hive, like the fan base. Yeah. The Huananabies. We used to call it the Hylwani Hib Nation, but I feel like Hive has become like a cool word. Oh, people have been saying that a lot? Yeah. On what, Twitter, Instagram? Huge on Blue Sky.

Friendster. If you can drop the links for those, I'd be happy to get him. Friendster, Myspace. Are people still using Blue Sky, by the way? Yeah, absolutely. I don't believe you. Yeah, our boy, BenFolks is still on it.

Is that true? His lower third says so. Yeah. Has anyone gone on his feed and looked if he's actually... Several times. I actually think he's got like a decent amount of followers. I can't even lie. Wow, wow, wow.

I'm pulling it up right now. Ben, folks, stop Blue Sky. He's doing well for himself. 3.1K followers? That's not. about you okay guys are we excited for tony connor or what i can't wait from height tina into tony the tony is crazy crazy in studio too i mean we have actual royalty coming in in a matter of seconds the bullet valentina shepchenko the pride of kyrgyzstan 37 years young ufc women's flyway champion

just listen to these accolades right here listen to this resume right here nine title defenses across two title reigns we know what happened in the middle nbd nbd nbd tied with Amanda Nunes for most title fight wins in UFC women's history 11 most wins in UFC women's flyweight division history 10 most KO victories in UFC women's flyweight division history four longest winning streak in UFC women's flyweight division history nine most title victories in UFC women's flyweight division history nine joint fourth with Amanda the noon is 11, Anderson Silva, 11 for most title victories.

Only Mighty Mouse 12, GSP 13, and John Jones 16 are ahead of her. John Jones 16 title victories is pretty nuts. NGL. Eight career victories via K.O., 7 via sub, 11 via decision.

Wins over Holly Home, Yawani on Jacek, Giuliana Pena, Alexa Grasso, Jessica Andrudge, Liz Karmouche, Jessica I, and on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York City, a brilliant win, a dominant win, a romper of a win over Zhang Wei Li and what a lot of people were calling one of the most significant title fights in women's MMA history, in UFC women's MMA history, in UFC women's title history, and honestly,

a lot of people thought it would be very close, and it wasn't. It wasn't close at all. It was not close at all. And so here she is in the tri-state area. What an opportunity. What a privilege. What an honor to be joined by one of the greatest fighters of all time, the one and only, the bullet, the pride of Kyrgyzstan. Valentina Shepchenko.

Is she there? Is she actually there? Yes. Wow. What a great honor this is. Hello, Valentino. Wow. With the belt.

So nice to see you. Okay. Let's hug it out. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Look at this. Definitely. Yes.

Wow. Wow. Can I see it. You can. What a great honor this is. Hello, everyone. Hello, Pavel. How are you? Okay, where are we? Oh, look at this. Wow, this is the belt.

This is the belt. This is beautiful. Thank you so much for bringing it in. It's a great honor. UC32 in. Yes, and still. New York, and still. And you have the, where are the rubies? Oh, they send it to you, right?

Oh, and they put the... So this is a band belt, and it has only one ruby because it's like, you can see here it's the U.S. 322 Madison Square Garden. but my belt with all rubies, it's like my personal belt. That is, every successful defense, I send my plate, and they update it with the rubies. Wow, wow, wow. And I have it. There it is, right?

We're on the screen. Yes, but it's like an old version right now. It's all this side plus one more rubies from the other side. Because you've now gone to nine, right? Yes. Unbelievable. I want to see how does it look? How does it look guys on?

does it look good? It looks good, Brad? I want to make sure it looks nice. Look at that. That looks beautiful. For me, it looks good. Yes, okay. Oh yes, I'm going to put the microphone closer to your mouth. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Thank you so much for coming in. I think in all my years of talking to you and doing the show, I don't think we've ever done it in the studio before. In a studio, I'm very first time and I was like very excited to see you, very curious, to see how it's look inside. It feels very cozy. Thank you. That's what we try to do. It's like you're coming to my house. Beautiful. I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

So... Where's my doll? Yes, I was going to say that. Do you have one? I don't have one. No. Is there a Valentina doll? Yes, there is.

It should be. I need to buy one. I don't think I've ever seen one before. I think I was sent like a few months ago. There is a dolls in a like in a punching bag. Oh. And there is like a Valentina. It's a bullet.

I love it. Okay, I'm going to look for that. I'm going to look for it. I'm going to put it right here next to DJ, next to all the greats that are with us. What was it like competing? This was your first time competing at Madison Square Garden, right? That's correct. Did you feel the aura, the history?

Did it feel special for you? Oh, you know, it's like when I'm competing, I'm so focused. I'm so locked into the fight that I actually like, in the moment, it's impossible for me to feel the moment. Okay. Because I feel where you try to feel it, you kind of like losing the point. the focus point because it's the same for the pilots

like combat pilot they cannot feel the moment in the moment of the flying they have to be very focused on what they are doing right now this is same for the fighters we have to be focused on what it's like feelingless completely zero feelings

but after you look back and you realize how big it was definitely leading into the fight coming into the fight I knew that about Madison Square Garden. It's definitely a huge arena. But still inside, this focus, it's like a block.

It's like a shield. Because if you start to express your feelings, emotions, show all of that, you kind of like breaking your protective shield. This is what you don't want to do during the fight, the important event. I get it. And I'm not surprised to hear you say that. I was wondering if you were captivated by it all. I have to say this, Valentina, and this is why I find you to be so interesting.

There is a mystery to you because I feel like, and you kind of alluded to this here, you let us in a little bit, but you don't let us in all the way. And so I could feel, after listening to you on Fight Week, like, I was getting the sense. Tell me if I'm wrong. You were a little bit annoyed that people would think that a 115 pound champion would move up to 125. There was a part of you that was feeling like the audacity of people to think that this woman is on my level. That's the way I felt.

Were you out there to prove a point and were you feeling that talk and were you channeling that as motivation going into this fight? Because I felt like it was annoying you a little bit. Actually, no, not at all because... I got it completely wrong. Completely wrong.

You know, I definitely knew about what people's saying and it's like leading to the fight. Everyone was like praising and like saying like so like, oh, they are the same size with Waley, so Bailey, she's so strong, she's so explosive, so fast, so everything. Yeah, definitely they will say it because she was

showing such amazing fights against her other opponents, but it doesn't mean that she will do the same against me. Because me, it's not the other opponents. Me, it's me. Me, it's a bullet.

And I have completely different like skills speed strange so and definitely people it's for them too hard to imagine how it's going to go and like to see the reality but specialists like professionals who know martial arts very good from the inside they definitely saw the reality very clear but from the point about being annoying. It's the same. We are coming back to the same point when I'm, I just cannot

let this emotions to get inside of me. Because in the fight, you have to be cold-minded. You don't, like in the moment, you have to have the clear vision, what action, what decision to take in this

second. It's right this second. And if you let emotions get into you, you will lose your mind. You will, like, commit mistakes, make errors. But in this level, when, for example, we are competing, when I competed with Whaley, the highest level of opponent, the highest level of martial arts,

it's like there is no right for any mistake because your opponent of this level will not, like, forgive this mistake. They will use it against you. That's why it's like completely in the bubble shield, hearing what is going on outside, but not letting in inside. Have you always been like that? Or was there a time in your life where you did let the stuff from the outside, from outside the bubble, get in and affect you? At the beginning of my career, definitely, yes.

Pre-UFC or beginning of UFC? Pre-UFC, way pre-UFSI, like pre-Moi Thai. At the beginning, I understand and I speak it's like 30 years ago. Because it's how you learn to be like that. How you can learn it if you are not experienced that. You have to like pass through it. You have to feel it from the inside what can happen. And when you feel it, you correct it.

And then you are put in the right tune. And so you have these moments where, you know, some people are saying this and that. And then you go out there and you completely dominate. Like it was not even close to fight. There was, right? there was exactly there was no question no question when you were

envisioning like thinking about the fight dreaming about the fight game planning did you really think it would go that way or were there any parts that you were okay a little bit concerned because it did not seem for one moment that you were in trouble even for a second it was as one-sided as it gets against the person who most

thought was the best pound for pound female fighter going into that fight from the very beginning like my coach by Ovidotov he was trained me in the way where this is I call the art of martial arts. When you go inside of the ring or octagon and you do, you hit your opponent whatever you want, you do whatever you want, but they cannot get into you.

They cannot hit you. They miss. They do like, this is the art of martial arts. And it was the very number one from teaching, like from my coach, from Pavel, from his teaching. that to learn how to make damage and don't receive any damage. And this is what I'm leading to the fight. I were saying about I will show the art of martial arts. And this is a truly art because going into the fight and hit each other

without like distance measuring without like going. Every can do that. And it's kind of like to find out who has. stronger chin, stronger head, stronger punch. But it's like more like physical quality. But it's not something that you are learning through the years from martial arts. And learning from martial arts is exactly how to control your body, how to control your distance, how to see the moment and how to properly react.

And this is like all the way through all my years of dedicated to martial arts. I was learning from my coach by the same coach from the very same coach from the very how old are you when you first met uh i was five years old five years old yeah and it's the same coach now same coach yes who introduced you to him and by the way i want to i want to fix this show i want to get this right what of the other shot i'd be there yeah i want to get this on camera you deserve to have that show right it's great look at it's so nice right right yeah yeah it has to be on the camera yeah you know what i mean It's just too, there it is, there it is, to stay up.

Nice. Yes, that is very nice. Who introduced you to him? So, my mom. My mom, and first, who started to train, it's my sister under Piverable for leadership. Antonina. The pilot now. Pilot now, yeah.

Amazing. But on the time, when I started to train, Pavel, back in Kyrgyzstan, he was already, oops. It's falling. Okay. That's fine. He was already a very famous coach. He was training a national team of Taekwondo of Kyrgyzstan.

So it's like a bigger challenge, bigger. It's national team. It's different sports. It's professional sport. It's all about hard training and everything. And when I started to train, it definitely was less attention to the youngest who was like running over there. but after like

maybe by the time when I had already like 11, 12 years and definitely there is more you want to train more and I understood that martial arts I want to do and I started to train it's a little bit more like deeply and definitely Pavel start to

dedicate more time to the older like older children right right so this is this is how it was, it's like gradually was growing up. But when I was little, it was like just like training. And Pavel has to work with his older students. And sometimes, for example, his older students was training us. But for children at this age, and it's not about technique, tactic or something like that,

it's more about how their body responds. Right. So the only thing I know about current, Kyrgyzstan is you, you and your sister and your family. What is it like growing up there? What is it like being a child in Kyrgyzstan? For me, it was amazing. It was very good because I think for every person, home country,

it's something like very specific, very, it doesn't matter how it is. It always will have a very special place inside, in the heart. And it was, first of all, all my life, it was about trainings. and since very beginning, so everyday training, I'm very grateful to my mom. She is president of Kyrgyzstan Muay Thai Federation. Still? Still. She has a lot of students, many of her students there, Asian champion, like a medalist

of championship in Muay Thai, national champions, and she's in training business for a long time. she like has a good quality as a trainer as well but the most important that what I am very grateful to her it's that in the beginning she has a very strong rule that for example we go to the school it's not it's and it's like I feel it's everywhere no one asking children if they want to go to the school or they don't want to they just have to go. And this is what's exactly with the trainings. We have to, we must be at the training session, every training session. You want, doesn't matter. You don't want, doesn't matter. You feel not very good, not very up to it, doesn't matter. You just go and do that. And this consistent,

and this, like, that she has like very strong word, it's very influent in a good way. Because when children is little, when child, like they are, they want to hang out. They don't want to do like hard stuff. They don't want to go and train and they don't want to do much things. But if parents force them to do at certain point, it's going to be, it's going to result for a good because by the time when a child is ready to take decision, what is they going to, what they want to be in the future, they already have a lot of choices. For example, they know martial arts, they know like different, like whatever parents learn them, and they have this ability to choose. And if they don't,

by the time they are already grown up, they say, oh, what are going to do with my life? And then they're like, I don't know, because I didn't experience anything. I was not forced to do any, to learn anything. And now it's the age, like 20, they just starting to learn things. But it's the process that they already would be able to come to with a lot of knowledge, but they lost it. And I think it's very important in their education of children. It's very important that parents will teach them to do what parents know what they do. And when the child is grown up enough, they will choose what they want to do. visitors. I'm going to clip this off and show this to my daughter. My daughter is nine and she plays

soccer, but sometimes I don't want to go to practice. She fights me, this and that. I'm going to show her what Valentina said about, you have to go. You have to just show up, even if you don't feel like it. Now, now your mom clearly instilled this in you. What about your dad? Your dad was in the army, right? Yes, he was in the army and he was. Here he is, right over here. Look, that's your father, right? Yes. And that's your mother. What do you mean? On the, on the right side? Is it, is it your It's Antonina. That's Antonina. It's Antonina, yeah.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. So was your dad, was your dad at home too? So I want to clear, like, this is my dad from the older picture in the army. Yeah. And my coach, Pavel, me on the background and Antonina on the side. Unbelievable. Wow, wow, wow. So was your dad instilling this in you as well?

My mommy dad, they split it when I was like three years old, but we had always amazing relationship and but in our growing up process it was more like mom's side okay okay but my dad he's he passed away a few years ago and he was amazing person and like a lot of love between all of us each other and yeah but this is how I grew up okay did he get to see your success in the UFC yes definitely beginning did he do martial arts also he did football soccer Yeah, and he was very successful in his youth. He was playing in the Soviet Union for the Kyrgyzstan team, and they were champions in the very younger age.

But that's it, that's it. We saw some footage of you. Early days of your career, you're doing Muay, I believe it is. This is you right here from your YouTube. Look how young you are. How old are you in this? So if I'm not mistaken, it's about 2,000. what

2006 I guess 2006 almost 20 years ago this footage here it's incredible seeing this yeah it was in Black Sea Coast and in Sochi one of the professional fights and where I competed like a lot

and I really enjoyed that time and Black Sea Coast it's a wonderful place to uh because we lived there for about three years what that young woman what was her dreams like what did you want out of all this where did you think it was going to lead to it's very hard you know like to say and answer this question i know it's uh interesting questions that everyone asking but um never i can reply on that you didn't think you didn't think long term you didn't No, no. I just was living the moment. I just living exactly like this day, wanted to do my best what I can, to win the fight, to be better. And I never knew that it's going to lead me somewhere.

And I feel that many persons, they don't know. They kind of like can suspect or can like guide in that direction, but never know what it's going to be in the future. And this is what I feel, it's more real, it's reality. You know what's going to happen, but you are staying loyal to your past, to your way of life. And for me, it always was martial arts. And I knew that if I will be loyal to what I am doing, I will have success. I didn't know what kind of success, but it's going to be good. This is like the most what I can answer is the question.

Would it be fair to say you've exceeded whatever you thought success was, like that you've gone way further, like Madison Square Garden, UFC champion, one of the greatest ever? This wasn't really, obviously the UFC wasn't really a thing back then, especially for women. It was just the early days. But would it be fair to say you've become a lot more well-known and famous and successful and celebrity than you ever could have even imagined?

This is what I didn't imagine. Never even thought. No, I never even thought. Even right now, it's like for me, I'm still active fighter, and I don't know what's going to be next, what I will face next year, how far I can go. So for me, it's still a living process. I never stop. And I feel on this question, you can answer when you are done done.

Like, you are done with everything, and you are truly look back and start to see. but even then the life it still can bring like so much more and you never know when and where it's going to turn so even then it's like who knows you just do what you are saying is right and you are don't pretend to be someone else and act like you think it's a truly like right thing this is i think the most important thing uh what i consider the right thing you wear many different hats it seems like you have many different talents obviously we know about the fighting and the different forms of martial arts we know about the dancing as well we've seen you dance in the cage but we found some early

footage of you dancing I think it was on a reality show what is this reality show here yeah it's one of the one reality show we were very nice and interesting it's called combate okay and I was there so first of all it's reality show every day life for two hours so every day from Monday to Friday you have to compete live. This is one part of the competition. What we have, it was dancing, DeSafia Dobli, where you have to dance different dances with your partner and compete against another partners. Okay. So we did five dances before the final. It was reggaeton. It was from the Greece. It was... This is incredible. One of my most more favorite dances. It was

Meringue, tango, cha-cha-cha. And in the final, we won first place with my partners. You won the whole thing? Yes. How did you get on this show? Because at that point, you weren't Valentina Shepchenko UFC star yet. In that point, it was 2013, if I'm not mistaken.

So seven, like almost, no, 17, like about 15 times Muay Thai champion. Okay. So people knew you in, in Peru. You were a celebrity there. Yes. Did you enjoy doing it? We already lived in Peru. for probably like four, five

years. Okay. And yeah, definitely I fought many times in professional fight in Peru and it was like every time interesting, a lot of fans coming, a lot of people like loving martial arts, loving Muay. Yeah, and this reality

was not about only dancing but also about competing in different like competition. when you have to run, you have to jump, you have to swim and do other things. So it was very intense. And what did you get for winning?

What's the prize? It's kind of like your job. It's like monthly payment. But definitely there was a price for this damged competition as well. And so when you're competing now in Peru, do you get a lot of love from there? Do you get a lot of people covering it and talking about it back there? I always feel this love from Peru, from all Latin America, from like every country over there and it's it's very important and it's very like nice and beautiful

for me to feel that because it's kind of like some motivations that it's going to saying like you don't you just have to do your best thing because people are looking to you onto you and they are like, want to share this success with you. And that's why I'm saying that all my victory, it's not just me. It's we are all together. Did you also live in the Amazon? Yes, yeah, part of Peru. What was that like?

It was amazing. It was the most beautiful time. In Peru, we lived between Lima, capital, and Amazon, Ikitos, a jungle. It's pure jungle. You lived in the jungle. In the jungle, not in the same. city, our place was about like 30 minutes going from the city by boat. So first of all, over there in the jungle, you cannot get by car. There is no roads. There is only way to go by plane

or by the boat. Wow. Yes. And even you go by plane to Akitas, it's capital of Amazonas in Peru, and then you have to take another small boat with a lone motor, yeah? It's a small, a small, skinny boat and go by Amazon River another 30 minutes to get into the place where we're staying. Why didn't choose such a remote location? First of all, always close to the nature. Okay.

And I just like loved there. It was so wild. We had so many preparation for like all kind of competition in there. And you know, it's this

feeling for three days. you kind of like feel a little bit uncomfortable because the air there is very humid, it's number one. The temperature, it doesn't change. It's super warm all the time during the night, during the day. And you kind of like adjusting for that. A lot of mosquitoes, a lot of like dangerous, danger around like everywhere in the corner. Like what kind of danger?

Animals. Animals. Animals, insects. It can be everything from jaguar, from Puma. to snakes like anacondas and piranas, of course, and like everything. You have to be very careful. Have you ever faced them? You ever, you see them?

You know, they are people thinking that they are like walking around, something like that. But when it's nature danger, they are very smart. They don't go like that. Oh, okay, I believe you now. No, they are also very like hidden. And if they see and hear some noise, they will hide. But I did see some when we were passing through the jungles. And they have very tiny and small, how you call it, like, passes.

Okay, okay. And people think that, for example, native Amazon people, like jungle people, they go very quietly, like almost no noise. But no, when they go in the jungles, first of all, everyone, has machete. Every person. Even children, like small, like six years old, five, or so they go to the school, everyone with machete. Because they have lianas that when it's touching you, it's kind of like more, you resist to get rid of it. It's going to be more tight and going deeper to your skin, deeper to your skin. And get rid of this plant, it's only to cut it. It's number one. And definitely

just in case you feel facing Jaguar on your way to the school. And you would walk around with a machete too Of course And you have to make a lot of noise A lot of noise when you're walking Because it's only way that all animals around They will just hide Just in case

This is the only way to get through that Did you ever get nervous, afraid? You know, definitely you have to But in that point you are there If it's happened anything you just cannot do You have to defend yourself And you can't kind of like get this feeling of, yeah, yeah, whatever happened, I will face it, yeah. And then after, like, after one week, you are become so one with the nature.

You are just like, disappear in this everything and you just live this life. And what do you live in, like a, in the jungle? We have a house. A house, okay. Are there people living around you or it's remote? It was a village. Definitely, but village with 3,000 people. Wow.

Like 3,000 people, that's it. And it's by the river. And when the time that the river is high or down, because it's like season when it's high, it's down. And there is, it's called balsas. It's like a floating house. Some people do floating bars. And these balsas, they are with the river going higher or lower.

So it's like moving constantly. And, like, many times after the training, we were coming to these balsas, just, like, few purposes. To have some food, to have some drink, to swim. And, you know, like, it's funny that in this spot, like, people swimming in Amazonas. And here, like, next to each other, other people, like, they're fishing piranias. Like, they do that's the same place. Wow. And how old are you when you're living there?

It was, like, um, um, um, What is that? Like, my 20s, my train is like... Amazing. We lived in Peru for eight years. You're kind of a nomad in that you have many different homes, I feel like, and you train in many different locations. Where's your home now?

Do you have a home base now? Yes, Nevada. Okay, it is in Nevada. Nevada, yeah. And I feel like you don't spend a lot of time there. Like, you know, like this training camp. Where did you train for this fight? Oh, it was all kind of like...

First of all, we started in Puget Sound, Seattle. Okay, okay. year. So we have a boat there and we try to go every season, summer or sometimes winter because it's beautiful too. And this time we went for about two months living on board, living in a boat, just like going from Marina to Marina, all the Puget Sound, all the San Juan Islands. And during the summertime, it's so beautiful. A lot of fishing salmon, a lot of crabbing, a lot of crabbing, a lot of shrimping. So we were doing everything. We had all this crab pod, shrimp pods. And when the season is up, it's like they're crabbing, fishing, shrimping, and it's like very fresh seafood. And just

amazing to live on the water and be able to go everywhere. In the same time, always training. And when we are in the marina, for example, if we don't have closed gym, on the next. nature, training on the nature always, and it's like always maintain the form. But also like in Seattle and like all parts of Puget Sound, we have friends and we go train with them. So my train can start it there. Then we flew to Morocco. It's like two purposes. One definitely like train, but it was kind of like farther from the fight. And another I was acting in the terminal list. Oh yeah. So we went to Morocco from Morocco to Thailand to Tiger Muay Thai my gym what I train for like since 2014 I represent this gym and a month over there go back to Morocco go back to the filming

the second part of the filming then Las Vegas and then El Paso Texas and we finished here New Jersey geez and like when you're doing the filming is that in the midst of the training camp or is it outside the training camp in the training camp is that is that stressful um it's all depends it all depends how close to the fight it definitely it's not one month before the fight it was a little bit further it was two months before the fight yeah kind of like a little bit less um yeah less than two months and um no it's not annoying uh instead of it was so hard training in thailand that it was refreshing. And we were able to find a training gym in Morocco, Tangier Fight Club, amazing, good training partners. And I was able, like, between the filming scenes, go to the training,

do my workout over there, sparring and everything. Definitely, Pavel was like every time taking care that everything goes smoothly and no one is injured because it's very important. and leading the training process. He's leading the training process all the time. And, yeah, this was like a fresh breeze. And with, like, recharge energy, we get back to Las Vegas, and I already started the final, would say. Do you think that the fights against Alexa Grasso,

and in particular the first two, do you think that they changed you as a fighter? changed no I would not say changed as a fighter because really change you have to be

less experienced but when speaking about me like years in martial arts like titles in Muay back then it was how many seven title defense

if I'm not mistaken so it's very hard to change your self as a person your approach but definitely it showed like different

sides but the most important is that I'm back and I'm here and belt is here and this is the most important did you ever question whether you would get it back

for a moment like you don't seem no no I was very sure you knew I knew that it's going to happen it's you know like if look back the first fight and how it went

all the way before the final in the fourth round. So you see there's like the difference. It's like winning all the way. It's there like, yeah, she may be hit one time or something like that. But it was like every round, like my round, my round, my round. And then mistake what it's happened and how I say. In the high level, you are not allowed to commit any mistake

because your opponent will not forgive it. And yeah, happened what happened, but then in the second fight, like, I showed that I am better, but circumstances, like, played not the way I wanted. You should have won that fight. That was crazy. I know. I know. I know.

It was crazy, but it happened what happened. And, like, whatever reason that person had, it's like their conscience will speak to him after years. But in the third fight, I knew that I just have to give zero chances for anyone to think, even think about this possibility to repeat this result again. And I did it. So finally, even better venue, even better event, even like everything bigger. So it looks like everything played out good. Yeah, you've done that now three times in a row.

I would say, the third fight against Alexa, the Mano fight in Montreal, and then this fight. And it's a testament to your skill. The fights are so one-sided that, as you may or may not know, some say like, oh, this is boring because it's so one-sided. Does that bother you? And what would be your response to someone who says, like, you're so much better, you're so dominant that it's not exciting. It's not entertaining. Oh, it's not exciting. You hear that.

Do you see people saying that or no? Is this the first time you hear this? You know, I'm very focused on my performance. I'm not focusing on what people are saying, much. But I would say it's, you know, appreciate the technique of martial arts, appreciate the strategy, and they have this ability to control everything, that even the most dangerous, the most, like, fear opponent, when they are coming against you

and fight against you, they look like they cannot do nothing. This is the art. And this is the major point where any fighter want to be. And definitely, like, for example, in this last fight, I was so close to finish the fight.

And I felt it, like so close with my kicks. I felt several times, like liver kick. it felt like just right it. But you know, the thing, when you're fighting with someone like Whaley that has so much power in her punches and like this feeling when she has to step back

and then she has to attack, it's danger all the time since the beginning to the end. You cannot just like with the hot hat just goes there and like, oh, I will make knock out now. Because one mistake and you're going to be down.

You're going to be like turning from the winner into the nothing. And you don't want to do that because you want to be, you want to stay the winner. You don't want to like do crazy things. You are not allowed because you're a professional fighter and you know what your mission here to win the fight and do in the best way. And the technique what I show in the fight, this is speak about my like, quality as a fighter and about all the excitement and even in the ground like was looking all the time for the finishing but she is not just like regular fighter I would finish like anyone yeah but with

her I could not commit any mistake could not give any hole for her to get out because if I like I was working on my position hard enough to get this position. And if I will rush, I will lose this position. And who knows, I will be down and she will be on top, and then it's going to continue, like, not in my way. So this is the way that you are, has to control every second. You have to be aware one step ahead. And this is what I call the, like, a mastery of martial arts.

And so, and I kind of, I feel. I know what you're going to say here, but I'll ask it anyway. Do you feel like that mastering of the martial arts is appreciated by the fans? Because as you know, they want blood and guts and they want the war. Depends. It all depends. Do you feel it? Do you feel like your skill is appreciated?

Your dominance is appreciated. It's not depends on the like, because you cannot be good for everyone. Even like you can see the highest strikers. Like they cannot be good for everyone. they will be like two-sided who say yes who say no yeah you have to choose what you want to do you cannot please everyone no it doesn't work like like this it's not only in martial arts it's not only in a may you have to choose what you are stand for and keep doing like being yourself you cannot go mad on someone because they have different opinion or because they don't have enough experience

or because they don't have, they don't see and don't they, like, read, like, they don't know martial arts. You cannot be mad about them. No, you know, they will come to it. It will take time, but they will be, they will understand martial arts for this moment. But it doesn't matter at this point. It's like more yes than no. Yeah, and this is what is matter. How do we repair the relationship with you and Chale?

How do I figure this out? What is going on with you and Chale, Sonnet? I never met him personally. I don't believe this, but he always has an opinion. He always calls you the bullet. He always refers to you as the bullet. Then he always has an opinion on the state of your career. I don't know if you saw last time he was talking about you, not main eventing and all this stuff.

What is the issue here? He's a lovely guy. You're a lovely, but why is there a beef here between you two? So the last thing, the last thing, what I heard from him, It was, I think after or before, what he said, what he said about, that I am not a nice person. So this is what, yeah, this is what the last lesson. He said, I'm not a nice person. And I was like asking all my people who knows me, they all said, I'm a nice person.

So he's wrong. How could he know this if he's never met you? You have to ask him. I know, I've asked him. And what he said. I don't understand what the issue is. What he said? What's his response? Well, I don't remember him saying the non-nice person.

He said, oh, you know, never before has someone fought on so many cards in title fights, but not main evented, not main evented the event, the event, right? And I was like, you know, co-main event is still pretty damn good. You've done that a lot in your career. And so, like, he kind of just talks, and he talks, and he talks, and it just seems like he has some sort of issue with you, and I can't figure it out. I don't know if there's a story we don't know about. I think it sounds personal. Yeah, what is it? I never met him personally.

So weird. He was here in New York. You didn't see him at the venue or anything? No, I didn't. So, yeah, I don't know. We have to like face to each other and I will ask him what issue he has with me. Yes, yes. I can't imagine why he would have an issue.

Honestly, maybe you guys go to the shooting range one time and you like, not shoot each other, but like you do a competition and maybe he'll get respect for you after he sees how good. I don't know. I'm trying to think of something. Maybe we can use rubber bullets, yeah? At each other. And then each other. like to shoot him with a rubber bullet. Is that what you're saying?

No, I don't like to shoot anyone. No. But it is weird. Here you are, by the way. I mean, look at this. Where is this? It is in Las Vegas. In my favorite, one of the favorite shooting range.

So I have two favorite shooting range. One indoor, one outdoor. For indoor, I go to the 702, the range. And for outdoor, it's a pro gun in Las Vegas. And I very like these two, two places and like very good spirit and when I go and the range and it's usually like all the time and it's like recharging energy and it's so close to the fighting because it's worked both ways it works for your reaction it works for your speed it works for your concentration and respect

because gun it teach not only how to shoot you have to control your emotions you have to control your breeze. You have to respect what you are doing. You have to think about when you're starting to shoot and when you finish to shoot what you have to do next in turn to be safe. Because you just cannot go to the range with the gun like that. No, no, no.

You have to respect what you're doing. And the sport, like shooting sport like IPSC, IDPA, three guns. It's amazing sport. It's like where you have, to know how to shoot speed very fast enough, accurate enough, and the same time be able, if there is some gems or something like that, you have to be able to fix it to continue your exercise. There is like position when you have to run, and you have to shoot from the sitting

position, standing position, laying down on the floor, like from the obstacle. So it's very like moving, very versatile. It's, I would say, this type of competition, defense of competition in a pistol it's kind of like mixed martial arts like m-ma universal like complete but and it's very similar because it's have everything honestly just between us no one no one yeah no one have you ever been a spy is that come on seriously no no i was like recently in my the terminal list i am playing a super agent okay i'm playing super is that a departure like is that you have to play or is that kind of your life and you just are playing yourself no I'm playing it

you're playing it but you know being a fighter it's so easy to play it because you are um I was doing the same thing I was like would you ever want to do that in real life like when you're done where should I do what what like like be like that type of person like an agent like a spy type of practice I'm a fighter no when you're done when you're done when I done and if I done by my 50s Yeah, you could do it. Now. You wouldn't want to do that. I feel like you'd be so good.

You're stealth. You're unflappable. After my 50s, I want to enjoy life. I want to like hang out, like travel all the world. Relax. Of course. Because you're so stoic. Like, it's hard.

You don't break. You don't even bend. I have to. This is a fighter mentality. It's champion mentality. But you're different. You're different. There have been fighters who have been broken.

You know this, right? It happens. You're fighting at someone who's better than you. you never break. We've never seen you falter. Even against Amanda, you're fighting someone who's bigger. We never see that from you.

Because I'm not alone. I'm not by myself. I'm not growing up just like trying to figure out everything by myself. I have amazing team that it's stand with me. Definitely all my career, my coach, he was like the best influence in techniques.

advice, mental advice, like everything. And he showed me the way how I have to control myself. My mom, she's professional in mixed martial arts. She knows how to deal with all of that. My sister, she experienced all the same things, so she knows how to deal with that. That's why I feel that I never had to face something by myself and without this support. and this support, this is what important. I feel that it doesn't matter what I have to face, I have that all people like next to me, stand with me. I get it.

No matter what's happening, they're going to stay with me and they don't going to turn their backs. In good and bad, they are here. And I feel it gave this confident to step in the unknown future. So Natalia Silva next? I don't know yet. And I don't want to think and I think about it right now. It's too close from the fight.

And I had so intense training camps like back to back. These two training camps, almost no rest. And that's why I want to take a good physical and mental rest before I actually will think about what is when is next and who is next. Because there is several options and we will have to. manage, measure everything, and think what is better for my career. Can I just ask you, I was a little surprised by one comment that I saw. I don't know if you saw this from your old foe Amanda Nunes. Did you see what she wrote?

About. So here's from a post on Emma fighting. Dana White gives his immediate reaction to Valentina Shevchenko's dominant win over Zhang Wei. I thought Wei Li would be much stronger and do better in that fight than she did is what he said. Then Amanda was in the comment and she said, after I beat Kayla Harrison, I'm going down to 125 and take this belt for collection too. Oh, let's do it. Amanda, come on, 125. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, maybe, maybe Kyla Harrison will

want to go down to 125 and do it as well. Yeah, I welcome everyone. Do you believe her when she says this? Do you think she can actually make 125, Amanda? Depends what she's going to do like to make this. In our experience, she already missed, she made the weight, But then she felt 135 point of way. But then she felt so bad that she said like, oh, no, I'm not up to fight. And she had to cancel the fight. I remember on the day of the fight. Exactly.

What was this? Back in 2017. And then you had to fight two months later in Edmonton. Yes. So I wonder if she can make 125. But that one, it feels like that's the one you want to get back, right? Before it's all said and done, a third fight against her? It depends.

It depends. There is like all the circumstances that have to come in. because for now she likes to talk a lot and this is like feels like secure when you're behind the wall and like no one can get she's still kind of like in the half of her retirement still saying that she's coming back but nothing sure yet and she feels safe to speak now okay and that's why I'm like you cannot never trust when people speak that much in their old words You cannot believe in that everything. Do you think she beats Kayla if they fight?

Who do you think? Depends. It will be depends. Because Kyla, she is now in her prime. Yeah. And she's in her best shape. And she is strong, like so amazing career in judo. Now, like, doing all these things in mixed martial arts.

Amanda, who's like had everything. And now she was like for a couple of years, enjoying the life, less training, more parties, and who know what lifestyle she had during these years, how this is going to affect her comeback if she's coming back, still if, a lot of ifs. Okay, you don't, maybe you don't believe? Before I see it? Yeah. No.

Before it's going to be like announced and something like that. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Why you think for now it's just talk? No, I see her training. I feel it's more likely she's thinking about comeback. But what shape she's going to be back? If she's coming back the same primes that she was, it's one thing.

But if she's coming back just to get some money because she's run out from money, it's going to be different. Zhang Weli, when she was asked about her future, she was non-committal. Do you think she should go back to 115 now? It's all up to her because it's really up to her. I feel she's strong enough and has all qualities to stay in 115 and 125 and she will be, she will do like successfully in both weight classes. Like, so it's up to her.

Okay. What do you think she does? I don't know. We'll ask her. We'll ask her. Speaking of someone who might be coming back, do you think Rhonda comes back? That's the hot rumor right now. A lot of training from her lately, like people commenting about.

Why not? Why not? She's still young. And if she feels she can do that, it's definitely will be good for the sport. Is that a dream fight for you? Is that a fight that you would love? I don't think so at this moment. Probably at the moment, like years ago, it would be more sense.

But at this point of my life, her life, I don't think that it's many, make many sense. And I know from my experience, like, when I'm 32 years in martial arts, and I know how it feels, like, when you have, like, time layoff. And my layoff, the most, it was, like, not even a year, like, when it was some injuries, and I have to go through the surgeries. something like that. But in this case, it's like eight years. And from my experience, I would say exactly, before you come back on the same level, like, she competed, Ronda competed in the highest top level, before she come back at this level, if it would be me, I would do like several fights, like lower level. Just to get back in the shape, in the same, competition mood to feel this pressure like in fighting and everything. And every time it's

it works. It works to get back on the highest level. But if it don't work that maybe because the most that I don't want to see like fighters like her like losing and it's so bad. And it's like it just doesn't feel like right because they are was so high. And now they have stayed high. And when not proper approach to that, it's going to lead for the, like, not very good after, afterwards. That's why I would, like, if it would be me, I would do this way. True or false question, okay? True or false.

If it could only be true. Is Valentina Shepchenko is the best female fighter in the world? Don't ask me that. True or false. And don't ask me that. Why, why, why? It's not for me the question. In your heart, what do you think?

It's for my fans. It's for the, like, for people. I think you proved that on Saturday. This is the answer. And this is the most important, but what is, like, really matter for me. If you say that, that it's what important. I don't think it's a debate right now. If people said that, it's what important, but I never will say things that I'm the best.

I'm the best in the world or something. Do you think it, at least? I'm not the person like that. Because the same mentality, you are not allowed. If you want to stay at this level for a long time, not just like a flash, you just sparkle and then like go down like everyone, forgetable. If you want to stay alone at this moment, you have to have this mentality when you are not allowed these thoughts come into your head

because it's going to play bad against you. It's going to play against you. Once you start to think about this that way, it's going to affect your performance, number one. It's going to affect your training. It's going to affect everything you're approaching into your life, how you behave, like everything. That's why you have to like get rid of it. If you want to be like true martial artists, if you want to stay in this game for a long time, you have to get rid of it. But if you are pursuing like different goals, whatever you say, it doesn't matter.

Fine, fine, fine. I tried to get you. By the way, before I let you go, I wanted to say, I love the glasses. I love them too. The ones at the press conference that you wore were, very cool. And then the face off, when you see her looking at this shot right here, her looking at you like this, this is crazy stuff.

What do you think when you see that? She's just smiling at you like that? I just smiling, yeah. And yeah, I really like when everything in the picture. it's just beautiful like beautiful even in for example speaking about the pictures many have the vision of female fights differently they they they think about them the same as a like male and female they have the same like picture beauty style but it's not correct thing because if for

example on a picture on a photo we see a man like furious like with a vein in his like in the neck and all like big and something like that it looks good on a man but it doesn't look good on a woman and this is the most important what I want to spread into the world you have to have this feeling even when you're like posting a picture of a female fighter you have to bring some motivation for other female fighters be the same way, strong, beautiful, like control the body, how the movements, how the pressure, how the power, everything it has to reflect in the picture. And it doesn't have to be, because you can take a picture of anything in the good way,

in the bad way. And you like kind of like scroll scrolling through them and you choose the best what you want to post, right? You don't post like I don't post every picture what I have in my phone. I just choose the one that I think is the most beautiful. And this is the most important that through the pictures, through the videos, we like spread the beauty, the beauty of athleticism, the beauty of sport body. especially where we are speaking about female fighters. It has to reflect the most beautiful qualities, the most beautiful sight of a female fighter.

And this is number one. I feel this is the most important. But like speaking back about glasses, I love them. Yes. I love how they look. I love how they feel because they feel so like one. Yeah. It doesn't fall.

You feel you're not rest. restricting in the movement and like definitely when I see myself in the glasses I feel that I'm like a super agent. Yes you are. Like I can do everything. Superpower. I love it. I love it. What a delight this was. Thank you so much for coming in. Honestly, a huge honor for us, a huge privilege. Thank you. I know you're very busy. So thank you for taking the time. So great to have you in here with the belt. Congratulations on all your success. Your dominance, your victories. It's It's amazing to still see you do this after all these years at the very top of the game. So well done to you.

And again, enjoy this. And enjoy your time off now. I hope you're able to relax and they don't bother you to come back for at least, you know, five, six months, right? A little break. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Valentina. All the best. Congratulations once again.

Thank you to the team. We're going to take a quick break. We'll say goodbye to Valentina. We'll be back with Tony Khan live in studio. Do not go anywhere. Okay, back on the program. That was my, well, not my conversation. It was our conversation.

It was Fight Feast, NYC, the movie. It was GC heading it up with the Great Action Bronson. It was Fight Feast slash or X or what is that sign. I don't know what it is. FT.D. The X? Yeah, I think it's X. I think it's X.

That was great. That's on the channel right now. I made an appearance. Action made an appearance. Rick made an appearance. Casey made an appearance. Rick made an appearance. I think it's the best one yet.

So go check that out if you've missed it. That was Valentina Schifchenko. My conversation with Valentina Schifchenko, the reigning defending UFC women's flyway champion. That was unbelievable. I enjoyed it. It was great to see Pavel. And now, without further ado,

I know a lot of you are looking forward to this. I know a lot of you are very excited about this. I am as well, without further ado, for the first time ever in studio, for the first time ever face-to-face, an opportunity to speak with the founder, the CEO, the head booker. I mean the guy

the man in charge the face of all elite wrestling the one and only Tony Kahn is here in studio is he in fact here there he is the one and only Tony Kohn

wow thank you for having me it's a great pleasure it's a great pleasure to see you thanks thanks for having me this is unbelievable this is great to be here I have oh okay we got you a a mug but I'm going to take that mug

so you don't this is yours this is mine thanks for having me it's kind of surreal to see you here it's great to be here I've always thought this is one of the best lit shows, and I love being here. I think I saw Darby and Rikshay, and they looked fantastic. They always look cool, and your lighting makes people look awesome.

So thanks for having me here on your great set. This is amazing. This is amazing. I have to say never in a million years that I think I'd have you in studio. Certainly not in the last few years, so it's great. And I do want to thank you because, as I was saying at the top, you know, like, okay, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I think in a previous life, we're actually really good friends.

We're around the same age. We have similar interests, pro wrestling, football, soccer, weird things happen. And I've been in this business long enough to where you get on the wrong foot with someone, you're never able to repair it. And so for you to come in here and talk to me face to face, actually I think says a lot about you. So much respect. I really do appreciate it. I think it's a testament to who you are as a professional.

Thank you. I really appreciate that, Ariel. And I really appreciate you having me on. It's great to be here. I have enjoyed your interviews with some of the great AEW. wrestlers. Like I said, I enjoyed seeing Darby on here. I enjoyed seeing ricochet. And even though he's not a wrestler in AEW, I enjoyed your interview with Maven. And I thought some of the things he said were really nice. And then after seeing that interview and seeing some of the stuff you've been

doing recently, I really wanted to come on and thank you for inviting me. I appreciate that. Thank you. How is life? It's been great. I think I'm really excited right now. I was just watching in the back England, U-21s. Okay. Playing Slovakia. Josh King, who's 18 years old, is a great young player for Fulham, scored for England for the U-21, so that was nice. A lot of great things happening in football, the Jags with a big win Sunday, and this is a huge week for AEW. We've got AEW full gear this Saturday night on pay-per-view. It's going to be a great event. It's one of the biggest AEW shows of the year, and it's going to be a big week of TV tomorrow.

We have AEW Dynamite, Wednesday Night Dynamite. It's a three-hour show. it's on TBS at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central. And it is actually a three-hour live show. We're doing dynamite and collision on the same night in Boston. And it's going to be a great, great event. We've announced some big matches and there's more to come. It's always exciting to do a live show, but it's especially big when we get to do a three-hour show. And being a pay-per-view week, this is kind of one of the biggest weeks of the year in AEW. So I thought it would be great to do something noteworthy to promote it. And it seems like people are really excited to see talk. Yes, absolutely. And you're in our backyard, as far as full gear is concerned. Prudential Center, the Rock, Newark. You were there last year for this event, and this is one of your sort of tent pole events, if you will. Darby in the main event? Darby and Pack is one of the big matches. It's not the main event. It's one of the top matches. Hangman Page versus Samoa Joe and a steel cage matches. A huge world title

match, Mercedes Monet, the TBS champion, wrestling the world champion, Chris Statlander for the world title in Chris Stalander's backyard. That's one of the huge matches. Pac versus Darby is absolutely one of the big matches coming out of that blood and guts match. Yes. And I really enjoyed your interview with Darby, as I said. What a character of this guy. You poured water on his, I'm still not sure why. That's not even in the top 27 crazy things I've seen Darby do. Yes, I bet. But I enjoyed his vibe very much. I wasn't quite sure. what to make of that moment, but a very eccentric guy, a fan favorite. I think a lot of people are wondering when he'll be able to like take that next step to be the guy, you know, to get the belt,

to be the face of the company. Do you think he's close to that or not quite yet? I think he's absolutely already one of the main faces of the promotion. And I've always felt really strong about Darby. Darby is one of our top wrestlers and he's been with AEW since the very first show. And really it was our first summer of events where Darby came in. And he's like, you know, you said, he's an impressive person inside and outside the ring, and the chances he takes inside the ring are only matched by the chances he'll take outside the ring. He's an absolutely crazy stuntman. He takes insane risk, but he also really loves wrestling. And I'm sure you saw that when you talk to him. Oh, yeah, yeah. He loves it. And he's a great professional,

but I absolutely think he's already one in the main faces of the promotion. He has not been the world champion in singles yet, but he's been the TNT champion. and a huge, important face of our media rights partnership, but also as a world tag team champion, he was undefeated with Sting, and Sting's run in AEW is one of my favorite things we've ever done. I grew up as a huge Sting fan. If I had to guess, I bet you grew up as a Sting fan.

I enjoyed him. He wasn't my favorite. That man was my favorite. That man right there, Brett the Hitman Hart was my favorite. Brett Hart was one of my favorite wrestlers, too, and I was a huge fan of both of them. Sting is one of my all-time favorites,

and to be able to have Sting come and say, I want to keep wrestling, and I want to come to AEW, and I'll do kind of whatever you want. And he never said, I want to go undefeated or have that run. He never asked for something like that. And really, he didn't know Darby well yet either. And I introduced them, and it was this pair. They clicked so well in the ring, but they've become best friends out of the ring, too. And if you could see them planning their matches, planning their moves, and putting ideas together,

it's such an incredible partnership. and, you know, two different generations. And there's even a generation of wrestlers in between them, too, which is kind of amazing. You know, they're very different in a lot of ways, but their similarities brought them together. And it's a bond that exists outside the ring, but obviously Stinging Darby in the ring were a great team for us. So Darby has been, to me, already a face of the promotion, and he would be a great world champion, too. I really believe that as well.

Is there ever a point with Darby where you feel like it's a little too crazy? Like some of the stuff through the glass. Yeah. It's just sometimes, I have to admit, I'm a hardcore fan, too, but I'm like, why put yourself through that? Do you ever feel sometimes like it's a little bit too much with him? I think he's really a brilliant wrestler, and also he takes these chances, and I think normally they're very calculated chances.

The one that I thought was too far, and I would say this to him, and I have said this to him a hundred times, what I'm saying to you, is in Sting's last match with a glass in Greensboro off the ladder through the glass. That was so much, and that was the one where I thought maybe it was too much, and it wasn't exactly the way it was described. It was pretty brutal, and that was the one after where I said, I think you're so brilliant about these chances, but this is the first time ever where I thought probably it was too much,

but it was also the greatest night in the history of the promotion, and he took a huge risk, and it worked out, and they won the match, and Sting and Darby finished as an undefeated team, and Sting retired, undefeated in AEW as a world tag team champion. It's my personal favorite night ever of all the wrestling we've ever done, and Darby was such a huge part of that, but that was a big risk to take for sure. What is your line with the stunts? Like, you know, like Moxley stuff, and what is there a line for you?

I know some fans say it's like a little bit too gory. Do you have a personal line? It has to make sense, and almost everything we've ever done, I thought it made sense. and the things that if there were ever a few that didn't work out, I thought, well, that probably didn't make sense to begin with. And that's why over the years I think we've really refined the process. But we have such great, great wrestlers that 99.9% of the time, I always think everything they do is awesome, and I agree with the choices they make. But sometimes there's stuff that seems like it's pushing it. And absolutely, the chances that the wrestlers take on papers,

views or a big night like blood and guts. They sacrifice and they do so much. And that's what makes pro wrestling so great as you have wrestlers that are willing to sacrifice their bodies for the fans with no offseason 52 weeks a year and then push it even further under these kinds of circumstances. So everybody on the AEW Blood and Guts show in particular, I thought, really set a great example of that. And also, thankfully, everybody's come out of it. Okay. You know, it has a potential to be a career-ending match with its hard-hitting situation, but thankfully everybody's good. You know, it's so interesting because I was going through your, I was watching an old video of you and Forbes. They did a feature on you back in like 2022 or 2021, and you say like,

I'm the CEO, I'm the founder, I'm the book, you go through everything. And that's a lot for one person if they don't have the Jaguars gig, and if they don't have the Fulham job and everything else that you're doing as well. And so now, as far as AEW is concerned, you're still the is it just you are you the the judge of jury or is there a committee and if so there's always questions i think as to like who's in the committee so could you tell us like what is the the sort of state of the booking process right now well i put the shows together and this year i feel like i've been especially hands-on at every episode about every aspect of every segment in a way that i was in daly's place in the pandemic and at the beginning of the year i kind of said

since the last year's holidays that I was going to step back and look at it for a moment like I did five years earlier. And Christmas 2019, I had said, you know, there's a couple things that I knew might not work and I did him against my best judgment. So why would I ever do that? Don't ever do that. And it's like a diet. You do your best to stick to it. Nobody's perfect. But like, you know, every once in a while I still might do something against my better judgment but I kind of told myself stop doing things against your better judgment so even in January and it was the same exact thing too where in January 2020 there were one or two things where I said why did I do that I said I wasn't going to do that but then kind of caught myself and I did that again

this year and I really felt like it's been it's been a lot like the shows like I would have put together in the pandemic where I come in with more of an outline of everything I want to do but I also like hearing everyone's ideas and I utilize them so uh I feel like we have a really good group of people. It's evolving and changing. And the one consistent thing is there's one person that's at all the shows, and it's me. And that's the thing is there's not any other one person that goes to every show. There's 100 and, well, there's 104 dynamites and collisions.

Because now that there's dynamite and collision, there's two shows a week. Wednesday nights, dynamite on TBS, and now HBO Max as well. Saturday nights collision on TNT, also on HBO Max, like this Saturday. but it's on an hour earlier for the tailgate brawl. Well, the only person that goes to all those TVs and the pay-per-views is me. There's not one other person. There's a lot of great people that help out, people that work in different departments, wrestling, creative, and they could be coaches, it could be senior figures.

I have great people who could contribute ideas, like everybody from Brian Danielson, who's an all-time legend in wrestling, but also has some great ideas, and different people on the staff, and it's a great group of women, and amend, but among all of them, the only person that goes to every TV is me. So I have a pretty consistent idea of what I'd like to do, but also whoever's in the room of coaches and staff that day, I will talk to them and hear out their ideas, but it might be a different group. It's kind of like, do you like Ghostbusters? I used to, yeah. You know that scene in Ghostbusters? I always think of it this way, and this is pretty convoluted, but this will give you insight into my

thinking. There's a scene in Ghostbusters with Ray and Winston and this is the original? The original Ghostbusters and they're just driving in the car on the bridge here in New York and it's Ray and Winston and then I realize and I'm like you know that's not the two that you always see together it's like shifts and like you get different pairs of people and like if that makes sense like you know you might see Ray with Egon or you might seem with Bankman Bill Murray or with Winston

but it was like it's different shifts like you know the whole movie it hasn't just been Ray and Winston, but they're in the car now. This is their day. This is their shift. Within every group of people, there's subgroups. It's not always the ones you think when you see the people walk and stand together. So I have a different group of people at almost every, a different combination of people than I did at the beginning, but I think there's been a common thread and a consistency. And I like that from show to show, because I feel like I have a good sense of what AEW is. and I am a fan of wrestling, but also, since I've been here, I feel like I, you know, have

through the years, followed the fans. I like to stay in touch with the fans and hear what they like and don't like about the show. And I feel like 2025 in particular, I think we've done a really good job of listening to the fans and putting on a really good show, you know, and I would say that start to finish so far, we're in November, I think as far as doing the TV every week, and the pay-per-views. This is my favorite year of shows, personally. And everybody, it's a cool thing about wrestling is it's all opinions. But for me, as far as how many great matches and how consistent everything's been and how happy I've been coming out of the events, it's my favorite

year yet. You mentioned HBO Max. That deal started a couple of months ago where your pay-per-views are available on HBO Max, which is very cool. As you know, UFC's deal on pay-per-view is coming to an end, right, with the Paramount Plus. That's a huge. So they're now going to be on Paramount Plus, and it'll just be their numbered events, but not behind that extra paywall. Do you think we will ever get to a point? Because you're one of the last ones left now, AEW, right? Well, yeah. Will we get to a point ever where maybe it will be behind a subscription paywall, the payper views,

but not that extra price to get the actual show? Do you know what I mean? I'm not sure. It's a good question. I think with AEW, something I've been really conscious of and have tried to stake consistent with is maintaining great prices. for families or friends to come and watch the shows at an affordable price to be an AEW fan and I think we've done a fantastic job with that so it's a great question now the pay-per-view price for AEW has been consistent from day one it's the same price it's always been to order the pay-per-views what is it it's on cable and satellite it's 4999 and now you can get the events lots of outlets that we've added over the years for that price for 4999 Amazon Prime YouTube a lot of great place that are great partners, but our media partnership that really drives the engine that is AEW

is AWR and Warner Brothers Discovery. Okay. And so we're on TBS every Wednesday. We're on TNT every Saturday. But also now this year, and I talked about how it's been this awesome year, a key thing that really felt like a switch that got flipped even more than usual to start the season, so-called in A8, this new year. There's always a great energy at the start of the year, the calendar year in AEW,

because the records reset. It's a fresh start for the wrestlers and a new season. But also this year, it was the beginning of putting the shows on HBO Max. Now the pay-per-views are also on HBO Max, and it's only been a few months of this, but it's really been working out very well. And it's also great for the fans because it's the lowest price. It's $39.99. And if you're an HBO Max subscriber already, that's a great deal because you're saving $10 a month

on these great pay-per-views. We get great satisfaction from our fans on our shows. It really means a lot to me because I was a kid and my parents would not let me buy every single wrestling pay-per-view. So I really appreciate whenever people do put the money in for every show. And that's why I try to put so much into every pay-per-view and make it feel like you really got your money's worth out of this show. And especially now with on-demand DVRs and the shows being available to stream, you can always go back and watch them again and again. And I see some of your wrestling posters and pay-per-view posters. And again, these are shows that I would watch again and again.

and again. So I hope and believe that the AEW shows are like that with the paper views we put on. And so to your question, I think we have a great model right now, and we just signed a great meteorites deal that I think even the most stringent analyst would say is a really strong deal for AEW the company. It makes a lot of sense for us. And it also shows of the faith that Warner Brothers, TBS, T&T, and HBO Max have in AEW. Do you have any concern about the future of WBD, There's some talk that they're going to, you know, have a new ownership. Even yesterday I saw that Saudi Arabia interested in purchasing them. Do you have any concerns about how a new ownership would affect your standing, your deal with them?

Well, I feel really great about AEW's relationship with Warner Brothers Discovery. And I think it's a great situation for us that we're one of those strong franchises, like I said, on multiple channels and properties where AEWs clearly very strongly figured in. Just as an example, we've got the huge pay-per-view this Saturday, it's presented by D.C. as a presenting sponsor, which I think is anybody looking at Warner Brothers would say that this is a really important part of the portfolio, D.C. And for D.C. to be sponsoring us and also the kinds of collaborations they're doing with us. We partnered on Dynamite episode 300 the week before AEW all in Texas. There were ads and collabs with the stars of Superman, with, stars from AEW. There's been some great partnerships across DC now doing comic books with AEW with the big stars from AEW crossover in comics. And we did a panel with DC at New York Comic Con. And then also DC now for the first time ever presenting an AEW pay-per-view and it's this Saturday. So we're becoming a bigger and bigger part AEW as we've grown and now it's been six years of AEW, we've continued to become a bigger part of the Warner Brothers family. So I feel like

no matter what happens in the future, I think we will be a really important part of that family. And also for different media properties, thankfully, because I'm on the NFL fan engagement and major events committee and have had a lot of experience in football in the NFL and in the Premier League and now with AEW dealing with a lot of media partners, I have strong relationships with almost every media property out there. You know, thankfully the NFL is and continues to be the strongest media and sports organization, in my opinion, in the world. And the NFL is in a really strong position, and we deal with a lot of these great partnerships. My dad is basically any committee I'm not on, my dad's on, and he's involved in probably about half of the NFL committees.

And there's very few and far between that he's not involved in in some way, whether it's business ventures and all the different finances and every aspect of the league. practically he's involved in so he's really really built such an amazing thing and I'm so lucky to be in the position I'm in but also I've learned so much from him and I have to say that you know he's built these great relationships and now with AEW I built a lot of relationships in between the two of us we've engaged with almost every media property and have great relationships so I think that's going to continue but most importantly for AEW we've got a great relationship with Warner Brothers Discovery and the leadership right now

And that has put us in this great position for AEW. I was thinking of this earlier today. You're, I do believe, off the top of my head, the only major combat sports entity right now that does not have any sort of business relationship with Saudi Arabia. UFC does WWE, of course, does in boxing, matchroom, Queensberry, top rank, Golden Boy. They all do. I think you're the only one. Is there any particular reason for that?

I can't speak to that. I'm not sure. I didn't realize that. but it's interesting. And no, I think AEW, we've got great partnerships. We work with probably some of the same media partners you do. But no, I'm not sure why that would be. Just a coincidence.

I guess it would, yeah, but it's interesting. I never thought of it like that until you said it. Okay. You know, it's something that I was really curious about, and I hadn't really heard you asked about this, so I would love to hear your thoughts. It is very clear to me as an outsider that when you're putting on a big show,

So, WW tries to counter-program it. How do you react when this happens? Do you think this is being done on purpose? I do think it's done on purpose, and I understand it, and it's part of wrestling, and I think we've seen a lot of it, but I think other wrestling promotions that have been the Challenger wrestling brand in our lifetime have seen a lot of it. Jim Crockett Promotions, which was the forerunner to WCW, saw a lot of this, and Jim Crockett Promotions ended up having to sell the company to Ted Turner, who then made a great run.

it took a while. And really, if you look, Ted Turner took over at the start of 1989 and the strongest run came over six years later, almost seven years later it started, really, when business peaked and took off their peak years. So it's interesting because as a challenge of wrestling promotion, you've got a great opportunity, but it's really hard. It involves tons of investment to build up to be a true, strong challenger. And that's why we took the risk with AWN when we did. I do think that we've seen that kind of counter programming in those things. And I understand and looking back at wrestling history, kind of expect that. Does it frustrate you? I think it's okay because for us, it's always worked out and we're in a great position. So it hasn't ever been a

thing where it's cost us anything. And even when you do something like AEW all in Texas, where we do the show in the afternoon, it really worked out for us great. And it was one of the best days in the history of the company. So you don't take it personally. You're not like, can you guys just leave me alone? Can I just have the day for myself? The one in Toronto, right? You put it earlier in the day because they had the ESPN debut. And so, I mean, like, you'd have to be an idiot to not think that this is being done on purpose.

UFC used to do this with their competition back of the day. And so I was just curious how you react internally to this. Well, it's very interesting. I think that it's something that is a part of the wrestling business, and I definitely don't take it personally. I think it's no more personal to me than it was towards Jim Crockett. or even maybe less so than it was with Ted Turner or similar amounts as with Ted Turner. But definitely I think all of us have seen that kind of counter programming and could speak to that.

And certainly with AEW, I'm very proud that we continue to really run strong and be that great challenger brand in pro wrestling. AEW is where the best wrestle. I really believe that. And I think we have the best roster in wrestling today and the best wrestlers and put on the best shows like this Saturday. you know my impression I look at a lot of things I listen to a lot of things I feel like there's a lot of these like YouTube pundits especially like the old timers so to speak and I hope they don't take offense to this but you know the guys who have been there done that who feel like it it seems to me like they have an axe to grind with you it's interesting because why you think this is I don't know I think you know what I'm talking about right like sure I do cornets the bishops like every single video if you type in your name it's it's never complimentary of AW or yourself it clearly does engagement for them to talk about AEW because you wouldn't spend such a large percentage of your real estate and you wouldn't devote such a large percentage of your content to talking about AEW unless it was engaging. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a smart strategy. Why do you think they do it so much?

Well, we're ongoing. We're putting on wrestling 52 weeks a year and people want to talk about current events and right now AEW is a huge part of the wrestling landscape. We put great shows on. Tomorrow is a Wednesday night and we're going to have a great Wednesday night dynamite tomorrow. and I think that any given week you know you can count on there's going to be AEW putting on new content to talk about and we're one of the major wrestling brands that people are going to want to discuss and a big part of the wrestling landscape is AEW. So I think people want to talk about the new wrestling,

talk about the current wrestlers, and as I see all this stuff here, I want to try and get some AEW. We do need that. I appreciate that. We'll hopefully make that part of the set because you've got, you're a big wrestling fan, you've got wrestlers, and great memorabilia. I might try to get a jaguar even up here with the Buffalo Bills. I don't know. Let's not get crazy about that. Okay, okay, but this is great. We actually were playing you guys, end of December, at Craven Cottage.

Yeah, we've had some great battles over the years with Nottingham Forest and with the Buffalo Bills. Is it fair, though? Is it fair? Like, do you feel like sometimes they hit you below the belt? I don't want it. I think that that is the business strategy. I think that's a pretty consistent business strategy of WWE that has not changed with the ownership change and so okay so that's WWE so I'm talking about the pundits like these guys who are analyzing every single move every single creative decision I think it's ironic coming from Eric because Eric sat in the position and and he was making a lot of great moves and Eric had a run that is unbelievably successful when you look back at what he

accomplished from 1995 to 1998 and it was unbelievable and he was still did some good things in those other years and he did a lot and it wasn't like everything he did in 1995 and 1998 was a hundred percent perfect 52 weeks a year but he did some really incredible things and the sum of his accomplishments is unbelievable and he still talks about it to this day and 83 weeks is something that is synonymous with eric and his brand and it's a name of his show it's incredibly impressive. I also was one of the wrestling fans as a kid when I was like 11, 12, 13 years old who was critical at times of some of the things Eric did, but also appreciative at times. And I was more balanced than other people, but I understand what it is to be a wrestling fan and to have certain things you want and expect out of a wrestling show. I think that Eric did a lot of those things. so he has a really good understanding of what it is to be on TBS and be on TNT and put on pay-per-views and work with the executives at Turner. Even some of the people who've been there for 30 years have worked with both of us

through different administrations, which is incredible. So I talk to him about that at times. So I do think for Eric, I respect... Not recently or no? It's been a while, but not that long. And I do, I respect his opinions. And I think he talks about AW a lot because AW's on every Wednesday night, every Saturday night and then it gives them good content to talk about.

So I think in his case, I think it's interesting because he spends a lot of time talking about AEW, but I think he's also cognizant that there were a lot of media personalities and former wrestling promoters that had strong vocal opinions of him. And I'm not trying to say that I've done more than him or I think that one thing that was cool this year was when we accomplished, we hit a milestone that's not a round number, but episode 289 of Wednesday Night Dynamite is remembered as one of the best ones. We're going to be in Boston tomorrow. We're back for Wednesday night dynamite. And it's going to be a great show tomorrow. And the last time we did Dynamite in Boston before tomorrow was

spring breakthrough in April. And it set a huge accomplishment for us. It was such a big thing that I sent it to even top Warner Brothers executives who were really happy with it because I actually think it was probably the best week of media coverage that we've ever had until I came on your show today. This has been great. Now this is going to be a great week for AEW. But the last time we were in Boston before tomorrow's show on TBS and HBO Max is something I'm really proud of because it made us the longest running primetime pro wrestling show ever on TBS or T&T. And that includes the great shows that they put on. And that includes the great shows that they put on. He gave you props for that.

He did, and it meant a lot to me, so I appreciated that. So thank you for bringing that up. I thought that was really cool, and so it's mixed opinions, right? And everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I also think Eric's in a unique position because he was in the chair, and he did have to make a lot of decisions, and he also knows that you can't go backwards. You can only go forwards, and you can only learn from the things you've done. So I'm very fortunate, I think about it all the time, to still be in the chair,

share because you can make a mistake and if you make a series of mistakes and you go down a wrong path in pro wrestling you can end up in a place that nobody comes back from and and look how many people in pro wrestling went down that door of making a mistake after a mistake and then they were gone and sometimes it's not their fault it's due to extenuating circumstances you can't control but I'm fortunate that if I make a mistake that I've always been able to go back and look at it or figure out what can we do to make the next show perfect or make sure that I don't do that again because I really think that course correcting, making sure that we are always on point for the next show is a really strong aspect of AEW. I think that's part of the

consistency. And on the one hand, I could say I've only been a wrestling promoter for six and a half years and I've only been booking and producing wrestling shows for six and a half years. On the other hand, that's one of the longest runs anybody's ever had. So I've been fortunate to learn a lot of things and I'm fortunate that tomorrow I get to do another one and Saturday I get to do another pay-per-view and I'm never ungrateful for that. I'm always very grateful to the fans who watch the shows that we're still in this position. Speaking of the fans, there's always a lot of talk about ratings, about attendance, honest assessment of where you're at right now from a ratings perspective and attendance perspective. Thank you for that. I'm very excited. We're coming off of an

awesome event this past week and awesome ratings. We had a great week. We were one of the top shows on cable. Okay. And this year, what did that do? I don't know the, it was, so I don't have all the numbers of the DVR, and I don't know the streaming numbers. You got to remember that we have a lot of fans who watch on HBO Max now, but on TBS, it was 600,000, and it was in our time slot, one of the top shows, and it ranked somewhere in the top 10 on cable for the entire night, and in its time slot, I think it was along with ESPN and Fox News. TBS was one of the top three channels, and it was also, to me, if you add in what I would believe we have on our streaming audience, more people watching than last year's blood and guts. And our audience this year, our cable...

You know what the streaming numbers are? No, I don't have them. They don't tell you. No, I don't have them. Okay, okay. And I honestly don't know how many people would have watched, but knowing that it was our most watched show in months on TBS, I would expect it was probably our most watched show and months on streaming. For what I've seen in sports, we don't get every streaming number from every game with all the data, but I do know from the NFL that there's a healthy and growing audience that watches the events on streaming. So I think that TBS is still our kind of bread and butter on Wednesdays and TNT on Saturdays, but I think that's a growing part of the audience, especially in the younger demographics. What's been really exciting for us

is at the beginning of the year, I was thinking that there was a possibility, okay, we have this audience at the end of 2024. I was here in New York for the holiday show. We're coming back again to do Christmas Collision and Dynamite on 34th Street around the holiday. It Hammerstein, right? At Hammerstein. They were great events last year, and they really set the stage to come in and have this great year we're having now. And, you know, looking at it back then, I was thinking, okay, well, the New Year's about to start. This is uncharted territory. We've never done the simulcast. We've never done Dynamite Live on Wednesday. It's still on TBS, but now we're also going to have people watching on HBO Max. It's, Collision is still going to be on TNT, but a lot of people watching on HBO Max. My thought is we're going to have some new viewers that have never watched before coming on HBO Max.

We're also possibly going to have some cord cutters that have been away from cable coming back to AEW on HBO Max. But I was prepared for a possibility that there could be some erosion or cannibalization of the cable audience, which did not happen. It came out the other way. In Q1, Q2, and Q3, if you look, our share went up and our total. audience went up. Okay. So we have this really great success story. Now, it's interesting because we don't get the same kind of numbers. In Q4, there's been this big change in the Nielsen system. Yes. Which is why it was great to see this huge number we did last week for us, because it was like, well, that's the best number we've done since the change. And so clearly there was a great

response to it, but also collision the previous Saturday had done the best number it had done since the change in this system. So we're seeing good response. And we've really closed the gap. It's kind of like in the pandemic. If you look at where AEW is as a percentage of the WW shows, this is really one of our strongest runs. And if you look at where WW is, say the audience of dynamite compared to Smackdown, for example, or raw, this is a great time for us. And you would say that along with some of the peak times in AEW, this is right there is 2025 right now what's happening, that the AEW audience as a percentage of the competition is about as good as it's ever been.

And with the streaming audience, like I said, at the start of the year, I wasn't sure if the cable audience, where they would go, and actually the cable audience at the start of the year, and then again, as the year went on, grew. So that was pretty exciting. And so from the first three quarters, that's the case, and now they track the data differently. So we'll see how this goes, but we're in the fourth quarter,

and so far it's been this awesome year. I'd be remiss if I don't ask you about the CM Punk story. do you have any regrets about how that was all handled obviously he came on the show there was that big interview and then you guys played that footage looking back are you at peace with how it all played out or do you wish things could have been done differently well there was so many things so i you know like the playing the footage did you think that that was the best move in uh in response because it felt like that was in response to the interview unless i'm to your interview that's what it felt like it's interesting because i do think that i didn't necessarily agree with the description of how it all happened and that was your way of showing like no not not necessarily

and i by the way i i i really think you're a great interviewer and i very much appreciate because we've had a very we've had a very very good interview and i think i've been very good to answer all the questions you have and now you've got me where i'm enjoying talking to you so much you've really got me hooked in so i want to answer your questions even the challenging ones and uh i didn't necessarily agree with everything uh that was said in that that interview about how things happened, but also it's a TV show, and it did a very

strong number, and if you look, it was... Are you talking about the video response from you guys? Yes, so for many reasons, I think that it made sense, and it was a thing that was advertised, and it got a lot of attention that did a very strong number, and also it's in the eye of the beholder. Was there anything he said that you want to

now refute? I think the tape spoke for itself, and I think that I didn't agree with how it happened, and obviously it was a major part of why things were no longer able to continue with us, even though I would have liked to have been able to. And it's clear that I wanted to reconcile and do those things. And you wish that maybe by him leaving and then showing up on WWB like two months later,

that was a huge boost, right? I think really for us, we've had a great run for six years. And if you look at the time before Phil came to AEW, we were having a great, run and we had some great times together but we've been on a great run and we're having this great year right now with this roster and I think this is the best roster and the best AEW locker room and it feels like in and out of the ring the combination of them this is the best we've been but I also think that we had great times together and it was clear when we started doing collision I wanted to reconcile and find a way to still do those things and I guess that wasn't possible but I didn't

necessarily agree with everything. Did you learn any lessons? Because one of the things that he said in that interview was that like, you know, and I hope you don't think this is coming from me. I'm paraphrasing that like, you know, you don't stand up as a boss. You let people kind of like walk all over you. And so that felt like an indictment on you as the leader of the company, which is what you are. And so I'm wondering what your response would be to that. I don't agree with that, but I also think that everybody's entitled to their opinion. And that's feedback. and it's fair if that's how he feels, but I didn't agree with the description of the way things played out,

and that's okay, and that's all in the eye of the beholder, just like the whole situation, if you see the way it came out, it all was in the eye of the beholder, and that's okay. I think AEW is doing really well right now, and I'm really happy with what the people on the shows are doing, and it wasn't the first time that he and I disagreed about something, and it may not ever be the last, and that's okay. But I had tried to reconcile, and I wanted to find a way for everybody to be able to work together,

and that didn't work, and that's okay. And it seems like everybody's happier and doing better right now. I know in AEW right now, everybody's really happy, and it feels like this is the best the locker room's been since the Jacksonville lockdown days. And we had over a year of shows, and I said at the beginning of the year, I wanted to bring that mentality to every show for everybody, that either how I put it together or the way we all interact or the way we all just sit down and are straight with each other and don't let the distance grow because in Jacksonville it felt like the locker room was super super tight and then

we became nomads again and we went on the road and it wasn't like that and this year it really has been and it feels like this is probably the closest it's been since the beginning of AEW and then we took that spirit of the very beginning of AEW and became even more tight-knit living in a bubble together, doing shows in a bubble together through the pandemic and putting on shows every week together, never stopping the shows. And that's how I got close to the UFC and Dana White because... Are you guys still close? Yeah, we are. You still talk? Yeah. Okay, that's great. And I talked to Dana still, and I saw him recently. We sat together at a football game. We are both friends of Dan Lambert, and we both sat together at the Miami Hurricanes game. That's right. I went to watch a game

with James Gladstone, the GM of the Jaguars, and Tony Bisselli, who's legend, yeah, all-fame, NFL player, and executive v. Vice President of the Jaguars, and the three of us went to the Miami game, and Dan invited us, and we were sitting with Dana. That's amazing. It was great. I love to hear that. It was great. Unfortunately, we're rounding 30 here, because I think you're very busy.

No, I'll stay. Whatever you need. This is such a rare opportunity to speak to you. You're the guy at AW, and there was a lot of questions that came in about the status of certain big names in the company. So can I ask you about a few people in the company? You know, there was the story with Andrade who showed up and then he was taken off TV and the reports were a cease and desist that he wasn't able to be on. Can you clear this up? What happened? Okay, so I've so far I've answered every question. You have, yes. And I'm batting

a thousand. This has been a 180 from the last one. Well, I appreciate that. Nothing frustrating to I appreciate that. And we're doing a great job. And I want to try to keep it going. Yes. I think the world of Andrade, I had a great experience with him, and he left on the best of terms. This is back of the day. This was the original time. Yeah, yeah. And now, when he said he was free and made his one-night appearance, I was thrilled to see him again. And any time he's free, and whenever that is, he is absolutely always welcome in AEW. He misrepresent his status? I can't speak to that. Fair enough. But I really, and it's the first time I've, I've said that to you, but I do appreciate that.

And it is an interesting situation that I am going to keep an eye on, but I absolutely think the world of Andrade Al-Edle. What's the state of Chris Jericho's relationship with the company? Chris Jericho is somebody who's in AEW and has been with us from the very beginning. He's been away from us for a bit, but he's... It's April, right? His last appearance was in April. Yeah, and he's somebody that's had, even this year, great matches with Bandito.

somebody that's been a world champion for us and was really at the very beginning of AEW absolutely as key and instrumental as any individual in the launch of AEW. And I love Chris personally and professionally. I just reached out and wish him a happy birthday recently. I'm very excited about everything Chris has done in AEW and he continues to be with us. And he's always welcome. He's going to be back. I can't speak to that, but I love having Chris in AEW.

always welcome the doors always open for Chris to come in what is the reason for his departure for now uh it's a very good question and it's uh some of it comes down to just uh working out the dates and is this deal almost up i i could i would rather not get into that but also i respect you asking about it and i and i'm if i could give as much information as possible to try and keep a very constructive dialogue do you think we'll see him back in a w i hope so i absolutely hope we'll get Chris back in and a star like Chris Jericho, you negotiate a certain number of dates. And Chris has always been really great about being one of those wrestlers in AEW that when he's in, he's all the way in. And if you think he's always really been a full time part of the show.

Sure, sure. And at first, when we started, we talked about finding ways with Chris and Fossey and his band to keep him involved because he was such a central figure as the original AEW world champion, his late champion. So there were times where, Chris would have videos in dynamite or make appearances. Even when he offered John Moxley, my dad's car, that was actually my dad's car, to join the inner circle in Jacksonville, Chris was actually on his way to the Tokyo Dome, and we had filmed that over the holidays, knowing Chris was going to be going to Japan, so he filmed this video that we played for Mox to watch after the Mox versus Trent match in Jacksonville

on New Year's Day, and then Mox himself then left for Japan right after that, but it was Jericho was wrestling Tanax. and got over early to do media. And that was on the Tokyo Dome in 2020. And it's amazing to think, now here we are, almost six years later. And Chris has been the huge part of AEW from the very beginning. And we started out early, like, okay, how can we find ways to, you know, keep Chris involved if you needed a week or two off?

And then pretty soon Chris was just here every week and wanted to be here every week, and we love having him. So if we can work out all the dates and all the things, I would always love for him to be here. one of my favorite wrestlers, and certainly he's as instrumental to the launch of AEW as anybody. What's up with Britt Baker? Britt Baker, somebody that I love and respect. He was also been in AEW from the very beginning, and she had been away at times for health reasons, and she had some injuries, and I'm just looking

for the right time with Britt, and I've had really good talks with Britt, who I really, really like. I think Britt's a great person in and out of the ring. She's so impressive. to have somebody that went to medical school or in their degree is practiced and also has wrestled at a high level and juggled all these things. I think it's really impressive and it's somebody who juggles a lot of jobs and a lot of work. I respect Britt's work ethic a lot. She's also a great wrestler. So I would love to have Britt back in AEW and Brit is going to be back. I really believe in AEW. And I hope soon. But it's going to be the right situation for her and everybody involved, and I want to make sure she's 100%, and that's important to me.

And I really care about the health and well-being of all the wrestlers, and in Brits' case, I think she can come in and still be a huge part of AW, and I expect she will. Did WW ever ask to use Adam Copeland as part of the John Sina retirement tour? No. Is his deal up at any point to where he could be used? I mean, you never say never in wrestling, because I would imagine. they could always extend that date past the end of the year. But no, Adam's going to be here with us through the year.

And he's really a huge part of AEW. Because they're bringing, like yesterday they brought back Dolf Ziegler and some other, you know, Matt Cardona came back last week. And so there was this big push for him to be the last one. But obviously, he's under contract with you. I was wondering if there was ever a conversation about that. Adam Copeland is a huge part of AEW. And I have so much respect for him.

And I really, really like Adam a lot. I'm glad to have him here, and he's away filming, but he's with us, and he's going to stay with us. MJF, when do you think he'll be back? I expect Max to be back, hopefully very soon. Max is somebody who has been a huge part of why this has been a great year, and even though he hasn't been available every single week, I think he's done some really great things in and out of the ring this year. And if you look at what Max accomplished with Happy Gilmore 2,

he's had some amazing matches. Yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. And it was really one of the marquee performances to where I can go into almost any office in Hollywood or any entertainment office and people have seen the movie and know Max's role, even if they don't watch wrestling, which speaks to how successful that movie was, how big of a role that was for him, and how great of a job Max is doing is a crossover star, but he's also wrestled at such a high level.

And if you look at his matches, first of all, I want to spend some time talking about how great, because I mentioned them at the very beginning when we were running down the full gear card, but I haven't gotten to talk a lot about somebody who's been a huge part of the success of AEW this year, Hangman Page. Yes. I briefly mentioned this Saturday, Hangman Page versus Samoa Joe

in the Steel Cage match. I could also talk a lot about Samoa Joe and how huge a part of AEW Samoa Joe is. But MJF and Hangman had a great match at Revolution. They had a great match at Forbidden Door. Their rivalry was outstanding, and MJF also had great matches with Mark Briscoe and was involved in a casino gauntlet match at AEW all in Texas

and some great matches in addition to this starring role in Happy Gilmore 2 that was really good promotion for him and for AEW. This is great. Everything's very transparent. I appreciate it. I'm having a lot of fun. I hope you are as well. I'm just firing away names, so I hope you don't mind it.

I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything with this. What happened with Rick Flair last week? I saw him post a thing apologizing for having to leave and not you know he was advertised right so he was at the show he was at the show so for anybody you bought a ticket and thought they were going to see rick flair come out he did come out rick flair uh he tore his rotator cuff the a w doctor's had looked at him because he had had a fall and torn his rotator cuff he's a little bit older now but he's still in great shape you see videos of rick flair lifting weights and working out and he pushes himself really

hard he's still a good athlete he's still a great athlete he's deadlifting 500 pounds and doing these crazy workouts. And Rick had had a fall, and he came in, and he had an injury. And the doctor's look, he had torn rotator cuff, and he said, I really feel terrible. And I said, Rick, I don't think you should be going out and doing anything in the ring or even getting into the ring. I think, like, maybe you and I just go out at the start of the show. And he said, you know, honestly, he was in a lot of pain. He might be good for him to go home anyway.

And so what we did is Rick and I went out and said hi to the fans before the show started. It's blood and guts. So I introduced Rick, and obviously with this big two-ring double steel cage match and everything that comes with it, the fans were going to get really amped for this. So I thought a great way to pump the fans up. We had a trailer that we had played online. It was a three-minute video. So for any of the fans in the arena that hadn't seen it yet, we played that video. And Rick and I went out and said hello.

He said he really loves being in AEW, and he thinks the world of the AEW wrestlers. and great to see the fans, and then we queued up the video. But Rick was in a lot of pain, so I didn't know when we had advertised he would be there that he was going to have a torn rotator cuff. I think it actually happened right before the show. So then I thought, let's just let Rick go home early, and for the fans here in Greensboro, he's going to go say hi. And then in the event, he really was not in any shape physically to go out there with a rotator cuff.

And he also took the sling off to go out there. but he was in a sling and he didn't want to go out in the sling so we just went out and said hi and then he put it back on. What happened with Miro? Miro was a great wrestler and he was great in AEW. He was a TNT champion

and I think he and I just had at times different visions of things but that's okay because everybody's entitled to different opinions and different ideas and really that's what this all is. It's different ideas and

we just kind of of drifted into some different ideas of what we thought we should be doing. That's okay. And I think he'd worked in WWV before, and that clearly was a good experience for him. So he clearly was excited to go back, and he did go back. So I wish him the best, and that's what he's doing now. But that must make sense for him, and that must be why he wanted to do it. Do you have, or did you have any interest in Killer Cross? I have not spoken to him in many, many years

I thought he was a layup for you guys given how that all played out That's interesting I'm not sure I like Killer Cross It'd be interesting at some point to talk to him again It's been a long time since I've talked to Killer Cross And

It would be interesting He's So when he became free you guys didn't Chad? I haven't yet He did some stuff with Darby that I was involved with Darby in terms of clearing the schedule for Darby to do an independent match with him here in New York, and they did a match, which I was involved in that, and Darby and I

were actually at the Comic Con together that day promoting DC, A.W. Full Gear and the comic books with A.E.W. and D.C. and Darby went right from the Comic Con panel where he assaulted Mox. Yes. I remember that with the glass. Got a lot of attention. He smashed the glass picture on Mox. Mox is so awesome, and he did so great on that panel. I mean, to have some somebody like that that's such a great champion and a great ambassador and a great leader we're so lucky to have john moxley in a w and i'd be remiss if i didn't say that but uh derby also is so important and their rivalry uh has helped fuel us and wait killer cross killer cross killer cross we like he i like him and i i went that night uh i had a lot of things going on and i actually

wanted to go see his match but darby like had to be hustled out and we still had events so Darby left early to go do that match with Killer Cross, which was great that he was able to do both things. So I didn't get to see him that night. That would probably would have been a great chance to reconnect with him. Okay. Do you make this happen? Yeah, he's great. I think he's tremendous. Him and Scarlet are a great duo. I think they've got a great thing and they were red-hot towards the end. Were they not? Are you surprised that WWE didn't sign him? It's interesting. I'm, I mean, you never know what's going on with different wrestlers and different wrestling organizations, so I can't speak to that. But I think he is very

talented and Darby said he had a great experience with him. So it would definitely be worth reconnecting. I mean, you know, we get so deep in our foxholes and thinking about the different things we're doing. And sometimes I get so laser focused on one thing, as you can see, that I think about those things. But at some point, he's definitely a great name to think about. Okay, I'll ask you one more name. Will Osprey. When do we see him again? What's up with him? Boy, I love Will Osprey. So Will Osprey is such an amazing part of AEW. And again, talk about somebody who's contributed to why I think this has been a great year for us. He was a huge part of last year. And this year, before his injury, he was just wrestling, in my opinion, at the

very, very highest level. And that match with Will Osprey and Hangman Page to determine who would win the Owen Hart Foundation Cup and who would go on to all in Texas to wrestle mocks for the world title. Hangman won the match. And Hangman versus Will Osprey, I think they're both great challengers and two great stars that you can build a promotion around. and what a great night double or nothing was, I thought, and what a great main event they had. Will Osprey is somebody, I'm glad you asked about. He's recovering from the injuries.

I talk to him regularly. He's doing better. Is it a neck? It's a neck? Yeah. And I think he's been pretty open about it, so I don't want to talk out of turn about somebody's injuries, but Will's been pretty open that he's on the recovery.

He's on the mend. He really appreciates the support from all the fans around the world. And Will Osprey is going to be back in AEW. I think hopefully earlier next year I can't say exactly when but it'll be next year and I hope it'll be

in the first half of next year and he's one of our great stars so I think it is great news because certainly when Will Osprey's on the shows every week it's great for us I lied one more name Adam Cole that's hard that's hard Adam Cole

I love so much and I think Adam Cole is such a great wrestler but also he's a really good friend. And it was very, very hard when I got the phone call the morning of all in Texas that Adam Cole was not feeling well. And he's had injuries and it's no secret. Some of the injuries he's experienced have been head injuries. And it was terrible when Adam Cole had the ankle injury and when he needed time to recover, it was just you don't want to see him in so much pain, but also it could have been, that alone could have been a career-ending injury, and he was out for over a year. And he came back from that, and he was wrestling at such a high level. And I was really

excited about what Adam Cole had done in 2025 to work his way into a top position and become the TNT champion. And it was a great comeback story. And I'm just glad that he was able to tell us when he didn't feel good about wrestling anymore. And do you think he's done? I think it would have to be the right situation for Adam to wrestle again. I think it's at least possible that we would keep Adam as part of the family. But I want to get to where he feels good about traveling and doing things every week again. But I've been open with him that when he's ready, there's always a role in AEW for him. He had been a commentator at times, and he's been one of the hosts of the shows.

He's great for that. He's a great talent. He could be involved in a lot of things. And if he ever did want to wrestle again and it was the right situation, and everybody could wrap their heads around it, so to speak. I think that it could make a lot of sense. But if anything involving head injuries or serious injuries, I always want to look at it and evaluate, does this make sense?

And is there an opportunity to do this safely where it's going to be a good outcome for everybody? What is AW Shockwave? Well, it's just an idea. I file lots of different names and ideas of shows and things like that. and that was a name that I actually at the time did not know anybody else had used and I had a really you know I love that that word shockwave you know what reminds me of pride pride FC back in the day you know pride was the the the dominant they were the WCW to the UFC's UFC or WW and they were the number one and they had a show called pride shockwave and so when I heard that you trademark shockwave it brought back

all these nostalgic feelings from the old MMA in Japan and so I was wondering what you were going to do with that i'm probably not going to do it i had a really nice talk with billy and billy corgan uh who owns the n w a i like billy and even before i became a wrestling promoter i had met him and i think he's just a great artist and i like him so when i talked to him on the phone i said if that's a show that you might do again and you because n wa had done a shockway i guess pride had done it before that yeah yeah but then n w a shockwave which i didn't know at the time when we filed it and then i talked to him and said if that's something you want to do and you did it first, then you can do that. That's fine. And he said, oh, that's great. I appreciate that. So that was

nice. Did you talk to him about the national title as well? I did. Yes. I had a great talk with him about that, which was to say, that will be introduced this weekend, right? Yes, it will be. And again, I have a lot of respect for him. I like the NWA, and I like Billy a lot personally. And what I told him is, you know, this is going to be our AED, really for AEW, this will be an AEW championship. It's a new lineage. think it's cool that Billy's been able to keep the legacy of the NWA alive and that that's an operating promotion and uh this is an AEW championship so a lot of wrestling organizations have been on TBS over the years and AEW now I'm really like I said very proud dynamite we're on for over six years now and one of the companies that goes back and has a history also going back

in the 1980s would be the NWA through the territories and the promotions. who operated through Jim Crockett Promotions, and Georgia came together because Georgia Championship Wrestling is another one of these promotions, and then the companies that existed after that, and the national title, it's a different national title, but there hasn't been anybody that was the national champion on TBS since 1986. So this will be a new national title, a new lineage as Billy and I were talking about, but we had a really nice talk, and I enjoyed talking to him about it. And I told them, you know, there are things we do that are tributes to the history and wrestling.

But in this case, this is a new title with the new legacy, and he gave me his blessing for it. And it was a nice talk. And, you know, it's good when the promoters can reach out and just connect about things. So the shockwave, if they're going to do a show called that, and I said, you know, if you've done it before me, that's yours. But I also didn't know that pride had done it. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's cool. I thought it was a tip of the cap to those days.

But I guess, okay, we'll keep it on ice. I don't know like 1% of what you do about MMA. It's all good. I'm not like a super expert. I'm like fan and I like it, but I'm not like the big expert who knows everything about MN. No, you are that guy in wrestling. And that's your thing. Yeah, but you like both and you're an expert on both, but it's cool.

Like I've gone with mocks to UFC and he knows everything. Oh, yeah. We sat in the front row and like he knew everybody and told me everything and the backgrounds of the fighters and who trains with who. There's a lot of similarities between MMM. in wrestling with the storylines, the good guys, the bad guys. It's just not as overt, but it's all right there, and everything is copied, and now they're under the same umbrella. I promise, I'll let you go in a moment, but this has been a lot of fun.

I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have as well. Ring of Honor and a TV deal for them. You know, what's interesting, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but, you know, WW has a deal with Netflix, with CW, with USA, with ESPN. Is there any real estate left for Ring of Honor? Yeah, absolutely. And at times, there have been operating. opportunities to do things for Ring of Honor, but I think they have to make sense. We did this

insanely awesome, great media rights deal that's so good for AEW, and I'm so happy because I think we deliver a really great value, and it gets great value for us, which is the perfect meteorites deal. We have the perfect partner with Warner Brothers Discovery, and we did this deal where it set up dynamite, collision, and the paper views, and is there room for Ring of Honor? I absolutely believe so, and there's been good conversations with us and them. I had other media partners reach out about doing things with Ring of Honor and other companies that we have never worked with that it's possible yeah but i think it has to make sense for everybody and also the most important relationship for AEW is always going to be warner brothers discovery

between myself and david zasloff and the leadership there so anything i do i want to make sense for everybody so i have actually rebuffed other offers at times from outside and if we do it i would love to do something with warner brothers discovery but again it has to be a deal that make sense for everybody. And it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly, you know, as big as the AEW deal, but it's still got to be pretty good. And it's got to make sense for everyone. So we've never been able to find the sweet spot. So I think it's perfect to do what we've been doing to focus on the sweet spot we have right now with AEW and Warner Brothers Discovery. And then for Ring of Honor, we have a nice service. We've been having a really good year with Ring of Honor. And people that watch

the shows would attest to that because there's been a really good support. And I think there's been a sentiment this year, more than in the other years that I've owned the promotions, more than any year since the first year when there was no TV, when it was just pay-per-views, and everyone was like, wow, this was like just three awesome pay-per-views this first year. People loved that. And then people thought maybe there was the first year, I think, if people loved the three shows, you have to say so much of it comes down to when you have the Briscoe's FTR trilogy across the three shows, that's a big chunk of it. But there were so many other great moments, including the arrival of Samoa Joe at the end of the very first show. And he's such an

important figure, including to this day to right now in AEW. And those shows people love, but there was no TV. So across the shows of AEW, I had a lot of Ring of Honor involvement. People probably thought that was more than they'd like. So now there's a lot less of that, but Ring of Honor has its own show, and you still see appearances and the stories flow together. And there's wrestlers that appear, whether it's Athena, who's been an amazing women's world champion now for almost three years in Ring of Honor or Bandito, who was the Ring of Honor world champion before I even owned the promotion

and was a great face of Ring of Honor and then when he came back and returned to AEW, it's a great thing because he's the Ring of Honor world champion but he's also an AEW tag team champion. We have these people that are involved in the AEW shows. Now Mercedes-Money is the interim Ring of Honor

TV champion and she'll be wrestling the... Actually, you know, should be wrestling tomorrow to settle the Ring of Honor title Before her match this weekend, that's the kind of schedule of Mercedes wrestles. We have dynamite in Boston tomorrow. It's a three-hour dynamite and collision. So on that show tomorrow, on the three-hour special, Mercedes is going to wrestle Red Velvet,

who is the Ring of Honor TV champion. There's the poster right there. And she's been out injured. There's going to be this great tag team match we see. Timeless Tony Storm versus Mina Shirikawa, Alex Windsor, excuse me, Tynos Tony Storm and Mina Shirikawa versus Alex Windsor and Rio. In the quarterfinals of the tag team tournament, that's going to be a great tag team match as part of this three-hour special.

But you asked me about Ring of Honor. Mercedes actually beat Mina Shurikawa, who's in that match to win the interim TV championship. Red Velvet, the Ring of Honor TV champion, has been out injured. She did some great things for us as the champion and continues

to be a great champion, but she was out injured and we've had a great partnership with CML. Top Lucha Libre promotion. They've been around for over 92 years. And this year, our most watched event and one of the most successful AEW events ever was our first ever show in Mexico with them, AEW Grand Slam Mexico. Right. And we had an ROH Global Wars event that coincided

with that. That was a great, great event. And we saw some of the top stars from Ring of Honor involved in the CMLL shows. And Red Velvet's done a great job representing AEW and ROH in Mexico. She got injured. She's back now. She's going to wrestle Mercedes to settle the R-O-H-TV title tomorrow, and that's before Mercedes wrestles for the AEW world title this Saturday versus Chris Stathlander. And like you, I'm a big Statlander fan. And I think she's tremendous. I think a lot of the A.W fans who've been watching from the very beginning are really like to see Chris Statlander succeeding and thriving as a world champion. And I think that Mercedes has got a huge match Saturday, but I think it's really commendable that she takes on

the schedule fights people all over the world and she's got this big match in her hometown tomorrow versus red velvet that will be a big ring of honor match on a ew tv but there aren't that many huge ROH matches like that we don't normally settle the championships on tvs this is a huge occasion for a match like this one or weeks ago on collision when bandito wrestled masqueror de rata if there's a huge huge match maybe i'll put the ring of honor on a ewe but most of the ring of honor matches are focused on the ring of honor tv and And the fans who watch it have been saying that they think this is the best year of the Ring of Honor shows. The pay-per-views have really delivered, and just looking at Bandito's portfolio,

some of the best matches in wrestling this year have been Bandito's Ring of Honor matches, whether it's Bandito versus Takeshita in Dallas, Bandido versus Achesero in Philadelphia, his matches in Mexico versus Masqueradurata, the match he just had a couple weeks ago versus Masquerorada, the rematch. It's amazing how you rifle off all this stuff. You live and breed this. I do want to ask you about this. I had Matt and Jeff Hardy on in July, and I asked them, like, what do you make of this WWT&A partnership?

And Matt said to me, like, let's be honest. It's the hurt AEW. Do you view it that way as well? That's the way he put it. I really like Matt and Jeff a lot. I like Matt and Jeff a lot, and I loved working with them when they were in AEW, and I still love Matt and Jeff very much. And I don't think it was malicious.

I don't think at all. But do you think that that's the impetus? I respect that opinion a lot. I think you agree with it. I think it's probably true. And I respect that Matt says. it honestly. Yeah. That's really cool. And I think Matt's a great guy. I think Jeff's a great guy. What do you make of that? The fact that they're so tight now. It's interesting. I think it's a

very interesting collaboration, but I think Matt hit the nail in the head that it makes sense. And AEW is a very strong challenger brand. And it's not that unusual. You take it as a compliment. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, I remember when WCW was starting to do better and Smokey Mountain Wrestling was running shows in Georgia that Vince McBan called up Jim Cornett and sent a bunch of the WWF wrestlers to to Smoky Mountain Wrestling to help. History repeating itself. Compete with WCW.

So I do think like when you have a strong challenger brand, it's not that unusual to see the WWF collaborate with another company. We saw that with Smokey Mountain there. And in Memphis, I think, did some of the same things to compete with WCW shows. So it's not that unusual. And again, I don't take it personally at all. It makes sense looking at the wrestling playbook of the WWF.

When you saw that picture of Jade, Ricky, Cody, and I believe Punk in there, you know, all with ties to your organization. How did that make you feel? It was, I saw that and I think AEW is having a great year. I think AEW is in a fantastic place. I think the roster right now is delivering great shows and I'm really proud of what AEW is doing right now. It did make me smile because it reminded me of double or nothing 2020, the first pandemic pay-per-view we put on great pay-per-view and Cody won the TNT title and Mox retained the AEW world title versus the late great Mr. Brody Lee. May he rest in peace. And after the show, Cody and Mox in this, in the area

of Daly's Place that is the kind of the one communal area. It's part of what brings everyone together so much in Daly's Place is like the gorilla and the pre-tape space and the live interview space and the hallway, it's all one thing that connects the amphitheater itself. There's just a very small little backstage, and it's very tight, and it's talent viewing. It's everything, and that's why, like, when people are doing promos, there might be six rows of wrestlers sitting five feet from them behind the camera, watching them do it, but it's just, we're all used to it. And after Double or Nothing 2020, Cody and Mox took a photo, and I thought it was interesting.

It just shows how far in the mirror, but I saw, I remember the photo that Cody and Mox took, And in that moment, I think I took it on my phone. Wow. So when you see that, like, is there pride there? Do you feel like it's a shot at you? Do you feel like I have relationships with all four of them and they're very different. And I could talk for two hours about each of the four of them and why I like them and why I thought they were great in AEW and we could talk about all their matches or I could talk about how much I like them all as people. But, you know, they're all not wrestling in AEW anymore.

But to be completely honest with you, I just thought that folks. And it made me think a double or nothing 2020 and being there in Jacksonville and taking that photo on my phone and remembering that night and thinking, man, it's crazy how five and a half years have flown by. Okay, one more I'll ask you and then I'll let you go and thank you again for all this time. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you. There are some complaints about fans being priced out with the WW events. Do you look at what they are charging? Do you look at things like WrestleMania going to Saudi? And there were some people saying like, hey, AW should run a show. that weekend for the American fans. Are you looking at these things that they're doing and just like they're trying to clearly counter-program your stuff,

you try to counter their moves sometimes as well to gain more fans and garner this relationship with the fan base? Like a lot of the things we're saying, I think there's a balance. I'm cognizant of what people are saying and I'm cognizant of their pricing. I think the AEW pricing,

which is lower and WW shows are more expensive for the fans than AEW. and when it comes to the ticketing and the pricing. Now we have different models when it comes to the distribution. I think that what we do is very good and it's been working for us. You know, from the very beginning of AEW, whether it was on the beginning calls like before we'd ever done a live event, talking about the original shows and saying before we'd ever done a dynamite being on the phone

and Cody was in some of these phone calls and Matt and Nick and different people and talking about how I always wanted there to be tickets that were in that range, of somewhere from $20 to $30 for the fans to be able to get in to the TV shows every week, and that that was going to be a consistent theme in AEW, and there still is inexpensive ticketing, and get-in price is usually pretty fair compared to the competition. It's always lower, and the ringside seats are also, they're more expensive than the highest tier of seats in the arena, but they are still more affordable than our competition, and they always have been, and I hope that they always will be, and I'll try to keep that

affordable pricing. That's something I care about, making sure that families and friends can get into the event, go to the show, and people who really care about being in the front row or being really close to the ring, people that might be willing to pay a little bit more for the ticket than just getting into the event and people that really care about that really close ringside seat, it's still the most affordable ringside seat you're going to get for major TV wrestling and pay-per-views. We're having this great, great year, but that's something that has been consistent from the beginning, and the pay-per-view prices, as I was saying earlier, the pay-per-view price has been the same for cable and satellite from the very beginning on every provider, and now we actually

offer the lowest price ever on HBO Max. So I think that's also been good. Now we're actually offering more affordable than ever pricing plan. And I will say this, because this is really interesting information. I didn't know this until I started doing the Media Rights deal for AEW this past year. So doing the research and bringing in top analysts, I learned things I didn't know about AEW. Of all the sports leagues in the world, of every league, from NBA, NFL,

MLB, WWE, UFC, PGA, and every sports league, the league that has the highest spending on streaming video per month is AEW. Okay. Now, our fans, I'm not saying AEW is the

biggest league in the world, the NFL is the biggest league in the world, but AEW has the most avid, loyal in the world. I feel that, by the way. Sometimes they come after me. Can you tell them that I'm not so bad? I think today, they come after me. I think you're going to be a fan favorite today. You think so? Because they came after me for like three years. I think you've not very nice. Big baby face turn. Is this my turn? Yeah, I feel like this is my turn. Especially because you asked me all these questions that were very legitimate questions and I think

hopefully I've also. It was all very fair. Yeah. I think I've come a long way from Montreal. I have. We've done it was awful. Done a good job. And we showed people that you can get off on the wrong foot, but then get on the right foot. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. And I also... They stop, you know, hounding me. They think that I'm a paid chill. Well, I think you've shown that you're a very balanced, fair guy.

You asked me a lot of good questions, and I really respect that. And also, like I said, I've enjoyed the interviews you've been doing with some AEDW. We do more of them. I hope you will, yeah, and that's why also when we hadn't really been sending AEW people, but I was interested because I saw you were saying some good stuff. I thought you did that great interview with Maven. Maven's the man. And he was a really...

I think you should have him on the broadcast. I think he's a great broadcast. You know what's amazing? You want to hear something cool? I've never said publicly. I like that. One of the people who, the person who is largely responsible for getting me into pro wrestling, I've been a fan my whole life, but I had never been backstage at a show, and I never really believed that I could take it to the next level. And I got to work with them through football because we both believe in protecting the players and doing everything we can to make it football safe. and it's the man who started the concussion foundation with Chris Nguinsky.

And Dr. Chris Nguinsky is one of my really great friends. Wow. And Chris Nguinsky was on Tough Enough. And the final three on Tough Enough were Chris Nguinsky. And Maven came in and did this great thing with us. And so I was joking with Chris because Chris and I are still really close. And he also comes in every year to talk to the wrestlers and gives a really serious speech because I want them to hear it about head safety and,

them, they want to take these high risks and chances, but I want them to hear it straight from Chris that it's really important that they are cognizant and that they hear the message he's giving, that really we want to be as safe as possible because Chris was a pro wrestler and he cares about this. So Chris comes in every year and I see him and I talk to him regularly outside of the shows and I was telling Chris, you know, I had this great interaction with Maven and I hadn't ever talked to him. The only time I'd ever really seen him in person was after a house show on Halloween when I was in college, Halloween 2004. And I brought that up to Maven when he was shooting his video. And he was like, thought that was

really neat. I remember this. And he was such a nice guy. So I was telling Chris that. But the other reason I bring this up is Josh Matthews now works in our production. That's right. That's right. And he's in the truck. And Josh is now a big part of the production team. And he's working with Mike Mansuri and Daryl and all the guys. Mike may be my favorite person in the business. Mike Mansour. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. I adore Mike. That's all. I love Mike. Yeah. I met him, I met him right before the pandemic. He was still at WWE and he took me on a tour backstage. I was like, this guy's the coolest. And then he left like a week later. And then he went to work for Pat McAfee, if you recall. And then now he's working for you in a high production and love him. He's a head of

production. His wife is wonderful as well. He's amazing. Yes, yes, yes. So you've got, and Renee, I'm a big fan of Renee. Renee's awesome. You see, I'm a big fan of a lot of your guys. I think... This is good. I think we just needed to do it in person. Yeah, and isn't it always much more pleasant in person? And, you know, it's great talking to people on Zoom or on video chat, but it's really not the same.

And this has been great, and I appreciate you giving me the chance. It's a big week for us with tomorrow being this huge episode, the Go Home Show, Wednesday Night Dynamite, and this being the big pay-per-view week, especially for such a big tent pole show. This is the seventh full year. and it's been with us from the very beginning and this week you have look at that look at that lineup here oh wow something it's going to be huge we have dynamite

tomorrow night uh 8 p.m eastern 7 p.m. central on tbs and hbomax and then collision is on as part of this three hour block so you've got to watch tomorrow it's a huge go home block it's full gear week then the countdown show which is all those awesome video packages and you were just talking about mike mansuri his team mike and the guys they do a great job putting these countdown shows together. Mike, Phil, and all the gang, they do a great job, and that's the countdown show. So that's a block Wednesday night that sets up the

pay-per-view, which is Saturday. And then on TNT and HBO Max, you got the tailgate brawl. On all the other platforms, there's a zero-hour that we put for all the Amazon and all the great providers. But live, you can watch the wrestling matches in the arena on TNT and on HBO Max. 7 p.m. Eastern Saturday and it's live coast to coast, it's on at 4 p.m. Pacific on TNT or on HBO Max. It's like collision, but

an hour earlier than usual for collision and live coast to coast. And it sets up the paper view and we saw on the last tailgate brawl Ariel that when you have a great match in the ring it could even continue from the tailgate brawl into the paper view

so full gear you don't know what to expect so you got to watch a tailgate brawl and FTR versus Jetspeed was an awesome match on the tailgate brawl and it continued into the pay-per-view and it talked talk about a hot start. It was a hot way to start the pay-per-view. I'm afraid to say goodbye because I think I'm going to have a lot of heat with your head of PR for keeping you on for so long. I think you won't.

Your head of PR is going to kill me. I think actually he's out there. He's a brilliant guy. He's a very nice man, but I think he's going to say you kept them on for too long. But we were flowing. We were flowing, right? And I got to say, I think he's going to be very happy. And to be honest, probably a little relieved how well this one.

Okay. As am I. As am I. That's great. Me too. Thank you so much, Tony. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Good luck tomorrow. Good luck on Saturday. Looking forward to it very much. Continued success. Looking forward to the big shows. Actually, I have a list here. You've got, if you're in the New York area, December 20th and 21st, right here in New York City, Hammerstein, Ballroom.

Presale actually begins today, I'm told. General's sale on the 24th in November. Your last show of the year is December 27th, AEW World's End at the Now Arena. and Hoffman State. It's a great venue. So all the best to you guys. Much respect. We'll take a quick break. Say goodbye to Tony. Be back with your questions. I'm sure there'll be a lot of them on the nose coming up right after this.

All right back on the program. That's the greatest taco I've ever had. That one right there. My kids make fun of me the way in which I say taco. Sounds normal to me. Well, that was weird, Frank. What is that all about? Just push it down. I say taco.

Okay. They say taco. I say taco. They say taco. But I prefer saying taco. There was a video of David Beckham doing something for the Qatar World Cup, and he's like, I like to make tacos. So that's what I think of. That was fun, guys. I agree.

Me and T.K. Buried the hatchet. Am I a baby face now in the world of AEW? Can all the hate go away? Are we friends again? Have you now finally seen the light that I'm not a paid show? that I just call it down the middle. Peace and love, peace and love.

We are just wrestling fans around here. Peace and love. Thank you. Thank you, Ringo. We've never had a dog in the race, so to speak. And I've never considered myself a wrestling journalist. I've always considered myself a journalist who enjoys talking to wrestling personalities, whether it's, you know, bookers, promoters, owners, founders,

wrestlers, male, female, the managers, the characters. I love all of it. And so hopefully We gave you a little bit to Nibble on It was a nice little chat And yeah Hopefully we can now move forward Always love having everyone on

From the AW guys to the WW guys To the W guys to the ring of honor guys To the NWA guys I think Frank's favorite interview That I ever conducted was with Billy Corgan Hey you're not wrong Still mentions it till this day You ever thought about having them back on

absolutely I would love to have him on I would love to have him on alright time now for everyone's favorite segment of the week it is time guys we're going to full gear on Saturday at the Rock at the Pruh? I'm in who's in? Me, I am you guys had the whole

you had the whole line up there it was amazing yeah I can't lie we had it up for like 12 seconds and I was screaming back here I was like Tony please look over oh yeah look over and that queued him up and then he went went through the whole thing. Tailgate, all of it.

He went through all of it. Hello, Petey. How are you? Great. How are you? Now that I look at it. Ptzee's got like the same type of curls that Tony has. Yeah.

I was thinking about myself. Cut from the same cloth. Cut from the same cloth. I mean, it's lovely to see you here on a Tuesday. Usually we don't get you on a Tuesday. It's usually like your quasi off day. Guess it's your lucky day. Yeah.

I thought Monday's after paper views were his quasi off day. What did you guys learn? I don't know. I'm going to. I'm going to have to discuss this. What did you guys learn from the chat? What did you learn from the chat? He's been here for about an hour.

Oh, geez. Sorry, PT. I told you. Yeah, three. Yeah, I told you three. I mean, we were vibing. The chat was great, yeah. It was a great chat.

It was a good chat. I enjoyed it. Yeah. All right, well, we'll see you next week. Okay. Let's go to the questions here. Triple double says it may be recency bias and too soon to say,

but as Carlos Pratch is the best fighting nerd in your opinion, I mean, he's the one having the most success. Would you not say that? He's the hottest one right now. Right. I was a Rufi guy. Yeah, I was a Ruffy guy too. But by the way, he's only had one loss.

I mean, all these guys have only had one loss. Bohali only had one. But like the M.MA spice girls. You all have your favorite one, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some are Kyle Barallo's. I'm a Rufi. What about Morales now number three in the welterweight rankings?

Prochus over Gary? How's that possible? Yeah, the over-Garie doesn't make a ton of sense, but I expected the Morales jump. I mean, he knocked out the number two guy in the very first round. Yeah. Who's Gary's best win over, and who's Pratchez's his best win over.

I guess that's the way to look on. I mean, Gary's best win over Pratch's probably over Pratchett. Yeah, Gary has won over the number of them. Yeah, I guess you're right. Leon down to nine. If Gary wins, he's got to go over him, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. He'll be beating the number two guy. He'll take the number two spot if he wins. Okay, YFG94 says, Frankie, what are your top five favorite drops? Oh, that's a good one. I like... Fucking out. Yeah.

And... James Tihuno? Yep. And... Who me? Yeah. And who's to check? Yeah.

And... That's fucking illegal. Okay. This guy actually had hashtag federal f in prison. Federal fucking prison. I do like that a lot. It's so good. It's so good.

Francois Crabb Apple says Ariel is going to be on his deathbed telling nurses Darby Allen poured water on his head. That's a good take. GM3 fader says 100% the leftover rice thing is a real danger and not safe. Just 24 hours refrigerated needs to be tossed out.

I used to do it until discovering it was not safe whatsoever. Thank you for that confirmation. Last week we spoke about this. Not how. no he said 24 hour refrigerated yeah that's what i said you're not supposed to refrigerate it no i said after 24 hours you toss it no you said don't i said leave it out if possible you have to refrigerate it 24 hours here also what was the revelation that we have this all on take it's verbatim what we have this all we can do you know what we could do lads yeah i've just put some rice in the fridge i could eat

it after 26 hours and if i get the shots i'll report back 26 hours i don't want this hanging over my Yeah. He's saying he's going to go. He said 24. Yeah, he's going to go. 25. No, he said 24. So at the 25th hour, you can eat it and see if you have diarrhea. But this guy's proof is, I found out it's not safe. Like, how did he find out? Did he go to the hospital or did he hear about it? I think they found out, Frank. Have you guys ever seen the movie 25th hour, speaking of it? Uh-uh. Yeah, that's the one with, uh, everyone's right? Yeah. That was crazy. Because he's, like, going to prison. It's the 25 hours before he goes to prison. Right after 9-11, so they showed you, like, ground zero and all that. By the way, by the way, G.C., as a New York resident,

relatively new, highly recommend watching it. All right. Is that a, is a Spike Lee movie? Excuse me? Is it a Spike Lee movie? Yes, it is. Great call. It's the first movie to take place in New York post 9-11,

where, like, post-9-11 New York is acknowledged. Pantheon of New York movies? It's not a, it's, you have, it's like, it's an I-Y-K-I-K, but the one scene, you know the scene, Frank, the F-U scene? It's an all-timer. What is the pantheon of New York movies? That's Midnight Cowboy. Elf.

I'm walking here. I'm walking. Is Main Streets, New York? Taxi cab. What is it? Jason Taxi driver. What's the taxi driver? Taxi driver?

Yeah, taxi driver. Ghostbusters. The Muppets. Take Manhattan. Home alone, too. You've got mail. You've got mail in New York. Absolutely.

Oh, when Harry Met Sally? Oh, yeah, when Harry Metz-Sally. My answer, though, Midnight Cowboy. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's a great one. Great one. Hemmy Neutron said, I said this past weekend that Bo Nicol was the most must-win fight on the card. I feel the same way for Ian Gary this weekend, you agree?

And out of both of those fights, I just mentioned, which one is slash was the most must-win? I think it's Dan Hooker. If Dan Hooker does not win, he likely won't return. Okay, I have a... Armin? I have a thought on this. I think Dan Hooker has now reached. He has reached that Donald Taroni... Interesting. I think Dan Hooker has now reached cult-like favorite. You sent an amazing edit and I'm like... Love him. Yes, I want to run through a wall for this guy and I don't really care about his wins and losses anymore. But he's said to you, his dream...

No, I know. He's one night with the belt. Like, his goal is still the belt. It's not just to put on bangor fights. And so I think if he loses, he probably will not return to title contest. I feel the exact opposite. I feel that Dan Hooker has absolutely nothing to lose. This is only upside. He would not be getting a title shot. I agree.

Otherwise, he hasn't fought in a while. He's coming off an injury. If he wins, he's going to be like the number two or number one. Yes, sure, but it's like gravy. That's not to lose. I'm just saying. He wants the title. He dreams of the title.

If Dan Hooker wins this fight, is he getting a title shot? Yes. Probably. You'd be beating Norman. You'd be beating the number one contender. I'm just saying, we don't even know what's going on with the title shot. It could be Patty? Armin Saruki was booked to fight Islam Makachev.

He was in the fight and had to pull out. And if he loses to Dan Hooker, you wonder if he can get back there, considering how long it took him to now get this fight booked and his potential friction with the UFC over the Islam Makachev thing. I think Armand is the one with everything to lose here. Armin is the one with everything on the line. Like if he does not win this fight, it would be catastrophic. Right, to get a title shot, like Dan Hooker. Yeah. You're saying Dan Hooker has nothing to lose,

but I think in his mind he has something to lose by losing this fight, which is a title shot. You're saying, no, this is from his perspective. Dude wants a title shot. He has to win this fighter. He probably will never get one. That's the thing. I think Dan Hooker is in that spot

where he wins one or two in the row. He's right back in that. Like, he's in that Michael Bisping, Donald Soroni fan favorite. It's foreign. People like him. People door him. Yeah, of course. People love him. People are always going to watch it.

I'm just talking strictly from the standpoint of him getting a title shot. But Armin has those same stakes. I just wish. Armin is younger, though. We got to figure out this lightweight title situation. What the hell is going on? Patty, got to be I thought they would have announced Patty already. Yes.

I thought they would have announced already. He's there, right? He's there, I think, with Shemrock. And he's like, he seems ready to go. They haven't announced a single date or fight for 2026. Got to be coming soon. Are they going to do a big rollout, do you think? I think they should. I think they should do a big Paramount Plus thing.

That'd be great. Yeah, like a studio day where you just do it. Yes. You know, so you make a big bang. Yeah, that'd be good. John's work. Do you expect to do that, though? Ariel, like, would you expect a big day, like a big reveal given how points have been announced?

I wouldn't expect you have C to proactively do that. But if Paramount goes, hey, we want to make a big splash, let's do this, I think they could get on board with it. Maybe the week of the last pay-per-view. you know they're in Vegas yeah they usually do something on the Friday if they want to announce something here's John Pork who says hearing that Dylan has a lifetime ban from the UFC made me think about his last interview

with you didn't you say you would never have him back on as well I did say that and look I never thought Tony Khan would be on the program as well not to say that I'm reaching out to Dylan because I did not enjoy that last interview but we did listen I'm not I'm not someone I'm not steadfast in my beliefs on anything I've said this before with people who I consider

you know people who have tried to do me really, really dirty, I would shake their hand. And just like I had no problem when it was brought up to me to have Tony on, I was excited. I like the idea of repairing relationships. I don't want to go through life holding grudges. I mean, could you guys imagine in February of 2023, Tony Khan being in the studio for an hour and a half? No. Like we couldn't to be, there was probably at that point a better chance of Dana being in studio, right? Yeah, it was about equal at that point. And so I think it's honestly a testament to him, much respect. He did not have to come. And I actually think it was an infinitely, remember I said that was the most frustrating

interview of my life back in 22? This was infinitely better. And he was attentive to that. He was trying not to dodge the question. Yes. And he did it. And I appreciate that very much. It was only like one question that he couldn't talk about. And I get it. It seemed like it was sticky. Yes. There was a cease and desist involved reportedly. Anyway, so once I saw Dylan, we made up, I have no issues. And what I think is hilarious, by the way, is Ali Abdel-Ziz going on Twitter and being like anyone who talks to this guy is not a real journalist. I mean, what do you talk? First of all, who are you to set those ground rules, number one?

Second of all, as an aside, the media tour that this guy is on. I mean, I've never, like, it is absolutely, every time I open Twitter, every time I open YouTube, this dude is talking to someone else. He has done more media than any winner coming out of Saturday. It's unbelievable. It really is. Like, if I'm one of his fighters, I'm like, okay, I get it. Can I get some of this shine, too?

it's crazy to me it's crazy and by the way maybe I'm wrong maybe they like it maybe they're the ones who're saying great this guy's a mouthpiece for me my promoter isn't going to do the talking let my manager do talk maybe I'm missing the point here but like the media tour and the Craig Jones stuff and then the the Dylan stuff it's just the difference between the way he handles it and the way every other manager handles it is is very stark but again maybe that's the brilliance maybe that's maybe that's what they want anyway Man, Dylan didn't do himself any favors. He's like, going four, assaulted him.

Here's the, I'm reading what this guy's saying. Here's the thing. We talked, I do think it's important to say this. We talked yesterday about the brawl, right, guys? And we did say that it's like, it's like, Pizzi, it's like the great Jamie Vardy, who once said, what do you say? Oh, wow. What do you say?

Chat shit. That's what he said, right? And that is sort of like a street code, right, among fighters. You chat shit, you post things. things are going to happen. But I do think it is important to say this. Like, well, like, you know, I don't know what he's going to do about all this. He hasn't said anything. And I do think he crossed the line with the things that he said about them, about their religion. And, you know, he's talking about things that makes them uncomfortable and all this stuff and more. We do have to acknowledge

the fact that they are at Madison Square Garden in New York City at a public event with thousands of people around them. Like, you can't just go around beating people up. You know what I mean? Just because he posted something. Like, that's not the way civilization works. So while I do agree that the street code suggests, like, hey, chat shit get bang, and you've got to pay, you know, you got to pay for the things that you say. And, like, you're talking mad shit about, like, you know, some tough dudes who don't have a tolerance for this. I do think we have to acknowledge that. Like, we can't just be like, yeah, well, you know, that's, you know, that's the way it goes.

Like, he did get what appears to be jumped and assaulted. Yeah. Madison Square Garden, you know? Of that situation, but it's, his reputation precedes him. Yeah. This has happened so many times with him. You know, there's that saying, you work for your reputation,

and then your reputation works for you. The opposite of that is what happened to Dylan. You know, like, it all went against them. And I do think if it's a different person without that background, that doesn't happen, you know? The guy who got jumped as the one who's being viewed as the bad guy here, as the one who is being banned, as the one who's being,

but again, to your point, maybe it's because of his reputation and this stuff. It's how much provoking he's done over the years of many different parties. Yeah. I think the other problem is, we don't really see the inciting incident, right? Unless, you know, somebody else has seen it.

But it seems more like it's like we kind of get it midstream where the brawl is kicking off. We haven't really seen kind of what the conversation, if any, was before that or what kind of like really lit the powder keg. So it's murky, it's whatever. You're kind of just going by one side's word or another. I don't know. Ali did an interview saying that he thinks that Craig Jones should be deported.

And then Craig had a great retort saying, to be fair, we both should be deported. Let's roll out Hensel Gracey, BJJ Blue Basement. Loser cuts up the green card. I'll only use buggy chokes. I mean, would you pay for that? Yeah, because Ali said he only teaches buggy chokes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. C.J.I?

next main event. Shit, I'd watch that. Did you see his TMZ interview? He said some interesting things. Yeah, what do you say? He said that Islam Makashchev barely weighed 185 pounds and I just can't believe that. 195 pounds in that fight

where he's the same size of Jack Delamadelaide. Most guys are competing in the division. I'd say 190 plus. Yeah. He's massive. Yeah. And also another thing he said was he hasn't said anything to the lads,

but, you know, he happens to manage Kamara Usman nothing to do with him that Islam's calling out. I don't know about that either being honest. The Kamar Usman thing is. I mean, it's Usman or Buckley. That's what we've determined.

It's got to be Buckley. Right up there. Can't see his video? Oh yeah, we talked about us. Great stuff. Treadmill. Love and War. Hey, Rick and Ariel, I'd love to hear more about how impressive Connor Ben looked. Was it more of what Ben did

or what UBank didn't do? That's the big question, right? because the talk, I think, was that Eubank was so lethargic. He wasn't as active as he was in the first fight. But I do believe that Ben deserves a lot of credit because Ben was very active. He was

energetic. He was spry. He was switched on. He was I mean, he was very motivated, it seemed like. It is okay for both to be true. First of all, Chris Chris looked like he was stuck in mud. It was a horrible performance. He looked like he wasn't there. But if you look at the

previous performances from Conner Ben, when he moved up in weight, he did not look like this. He looked like his cardio was in the toilet. He could not sustain it over the course of the decisions. And in this one, his foot was never off the gas pedal. The cardio was there. His hands looked sharp. The power was obviously there in the late rounds. He's knocking down Chris twice in the final round. The power translated. Everything was clicking for Connor Ben. I was extremely impressed. And then you do have to consider, this is up weight from where he actually fights. This is not his natural weight class. And so he's up there fighting a much bigger man who, in the last fight, was sitting behind a jab and really making him pay for those exchanges.

I was equally impressed with Connor Ben and sad for Chris Eubank for how bad he looked. But there's nothing to take from Connor Ben. He looked tremendous. I can't wait to see what his next move is. Oh, yeah. I mean, think of any of the names. He's a huge star now coming out of the UK. Like all these guys, like he could do a stadium show again against one of these guys.

Could you imagine him versus Ryan Garcia? Ryan Garcia, Shakur Stevenson, any of these guys would be massive fights. I mean, we said... Lewis Crocker, yeah. Lose Crocker, yeah, him too. Yeah, get a belt. Like, I'm so happy for Connor Ben because of the way his career had seemed to, like, go off course. And now he's riding high.

Like, he has gained a lot of momentum back and fan sentiment back from positive test era when the BBOC is jerking him around. He's just sitting on the sidelines, no fault of his own, just because, because these appeals are taking forever and they won't license him and he's fighting in in ballrooms in Florida and now he's on he gets revenge for his family he he gets the first win for the for the Ben family in that in that blood feud and all the options are available to him like it he went from the outhouse to the penhouse and I'm happy for Conor Ben so Dana White was on the Andrew Schultz show Andrew Schultz very much in the news as of late he was at WWE Raw last night

getting involved with Cam Scatabo. Is it Scataboo or Scataboo? Scataboo. Scataboo. Getting pushed around at Yeah, isn't his footbroken? I mean, it was hanging by a thread.

And there were other Giants guys in back of him, right? It was only like three weeks ago. Sheltzzi, Schultzzi getting involved in a lot of the WW stuff as of late, but I guess he had Dana White on and he said something about

Francis Ngano getting, Dana said France and Gano got physical with him. What's up with that? Cap or no cap? That's what he's climbing. It'd be weird if he was outright lying. Dana has alluded to the fact that he doesn't like Francis because of an incident that happened way back in the day. And so maybe this is the incident.

I had heard about the like get the private plane ready, get the jet ready for me. Remember that, yeah. You remember that? And I don't know if this is all, you know, intertwined. But he said Francis Ingano was a bad guy after the press conference. He comes over to me, grabs me. and he says, when the fight is over, you're going to book me a private plane to Paris.

He was pissed off that he didn't get a $50K bonus. The conversation's over. I'm starting to leave. He grabs me by my shirt, pushes me back in the office. I said, dude, get your fucking hands off me. That is wild, if true. That is insane if it's true. It feels weird that he would lie with that specificity.

Yeah. Because otherwise, Francis Ngano just says, what the fuck are, you know, the drop? Yeah. but it's bizarre, yeah, it's bizarre to go to that level of... Also, all these years later, I mean, that's, that's 2015, yeah, 2015, that's a long time ago. But, I mean, who know, I don't know what prompted this. I don't know, like, what they were talking about.

I also saw that he said, I can't put John Jones in a position where he can pull out. I had to deal with him to fight Tom Aspel, and he said, I'm not going to do it. I can't be put in that position again. So it really does seem like he is hell-bent on not bending here, you know? Until Connor McGregor can't go or Islam can't go. Until DJT picks up the phone and says, what about that, uh, J.B.J. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, this from Nathan. Question from Brisbane, Australia. Hi, Ireland, crew. Been a huge fan of the show for ages. Congrats on you and your team success with Uncrown. Just had a question for the boys in the back. You're Rick, are there any recent movies or under the radar gems that don't get enough love that you'd recommend

recent man this is so hard I watch so much shit I'm so bad at this off the top of my head It's tough The dissent I always say that It's my favorite horror movie

It's underrated Not a lot of people have seen it Go see it Um Yeah I don't know This is this is too hard I can't do it off rip I need more prep time

I'm like that man This is for GC from the same guy Nathan are there any good books you've read of late that you'd recommend? Nothing crazy, book called The Measure, and then I read Man Search for Meeting. That was okay. That was pretty good. Oh, yeah.

You read that one. I'm in the midst of reading that, too. Oh, shit, seriously? Yeah, of course. Why does that surprise you? Because it's a small world. I mean, it's been out for 60 years, 70 years. My friend John Beer told me to read it.

Ah, shout out to Johnny Beer. I mean, it's an incredible story. Yeah, yeah. It is an incredible story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the very one. Yeah, yeah, oh my God, inspiring as hell, shocking. Insightful stuff, yeah. Okay.

It's crazy, wow. How far are you? Nah, probably 75 pages in. Okay. I tend to, like, go hard on the books on vacation and then, like... Has it made the switch over to, like, post-Holacost era? Has it's... Wait, wait, what?

Like, he goes through his whole experience. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Is that the most impactful stuff? Yeah, it's essentially just like the lessons he learned from that and how he approaches life after going through something so horrific.

This is for Frankie. Are there any good tabletop slash board games that you'd recommend? They've been playing a Dune Imperium with some guys. That's a lot of fun. Invited Rick. He could have been bothered. We don't care. We don't care.

Why did Rick say no? Seems like it would be up his alley with the games that he plays. can't be bothered why was KKF removed from the rankings thank you Ahmed for the hot tag Kikar France actually as first reported by

Dan on our production team who's done a marvelous job filling in fact he was in attendance at UFC 322 this past weekend first on the scene with the eyewitness report of the Dylan Dennis Brawl he alerted us as he was doing his rankings check-in that the great Kai Kar-France removed from the rankings.

Peti, did you know this? Did not know that. Very interesting. Take a look at the rankings. Right here, I do believe we have them. The top 10 in the flyweight division, you have a lot of familiar names. Big Josh fan, number one, Moreno, Royville, Albaazi, Tyra, Kapp, Perez, Amabayev, Elliot Erseg, conspicuous by his absence, is Kai Kair, France, who was in the top 10. Well, I did reach out to his team, and they told me that, yes, it is, in fact, true. He is not in the rankings, and they explained why. They told me that he informed the

UFC that he was taking the year off, that there were other things that he wanted to do. He is not retiring necessarily, but he is taking a break. He is taking at least a year off. He wants to get into some cultural things, some things that have nothing to do with fighting. He's very spiritual. He's obviously, we've seen him do stuff for, you know, his culture, for his heritage, for his people, for his country, and he's taking this break as a result, removed himself from the testing pool. As a result, he is out of the rankings. He is not eligible to be ranked. And so that that is why he has not shown up on this week's rankings for the first time. He has not been released, so it's not that, but he is not part of the rankings until he tells them that he is

coming back and goes back in the pool and all this stuff. So there you have it. There's the scoop as far as KKF is concerned and I appreciate you giving me the hot tag this is from Steven Segalo Sensei quote The day started earlier today end quote is one of the all-time quotes from Ariel

during the post-fight show this weekend Quality Stuff Boys this is the kind of wisdom that we tune in for all right, all right chill out I mean it's one o'clock in the morning I'm happy to fucking night me yeah I mean let's see you let's see you at 1.30 in the morning

why does it seem so scary outside right now. I mean, it's 4 o'clock what is happening? It's not usually the start at 4. That's like a horror set. It is. What is this? Batman? It feels like we're in Gotham City right now. That's exactly what it looks like. Yeah, bro. It's always pitch black. Is it? At 4? Yeah, by 4305. I've never seen this before. No, you've seen it. It's been happening all week. It's criminal.

It is criminal. It is criminal. That's fucking illegal. Yeah. Connor from Canada, what do you guys think about Justin versus Charles? I mean, I think we all kind of want to see Charles versus Maxie, right? Yeah. That's the one. I'd prefer it, but Justin versus Charles ain't bad either. Justin's retiring if he doesn't get a title show. Yes.

Interim title, Charles versus Justin. Oil be hooked. Hey, Ariel, question for all you boys. Do you think they'll ever do an interim BMF? That will be like the end of days. If they ever did that, I might just, I might not work in this sport. Yeah, I was going to say I'd retire as well. Just because you're destroying the sanctum.

That will be the end of days. Sanctum owner or whatever it is around the BMF. Yeah, no, there's a lot. question for all you boys surrounding the rumored Sydney card in February with the fact that Vogue mentioned previously he only had a couple of fights left in him and with Whitaker saying he is desperate to fight at home what do you feel like is the likelihood the UFC build a big card around both I feel like they should both be on that card to be honest

I feel like Vogue is going to be on that card and yes it would be nice to see Whitaker back in Sydney here's Iran Shalom Ariel we all agree that without Dana there's no UFC you guys wouldn't be

doing what you do for a living and we wouldn't be here listening but he's become unbearable in recent years a pathological liar

self-serving and anyone with half a brain can tell how ridiculous it is every time he speaks by the way no joke

I thought that he was going to I thought the way this was going was that like you guys are too critical and you should be

thankful is that what you were thinking BT2 absolutely yeah so this this

Yeah, what a turn. I love getting told that, like, if Dana White didn't exist, I would not have a job, period. By the way, by the way, it's... Wouldn't be in another industry, wouldn't be involved anywhere? I would have no job. No, no, no. There is validity to the statement that if there is no Dana White... We are not doing this. There is no, there's no UFC, we're not doing this. I have never, I've never suggested otherwise. I've never suggested otherwise. It reminds you of the great Max Kellerman, who said at the pre-fight press conference. I was thinking the same thing. If Turkey wasn't here?

Oh, thank you to say. You wouldn't even exist. Thank you. That's New York Jackman, New York, Ray. We wouldn't. Can you take me more? I have nothing to do with any of this. I just want to let you all know.

I thought the exact same thing. If it wasn't not for his majesty. Yes. No, but seriously, I'm not going to go as far as like if Dana White wasn't born, but yes, of course. You wouldn't have a dollar in your bank account. It would have never worked a day in your life. By the way, there is a chance that we'd be doing media surroundings. surrounding another sport.

I worked in media surrounding another sport before this. I would just not have gotten into this. Anyway, anyway. It would just be a different path. He continues.

I've followed the UFC since 2009 and listened to your show in all its versions since then. Lately, I'd rather enjoy my time listening to you than watching the actual fights. We'll take it.

Everything has turned into politics, undeserved title shots, and non-stop stories about scandals and behind-the-scenes stuff. I know you covered it yesterday, but I'm convinced Islam will pull a John Jones, chase a fight with Usman,

and get it. I mean, I feel like we could see it coming a mile away and get it thanks to his influence and Ali. And by the way, this is why Ali does what he does and his clients will love him for it and this is why he will willingly tell Dana White, hey boss, I'm going to stop my clients

from talking to this guy because you don't like this guy even though it was never suggested just to try to occur as much favor as possible. That's what he does. And so that's why I think that Kamar Usman is in pole position right now despite what happens. Like this whole idea of guys, by the way, of like, oh, if Ian Gary does it, I honestly feel like it's fait accompli.

I really do, and that's crazy. The ease in which Dylan Dennis got a lifetime ban, shows how convenient it is for Dana to act instantly instead of actually checking what happened. Funny how he didn't wait for a Tuesday meeting this time, Dana White's privilege is real. I mean, the Tuesday meeting thing is about, like, booking fights. It's not about reprimanding someone. And by the way, it's someone who's not even on their roster, so there's no reason to kind to back that guy.

So, anyway, he said, I just had to get this off my chest, keep being the only outlet but that isn't afraid to speak the truth and call him out. Well, thank you. Ace Crouton. Hey, Ariel, has the UFC always displayed the live odds on the video board outside the octagon? I don't know. Have they? It's been a minute.

It's been a minute over here. I think it's a new thing. I think it's a new thing, right? Like, it's like a little Draft Kings board or something? Yeah, I think it's a partnership with Draft Kings. And I only think they do it in between rounds. Did they do anything about the Polly Market thing on Saturday? I didn't see anything, right?

No, there was nothing. I actually was wondering that mid-card. I was like, where's this fan voting thing going to happen? This one's for Frankie from Islam's flambotomist. Frankie, please blind rank these five fall activities for us, one being the best. All right, you ready? Let's do it. Pumpkin patch with the S.O.

I guess S.O. is significant other? Yeah, five. Black Friday, you said that was such disdain. Black Friday shopping. Four. I think you shot your shot too early. Yeah, dude. You're having a shriek.

Black Friday is the worst. I'm more likely to go shopping than I am a pumpkin bed. Yeah, but Black Friday, have you ever been to the mall on Black Friday? It's awful. Leaf peeping out in nature. Yeah, let's put in at two. Planes, trains, and automobiles. One. Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws. Three.

It's not a horrible list. Like, Frank did well on that. Pumpkin patches are great. You swap the four and five. It's probably pretty good. It's not like every Black Friday, every store is crazy. the dumb stores that are crazy. He adds this, by the way. And he doesn't go to dumb stores. If you guys go to dumb stores, Frank hates you.

Seriously, are you going to go line up at Walmart on a Black Friday? Wow. Wow, our fans that line up. Yeah, we love Walmart. Yeah, we do love Walmart. Please support the show and... Everything from Arkansas is good. Frank doesn't speak for all of us.

If you line up on Black Friday, we support you. They say who's to check. Well, I'm who he said. I'm who checks. I like it. What's he checking? Who's to check? He was checking.

checking the list. Joe Mers says this one's for Pizzi. Oh. Pizzi, please blind rank these five how did we get here? These five pines slash beers. Oh, I like that. Okay.

Airport pint. By the way, I saw some great scenes over at Detroit Parrott International Airport, a.k.a. of the people watching, you saw that? The scenes were fantastic. Airport points up there with the best in the world. I'm going to go two just in case. hungover spoons breakfast hair of the dog pint

five i don't like that shit no beer garden pint nice summer's night oh wow three train can what's a train can it's like on you bring a can on the train and you drink it oh okay okay you ever see that video of the guy on the show

where he's like until my last dying breath that moment when you're on the train with your mates even if it's for four hours and that first crack you ever see this from like the UK breakfast show and he talks about it with so much passion and love

I'm like this guy's the freaking man anyway it's a proper football thing yeah yeah Christmas Day Bayleys oh I fuck myself I hate bailies oh one one I guess

well that's the only one I've got left but you hate it yeah it gives me the shits actually that was kind of an odd list like you had like airport beer then you had I feel like the airport beer is your favorite Beer garden.

Yeah, I did. I went number two just thinking it was going to be something else. But like, Jeverey's very sweet. If you have two or three of them, it'll make a road through you. I was going to say, I thought you were saying you went number two

just thinking about Bailey's. Oh, you'd be shied now the eye of an needle after Florida. You know what he says these things right here? Shitting out the eye of a needle? No, no, no, that was like that time a couple weeks ago where he says something and all of a sudden he sounds like a guy

who's like in the country. 30 million for the kitchen say that one again say that one again you just said oh he was actually just talking about 30 million the other day and everyone was like yeah what was the one you just said shit not the eye of a needle shit now the eye of a needle after four of them yeah

after fordum four of them four of them it would just be spraying out of you you know what I mean wait you paint the wall behind you yeah so good

I'm gonna go have a Bailey's after this Hey guys, it's from Shrimp Cocktail Ola Arelland Gang, has there ever been a fight where the ref asks the fighters in the cage if they're ready and a fighter has said no? Was that guy who tapped out immediately against James Gala? I remember that? Just went down and just happened again recently.

Did it? Dude just like the bell rang and he just tapped out immediately. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. But I've never heard someone say like, are you ready? No, I'm actually not ready. I'm surprised more guys like don't get sick in the Octagon. There's been a couple of stories about people, you know, having accidents. It feels like it doesn't have that much in the UFC.

What if you're about to, like, make the walk? No joke. And you're like, shit. Yeah, you just go to the bathroom and don't make the walk yet. No, no, no, you're literally on camera. You go back. You turn around? Yes.

What if you feel like you're going to yak? Eh, it kind of goes. No, then you grab a garbage can and just do it. But, yeah, you go back. Yeah, I guess these guys are savage enough. You'll just pull trig and just go out. Here's Left-Like Cemetery with a good one. Howdy, Ariel, of all the storylines coming out of 322, my favorite is Boe Nichols' heel turn.

So Boe Nichols a heel, I'm a baby face now. Would you advise him to apologize for the birds and try to explain it away? No. Lean all the way in, of course. Cut a promo. Do your thing. I would just say this, don't play too much into the fans. You know what I mean?

Like, be who you are. Don't show that it bothers you so much because then I think that it will show that you have thin skin and that you're affected and blah, blah, blah. So I would say like It's okay to react that way But ultimately I think the fans want to like Bo Nicol I don't think Bo Nicol has You know changed the channel heat

I think he's a I think the most interesting thing about Bo Nicol is actually like the feelings that he is expressing About not wanting to hurt people I think that's really interesting That led to the end of Tom Dukenwa's career Remember that? Yeah the fireball kid right

Is he the fireball kid Or the fire kid Yeah, he was an unbelievable prospect knocking lads clean out And he got to the UFC He was actually matched to fight Nathaniel Wood Which was a huge deal here Because obviously Nathaniel Wood, Cage Warriors champion He was the Obama champion

Everyone was buzzing to see it And he just was like, I can't hurt people anymore And he became a yoga instructor Yeah, yeah, crazy, he was great. Duquesnewa Levi Tetch says Ariel, whenever you have a guest on that has kids You always ask if they want their kids

To get into martial arts I want to ask you that same question Would you want your kids to get into martial arts? well the thing is I guess the proper question is to be like would you want what I want my kids to get into this my kids have actually starting to ask like even today my daughter was like how did you get a job where you interview people and what did you have to do and I was like oh this is interesting she's never asked me that she's nine what I want them to do martial arts absolutely right now they have so much going on their main two things soccer and basketball my daughter soccer she does piano She does music theater. She does dance. She actually showed a lot of interest in Taekwondo,

but we just couldn't find any time to do it. But I would love to see them do it. I think it builds confidence. Do I want them to be prize fighters? Like, no, I mean, I wouldn't push them. It's a dirty game. It's a tough way to make a living. I know how the sausage is made.

So I wouldn't necessarily advocate for that. But would I love for them to do it recreationally? Absolutely. 100%. Irish Lad Hey guys I know Dana said The White House card won't be The U.S. versus the world

But could G.C. and Rick pick five American main card fighters to represent the U.S. And could PT and Ariel pick Oh, Jesus. This is a lot. Wait, what are you in BTF? But there's only five Irish fourers.

No, I think you and Ariel team up for international and me and G. Okay. John Jones. Yeah. Kayla. We take.

Kayla. Yeah. But wait. Do we have to match these guys up? I thought we would have went back and forth. Yeah, okay, all right, you guys go. We'll play tit, you go tat. Jones Aspinall.

All right. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Wait, wait, were you going to say Pereira? Ptty. That's crazy. Wow. I'm calling Andy.

I'm calling Andy right now. Can I tell you what I was going to do? I wasn't matching the fights. I was just going to do like. Random five? I don't know. He says John Jones. I was going to say Connor McGregor, like as in Star Power.

No, you must match. Kayla Harrison. Oh, come on Amanda Oh, are we going to We're not going to have her fight till June I thought they were going to fight beginning of the year and then

This is just for this exercise Right, Norma Dumont, Norma Dumont Norma Dumont Vantina Versus Kayla At 135, Valtina moves up Don't mind it Okay, Michael Chandler

Are you guys out of your mind? Connor Connor Sean Strickland Hmm Is he Oh, rematch This is good so far

no Bickle Hmm Shamoia Yeah sh'm sorry We did it We did it We did it Good card

Yeah it's a good card Don you can rest easy Now the car's made René Renée dance revolution Is Ewing and his coach The best unassuming surprise ever Watching and realizing

how good he is Joe's saying This guy's good over seven times That's why I love the sport Side note Annex call Of this is the first time A Ewing lit up the garden

In years is a great call For sure Have you warmed up to it by now By the way, I had no problem. Annex Call was great, and I don't think he meant any malice when saying it. And I don't even think he said this is the first time. He was like, a Uing, that was good. It was the other Jibronies online, and they know who they are with the little, like, you know, comments.

Say their names. Let's call them. Bronstetter. Bronstetter is hater number one when it comes to all things Nix. He's been a hater. He always says that the Raptors get the better of the NICs when it comes to the trades. Yeah, how'd that OG trade go? How'd that OG chair go?

And then he brings up the Oakley-Cambi trade. like Oakley the Knicks won that trade Nick's made it to the finals with Marcus Camby oh Kyle Larry they didn't get Kyle Larry okay great wonderful so Bronsetter number one hater and then all the other people

you know can shove it as well love Bronsetter but he knows he's the number one hater number one Knicks hater on the Biden so he said something like what do he say he said like Ewing could win the championship which made no sense he said Ewing would be the first guy named

Ewing to win a championship at Madison Square Garden And then I came back with like, that's cute, but Patrick Ewing won the Biggie's championship twice at MSG and once as a coach in 2021. And then he came back and so did Patrick Ewing Jr. Okay, thank you. And I'm sure everyone in New York was very excited about a victory for a Maryland-based school. Number one, yeah, they were. Everyone loved Ewing, especially when he came back as a coach. And number two, why would they be excited about a dude from Anaheim winning at Madison?

You just refuted your whole stupid thing. Your whole stupid joke has just been refuted. And then people were trying to say the Big East title is an important. G.C. As a lover of college sports, is the Big East title prestigious? Yeah, in college troops it is. It's a huge deal, especially in the 80s. I did a documentary on that.

I worked on a documentary on that era. The 80s, St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown, Syracuse. That was college basketball. that was tougher than the actual tournament Lou Carnaceca, St. John's, Chris Mullen, St. John's, Pearl, Washington, Jim Beheim, Syracuse, Patrick Ewing, and John Thompson, Georgetown. Are you kidding me? Gary McLean, Raleigh, Massimino, Villanova? Don't come at me with your college basketball, mesh you guys, all right?

James Portland, JDM is a plus 2,000 to be the Walterweight Champion on December 31st, 2026. Are you taking this, GC? No. No, unfortunately not. It's tough. It's a long road back with how many contenders there are. Obviously, if Islam remains champ, I don't know what changes in a second fight from him not being able to implement the same game plan. So, yeah. I'll be rooting for him, though. I'll be rooting for him, though. I'll be rooting for him. Love Jack. Love Jack. Kitt's Corner. Hello, Ariel. First, I want to say you are the best interviewer in sports today. Wow. Who is to check?

I meant to hit the other one. I'm sorry. And I don't think that's a hot take at all. You remind me of an early 2000's job. Jim Rome, wow. Put it on the board. No, no, no, no. What does he say? Rack him. Day after day, it's great.

Thank you so much. I really do appreciate that, and that's an unbelievable compliment, and that means a lot to me. I used to listen to Jim Rome while driving around with my mom, and he would take long pauses, and she would say,

why is this guy taking such long pauses? And I'm like, yeah, I appreciate. He's thinking. He's pondering. Anyway, okay, so the UFC has 756 fighters on their roster and probably another 150-plus employees. So let's say for conversion sake, 900 people employed by the UFC.

How many of those 900 do you think listen to your show? I didn't think we were getting there. I didn't prove for you to any of these today. I don't know. Let's say 65%. But this is a tough. I mean, it's impossible to... It's tough.

There's probably a lot of people at the UFC now that, like, don't even know who I am because I haven't been there for so long, you know? Steven Segal Sensei, the Hohani Nose Awards are nearing, and you can smell it in the air with Ethan Ewing's performance still fresh. How about adding a new campaign? category this year, debut of the year, guys. What do you say? No. No. I actually, I actually don't mind it. Some people like to do rookie of the year, but I feel like that's like two UFC

specific. And I guess debut of the year would be, ours are all encompassing. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like UFC fighter at the year, UFC knockout of the year. So debut of the year, Ethan Ewing is not a debutante. So he actually wouldn't qualify. Do you know what I mean? Wait, so debut of the year would have to be from somebody making their first pro fight? guy is thinking UFC debut of the year but I don't like to do promotional. Like how would you qualify for a debut? What would he not qualify then?

Why wouldn't he qualify? Because he was seven and two. Is it like debut? So you, so the only person that we would qualify is first fight? I understand when people do like UFC debut of the year, UFC rookie of the year, but you can't actually call a debut of the year rookie of the year because

technically they're already fighters. They've been fighting for years. So it would be a promotion? debut of the year. Okay, yeah, yeah, you can do that. You can do that. But then, like, how do you decide?

Yeah. It just, it gets the number one league. It's the, it's the top. Also, let's just recall, I did say no immediately when we brought this up. All of our categories are not promotional specific. No. All right. Pass.

Jesus. Curro's dad, arrow, do Jake Paul's opponents get any payments for accepting the fight? I mean, yeah, they get a massive freaking purse. What are you talking about? What the fuck? Not show win, but like something like a sign on payment upon accepting a contract. I mean...

Joshua's doing for free. I guess what he's trying to say is like is there like a signing bonus. Who cares? They're getting paid. Yeah. Have you seen this thing where people are saying like, oh, like he's going to pull out in two weeks

or two weeks before the fight and Jake's just going to get the street cred? Joshua's going to pull out? Yeah, like none of this is actually happening. It's just a deal. Don't believe that for one second. I mean, I hope so. I mean, I hope it's happening. I'm going to freak in Miami for a one hour press conference.

Joshua's not pulling out. Again, as we've outlined many times, easiest payday of his life for the worst opponent he's ever faced in his boxing career, likely. Yeah. I had brain afraid about this fight. I thought it was happening in London the whole time

until someone rang me. They were like, Miami, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what are you talking about me? And he was like, the fight has happened in Miami. I was like, it's happening in Wembley. He's like, I live in London. And I was like, all right, you're right. Pizzi booked the flight.

I saw an incredible tweet, guys. Who would have thought after all these years of us talking about Jake Paul KSI and Anthony Joshua Tyson Fury that the fight we get is Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua. I guess that means KSI is to fight Tyson Fury. Hell yeah. Sign me up. Is this going to be, this book and Fury Joshua thing

is going to be worse than Mayweather Pakia with it. At this point, we're reaching that. We're reaching, I'd still watch it with bells on, but we're reaching out. It needs to be Joshua's next fight after this. Oh, my God. Especially if he wins. Like enough of this tune up.

nonsense. Kyle Grant, true or false guys, Waley fights for the 115 belt in 2026? True. Wayley is the 115 champ at the end of 2026. True. Chefchenko fights for the 135 belt in 2026? No. Maybe 27.

Yeah, false. Yeah, fall. Chefchenko's the 35 champ at the end of 26. Obviously false. Right? Yeah. Ariel, from Grant, do you think a UFC fighter who's struggling to build a platform or fan base would benefit from doing a liberal left-wing gimmick?

No. It'd be funny. You'll be very funny. By the way, Kevin Lee, do you remember when he won at Madison Square? He knocked out Gregor Gillespie, and he shouted out Bernie Sanders, and it was so random. Yeah. And I think he's since walked it back, that's the closest. That's the closest.

I will go to Sean Strickland when he won the belt, and he was like, my name is Sean Strickland. and then my pronouns are. Oh my God, that was amazing. I don't know. Oh, fuck. Like, I actually think it would be kind of interesting, but like I don't even know. Somebody doing a left wing, like Colby gimmick? Yeah, a total left wing.

Yeah, I don't know. Like going anti-Trump. Yeah. I didn't get murdered. I don't think it would go over so hot. Listen, he'd, uh, I'm going to make a joke. But maybe that's how you wouldn't be about, like, cutting promos. Like, what would it even be like?

Okay, so he says here, he gives us an example. For example, if Aaron Blanchfield cut a pro-Mandani promo after her win on Saturday, do you think that would ultimately be a net positive or negative for her stardom? Negative, are you kidding me? It obviously wouldn't go over well among the fan base, but it would get a lot of people talking about her, and that's the name of the game these days. P.S., I don't know Blanchfield's political views, but you get the point. I guess, yeah, like people that aren't that into the sport and they see the pro-Mondani Blanche

field, get the finish, throw her mouthpiece. And they're like, that's our girl. Perfect litmus dress. You're trying to tell me if Mom Dany showed up at MSG, Dana Hoyt wouldn't give him the royal treatment like he gives strump every time. That's what he said he'd do. 9.55 walkout on the pay-per-view. And here they are.

I have to remember. It wasn't like when the right-wing gimmick popped up. It wasn't like the environment is like it is now. So maybe now is the time for somebody to do the left-wing gimmick and make that popular and then flip the pendulum. Number one, I thought

Mamdadi was going to show up if only because he's actually a big pro wrestling fan. You know we went to that AEW show. Yeah. He's been to those and is a big fan, so I thought maybe he'd want to be at a Mattis Square Guard if he's a fight fan. Number two, I feel like the perfect litmus test for this is ask the most woke person on the team, Frank,

if he would like Aaron if she cut a promo like this. So Frankie, what would you think if that happened? I think the liberal fighters just act normal. And they don't need to go above and beyond. There it is. What if liberals are normal, conservatives are free. Franklin.

Can I make a joke here, but I promise it's not malicious at all? I don't know. We have to hear it. Any people where you have to couch it? We're going to pass it. We don't need a trigger warning. It's not worth the hell, honey. Don't do it.

Don't do it. I mean, you could have done it, but now we've received the trigger warning. Do you know what I'm going to say? No, that's why we want to know. I was going to suggest hiring. Don't. Joshua, for Frank, blind rank these five Allison Chains

No, no one cares. I was first on the nose question that got half to say to support. To that person who wrote it, then Bones is number one. Coleman T says, hey guys, what's the worst thing you've had to endure while watching UFC fights?

I asked because I was in the most pain ever. I've ever been in my life passing kidney stones on Saturday. Have any of you guys passed? No, you don't drink too much water. Dude, it's a nightmare. I've never felt any... I had a kidney stone in 2002

and I will never forget the pain. Cripling. Cripling pain. I had it for two weeks. Cripling. I had one for an hour. As I rolled in my bed, I realized what the fuck is my life... Maybe turn off the UFC. As I rolled in my... As I rolled in pain

on my bed, as Leon gets starch bad, I realized what the fuck is my life right now? This sucks. Doing much better but my heart still hurts for Leon. Yeah, that's not great Your boy getting knocked out While you're passing kidney stones is not great That's horrible

I can't top that So I don't have a awful Shooter McGavin says Hello Ariel and BITB Any idea what will happen to the ESPN MMA shows Do you think talent will come over Or will Paramount put in their own crew I think a lot of the analysts

Like the Chales Or the Anthony Smiths Or the Dominic Cruz I think all those guys will go over The Garren Bryans The Laura Sankos They will all go over For the most part

The DCs I'm curious what they're going to do with the YouTube channel, which of course we, you know, so famously launched back in 2019, much to a lot of people's dismay. I got a lot of pushback back then. They may not admit it now, but they did not want to start an MMA YouTube channel. Of course, it's the hottest thing going today.

My prediction with the YouTube channel is they'll rebrand it to a WWE channel now that they're in the WWPLE business. And that will be that. What happens to best bets? It's a good question. It's a good question. we'll have to ask everybody wants to know we'll have to ask who is to check um who's to check Liam says free Joe Parker Joey Parker what are your thoughts on the UFC getting Islam to

fly to Qatar for the fight nights this Saturday if Ian gets an impressive finish have them face like I mean he might go but I don't think he's walking in the ring the champion walks out of you know what I mean um Antoine long time listening to her first time on the nose, Antoine representing from Morial, Quebec. Can we acknowledge how good Volcanovsky is? Did he not give Islam his biggest challenge? I just think for a 45 or coming that close to beating Islam is quite impressive, considering how Islam is running through the competition.

Any word on Volk's next fight? Thanks for all the great work from the team at Uncrown. Yeah, I think it will be in February. G.C.'s second roommate, is this the best crop of welterweights all time, Mr. Halwani? Up there. Even when GSP was champ, I don't know. the crop was this talented, you know? Maverick says, P.T. asked on Monday show if anyone has ever been down

02, then won the trilogy fight. Surprise, no one mentioned Max Blessed Holloway versus Dustin Porreier. Oh, shit. Good show. Who the fuck is we? Ariel, you were saying Gant's team was angry with you for stating your opinion regarding the eye poke situation? Have you reached out to him or his team to come on the show, tell the side of things? Yes, I did. And I was rebuffed. Just for Shits and Giggles I looked up the 2013 Welterweight rankings

October 28th, 2013 Well that's fun GSP Tip for tat Johnny Hendricks Carlos Condit Rory MacDonald Jake Ellenberger

Damian Maya Nick Diaz Martin Campman Jake Shields Matt Brown Robbie Lawler I'm gonna say yeah that was better man

like we were doing better back then Here's the thing Those guys were kind of reaching the end The ceiling I think is a lot higher with these dudes. Yeah, I don't know. I think we're forgetting.

No, you're right. I know, but it's yet to be seen what a lot of these guys' careers are. Exactly. Like, there's not a name on here that I'm like, your product's different as well. But we're judging based on knowing how those careers turned out,

like, who knows what Morales becomes or what Schofcutt becomes, or what Ian Garry becomes, or what E. and Gary becomes, or what I mean? So it's a good question. Maybe it's not as one-sided as we thought, but here's an interesting one Christian Jarrez

or Juarez everyone I mean everyone that watches boxing should be happy because one Joshua's making the easiest money you know what I saw that too it's like yo man a lot of these guys retire broke great if you're a Joshua fan just be happy

the guy's getting paid and I get oh like what did you want you want to fight some nobody guy in Ghana next month he's getting to fight on Netflix this is fun come on stop it every jake hater

should be looking forward to this because this is what everyone has been waiting for this is all positive for Joshua as this is a warm up for him as well New York Rick is the goat agreed fair point

he is a goat yeah Patrick McCraite says GCU mentioned on the last fight feast that action was your white whale may I propose your next white whale please fight feast X

you know what he's going to say Cooking with Vogue Colab from Volk's farm in Australia. Yeah, that is the White Whale. I saw, I saw Ash in the comments there. He's setting it up. Yeah, Ash in the comments,

Big Bill Castro and Volk, Plinyo. Plinyo was actually the first invite. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. Yeah, we're manifesting something new now. We said that right when we got on the episode of Boys in the back last week, but yeah, Volk is definitely the White Whale Volk stuff. That would be incredible. Yeah, we've got to fly down to the farm.

Joe Mears says with the AJ Paul announcement, do you have any idea who will be on the undercard? I think some of the fighters are going to move over from the card that was supposed to happen this past Friday, Alicia Baumgartner. I definitely think that Baumgartner and Sugar Neeks Johnson is going to move over. There were a few PBC fighters on that card.

They won't move over. This gentleman is asking if any matchroom fighters are going to be on perhaps like a Pat Brown. That would be incredible. I think Pat Brown is phenomenal. And I totally got that one wrong. We were joking on the show last year with Aday that like, oh, they're making such a big deal. Like the guy hits like a freaking truck.

He just fought in Orlando a couple weeks ago. But I don't know of the breakdown right now. I don't know of the breakdown. And who else is going to be on it? They haven't announced a single one, to be honest. Okay, just a couple more here. Just a couple of quick ones. Hmm

Francois Crabapple says only one fighter at 322 landed 100 significant strikes Anyone know the answer to that? Who is that person? The answer is Mysterious Franks quote Fatima Klein. Oh, hell yeah.

Hunter Biden's crackplate says Ariel, you're a legend, but your comments about 50s performance during Eubanks' walkout proves you don't know dick about music It's near impossible for artists to sound good in those situations, and 50 sounded incredible. Why can't they have, like, the instrumental version, and why can't he just rap to that? It's the same mistake, by the way, that they made when Fat Joe sang before Game 3 of the World Series, you can't have the music, because what happens is, I'm trying to find a thing here.

He's like holding, and so it's like, what was the song? What was the song? It was like, many men, wish death upon me. And it's singing, and then he's like, so, okay. P.T. sing the song. Go ahead. Go ahead. Many men wish death upon me. Death upon me. I don't know.

Lod am I. Like, he's just trying to like... Oh, he's just trying on the end, right? Yeah, he's just singing. It's annoying. Just do the instrumental and then have him sing it. How hard is that? At some point, did the back and track not drop off at one point? Frank, you know I'm right. I believe it was wankster.

It all depends on how much you're willing to pay for what performance. So if they weren't able to be like, hey, we're going to pay you for a full. performance. He's like, I will do some ad libs to the pre-recorded track and be done with it. Brantley says, hey, Ariel, thank you for that, Frank. If you had Dana Wayne's studio tomorrow. You're very welcome.

I didn't listen to a word. I can listen. It's a matter how much you paid. It's cool. Is that the pop you wanted? I get it. The hot take? All the walkouts with the rappers suck. It's fair. Although, although I will say this, okay, so it's different. I thought Amanda Serrano did it really well in July.

But that was good. That was good. The girl came out. She sang and then Amanda came out. It needs to be separate. Just like Terrence Crawford had the Teporia band playing and then Tours. Remember when Crawford came out with Eminem? That was crap.

Eminem just stood there? He just stood there? He just walked next to him? The best of all time was Lowell Wayne and Dustin Poria. Oh my God. That was awful. The worst of a legend. Yeah, they didn't even, yeah.

It was incredible. He didn't even have a fucking microphone. time. Oh, here's Ryan Bruce who says Ariel, you grew up jamming to Blink 182 like me.

I adored Blink 1282. I took her out. It was a Friday night. I walk alone to get the feeling right. You should check out

MGK's. I got to tell you, I'm a big fan of MGK now. I had no idea. Tickets to my downfall album produced by Travis Barker.

That's my guy. I love Travis. MGK on the show soon? I would love to have Travis. I would love to have MGK. I love all these guys.

This reminds me in my youth. I used to go to the Limp Biscuit concerts. I mean, you guys don't know. I used to have, like, the really baggy shorts. Like, they would go all the way to my ankle, the shorts. I would wear, you know. You're a Limp Biscuit fun. I was going to say, how many Limpisket concerts? The other day he came in the studio, like, give me something to break. Yeah, Frank, I was seen him. And then he grabbed a water bottle and chucked the video. I did it all for the the nookie. I'm always afraid to sing songs. I was like, how are you doing?

I was like to slip up and say the wrong word. Anyway, he performed at the halftime show the Great Cup. Yes, I know. I've been listening to. it. He was phenomenal. Did you guys go back? Now, now you're going back to the Grey Cubs? Not, man, I didn't go back and watch it. I've actually been listening to the Grey Cubs. You're listening to the Grey Cubs? It was that good. No, it wasn't. It was that good. Do you a favor.

I will not watch it. Nope. Yeah, this is Cal favorite. This is insane. I can't watch it. It's so wrong. It's so wrong. Look, nine teams played really hard all season to get to that point. It was a great performance. MGK. You won on? Remember when Steepa used to walk out to the Yes.

You won on? I'm from C.S. elite till I die till I die Don't don't and I die It's like he's right here with us

Come on MGK I call him up real quick You think a man who performed The halftime at the Grey Cup Is watching this show He's too big time Bro, Tony Khan came on Fabricio aka Poppy Live

I haven't heard from him forever Poppy Live the legend You don't avoids Can we get it? Yes An uncrowned meetup At the nation's capital For the WH event

Yeah we're gonna be up in that We're gonna be up in that You're gonna be like six people allowed there. It's not happening. We'll be in D.C. We will. We will. I thought we had discussed this. I think we will be there. Yeah. Shout out to

Pep Guardiola. It's a quick amp track, right? You and Tommy Fury are having problems entering the country, it seems. We've got some spurious friends. What can I say? Who's to check? Frank Annie's Super Chats. Wow, 45. We got through 45 things. Yeah, man, you're a fast reader.

Ever sit back and just do this after a long day. Yeah. Welcome to the bottle out of the sky. What do we got, Frankie? So the first one here says, assume rumors of Shafkatz return in January are true. Him versus Uswan on the first Paramount card number one

contender. Rallis versus Gary, if he gets past Belaw for next up, J.D.M. versus Pratchez, fight night, main event, first quarter, 26. Jeez. Well, you know what happens when you assume, but A. You make an ass out of you and me.

Can you read that one more time I just wanted to digest it. Assume rumors of Shafkat return in January or true. Him versus Usman on the first Paramount card number one contender. Oh wait, you skipped the question. I'm seeing another one on top of this. Are we skipping that on purpose? Who's to check, man?

Okay. Who's to check? Assume rumors of Shafkker. Yeah, I could see that. But I feel like they're going to do protest versus someone who just won. But I mean, JDM was the champion. his stock doesn't fall stock doesn't fall too much

I'm seeing something about Ali comments about me on the BYM pod I don't want to watch this what the haters what is it like the player haters ball it's like all the haters sitting around just talking smack

that's a great sketch that's exactly what that is Bucknesty he did another show I didn't even Johnson and Bucknasty Another media appearance for this guy

unbelievable he's on a tour man the people won what the people won what else frankie what else ollie i'm sorry yeah come through allie let's have a chat time to test the self has to be in america though you know what i fucking kidding sorry go go ahead time to test the self proclaimed NBA historian who was jason kids coach during his rookie year oh wow uh who's he playing for the nets no no he's drafted by the song He was drafted by the Sons. Or was it the Mavericks? He was drafted by the Mavericks.

No. No, was it the Sons or Mavericks? He was drafted by the Mavericks. He was drafted by the Mavericks, and I'm going to say Don Nelson. All right. Let's wait to see if they super chat. It was. Dick Mata, and he was drafted by the...

The Mavericks, former Los Angeles Clipper coach, I believe, had the most losses at one point in NBA history. Then he went to the Sons. Then he went to the next. What else, Frankie? What else? Hello, Tony. What's the word on Ring of Honor getting a TV streaming deal for 2027? Well, we answered that. Yeah. What else?

Well, there's a lot of questions here to Tony Kahn. What are we supposed to do about that? Bring them back. We'll free them real quick. You try to answer. Tony, quick question. Okay, we did not address this one. Sorry, Jared. What else? Okay, I asked that one. How does you feel about the impending WBD sale? okay one point for me what else

is full okay Frank you're not reading anymore or what you started to read these this chat is full of mouth breathers copy and pasting verbatim cornet piskov bully ray midges from New York is this what was happening is this what was happening

look I think I think we got a lot of new fans in the chat oh shout out and they were testing their They were practicing their right to send superchats. Were they enjoying the chat? It sure seemed like they did. They sent a lot of money in.

Okay. Wow. Keep going. Keep going. Thank you. Tony Kahn is a gift to professional wrestling. Thank you. To the uncrowned holiday.

I don't know why I'm saying thank you, but yes. I don't know why it did either. Shout out to Tony Kahn for being one of the coolest people and giving my family and I a great six years. Bring double or nothing back to Phoenix. okay okay only sad end cells enjoy shows based on rating numbers okay yeah yeah yeah they care a lot about ratings oh fed bots of the chat dynamite is unwatchable oh dear oh dear okay what else what else jadey from ny 206 watchers are the iwc's macamore okay okay what else what else is bigfoot actually the coast of an alien big foot no he's not what else what else

Real human being Shout out GC with a corduroy That's hard as fuck Frank hit the federal Prison drop It is hard Man people love the cords baby It's very prison

Yeah it's very cozy What else what else I think Oh congrats to Pizzi and the boys Treat Hamir Well Who's that The Icelandic football coach

Hamer Hallamson Yeah Did you know that off the top of the dome Frankie? Absolutely not I looked it up Okay What else what else?

You asked Dakota about Valentina But you never asked Valentina about Dakota Why? They're going to be fighting at the White House after all. Why? This is from personal staff. First of all, they actually won't.

And second of all, you know, you're right. I probably should have asked her about it. I feel like I did one time. The Fighting Mothers thing, I think you asked about, like, both of their mothers are celebrated. But the other thing is, like, did you not surmise from Valentina? Like, she's not one to, like, talk smack about other opponents and whatnot. It's certainly not other ones who work for other promotions. But fair, I could have asked the question.

What must be smack? What I enjoyed about the chat with Valentina, especially when you do, like, like an in-studio chat with someone who you have often, but you don't have them in studio often, is that you're able to, like, talk a bit about the come-up, about the backstory, things like that. You know, like her backstory. Oh, what else, Frank?

All right. And lastly, a lot of sucking and fucking chatter last week. Me, likey. I can't believe Ariel let the world know that Frank is down to fuck. Cheers you all. Hashtag call HR immediately. This was filthy. What?

By the way, why? This is what you let through? Yeah. I feel a bit filthy. Listen. The amount of things they, you censor. and then this is... I copy and paste all of them.

Jesus. As much as I... Like Ali, like Ali should get read over that. My mom's watching, please. Yeah. They're not wrong, though. All of these things... Oh, just Mrs. Burks.

Also, Frank, reading out DTF was really necessary. Seriously. I listen to that back, and I'll piss myself laughing. That was very funny. Which one? Which one? DTF. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I mean, he's down for anything. I mean, what? Gentlemen, tomorrow on the program, it's going to be another great day. We're going to have Frank Smith in studio. We'll get his thoughts on the big AJ fight, the New York Rick to my Eddie Hearn. Love it. Frank's a good dude. Love Frank.

David O'Tunga. Are you familiar with David Otunga guys? Yeah, WWE. Lawyer actually was once. Jennifer Hudson? Did I make that out? Jordan. Hold on.

Who is it? Yes. That was like his big thing. Anyway, he was married to Jennifer Hudson. Jennifer Hudson. Wait, what was that, Andy? Staroff, I love New York. He was also on...

Give him credit words, too. That's where he became famous. Wait a second. Wait a second. Is this another reality show? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, Ariel.

No. Wait a second. Andy, you know who David Otunga is? Yes. Are you excited about this guest booking? Very interested. He's a good-looking guy. I'm not going to lie.

he was a, you know, interesting in the show. Oh, damn, Andy says he's chopped. He's a nice slice of pie, though. He said Unka's chopped, bro. All right. Anyway, he's got a YouTube channel. He talks about the law side of things. Good to pick his brain.

Kyle Dawkes will join us in studio as well coming off the big win this past weekend. So two-in studio guests. We may have a fourth guest, but I haven't heard anything on that one. James Tehuno? Oh, yeah. Working on him as well. Shout to the Dars Knight. Is that his nickname?

Yeah. Wow. The Dars Knight. That's a great nickname. I had not heard that one. And that's it. Other news and notes, but I think we're good. I've got to go do an interview now with...

We're good. Are you guys all good? I'm good. I'm okay. I wanted to give you your flowers for such a great interview of Tony Connor earlier. Oh, wow. You asked a lot of serious questions. questions. He didn't dodge them, but you didn't ask the one question I wanted the answer to, which is, did he watch the episode where we had his head superimposed on the screen bouncing around while we were keeping track of it? We did the bouncing screen. Oh, my God, I forgot it for him.

By the way, that just shows how far we've come. Yeah. I forgot about that when Fulham played for us and beat us like 3-0. Yep. And it was awful. Yeah, then we bounced Tony. And we did. I should we call him? I feel like he's a good sport. I think he would have enjoyed it. I think he would have laughed about that. Wow, I forgot about that. Man, let me tell you something.

I was in Montreal. We were going back and forth. In a million years, I did not expect this to happen. But I am appreciative, and there are people in that company that have gone to bat for us, and I hope that you guys enjoyed it. I mean, it's a rare opportunity to speak to someone for an extended period of time. I'd love to have any head of a sports league or two join us in. studio and it is better in person he's right it's just a different but i don't know what it is

but when you're like in person with someone and you're kind of going back and forth it's like a nice game of paddell you guys ever play peddle paddle yeah it depends on where you're from not is you a peddle guy you go to pedel hang oh is this fucking real thing is it called but hell you go to pedel house i was just what the fuck i was just trying to i was trying to sound a little bourgeois pizza you'll figure it out you'll you'll get there one day uh gentlemen it's been a great day thank you valentin and shepchenko thank you tony con thanks to you thanks to them back tomorrow same time places a piece up in here