The Ariel Helwani Show - TUF is cooked, Maycee Barber misses weight, Tom Aspinall trolls Jon Jones, troubling BJ Penn news | The Craic

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

On this week’s edition of The Craic, Petesy Carroll is joined by Ben Fowlkes and Drake Riggs.Kicking off the show, they dive into breaking news: Maycee Barber has missed weight for her fight against Erin Blanchfield, along with several other fighters on this weekend’s Apex card (4:02).Another UFC product that returned this week is The Ultimate Fighter. The guys discuss why the show feels underwhelming, even with fan favorites Chael Sonnen and Daniel Cormier coaching opposing teams (14:15).The trio then address the troubling news surrounding former UFC champion BJ Penn, who was arrested this week. His mother has reportedly been granted a restraining order, citing a pattern of concerning behavior (30:37).There’s also more on the potential Tom Aspinall vs. Jon Jones fight, but it’s not good news. Jones’s recent comments make the matchup seem even further out of reach, and the guys break down what this could mean for the long-anticipated superfight (39:28).To wrap things up, the fellas discuss Vitor Belfort’s recent Hall of Fame induction and examine the evolving narratives around drug testing in combat sports (52:35).

Hello, welcome everybody. The music threw me, the video threw me there, but it is Friday, it is the crack. PZCarol is here. Again I will say Macy Barber has missed weight by 0.5 of a pound for a main event tomorrow night with Aaron Blanchfield. Clash of personalities, clash of styles, we're looking forward to that one. Giles and Gustafson apparently off as well. Mr. Gustafson making his third attempt at a UFC debut this time it's been taken away

by an injury to Trevin Giles. Macy Chase on and Caitlin Vieira has been moved to one 45. And we've also got a weight miss from Mr. Nashimento, who is on the prelims of the card, Alan Nashimento against your file, Filo, so a lot happening with the apex card this weekend. We have to talk about a lot as well pertaining to the ultimate fighter. I got slated for having some criticisms of the longest running reality format in UFC history. 33 seasons, 20 years. They told me it was going to be special. They told me it

was going to be important. I didn't really feel like it was either of those things. We have a bit of depressing news coming out with BJ Penn. We want to talk about that too. And we're going to talk about John Jones again. It's either John Jones or Ilya or Islam or Tom Aspinal every week here. And we're going to keep delivering on that front. And then, of course, we will talk about this apex card as well. And as I said at the top three or four times, I'm Pizzi Carroll. This is The Crack. Welcome, Crackheads.

We have beautiful esteemed guests from Uncrowned this week. You know and love this man. His name is Ben folks. He is beautiful hair. He is beautiful glasses and he is beautiful facial hair. Look at that face. Oh my God. And we also have now get ready for this. He's been here before and he had a big background the first time he was here, but he's back again.

Drake Riggs is in the house from own crown as well. Look at that background. As I said to him on the lead up, he looks like the weekend at the Superbowl there. And we're all here. We got there in the end. Lads. First of all, Ben, how enjoyable was it to watch me stumble through three different intros to this show?

Just moments ago. The music was on the verge of driving me insane, honestly, because it was super loud in my headphones and I was just like, are we listening to like the, the seven minute, the like stairway to heaven version of the intro music? It just kept going and going. And then it restarted and I was like, okay, they're messing with me. This is a practical joke being played on me personally. I had the band live in the bathroom downstairs.

They just kept going. I thought it was great. Dad and my uncles out there with the healing pipes. It was incredible. You get a few pints in them. They'll do that. They might just start jumping in halfway through the show. They like to play, you know, what can we do?

Drake? I mean, you are the man who has to be on top of all the news at Uncrowned. How much have we destroyed the website by having you on while all this news is breaking about this Apex card? Is Shane Olshady okay? I think he's hanging in there the best that he can. Um, on the Fridays though, it's a little bit, been a slow start of the day for me. So I'm kind of catching up along with you guys.

So I'm dropping the ball here, but, a lot of things going on, which is good because, you know, MMA has been a little bit slow lately. And I just got to say though, you guys, before we really get into things, I mean, this with no disrespect to the rest of our esteemed colleagues, but I think we have, we have a very beautiful trio going on here. Maybe the most beautiful in on ground. So I'm just going to roll out there. Well, I mean, New York Rick is on the ones and twos today.

He's going to destroy this whole show from here on out. He's going to start morphing our faces to make us look less beautiful. You can try all you want, mate. Look at this. You could cut diamonds off these fucking jaws. What are you going to do? Anyway, we have things to talk about. One being Macy Barber missing this weight.

As we said at the top, it being Macy Barber missing this weight. As we said at the top, it's a big fight for the Flyweights this weekend with Macy and Aaron Blanchfield. Obviously, it's got the backdrop of the Apex, which is not going to add to the affair in any way, even though it's been a great investment. As I pointed out in that Ultimate Fighter article't come on guys, give me some credit. You know what I mean? It's a nuanced article. Okay.

We'll get into that later. Uh, but first of all, do we have an image New York, Rick of, of Macy Barber on the scales by any chance? Um, from what I'm hearing, Oh, yes, that is, that is a gaunt Macy Barber right there. My word kind of unrecognizable. Honestly, honestly. Yeah. Look at the face. He is Barber right there. Wow. Kind of unrecognizable. Honestly, honestly. Yeah. Look at the face.

He is really sucked in there. We sure that's her. Are we sure? That is crazy, right? That is insane. Former straw weight too. Well, you know, see, this is the thing too. Like, I don't know about you guys, whenever you hear somebody missed

weight by like half a pound, quarter of a pound, you always don't you kind of feel like, well, come on, you were so close, like, get back in there. You can, you can do it. You're almost there. Like you're going to lose as much money over half a pound over like a few ounces. Come on, you can do it. And then you see something like that and you're like, okay, no, maybe you couldn't do it, maybe that was the absolute lowest you could go before your body goes into

total shock and you end up on the ER waiting room floor. It's like the Aldo thing, right? Like when we were talking about Aldo that week, yourself and Chuck were kind of like, every time this happens, you're debating, like, is this strategic in any way? I think it's safe to say that this was not one of the strategic ones, right, Drake? No. And I mean, especially not for this main event when I'm not sure. I believe her claims of being right there for a title shot, as she said on

aerial show, but like, like in terms of jumping and Natalia Silva, like it's between them, if she's to get the win here, um, not anymore though. She kind of ruined that one by missing weight. That doesn't help any, uh, any hopes of a title shot. Uh, as we've seen how that worked out for Armand Sarukyan who lost his entire fight and has to work his way back up but little bit different situations but yeah it's like the worst thing that Macy could have had happened to her especially before the fight aside from a loss and what happens in the fight itself now? Yeah. I can't help, but go right back to that question. I asked you an Aldo missed weight. Then what are you saying if you're Aaron Blanchfield's coach at this point? What are you saying to your fighter?

Well, I mean, anytime you come in there, when you're dealing with somebody who's missed weight, you go, things didn't go great. Things didn't go exactly what they expected. Right. So, I mean, you'll take the extra money if you can get it. Like that's, that's nice. And then you kind of feel like you look, especially when they look that bad on the scale, you go, that's somebody who is going

to have to fight me tomorrow night. And they don't look like they're feeling good right now. They look like they're suffering. And so they, they've got some time to pull it together, but they don't have a ton of time. And yeah, I think you got to be feeling a little bit encouraged by that, especially if you're in a five round main event and you fight, if you get yourself into a longer fight, which let's be honest, a lot of the, the women's fights in this division do, they, they, they tend to go to the scorecards

more often, then you got to feel like, hey, if we get into some of those later rounds, she might not have it. You know, that's something you want to keep in mind. What do you reckon, Dre? Good thing for Blanchfield? Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I kind of was thinking about this when breaking down the fights for our preview at Uncrowned.

I don't think Macy Barber has really ever had any cardio issues, but now we're going to see them really tested. That was alone the thought with the additional two rounds here for a five round fight. But now knowing that the weight cut did not go well and that she's not, you know, wasn't looking too great up on the scale and everything that's transpired. Yeah, this should be, I don't know, you can get much more of a confidence booster than the stylistic clash for Blanchefield that they already have going in. So it's going to be a very big test on top of what it already was for Macy considering

how relentless Aaron is with her grappling and the disadvantages that Macy might be in this matchup. So I mean, I'm very curious to see how it plays. I'm even more curious to see how it plays out now if I wasn't already as the fight was in the building grudge match that we've had between them having to, originally being scheduled to fight in 2021. And then here we are now with all this, like, it takes a hit to the confidence for Macy, I'm sure it's, she's probably not feeling so great mentally as well.

Yeah. And just as a striker too, right? Like that is, I feel like Blanche Field, she has withered people in there with a grappling offense, Macy obviously better known as a striker and knockout artist as earlier in her UFC tenure as well. So Blanche Field, if she can impose her will on her, she will reap the rewards. You would assume. Gamrot and Klein is still on our all European affair.

It's a fantastic fight. It should not be in the apex, much like Blanchfield and Barber. But I'm happy to report that that one is OK. And as much as Aaron Blanchfield might be feeling some kind of way, Alexander Gustafson, who has come all the way from Las Vegas to come all the way from Sweden to Las Vegas for this fight, attempting his third UFC debut, Trevon Giles has pulled a bit of an arm in Sarukin. He is not well enough here as an injury.

This late in the day has caused the fight. It is, I believe, the third time Alexander Gustafson has gone to make his debut. He is a lot of hype in Sweden, a lot of hype in Scandinavia. He has come up through the regional circuit in the most extreme of ways. He has been in cage warriors. KSW usually have one of these parts. This guy has been down the mall. He's 11 and two.

Oh, we would love to see him make his debut this weekend. That is not going to happen. Macy Chase on and Caitlin Vera must have agreed to go to 145. I don't have any information here in front of me. Just shout if you guys do. But that fight was supposed to happen at Bantamweight. It is now happening at 145. And then, of course, as I said, the top as well.

Alan Nachiminto has missed weight for his fight with Jafel Filo, which is to be contested at Flyweight. It's yeah, it's not ideal, you would say. But it's a big fight at the apex, guys. I mean, nothing gets my blood. It's look, I don't want to keep shitting on it, but it's a big fight at the apex guys. I mean, nothing gets my blood. It's look, I don't want to keep shitting on it, but it's so fucking hard to get excited, man. Like I just, you know, you just want to get some UFC shove it in your face at the weekend. You know, the crowd, when you're fucking staying up to six o'clock in the morning, you need a crowd there.

You need some energy in the room to keep you awake. These apex guys, I swore off them last year. I said, I'm giving them up, but I find myself just coming back to them every time. Like a jilted lover waiting at the door with a box of chocolates and some withered flowers. Please let me back in. UFC apex. And it always does boys. It always lets me in.

And I go to bed at six 30 and Elaine says, what the fuck were you watching till this time? And I say nothing. And I slink into bed and I wasted another weekend of my life. Sorry. Go ahead. Why can't you, can, can you not just wait until Sunday morning and like get up? Cause it's like, yeah, most of this card would, would happen while you would normally be sleeping if you're following like your normal sleeping schedule.

So it's not like you would even have to work to avoid spoilers because you'll be unconscious. You can just wake up, pour yourself a cup of coffee, tea. I'm sure you're having a cup of tea over there. Slammed her every time. Sit down at the kitchen table. You don't have to do anything. Just open up the laptop right away.

First thing you do, you can watch the fights and you'll be rested. You're, you're, you'll be looking after your health. You'll be keeping, you know, things maybe on a more even keel in your relationship. It seems like a, like I've solved a problem for you and yet you won't, you won't accept this help I'm trying to give you. Ben, the incentive I don't think is there for a non-live apex show. That's the only allure maybe that it will have, especially for Pizzi at that time.

I mean, that's a big ask still. Oh, I mean, you get to skip through all the filler. You know how much filler there is on these UFC fight nights. Like we're throwing it back to the desk. We're going to like Mitzi Betts, okay? Mitzi Betts is the highlight of the show for me. We're, we're going, we're throwing in all kind of ads, you know, like now here's an ad for like the UFC's magical amulets, whatever.

It's about three. Oh yes. Okay. It's the same three over and over and over again. Hey, there's a better way to live. And especially it's like, if you're not on the duty where you have to be there, like monitoring it live or like writing up results immediately after it's over. Why do this to yourself?

Well, it's fine in the morning. You can watch it in a much shorter time period without spoilers. It's, it's all the same to you. What's stopping you? Oh, I think, I think what stopped me is right. If we wait for the morning, then Elaine's going to be awake at the same time and witnessed me watching an Apex card, which could challenge our relationship even further, you know what I mean?

She's like, do you want to it's come on. It's Sunday morning. Let's go down to the, you know, uh, the markets on we'll go to the market. We'll bring the dog. And I'm just like, I can't, uh, the apex happened last night, you know, this way I can hide in the corner. It's like watching porn as a teenager. You know what I mean?

Wow. Wow. I mean, you're just, you're shuffled away in the corner. Like no one can see you hoping nobody comes down the stairs. You're like, turn it off. What are you watching? Ab, sports news. So over there being like, I can't go out and live my life now.

Cause Ketlin Vera and Macy Chaston is about to start. Obviously you see the bind I'm in. Yeah, I get it. That's two porn references in one week. I was going to say a little bit of blue, a little bit of porn in the corner. It's just cracked me up so much that they blew just the Americans. I've never heard of the blue, a bit of blue. It's fantastic.

I've heard that. I've heard that. Oh, there you go. It's a generational thing, Ben. These young kids, they didn't get it all. You never heard of a comic work in blue? It's like, you know, that's what Rick said. Rick's a generational thing, Ben. These young kids, they didn't get it all. You never heard of a comic work in blue? It's like, you know.

That's what Rick said. Rick, Rick got it in fairness. Ariel, Ariel's way too pure. He, you know what I mean? He doesn't know anything about blue. Um, let's talk about tough boys. Uh, as much as I want to keep on talking about the Apex and tough in fairness, filmed at the

Apex or we're staying at a similar theme. Um, first of all, child son and Daniel Kormier, great coaches, you know, they, they kept me in there. Uh, there's a guy from Ireland as well. Andreas Binder was on the show, pick blasts, unfortunately. So I was there, I was there with a bit of intrigue. That was, that was pretty much all of the intrigue in fairness. It was a great intro.

I mean, got my blood going, going right back to the, the fatherless bastard season, season one. And one of the great, redundant insults in all, all of MMA history is in Bobby Southworth called Chris Liebman a fatherless bastard. It's the highlight of Bobby's outwards, MMA career. But, uh, they had it all there. They didn't have the line. So that's why I gave a nod to Bobby, a legend in my eyes. They had the montage and then we went into like another montage of famous moments. Yeah.

I believe McGregor had just told Chandler he'd do what he was told and pushed him. There was that moment. There was the door moment rampages with the door just like goes all around him. And then, you know, the design of the door moment. Rampage just with the door just like goes all around him. And then, you know, there's all these moments and then it just turned into every other episode of the ultimate fighter. And you know, at this point, I'm kind of like, I know we've had this conversation before I'm not like this is no new ground.

I'm not like exploring new lands by like going, Oh, you know, I don't think this show is all it's cracked up to be anymore, but my God, I was looking at the last season, there's no even finale anymore. Do you remember they used to get the finale? So everyone would get a second. They get a second go to apparently that's gone since 2018. Um, now it's just like a couple of guys will get signed. And I'm like, I looked up the stats last season on the contender series, 43 dudes got, like

43 people got contracts. That's four contracts a night going out on a Tuesday from Dana White's contender series. And then we have the lock in Tuesday for the ultimate fighter. I mean, it's just, it feels to me like it's completely gone. Fair play to Cheyenne and DC. They kept it interesting. There was a bit of shit talking at one stage when they were facing the guys off for their fight and Cormier's guy, they're doing the ooh, vamo hey, all this stuff. And then Chael Sonnen takes his fighter after he comes off the skin.

He's like, I really don't like when guys are disrespectful like that. I'm like, Chael Sonnen saying this. My God. He is unbelievable. What a guy. I mean, Ch Charles just ends the entertainment fairness, but a lot of guys have been telling me I'm a bit of a prick for saying this. Peter, do you know what? Every fight they put on is a treasure to us.

How dare you? Okay. The stories behind these guys, you just don't care. You don't care about these fighters journeys before they get into the ultimate proving ground. Okay. Where only one man can leave and you are a scumbag for not looking the ultimate fighter, Drake, I'm a scumbag. I mean, I don't know if those are the same in the same vein. There might be an entirely different question to answer there. Pete C now, but man, it is, it really is fascinating. The whole ultimate fighter

in 2025 experiment, right? Like it just, it feels like they're doing it just because they can do it at this point, because I will say, I like what they did with the idea of the coaches, right? That's one thing that this season has got right. That's probably the biggest thing, if we're gonna be totally honest,

was having two fighters involved with the season who are not gonna be held up by the season, which has been a lot of the big qualms, I think, with it, aside from all the other things we'll get into here, with the Ultimate Fighter in this day and age, is that it delays all these great fights that we wanna see, but then you have these two guys who,

not only are they great personalities, but they're former coaches, they've been on the show before, have great banter, great synergy, they have their own podcasts, all these things. I mean, in this case, it's very, very specific and unique and I think works great. I think with Chaelyn DC, this was, that was a home run in terms of the idea of the coaches and if they keep the show going, which I'm sure they will, keep doing it this way, keep doing it this way. But as for the entire rest of the concept of the ultimate fighter, it could not work any less. I don't think in this day and age when MMA is completely entirely monopolized by the UFC and there's, there's no, we already get them all from, from the contender series. Like you were saying,

Pizzi, like having both of these does not work for the UFC. It completely has destroyed what is left of tough in terms of actually finding worthwhile prospects and talent, I would say, in my opinion. I don't know how you fix it, other than maybe go back to the comeback seasons. Those were fun back in what? 25 was that the last one with Jesse Taylor. That was a great season. I thought that was phenomenal

We know what happened to Jesse Taylor afterwards didn't quite work out great story at the time But like I think that's the best vehicle kind of approach to go with it. They're not doing that but it's We're just gonna we're gonna going to, we're going to keep running this until we can anymore, boys. I know Ben disagrees. Ben, a huge tool fan. Sorry that you had to hear all this, Ben, but please tell us how you feel. I haven't watched it since the heavyweight season where Brock Lesnar, Brock

Lesnar kept saying how you got to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. It was like a phrase he heard. That was season 12 Ben, come on. Yeah. And you know what? I watched every season up until that. So I watched 12 straight seasons. And by that point I was just like, okay, it's the same thing.

It's just the same thing over and over again. And so I like, I think I agree that doing it this way with the coaches who are retired fighters who actually have an interest in coaching, you know, they both will have coached just like separately in other aspects of their lives. So having those guys, that's a good choice. We're not holding up a champion. We're not holding up a division in order to do this fight.

Um, you, you also have, you know, Chelsonan, he, he knows his job at this point. Like his job is to be an entertainer, is to say interesting things, to be funny and to be charismatic, and he's great at that he's better at that than basically anybody else in MMA. And so I think that that's a smart choice to have those guys as the coaches. The problem for the show is that it doesn't have any stakes anymore. You look because like what we said with the contender series, you get everything from the contender series that you get from the ultimate fighter, but you get it

quicker, like if a guy has an inspiring personal story, they'll tell that in the video montage before he fights, if we're waiting to see, Hey, is this guy good enough? Is he going to earn a spot in the UFC? We'll get that by the end of the night. We don't have to sit through like a weekly episode, um, weeks in a row trying to find out who gets to USC and who doesn't. And so you're, you're doing all that much better with the contender series and, and with more respect for our time.

And so it's like, what are you doing with the show at that point? Especially because it's like, if you've watched enough seasons of this show at this point, you just feel like I've lived in that house, like I feel like I've been there. I've been through all that stuff that just because like I've endured it as a viewer and it doesn't really change. Like nothing is happening on any of these seasons that hasn't ever happened before. And it used to be like when they did the first one and even though the stakes in

that one were a little bit of a lie where it was just like, Hey, one winner from each weight class gets a six figure UFC contract. And the way they led it to believe it was that you have all these guys from like regional shows elsewhere in the world. They're all coming together, but we're only taking one from each weight class. That's the way they made it sound. And it was like a life changing amount of money is also how they made it sound at the time and then say, you know, almost everybody at least got a shot to fight in the UFC.

The six figure contract was paid out over the length of the contract. So it was like a potential for six figures, but it did change people's lives. You know, the, the people who came off that first season, they were somebody like, oh, Forrest Griffin and Diego Sanchez, they both entered the UFC as somebody because of the stakes of that show. Forrest Griffin and Diego Sanchez, they both entered the UFC as somebody because of the stakes of that show. And now a guy will show up and we feel fighting the UFC fight on an undercard somewhere and you'll look at his Wikipedia page and be like, oh

shit, this guy won the ultimate fighter three years ago. Yeah. It just doesn't really mean anything to people anymore. And so like you, your question of like, how are you roping people in? Like what's the drama? What's the appeal of this show? It just doesn't exist anymore. And I think the reason they just keep doing it is because it's good, cheap,

easy content that they can rely on. Like the fact that it doesn't change. I think the UFC sees that as a feature and not a bug because it's easy. It's just painting by numbers. We're just plugging in the stuff, churning out the episodes that get like some low level viewership. It doesn't matter. It's all content for the content mill.

And they don't really care if people are watching or not. You make a great point here about, um, just in terms of those contracts as well, like make no mistake about it. This is a, this is a factory for entry level contracts for the UFC as is contender series. It's something that obviously when we talk about fighter pay, the people who are hit the worst by this are the people on the entry level deals, which I believe are about 12 and 12 will be your first fight.

Now that means you can fight, you know, gear your whole life towards making it to the UFC for 10 years. And you'll finally make it there. You lose two fights, you've earned 24,000 and it's over. That has happened to a number of people I know. And the contracts that Ben spoke about there, the ultimate fighter ones, the early ones, I can remember several guys from the UK and Irish scenes getting those contracts and being in serious, serious trouble very, very quickly, given the amount they had to put into their careers and lead up to it. But that's another massive plus for the UFC, right?

Like you have guys contesting for a very, very low amount of money. And Ultimate Fighter, in fact, they were the worst ones notoriously back in the day because it was a 10 fight deal, you'd say. I can remember people coming out of that, like 10 fights. That was your six figures, 10 grand a fight. That is a that is a crazy, crazy situation for a company that's worth 20 billion. I think now at the moment, obviously, it's probably a factor into why they were 20 billion as well, to be honest.

But one thing I was thinking about when I watched it and you can you can ask me, you can tell me if I'm right or wrong lads. Is there an element to it? Like when the first season came out and I can remember watching it and being so intrigued, um, because we never really got that access before. We don't know how it looks. We, you know, we, we, we had limited amount of views into like these guys' lives and such a crazy sport to see the first time you see it, right?

Like we probably probably watching pride. We've been watching the UFC, but we never had this kind of focus. These guys living together. And I think. There's a bit of that at play as well. This was once like an underground thing. This was compared to like punk rock. When I was talking about in the article, like you felt like you were part of like an anti-establishment thing, nearly're an outsider, he's weren't quite sport.

It wasn't quite entertainment. It was out on its own thing. And we're getting this magnifying glass, putting it, but like that kind of fades away when there's been 33 seasons. The U S president now goes to all of the events, you know, he's at every event. You have Hollywood actors competing for time on camera there. You know, every NFL star wants to be at the UFC, everything like that. Like, is there an element here of, it's just got too big.

It's way too visible for this kind of package to be interesting at this stage. Right. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. And I didn't really think about that, but just the, the social media explosion over the 20 years since that first that first season and how easily accessible just everybody's lives are now and it is smarter for these fighters to let the people get to know them before an opportunity like this presents itself right you should be doing that all the time in this day and age give yourself the max amount of exposure

because you have that option to and you and it will lead to better possible opportunities and all these things. And it's just, I think, that over saturation too of like we get all these Apex events and things every week, it's the same thing. You're getting so much of it. Some of the stories, they're going to be pretty similar. So again, there's that interest just with the general person who, again, with the exposure of not just fighting,

but everything that is out there now it takes away from it in an overall element, I think. Um, and this was something I was thinking about too, just going back to a little bit of a side note here, Pete Z when you mentioned like how the finale and stuff isn't even a special thing anymore. I just say that dawned on me too about how like, there used to be whole events built around the finale. Remember that? Like they don't even do that anymore to make it feel as special as they can. that dawned on me too about how like there used to be whole events built around the finale. Remember that? Like they don't even do that anymore to make it feel as special as it can and

there's no reason not to again considering the schedule. So it is This is fascinating. Is that a nod to like the waning interest? Do you think the fact that there is no event like they know that all these people aren't tuning in the way They were on previous seasons like there was a lot of season once, you know, there was a, they did everything. One and done. Only one. Not to say that was a massive success, but is that a nod to like a lack of interest? Do you think Ben, like the fact that there is no finale, like we aren't invested in these guys careers.

Yeah. We're not doing the big presentations as a cut glass trophy that we build to all night, you know, and we're going to give you a motorcycle or a car. Like we're doing all that. I do think there's something to what Drake said also that I remember when the first season of tough came out and one of the really exciting things about it was you're going to get to see a fight at the end of the episode, like one fight, one MMA fight on free TV TV on like cable TV.

And that was special at the time because you didn't get to see MMA anywhere. Basically like you, it was only pay per views. It w and if you wanted to go find like a bar showing the pay per views, you know, you had to find, you had to really hunt for one, or you had to go in with your friends on it and to be able to know like, Hey, I'll tune in once a week and I will get to see one MMA fight was special because they are hard to come by. It was hard to get to see these fights.

And that right there was enough. Even if we started to feel like some of the stuff in the episode was a really boiler plate, reality TV drama kind of stuff, it was still worth it to sit through, you know, 40 minutes of that to get to where you'd get to see a fight. Now it's not special at all. There's so many fights. I mean, you know, if you follow the grabaca hit man over on Twitter, happening somewhere in the Eurasian continent, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

There's always somebody fighting somebody else. And the idea that like, Hey, we're going to sit here and watch this entire thing. Just so we get to see one fight among people who we might not necessarily know that well going into it. And that's just doesn't have the same appeal anymore at all. Yeah. It's, um, that's also like, it's important. Like we've, we've already kind of mentioned why it's, why it still makes a lot of sense

for the UFC, but like a particularly when they're coming up in this broadcast deal, you know, it's, you know, it's on that one sheet they're giving guys, right? Like we have the ultimate fighter as well. That can go somewhere. And I'm many people, I don't know if people want that one though, man. Like that's, that's, that's a deterrent. Yeah. Like that's like add on content, I guess, where you're just like, oh, we could,

if you have a streaming service that just needs stuff, just needs some stuff on the shelves in the library, we have this, but I don't know if anybody's like, we got to get this thing. Cause look at the people don't watch it. People don't care anymore, but they are going to still pitch it, right? Like they're going to be like, oh sure. They're going to pitch that power slap too. I'm guarantee you there's been a conversation where, where Dana White is telling somebody,

I could also throw in power slap. And they're like, could we pay more and you keep power slap? People don't want that. More views than every major sport. Power slap, of course. Let's not disrespect the slap on my show. Okay.

I know some people don't like it, but it's got some merit. Believe me. I'll watch that rugby thing where the two big guys just run at each other before I'll watch the power. I don't even know what that is, but I'm already in. It sounds fantastic. A bit more serious news. Unfortunately, Ben wrote this piece earlier in the week for Uncrowned on BJ Penn. And look, we've been talking about this probably for the last few months. It's become obvious that the situation had emerged between BJ and his family.

And we now know that the mother of former UFC champion BJ Penn has successfully filed for restraining order against the Hall of Fame fighter. I'm reading from Ben's article on Uncrowned. She told the court she believes her son suffers from a rare psychological disorder known as Capgras Syndrome. Ben, tough stuff to write about, like one of the great legends of our sport, one of the great icons. This is something that, as I said, we've been aware of for some time in terms of a complaint

BJ had about his family. Obviously quite a bizarre situation where he thinks the identity of his family has been stolen. And these people are acting as his family now. And yeah, I mean, a very tough read and you're right, going on crowned. Are you shocked that it's come to this with BJ? Because I feel like there has been a lot of signs that it was going to go this way with him. Yeah. I mean, it has been troubling to look signs that it was going to go this way with him. Yeah. I mean, it has been troubling to look at from the outside for months now.

Like if you look at his social media, if you follow his Instagram or anything, some of the videos he posts, like he, he has on there a, where he is videoing a conversation that he's having with his mom, where she's trying to kind of bring him back to reality and he's just like, you're not even my mom. You're not even really who you say you are. Like you're, you're an imposter. You're not this real person. And you're just like, that's a real stark break with reality.

And I had never heard of this syndrome before, before his mom, Lorraine Shin mentioned it in her application for the, or in her request for the restraining order, and she said, you know, I believe my son suffers from this syndrome. mentioned it in her application for the request for the restraining order. And she said, you know, I believe my son suffers from the syndrome. And if you go and you look it up and you read about it on like the Cleveland Clinic website, you read the symptoms of that disorder, that delusion, that syndrome, and you go, yeah, that sounds like it. That sounds like exactly what he's been displaying, like where you cannot be convinced that it usually happens with people with regards to family members,

loved ones, often like people who are dealing with some kind of neurodegenerative disorder, like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, where they have like one or a couple close caregivers who they see every day. And sometimes they will become convinced that those caregivers are like, it's an imposter posing as that person that maybe they've killed that person or replaced that person. And he seems to have seized on it. Like somebody has killed my family, they're, they're imposters and they're

trying to steal my family's like assets essentially. And he's really fixated on that. And the thing is, when you read about this, the, you know, there's not a whole lot known about it, it's not a very common disorder for people to have. But the, and the causes of it, uh, there were the things that they think might be causes of it. You know, it's not like there's one thing there, there's several different possibilities, but one of them is traumatic brain injury.

And it, when anytime we're dealing with somebody who's been in a contact sport where they, they've definitely suffered some head trauma over the years, you have to consider that possibility that, you know, there's some kind of psychiatric disorder and here's somebody who, his profession for pretty much his entire adult life involved getting hit in the head. And so you got to think that there's a possibility that that might be part of it. But the other thing about this disorder when you read on it is everybody kind of agrees it does not just go away on its own. It's not something that's just going to clear up one day.

You need treatment for this and you probably need some sort of anti-psychotic medication. And the thing that seems so troubling about it now, you see the trajectory he seems to be on, is you're just wondering how is he going to get any help? Because he doesn't seem like he's willing to let anybody help him. And when you have this sort of like unfalsifiable delusion where you're convinced that everybody around you is imposters, if somebody comes to you, whether they're a close friend, whether you've known them for years, and they'd say like, Hey, I'm worried about you.

Let me help you get some, some treatment here. Then you just become convinced that that person is an imposter. And one of the things they say with this is like, don't try to sit there and convince somebody it doesn't work. It only makes them more agitated. And so you wonder, what's it going to take for him to get some kind of help if he is really resisting the help. And if it doesn't happen, if the help doesn't arrive in some form, then it

seems like he's just headed down like a dark road where there's whatever, wherever this goes, it's not going to be anywhere good. Yeah. It's a sovereign stuff, you know? Um, obviously BJ was on a big losing streak, I think 2019 that that street fight footage came up and Dana effective, excuse me, Dana would affect effectively said, like, look, we can't we can't promote this anymore. You know, he's getting himself in situations like this. And this is six years later now.

And as Ben has put in the article here, there is a, you know, there is a very significant things that BJ's mother is reporting here from the article I read again in Shin's request for restraining orders, she alleges a disturbing pattern of behavior from Penn. After returning from a trip earlier this month, Shin said she noticed many of her belongings, such as clothes, shoes, jewelry, personal items, and even her bed had all been removed from her bedroom.

Shin filed a police report after Penn denied taking the items, she said, and a few days later, her purse, Whitmore Driver's License, credit card, and locks from her safe were also stolen. She said she then put up security cameras inside and outside the home while also installing a deadbolt lock on her bedroom door. According to Shin, Pen also took down her tamper with cameras and also put glue into my dead bolts that stopped me from opening my bedroom door. Shin claimed Pen then stole her mail and aggressively shined a flashlight on her face on the night of May 25th when confronted.

In order to prevent her from calling the police, Xin claimed Pen grabbed my arms and shoved me against the four-door grey sedan which I felt a sharp pain in my back resulting in her screaming for Pen's younger brother Regan to come help. Pen was ultimately arrested in order to stay away from his mother for 48 hours. However, Xin claimed she caught Pen breaking into her home again the following day as a result. Penn was again arrested for violating the police order. Yeah, very, very troubling stuff from an absolute legend in BJ Penn. And I think that's like one of the interesting things about this. Like I saw the video where he's lying on the bed.

He's about to be arrested. I think I think most people think that when a fighter is suffering from a degenerative brain issue, stemming from contact and things like that, they will slur their words. BJ is not slurring his words. He is speaking quite quite clearly as far as I can see. And very, very troubling stuff. And look, I know I was on this show only last week pushing for GFL and Tony Ferguson and

Dylan Danis, but this kind of thing has you really, really reevaluate what we should be seeing in the sport. And that was obviously me a bit tongue in cheek talking about that, but this is very, very stuff, serious stuff, Drake. Yeah, no, it's, it's like horrifically sad to see it. I mean, before it even got to this point was obviously very concerning and worrying some of the things that were being said and where BJ's career obviously had gone. And yeah, it makes you think and hope that it doesn't get any worse.

But like Ben said, in these kinds of cases, what is it going to take? Because just telling somebody will then lead to, same thing happening with them, and it's just so on and so forth. And you can only really hope for the best. I don't know what you do in that situation, but it's not let them fight. I think that's the best case.

And thankfully for BJ, hasn't been any more fighting, at least that we've seen or professionally or anything like that. So yeah, it's concerning, man, especially like with the GFL in particular, hasn't been any more fighting at least that we've seen or professionally or anything like that. So Yeah, it's concerning man, especially like with the GFL in particular like you were saying I mean we already had the the inclusions or mentions of possible other worrying situations with like a Fabrizio Verdun or a Vandale Silva, you know who have been on record and with their own things going on so I

Think we can only hope that people take it more seriously when it comes to letting fighters who maybe rack up, you know, losing streaks and damage and, you know, get older that we should maybe not let them continue to take brain damage and shots to the head and things like that. And in some cases, obviously we've seen people take care of that, but I think, um, it will still take just more time with the sport in terms of MMA, at least obviously I think boxing older than MMA, but yeah,

there's still, I guess we have to see these examples firsthand, unfortunately sometimes, but you really can just hope for the best in this kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. You can go and check out that article on Uncrowned now. One of the things to move on to a topic which has dominated this show since it started pretty much. There's more news with Tom Aspill and John Jones. It's not good. I'm not going to lie to you. John Jones was on a Barber's podcast, I believe it was.

His name is... hang on, I wrote this. John Jones was on a Barber's podcast. I believe it was his name is. Hang on. I wrote this down somewhere. Give me two. So it's not Macy Barber. No, not Macy Barber, different Barber. I'm talking Barber. I was talking Tiki Barber. Not Tiki Barber.

Rhonda. Oh, damn it. His name is Vic blends. Okay guys. God damn it. His name is Vic blends. Um, I don't know if he's actually saw this. Um, did you see Tom and Craig Jones reenacting the, the, the Mopin

instance, Ben, we talked about the Mopin. I haven't seen this. No, I need to ask an expert, an expert from the other side of the pond. Would you say that that's an instance of taking the piss that they take in the piss with that one? That is pure unadulterated piss taken right there. That is, cause I saw it and I was like, this feels like taking the piss, but I don't know, I'm not, I'm not the one to say absolute, absolute taking the piss. My borderline shit house.

You might be shit. How's that? This one. Wow. I don't know. I'll hope I'll try and clarify with the hospital family, what they're aiming for there, but you're either extreme piss taken or you know, you're dipping your toe into shit house.

We at that point, but it's shit house. Are we just like a more extreme version of piss taking more aggressive? I mean, I think it's shit house. Are we just like a more extreme version of piss taking more aggressive? Piss taken is all in good fun. Uh, shit house and like, you're being a bit of a bollocks now. Do you know what I mean? You're fucking, you know what I mean?

I think that after reviewing the footage, I think it's piss taken. I think it's, it's, it's extreme piss taken. Um, just before we get into this, lads, Jones interviewed by Barbara Vic blends have written down here. I know you're all wondering is Vic blends quite a, quite an online following those big plans he has during his toy adventure. Uh, here's a shorter version of the quote. I'll go with this one.

I don't know what life holds as far as fighting. I have a lot more options than a lot of other fighters as far as the ability to leave and return. Ooh. Um, okay. I mean, he's not necessarily wrong about that, that he could just be like, I'm taking the next two years off or something. And then if he says, Hey, I want back in the UFC would be like, sure.

Absolutely. We'll book you a fight, but he does seem to be acting like he is immune to the effects of time, right? Like he is not a young man in fighting terms at this way. He's getting into his late thirties. And we also know that it's not exactly like he's been out here living the cleanest lifestyle at all times. So that'll, that'll age you a little faster.

I speak from experience. It'll age you just a little bit faster. And so it does make you wonder like if he's taken that into account. Cause honestly, uh, if you were going to fight Tom Aspinall, I would think you'd want to do it sooner rather than waiting around being out of the gym, uh, off gallivanting on motorbikes and, you know, out enjoying Thailand. I would think that you'd want to do it when like you're kind of at least

closer to the athletic prime and fresher and closer like to your last fight so that you're not letting all the skills get rusty because it's like we saw John Jones, you know, he beats Stipe Miucic, a 40 something semi-retired firefighter who'd been out of action himself a long time. Stipe looked pretty old in that fight. John didn't exactly look like he has not lost anything. Like he still looked good, but he didn't look like prime John Jones anymore.

And he hasn't for a little while. And you got to think that that's only going to continue. Like if you're thinking, Hey, I don't need to do this now. I can come back and do it later. Later is going to be worse. Probably at least if you're thinking at all about fighting Tom Aspyn, he might be thinking, I'll wait and I'll pick a spot against somebody, some handpicked opponent. You know, two years from now, I can call my shot and say, I'd like to fight this

guy and there's a good chance the UFC will say yes, and he's probably right about that. But if you're, if you go out still still avoiding this Tom Aspynall fight, people are not going to forget that. Yeah. It's, uh, I don't know, man. It's just, how exhausting, how many articles have you wrote about this, Drake? Would you say like different updates? Like, yes, that's a, I couldn't tell you.

I really couldn't tell you, but, uh, it's fascinating though. Cause I think Ben makes a great point there. And I was thinking about, you know, to springboard off it, like, that's also a lack of a motivational thing, right? Like the longer it goes on and just how he's acted about the whole thing, there's really no reason to believe

that he would return to, you know, that prime version, unless something really woke him up. But I did think about this hypothetical scenario too the other day, you guys. John's been going on about how he really doesn't care about Tom and doing this whole thing. He doesn't need it, right? My legacy doesn't need it. It's all subbed and everything.

Then if I was John Jones, and this is just me, this is me taking the piss. If I was John Jones here, I would agree to the fight. Don't prepare at all. Don't do anything. Fight night comes to give us the instant tap, John. If you really don't care. Wow.

Wow. The instant tap. You want to be the ultimate troll? There it is. Pure contempt for everything at that stage. Just fuck it. You know, I saw like these comments- That won't happen because he very clearly cares,

but I'm just saying. Yeah, he does. I saw these these comments. That won't happen because he very clearly cares, but I'm just saying. Yeah, he does. The, the, I saw these comments from Chelsonan where he was saying, you know, this fight as there's been all this like anticipation and this sort of like, will he, won't he around John Jones for this fight, but it's been going on so long and has seemed so frustrating where he was like, this fight is not getting bigger as this, this kind of feeling builds on the fan base. It's getting smaller.

People are, are exhausted of it. People just like, they care less and less to the point where like, if the USC announced something now and they were like, November, we're doing this fight. I don't just think the one part of the reaction would be like, okay, fine. Finally, you know, like I don't think it would be like, yes, we got it. Cause it just, you put us through this wringer for nothing. And I think that you're, you're just wearing people out and it gets to a point where people are just like, like right now, like when you look at the petition

to strip John Jones of the title, that's people just being like, let's move on. We're tired of the discussion. Yeah. That's people like in fairness, I never thought about that. That's people that are like, yeah, I don't want to fucking see that for you anymore. I just want something to happen. I just want something to happen at this stage. I don't know about that. I think once like it got closer to it, then everything would go away. At first it would be like, all right, fine. But then, you know, goldfish brain MMA fans would be like, all right, sweet. We're getting

the fight. It's fight week. Let's go. Yeah. They just need one clip of Jones like saying something like that's when I took it personally or something. Oh my God. I think he's going to kill Tom Aspinal. Um, one thing, uh, that's kind of funny to me about this. And there is lots of funny things about this, including the motorbike situation, the smelling of the hair, which is just so John Jones. He's actually a genius.

Like he is, he's a trolling mastermind. I don't even think he meant to, to be honest. It's just, he's so good at it. Like you can catch him at any time and he'll, he'll get someone, you know what I mean? But he reminds me of when I was in college and some of the girls we hung out with started to go to Thailand in the summer. And they'd come home with this completely new perspective on life. And they're like, you know, you felt like a sub human because you hadn't gone off and oil and hopped around the place.

He's like, have you tried the food out there? Oh, that's not real time food. I've had real time food. They charge two, two dollars for full meals. Like he's gone full on. He's out experimenting obviously based on the hair sniffing thing. And he's just like, you know what? I could live here forever.

You've done this 20 years too late, but I fucking love it. You know, play John. Study abroad kid coming back, talking about how this isn't as good as the one I had in Ibiza and you're just like, go back, you know, feel like you could really become a Buddhist. Like I'm waiting for it. Oh, fucking hell. Oh, it's, I am actually like, I didn't actually, that didn't occur to me, Ben, until you said that now I am fucking so there with this, like, this is my, like,

like fight of the year, like from, in January, I'm like, oh, I just want this so badly. Then Ilia and Islam obviously comes on. I'm like, I nearly want that as much as I want the one I want so badly. And then of course, yeah, neither of them are happening now. But I'm just like, yeah, fucking just do something. You know, there's there's heavyweights to just need to pay their bills at this stage. And I mean, what is, you know, Den of Thieves hadn't come along like Cyril Gann is having a light bills at this stage. You know what I mean? What is, you know, if Dan of thieves hadn't come along, like Cyril Gann is having to lighten the eyes of you.

You know what I mean? Okay. I saw the, have you seen the trailer for the, he's starring in one, like a French language, like action film, I believe it's called KO and somebody sent me the trailer and they sent me the English dubbed version of like, if I'm going to watch this on Netflix, I'm going to watch the French version with the subtitles and everything, but he's like the star in that one. And you know, since it's dubbed, it's hard to get a sense of his acting chops.

But when you watch it and you look at him, you're like, he looks the part, man. He does not look at all out of place. If you didn't know, you wouldn't be like, this guy is not an actor. This guy is an athlete who has been given an acting role. Like you just look at it and you're like, so God might actually have a career at that. And you know what we've seen any time, like a fighter kind of sniffs a life of Hollywood acting roles, they always from, you know, rampage Jackson to John L Sullivan are all kind of like, this is actually a lot easier work.

I would like to just do this now because, uh, you know, no one's hitting me in the head and Jackson to John L Sullivan are all kind of like, this is actually a lot easier work. I would like to just do this now because, uh, you know, no one's hitting me in the head and I'm getting paid more. So that's Jones and gone off the table for Tom Astle might lose. Fucking hell boys. I thought fall golf back on in that fight. I thought he beat him.

Maybe we could just push him in there. So, oh, you're going to mess around. You're going to lose Cyril Gaunt to a, like an Othello remake or something. And then you're going to, you're going to wish you'd made more of these fights when you had a chance. Oh, fucking Rico Verhoeven on him. I saw them in a den of thieves too. I saw the trailer for that one. That same thing, like two handsome boys, like they can, they can pull this kind of stuff off.

Um, fair play to them, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's not a good time. It's, uh, it's becoming increasingly frustrated. I can only imagine being one of like the dad or actual Tom Asimov at this point and just being like, this is fucking, I don't know. He said as much, I think in that interview with Mighty Mouse that he's just fucking completely over at this stage, wants to move on. 31 year old guy wants to fight. Let's see what happens.

I genuinely think, and I said this on Ariel's show, I think he's going to fight someone else, be it Gan Volkov or whoever else doesn't get an acting deal and then, and then Jones is going to be like, I just had, I just saw that foot and I think I can do something. Right. Yeah. Are you, you guys written me on that one? You'll be back.

Yeah. I mean, I think that like when he sees how quickly people would move on at this point, like if the UFC was like, all right, we're done, we're taking that title of him, uh, Tom Maspinall versus TBD in November for the unified heavyweight title. And people would be like, okay, cool. And I think once John Jones saw how quickly everybody else just shifted their focus to that and stopped talking about him, he would not like that.

Cause as much as he's like out there on Twitter being like, you think I care about being stripped? Like, yeah, I think you care a lot about what people think of like the legacy. Like that's been his whole thing. Like why he wanted that steep a fight in the first place. He cares a lot about what the MMA world thinks about him and says about him. And then if they just sort of turned away and were focused on the next stuff in the heavyweight division, I don't think it would take that long

before he would decide like, wait a minute, I want the attention back now. It just seems like you're the window of opportunity to really capitalize on that is not going to last forever. You know, he's seen he's kind of living like he can decide whenever he wants. Just come right back and you'll still be the same guy and you won't like it. No matter who you are, we've seen that time eventually catches up to you. You imagine if you decided to go back to light heavyweight? Before that?

You know what? I am coming back you guys, but I want the belt that I got first. I want it back. I don't think he's going to weight lose. You're pissing me off. I mean, you see the way he's living right now. Does that look like a guy who's in a hurry to lose a bunch of weight? Definitely not.

But as he said, you know, you can eat all those meals, $2 over there, losing all that weight, those beautiful ingredients, the type people use, get into my Buddhism, doing some stretches at 6 AM every morning gets the, the body flowing. I'm passing the food a lot quicker. That will be the next tweet. Vitor Belfort in the hall of fame before we go, Ben, I, I know this was announced well ago, um, you, you had an article about it during the weekend. I thought it was very good framing around how would Michael Bisping feel about this?

Of course, Michael Bisping has talked about that in a weird way. He's like, this guy's a disgrace, but fair play to him. You deserve this. And honestly, I thought, you know, Bisping's reaction was everything kind of I thought it would be where he's going to do some Bisping stuff in there. You know, he's for years and he's got a right to, nobody has more of a right to feel a certain type of way about Vitor Belfort and that whole thing, the Michael Bisping who lost an eye.

And you could argue, sure, like, this is a dangerous sport. We're, we're hitting each other in the head. We're trying to hurt each other. So that can always happen to you. Could have happened to you against anybody. So, and that's absolutely true. But for years now, he's been sort of in the mode where he practically spit on the floor every time Vitor Belfort's name gets mentioned and you think, all

right, you know, you came by that feeling honestly, but then he's also, uh, aware enough and like, honest enough as sort of a commentator on the sport to be like, he does deserve the honor though, when you look at the, the breadth of his career. And especially we have such a weird relationship to it in this sport, because it's one thing to look at the guy and be like, okay, we know he failed drug tests in the past. We know he was abusing the TRT stuff.

You know, we, we suspected it for a while, just by looking at the guy when he showed up and suddenly looked like an action figure and we were all like, at right around the same time, the TRT stuff was exploding. The UFC was keeping him in Brazil, uh, acting like, no, no, no, we're not going to have him come back and fight in Vegas. Brazil loves him. And, you know, we're looking at the muscles coming out of the guy's ears. Like we kind of knew what was going on there, even if no one was saying it.

And then they went and just emailed his like lab results to a bunch of people that they shouldn't have, they took all the doubt right out of it. Um, so that was a hilarious chapter, by the way, in the UFC media relations. But that's a complicated legacy kind of to have, but it also came during an era where there were a lot of those, there were a lot of those complicated legacies rolling around and a lot of guys where there were suspicions, even if they never got caught. A lot of guys who did get caught had somewhat acceptable excuses or

less so in other people's case. Like there's a whole, like if you were going to go through and be like, no one can get in the USC hall of fame that has any sort of like known past with performance enhancing drug use is going to be thin that hall of fame is not going to be able to maintain a new entrant every summer at the ceremony, the way they want to. So it's like, you gotta kind of allow for that. And to me, you know, this being brought up with Vitor Belfort, where he was

like, he was a two division champion, heavyweight, light heavyweight, almost got the middleweight title, closest thing we've had to a three division champion, which sure that's true, but to me, his championships are not the most impressive thing about it. Cause it's like, he won the heavyweight tournament back in like the late 90s when, you know, you showed up and you knew some jujitsu and you were a good athlete and you were probably going to win. Uh, but, and then he had a cup of coffee with a light heavy belt after his glove grazed Randy Couture's eye and then he gave it right

back in the rematch. Um, so like those aren't the most impressive things to me. The most impressive thing is that that guy was fighting in the UFC in the late nineties when it was a completely different thing, had completely different ownership. It was just a wild, wild version of what it became. And then he was still around when the UFC was on Fox, when the UFC had like a network TV deal, like just, and he was in title contention at that time.

Just being around and being that good for that long, living that many lives in that many different bodies in this sport. That to me is what really is like the accomplishment for Vitor. Drake, what do you reckon? Like, like I agree what Ben's saying. I think he absolutely deserves this, but I don't know what it is. Right. When I see this stuff and I know a guy has like melted a few tests, like I, I

know, like, as Ben said, if we're just going to start like crossing out anyone who has done this, a lot of things go missing in MMA very quickly, but at the same time there's somewhere in certain we'd like, I should feel some kind of way about this and every other sport feels some kind of way about this, I guess. Like, do you, do you have any kind of similar feelings in that regard when this happens? No, yeah, totally. It's, uh, It's weird, man, because I've been a fan of the sport for like half

my life now, which just makes me feel very old to say that. But thinking about like from the beginning to now, I used to care about the test failures and whatnot a lot more. And I still do. I still do to a certain extent for sure, but it kind of falls in line with the same thought of like, do they disqualify you from greatest of all time talk? Like Hall of Fame and greatest of all time putting it into this perspective of like, alright, how much does that impact it with the usage? You look at the time, all of these things. Like for a long time and I still think I kind of feel this way. It's like, we can separate them.

All right. If you, uh, if you are fine with the test failures and stairward use, whatever it may be, then anything goes, what is your list for that or you can take it away and how do you feel in that sense and kind of separate the two. Um, at this point, I'm caring a lot less about it, but I think that's kind of the way you have to look at Vitor is the fact that the longevity and what he was able to do for that amount of time throughout the generations, but it is still very hard to look past the asterisk there of, well, I mean, this guy is like, I don't want to say the poster boy, but he's one of them.

You know, he's the guy where you think about the MMA dictionary for TRT and test failures. He brought down the whole TRT thing, honestly. Like, I mean, we kind of, we kind of owe him a thank you for that. Cause the TRT era was ridiculous. It was one of those, one of the many eras MMA has had where I was like, I'm glad this is not more mainstream because if the rest of the sports world found out what we were doing over here, that we're like letting guys come in with a doctor's note like, I need steroids. And they're like, okay.

And you just have to miss a night's sleep, right? Like Ben, like to get that, like. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to, to game that. And, and that was insane. That was ridiculous that we were doing that for as long as we were. And Vitor was the one who really helped, like his case was so obvious where people could look at him and be like, that guy, that guy looks like a cartoon character, like the muscles and stuff that he has. And you're telling us like, that's just a guy getting himself to

normal testosterone levels. There's no way it was so visually impossible to avoid. Cause it was like when it was Dan Henderson and Chelsone and you could look at them with their shirts off and be like, okay, like you tell me they're getting to normal testosterone levels. Maybe like neither one of them, you know, looks like a he man and neither one of them is going out there and just crushing skulls the way Vitor was. And so it was like, he forced the issue to where people couldn't really ignore

it and couldn't pretend that this wasn't happening right in front of their faces. And he sort of ruined the party there for a whole lot of other people who are like, I would like to get on some of that stuff. It looks fun. It looks like people are enjoying it. Uh, and then when, when he was just clearly, you know, out of his mind on it, people were like, okay, we got to stop this. It's getting completely out of hand.

But like that, he definitely was kind of the poster boy for that era. But again, he's yeah. If you start taking guys off the list, Anderson silver, Phil, the drug tests, John Jones, Brock Lesnar with his foot cream, you know, all these cuts, like I want me some of that foot cream. Give me some of that shit boys. Fuck. Brock knows a guy.

He knows a guy. He knows a guy. He knows several guys. It's fucking. Can I throw a hypothetical at you real quick, you guys? What do you think would have happened in the Weidman fight with Vitor if it was just a little bit earlier? Just a little bit earlier. Well, yeah, when he showed up to fight Weidman, he looked like a completely

different person, right? Like his body looked completely different cause the TRT era had ended. Was that the birth of the side by side shots, by the way? Do you remember that was just for years. It was like, here he is TRT, here he is a worthless 40 year old man. That was, yeah. Yeah. That, that was where that all came from.

But I mean, it's tough to say because at the time, Weidman seemed like a freight train from hell who was going to go through everybody. Right? So it was just like, it was not hard to believe like he would have beat Vitor It's tough to say because at the time, Weidman seemed like a freight train from hell who was going to go through everybody. Right? So it was just like, it was not hard to believe like he would have beat Vitor either way, but he sure trucked him really easily when he was the non TRT version. Which honestly doesn't help the appearance of things for, for Vitor either.

Cause it's just, it'd be like if Barry Bonds showed up one day, his, uh, hat has gone back to normal size. His, his, he's lost 60 pounds of muscle and he's getting, you know, struck out by 40 year old knuckleballers. People would be like, okay, it was all the, everything special came out of a vile. You know? Yeah. It was like the craziest thing about Vitor for me was like, he was learning

like wild techniques at his age. So like he was pulling off taekwondo level wheel kicks and shit. Just exploding out and spiraling around like this. Like again, I mean, you guys tell me, but I think it's crazy that I can't think of a time where I've heard about somebody losing an eyeball just period and it coincidentally happened in this case. It was just kind of crazy. Not that I can remember.

And then fought several more years, several more years without, without the eye, without the use of the eye and became a champion. He's a hard boss or dude. Like he's so like fucking Bisping's career act is absolutely insane. I remember like Irish people like didn't we weren't really on board with Bisping for a long time. And that night I was, I was in an apartment. I was rented an apartment at the time. And my friends came over to watch Bisping and Rockhold.

And it was like this non-event or like, oh, you know, what's going to happen here. And when Bisping did that, like you could hear like all around this apartment blocks, just lads losing their money. He's become us. He's become us. It's absolutely fantastic. Lads. I've had a wonderful time talking to you today on a, on a weekend that was, that didn't offer a lot. I think we have delivered an amazing show. That's really crack heads. I've said it. And I didn't even a lot. I think we have delivered an amazing show. That's really crack heads. I've said it. And I didn't even look at the comments.

I invited you all here to talk some shit in the comments. Haven't looked at them. Won't look at them. Damn. I'll see these ones. Okay. All right. Fair enough.

God damn it, Rick. Okay. This card has fallen apart. The sky is falling. All caps too. That wasn't all caps. The last time. I mean, in fairness, like what, what, what did it fall apart from?

You know, it's like if you go to McDonald's to get a hamburger and they, you know, you're, you asked for a cheeseburger and they, they leave off the cheese and you're like, okay, you've made it worse, but it wasn't great to begin with. There's no fucking cheese on this thing. And you're like, okay, you've made it worse, but it wasn't great to begin with. The card, all right, hang on. Did you see your Irish man show you dubbing? What? She shared dubbing get dub in one. No, I don't know who that is.

If I'm going to be honest with you, uh, you gotta be careful with the fake names, pizza. You gotta be careful reading those. Sometimes that was that a fake one? Well, I don't think, I don't think so. Backup break. I want to see what I was. What did they try and get me with?

No, that's, that's a real person. All right. All you could convince me that half of the Irish names are fake. We didn't fake pronunciations. When I see them, how they're spelled out and I'm like, there's no way that's pronounced that way. I've seen lads in a pub have an argument about how an Irish name was pronounced because like there's all different dialects of the language.

So Brendan Lucknian, his name would be pronounced four different ways in Ireland, depending on where you are. So he's like, he grew up in Manchester. He has Irish, Irish family. Obviously he's been told like, why do you pronounce it like this? It should be like this. He's like, he gets asked like, how do you pronounce your name when he's in Ireland? He's like, I don't actually fucking know. So whatever you want, just go with it.

Me give it a shot. Yeah. Go fuck's sake. Do we have an else there? Oh shit. That Drake guy looks like that John Jones guy who became famous from Twitter when they'd shit on Jones. I have never got that one before.

Drake is fucking like facially right. I get it. But rigs here is in sublime shape. The man it's, it's the facial hair. You guys I think are doing something similar. I, that guy, I did a story on him, you know, back when that was kind of like first starting to happen to him and everything, uh, nice guy, interesting guy, had an interesting life.

Doesn't he have like a real high profile job or something like a crazy, like. He was a game designer or something. Yeah. He was a video game designer. Uh, yeah. Nice guy. Every time, every time something pops off, you'll get, you'll see the tweet from him again. I don't know if he left Twitter X, whatever it is now.

Um, I mean, you could only take so much of that, couldn't you? You know, it was, especially it's like, it'd be one thing if you were out here and your name happened to be Robbie Lawler. And, you know, every once in a while people would be like, Robbie Lawler is a monster. Robbie Lawler is so great. And people, and you'd just be like, it's not me. You're tagging the wrong guy. But it's John Jones who is always making people mad,

always getting into trouble. All, you know, imagine right now, what it'd be like people be adding him about Tom Maspinaul, calling him a coward, calling him a duck, all this stuff. Like it's the worst guy you could be confused for because people are so mad at that guy online so often. I used to get the Seahawks coach quite a bit. Like after Seahawks would lose and people were like, are you going to run the ball again?

You're a fucking dickhead. And I was like, if I could, I would, I guess. I don't, I don't fucking know. Oh, get ready. He's back in the league, Pete. See, come on. Who's he? Who's he with the writers? Yeah. Come on. Who's he? Who's he with the Raiders?

Yeah. Come on Vegas. We're going to fucking do it. Bring me in coach Pete. I'll be your younger something or other. I don't know. He's probably in better shape than me anyway, but, uh, listen, we, he's definitely in better shape than me.

Let's just clarify that before we leave the show. Um, oh, here's the music. Okay. We're going this time. The music is loud again. Crackheads. Uh, we did Okay. We're going this time. The music is loud again. Crackheads. Uh, we did it. We got three intros, three intros, one show.

You only get it on one place. It's the crack with PZ Carol. Thank you to my beautiful guests. Look at these fucking guys. Look at it. Look at this one over here. Look at this one over here. It's Ben folks.

It's Drake Riggs. There goes the music. The music is gone. Um, but we had a lovely day. Thank you all so much for joining us. Have a lovely weekend. Go Apex! ["Apex Theme Song"]