The Ariel Helwani Show - UFC 321 reaction, Ariel goes off on Aspinall critics, Chael Sonnen, Mackenzie Dern, Jim Miller, Joseph Parker

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Ariel Helwani opens the show with a recap of UFC 321, including his reaction to Ciryl Gane’s controversial eye poke against Tom Aspinall, how the foul was handled by officials, Dana White’s comments in the immediate aftermath, before talking about what can be done to prevent fouls moving forward, the rest of UFC 321, and more (02:39).Chael Sonnen joins to give his thoughts about the UFC 321 main event, explaining his comments on the ESPN post-show, discussing the rematch and Aspinall’s potential game plan, whether anything can be done to reduce eye pokes, and talks of Alex Pereira vs. Jon Jones (1:16:40).Ariel answers Super Chats (2:20:46), before being joined by Joseph Parker, who breaks down his fight against Fabio Wardley, including his preparation, the referee’s stoppage, having no ill will toward Wardley, and who he wants to fight next (2:32:17).Jim Miller, who has been vocal about fouls and MMA gloves in the past, joins to talk about the UFC 321 main event, giving his perspective on how to penalize fighters who break the rules, responding to comments by Demetrious Johnson on the topic, outlining the potential long-term impact of eye pokes, and more (2:55:17).New UFC strawweight champion Mackenzie Dern is back to recap the big win, talk about the emotions after capturing UFC gold, how her daughter reacts to her fights, Din Thomas’ comments about the fight being “insignificant,” whether she wants to fight the division’s previous champion Zhang Weili, and more (3:24:26).Ariel wraps the show with more of your Super Chats (3:49:55).       

Ladies and gentlemen, now, welcome to the Eria, Hawaii Show. Back in your life on this Monday, October 27, 2000. And 25, hello again, everyone. I sure hope you're doing well, and yes, take a look around. my friends. It's one of the most wonderful times of the year. Look at that. I mean, this is amazing stuff. Halloween week around these parts. This, of course, the doing of the great G.C., who, in my opinion, remains the pound-for-pound best set designer in the business, especially when it comes to the holiday season. No, the festive set designs, no one can hold a candle

to this guy. I mean, he comes in, he whips up. How long does this take, G. How long does this? About five minutes. Wow, not even here to receive his flowers? Where is he? Where else could he be? Is he that upset? Yeah, he's pretty... After what transpired on Saturday as well?

No, but really, where is he? He'll be all right, man. Okay, all right. Well, can someone tell him that I was giving him his flowers? Yeah, yeah. There was once a time, do you remember this gimmick? He would make, like, funny videos or intros, and the thing that I would always say is, like, how long did this take?

How long did this take? Because he would just whip it up. and it was all very impressive so it's very festive here it's the holiday season everyone loves Halloween it's uh how do you say Frank non-denominational

non-denominational yeah agnostic agnostic it's my daughter's ninth birthday tomorrow so there's a lot to be excited about the blue jays are in the world series they're tied one one game three tonight at Chavez ravine what a game on Friday night Knicks are in full swing horrible game yesterday but the bills are back

I mean there's a lot to be happy about but I have to say I have to be honest I have to shoot with all of you I have to speak from the heart that's what I always do I'm in an awful mood I'm in a horrible mood today I am frustrated

I am disappointed I'm upset I'm deflated all these feelings and more are going through this dome this body right now because of what we what we witness and what

transpired on Saturday. You all know what I'm talking about. Frustrating scenes in Abu Dhabi, frustrating scenes in London. And we're going to get into all of that and more today on the program. We have a lot to discuss on this post-paper-view Monday, a double post-paper-view Monday, pay-per-view over in Abu Dhabi, pay-per-view over in London, the big UFC 321 showdown between one Tom Aspinall and Cyril Gan, ends unceremoniously, ends via no contest. historic fight in that it's the first UFC title fight in the history of the company. Company's been around now, 2005, 1993, what's that? 32 years?

First time ever that a title fight ends on the night in a no contest. There's been two title fights that have ended in a no contest, but the other one was John Jones versus Daniel Cormier, which was turned to a no contest a month later. First time ever on the night. we're going to get into all of this. Don't you worry, because I have a lot to say about all of this. And then as that's going away and into the sort of back part of our brains, we settle in for Joseph Parker against Fabio Wardley, which ended up being an all-time great classic. I mean, it was amazing. Back and forth they went, and it ends in the 11th. A horrible stoppage, a premature

stoppage. What was Howard Foster thinking? Ah, do you have to play it? I mean, it's awful stuff. times Wardley misses him. I like Wardley. Again, when I speak about these things, it's not because I'm trying to make it personal. I'm trying to tell the truth. He's missing constantly. This is a fight in which Joseph Parker was up on one scorecard via six rounds. Another scorecard, two rounds. Another scorecard tied. 11th round of a title fight with massive, massive stakes attached to it. Alexander Usik, we're going to get a into all of this. Oh, here it is. Miss, miss. Oh, yeah, uh, almost fitting. He missed the final shot. He missed the final shot. What was going on? Was the fix in there? We have a lot to

discuss. We have a lot to discuss on this post-paper-view Monday. On today's program, back into the show, the brand-new UFC women's strawweight champion McKenzie Dern is going to join us. She defeated Verna Gianjarova. No controversy there. She won fair and square. Shout out to her, looking forward to having her on. Prior to that, Jim Miller, who has been very outspoken about eye pokes and the gloves and DQs and fouls and illegal shots, he'll join us. He's been great on social media about this. Jim Freakin Miller going to join us at about 3.45. At 315, the Big Us himself, the reigning defending uncrown champion who's been screwed six ways till Sunday who got screwed again. He'll join us to talk.

about everything that transpired this past weekend and chill peace sun on a special ariel on the bad guy Monday post pay-per-view Monday should we make that into a thing maybe we can who knows he'll join us as well there's the lineup let's get into it I'm I wish that we had our show yesterday I had so much to talk about I had so much that I wanted to get off my chest here are the facts my friends the facts are that a lot of people didn't give surreal gun a shot going into this fighting against Tom Aspinall. A lot of people thought that Tom would just steamroll right through him and quite frankly, after Alexander Volkov beat Jelten Almeda, the talk was like, oh, okay,

I guess we're getting Volkov versus Aspinall too. I guess the MMA gods righted the wrong of Volkov versus Gunn. They gave Volkov the victory in a fight in which he was taken down a bunch of times, but nothing happened with those takedowns. And they scored it the right way. The guy on the bottom who was trying to inflict damage, who was inflicting damage, gets the nod. We were already thinking about how they're going to promote and book this fight, Aspinall v. Gunn. That's how much of an afterthought, it seemed like Seril Gan was because of the fact that he had lost against Francis Ngano, because of the fact that he lost against Derek Lewis, because of the fact that he had lost against John Jones, technically 0 and 3 or 02 an undisputed UFC title fights. and the Jones fight was so one-sided and the performance was so uninspired

that we thought that the same thing would happen in this fight. Well, guess what? A funny thing happened, he didn't look like that. He actually came to fight, and he looked phenomenal. He was aggressive. He pushed the pace. This was one of the best versions of Suril Gandhi we had seen in quite some time,

probably since his fight in France a couple years ago. He came to fight, and he was landing shots and he even bloodied Tom Aspernel. It seemed like he busted his nose. And when I say busted his nose, I don't mean broke his nose.

I just mean he punched him so hard that blood started coming out of the nose. So all these things are true. And you know what else is true? If the fight would have ended at the 4 minute and 35 second mark, he probably wins that round. We don't know

because it didn't go the full 5 minutes so we never got scorecards. but I would imagine most judges are giving him that round because of the damage inflicted. Now, tall tails have been spread since the fight that he was... You would think it was a 10-7 round. You would think it was a 10-8 round. It was not.

In fact, the stats were actually pretty damn close. In case you're wondering, Tom Asperon landed 27 of 39 total strikes. Cyril Gan landed 30 of 40. Now, not all strikes are created equal, but I'm just saying it wasn't a 10-8. But there's got to be a winner, and I thought Cyril was on his way to winning that round. So all these things are facts. You know what's another fact?

With three minutes and 11 seconds left, in the first round, Tom Aspinall shot for a takedown. And for the first time in his career, he was unsuccessful. Do we think that this moment had anything to do with that unsuccessful takedown? it's a little bit blurry we can't show you the footage but if you go back and watch and cue it up at the three minute and 11, sorry,

with 3 and 11 left in the first round which my math is correct is the 149 minute mark of the first round so fairly early on the takedown is stopped in large part

due to the hands and fingers to the face and to the eyes of one Tom Aspinall and so he pulls himself back and then of course with 435 left

or I should say at the 435 mark it's confusing with these numbers I'm not very good in math please forgive me at the 435 mark it is very clear that multiple fingers

are going into both eyes it is a three stooges moment look at that that's knuckle deep the index finger is knuckle deep And so what then transpires is a scene in which Tom Aspinall repeatedly says, I can't continue, I can't fight, I can't see. He's saying this in so many ways.

The main thing is, I can't see, I can't see, I can't see, which are the words that lead to a referee saying the fight has to be stopped. You can see the frustration, you can see the disappointment on both men's faces. And you could hear the referee Jason Herzog say, I understand it wasn't intentional, but it was a foul, which to me would lead one to believe that he was going to take away a point. He's telling him, hey, I'm not going to, I'm not going to, like, disqualify you or anything on the spot here. I know it wasn't intentional, but it was a foul. That would lead, at least I would hope that he would take away a point because, that happened earlier, and it was so severe this second time. It never even gets to that moment.

The doctor in the cage is heard saying, yeah, the eye is fine. My interpretation of that was that the eye wasn't hanging out of the socket. That's what he meant. How could he really tell what's going on inside? He's not, you know, holding some sort of x-ray goggles. He's not wearing some sort of contraption that's allowing him to see into the cornea are a retina, but of course people have spun that into like, yeah, yeah, he's good to go. And so here's Tom Aspinall, who has been waiting to fight since July of 2024, a year

and three months, 15 months total. Here's Tom Aspinall that has fought them all, that was begging to fight them all, that wanted to fight John Jones, that would have fought France and Gunno, that would have fought all of them. Here's Tom Aspinall being called a quitter. Here's Tom Aspinall having his heart question. having his integrity question. We talked about going into this fight

how obviously after everything that transpired or the past year, it would have been an absolute nightmare if he would have lost, right? The pressure, the Jones talk, all that stuff. Now, this wasn't a loss, but it's the next worst thing. Because now his heart has been called into question.

His integrity has been called into question. He's being called a coward, a quitter. Why? Because he got poked in the eyes. Why? Because he refused to fight blind. In some fococked the world that we live in, the guy who had a foul inflicted on him is the one getting the heat. Not the one who ended the fight, intentional or not, it's the guy who couldn't continue because he didn't show enough heart, because he was hit with an illegal foul multiple times and refused to continue. Couldn't do it. He's a quitter.

He's a coward. He's a duck. Whatever you want to say. Now, I know a lot of this comes from people who, you know, had money on the fight or our gunfines. I get it. People are emotional. They go online. I'm not trying to put any more stock into any of this.

But a lot of this could have been calmed down. A lot of this could have been quieted, could have been subdued if perhaps, I don't know, the face of the company would have gone to the press conference and said, look, that was a great fight. That was a great round. We're going to rebook it right away. But at the end of the day, you can't poke your opponent in the end of the end of the end. multiple times at the end of the day you can't do this

you can't do that you want you want to you want to block someone at range close your fists at the end of the day Tom Aspinall is a fucking gangster who did everything that we've asked of him he will live to fight another day

and we stand by him of course that didn't happen instead this is what you got from UFC President Dana White about the main event coming into this fight between the two of them serial was the underdog

and Tom the most popular. With the few things we've seen into this fight, I feel like Cyril was doing pretty well. Do you feel the same? And do you feel that he's earned respect so that people would care even more when you make this fight again and the odds would be more equivalent?

Yes. Yes, I agree. I think that I said earlier because of the John Jones fight, I think everybody was sleeping on Cyril gone and sort of rode him off. And he's right behind me. He's coming in next, so you guys can have.

ask him how he felt, but I feel like, you know, I'm sure in his camp, he was training like a animal for this fight and it's unfortunate that it ended the way that it did. And yes, I think that there probably will be a lot more interest in the rematch after they saw, you know, I mean, he had Tom bloodied up and, you know, Tom didn't want to continue in the fight. So the rematch is very interesting. didn't want to continue in the fight. I mean, could you imagine if you're Tom Aspinall listening to that? Could you imagine? I mean, we know that no one from the UFC was with him at the hospital. We saw that on his video blog. Could you imagine how this guy must be feeling on this Monday?

Everyone calling him into question, his heart into question, because he got poked in the eye multiple times. One of them knuckle deep and his promoter, his promoter is saying Tom didn't want to continue. Not Tom was fouled with an illegal strike, multiple illegal strikes. Let me ask you a question. that happened in some alternate universe to AJ, to Anthony Johnson, excuse me, Anthony Joshua, what do you think Eddie Hearn is saying? Eddie Hearn is probably still at the hospital with him. That's the difference. That's what I talk about.

How do you think Tom feels on this Monday? Do you think he wanted it to end like that? Do you think that Tom was saying to himself, you know what? I got a bloody nose. The going got tough here. Peace out, guys. I'm out. Again, the fight wasn't as one-sided as people want you to believe.

Yeah, I know it was weird that he was bloody. And yeah, I know it was weird that he was losing a round. We never see him lose rounds. We never see it go past the two minute and two second mark. That's his fight average going into this fight. But do you guys really think that he was looking for a way out? And again, I bring up the topic that I brought up last week, and I bring up the topic that I've been bringing up ever since I've been sitting in a chair like this,

talking into a camera like that. this notion of intentional versus unintentional is the stupidest shit in sports. Period. Period. You don't hear it anywhere else. Let me ask you guys a question. Yesterday, I'm watching the New York Knicks against the Miami Heat. Crucial juncture of the game. Knicks are down like eight or so. They have the ball. Josh Hart gets called for an offensive foul. Illegal screen. Do the referees converge and say, like, did he mean to do? that or did he not mean to do that? No, a foul is a foul. Ball goes the other way. Let me ask you a question. Super Bowl a couple years ago. All-time great game. Eagles Chiefs, past interference, end of the game. Do the refs converge and say, did he mean to do that? Did he mean to bump him or not?

No, foul is a foul. Fowl is a foul, which means a foul is a DQ. That should have been a DQ victory for Tom Aspinall. That should have been a DQ loss for Surreal Gun. And let me be very, very clear. right here and now. I don't think Cyril did that on purpose. Why would he have done that on purpose? Why would he have tried to foul his opponent? But it doesn't matter.

An illegal maneuver is an illegal maneuver. An illegal foul is an illegal foul whether you meant to do it or not. Cornerback doesn't always mean to bump his opponent, the guy he's guarding the wide receiver, but he did. Offensive tackle doesn't mean to grab the face mask, but he did. Josh Hart didn't mean to set an illegal screen, but he did, and they all get penalized for it.

Why shouldn't they get penalized in this sport? Why isn't that a DQ? You know why it's not a DQ? It's not a DQ because the referee determined it was unintentional. And so because it is unintentional, then it's a no contest. Now, same result, by the way, because it's Tom, meaning no contest, Tom keeps the belt. DQ, Tom keeps the belt. But we did see Piero Yan versus Al Jermaine Sterling.

Yan lost the belt because it was a DQ. Do we think Jan tried to throw that knee on purpose? Like, do you think he said, you know what? I'm getting tired of this fight. I'm up three rounds to one. Let me just throw this illegal knee just for shits and giggles. No, of course not. But on that night, it was a DQ.

There's no consistency. No consistency whatsoever in all of this. Get rid of the no contest bullshit. Andy Foster, Rules Committee, ABC, please, for the love of God, The next time you have one of these meetings, get rid of that language. A foul is a foul. First time you foul someone in the cage, point deduction.

That's it. None of these stern talking tos. None of these stern warnings. Enough of this. This is not a serious sport. You have Jason Herzog in the back telling Tom Aspinall, hey, you know what? The best part about fouling someone is that it works. Don't believe me, take a listen.

The best part about following, right, is that it works. So the best thing you can do, like, you can't have any game, and I'll do everything I can't manage. Hold that training for that. Look at this. Look at that figure. What the f***ing is he doing? The left one was really deep.

The left one was really deep. Sorry. Yeah, it's awesome. This is afterwards. This is courtesy of his YouTube channel. It's a great video blog. You see all of this. And you hear Andy Aspinall weighing in.

That's his father. go on the YouTube channel and watch the rest of it because it's all, you know, it's riveting stuff. And by the way, credit to them, they're not hiding. They're not hiding.

They're putting it all out more than anyone. That tells you who these people are. That tells you who the aspenols are. You can say, I'm glazing all you want. I don't give a shit. Who does that? Who shows you the whole freaking trip to the hospital? Even at times where you can say like,

I don't know if this back, this is backing up your stance. And I don't know what that doctor or who those people were that he was seeing at 3 a.m. in Abu Dhabi, you have the one nurse who's like, does this hurt? What is that? Yes, it hurts. Are you allowed to poke in the eye in your sport? No. Can you just tell me what's wrong? I thought Tom was going to lose the shit and credit to him for not losing his cool because it seemed like an unserious place that he was. I don't know what that place was, where that was. I certainly

didn't see any UFC officials with them. If they were there, they were off camera. and God bless. That should have been a DQ. It should have been a DQ win, and I can guarantee you. Actually, you know what? I'm not even going to beat around the bush. Gan's team is upset that I'm saying this.

Why are you so upset? Upset about what? I'm not saying you did it on purpose. I'm just saying I don't want to live in a world where this sport tries to determine what's on purpose and what isn't. A foul is a foul is a foul. You think when a defender tackles someone in the box,

in football and soccer, they mean to do it? No. They're going for the ball. They're doing stupid shit. And they get called and there's a penalty kick. That happens. I think someone wants that to happen in the World Cup semifinals? No.

But only in our sport. And by the way, I understand what Jason Hurtesog is saying. What he's saying is, look, when you get fouled, there's something wrong with you, right? You're going to be in pain. So just focus. But the irony is the way it's also interpreted is, is, hey, nothing happens in the sport. When you foul, when you cheat, when you do something illegal, nothing happens. More often than not, nothing actually happens. And it's maddening to watch.

And so because it wasn't declared a DQ, and because Dana White goes out there and says, he didn't want to continue, Tom's the bad guy. How is Tom the bad guy? And by the way, the UFC has stepped in shit here. They were staring at Volkov v. Aspiral 2 after a very uninspired performance by Alexander Volkov. Now, you're getting a gigantic rematch where the intrigue is going to be super high, where Gan is going to be a much closer opponent as far as the lines are concerned. He's not going to be such a big underdog, where people are going to say he had his number, he's going to have his number again, where Tom is going to have something to prove, chip on his shoulder, annoyed at the people who doubted him, annoyed that the UFC didn't have his back, annoyed that Gan poked him in the eyes.

I mean, between the two, he wasn't fighting Pereira next. He certainly wasn't fighting John Jones next. And, of course, as I predicted in the post show, John Jones is there, taking a shot, changing the profile picture. Of course, he couldn't help himself. Telling Pereira, let's do it at the White House, begging for that White House slot, couldn't help himself. Within seconds.

Change his profile picture to the duck, but now with the eye patch, which doesn't necessarily make sense if I'm being 100% honest because. that would kind of suggest that you think that Tom is the one poking the eye and I don't know what, but we all get. Look at that. Wow, that's some high-level production. Wow, it continues to zoom in.

Yeah, of course. I predicted that. He was going to have some kind of little dig. And again, as I said on Saturday, the irony is this guy, John Jones, was a serial eye poker. And now he's having a laugh over all of this.

Very frustrating to watch because, again, it was such a good fight, it was such an entertaining fight, and you see now people saying all this kinds of, I mean, craziness, all kinds of craziness, regarding Tom wanting out, Tom getting beat up, Tom, you know, being a coward, being heartless, gutless, and just forgetting about everything this guy's, by the way, this guy took a fight on, what, 10 days notice, 14 days notice against Sergey Pavlich, saved your ass. at Madison Square Garden. Literally saved the card. And now we know what this is all about. His dad talks about wanting to take a fight, you know, fight out the contract, three left. Let's go to boxing. And he says in an interview Tom does,

I wouldn't fight anti-Delia. I'd rather vacate. That's my friend. That's my teammate. Oh, my God. Literally the two things that would piss Dana White off, more than anything. And so the most predictable thing is that he would show up at the press conference, not backing his guy at all.

Not backing his guy at all. I mean, you had to know that this was going to have. Forget the fact that he took the fight against Pavlovich on 10 days' notice. Forget the fact that he was the backup fighter against, you know, when John fought Steepay last November. Forget the fact that he, you know, was ready and willing to fight John Jones at any moment this year. That he was a good soldier, that he never threw the UFC under the bus, that he never complained openly, that he was just doing all. the right things, saying all the right things. Forget all of that. Oh, no. He won't fight his teammate. And his dad says in a sort of off-the-cuff comment, I don't even know if that was an interview or not,

he says, yeah, yeah, I want him to fight out the contract and then go to boxing. Oh, the horror. The audacity. The chutzpah. And so, like I said, the UFC is going to be able to rebook this fight. It's going to be huge. They're obviously not going to be able to sell pay-per-views here in America. They will be able to sell pay-per-views over in the UK. but I would I would love for someone to explain to me like an actual official to explain to me why the hell that wasn't a DQ and trust me I've asked that should be a DQ and I really do believe that a DQ plus Dana actually having his guys back without throwing Surreal under the bus surreal is a I like surreal a lot he's a great guy his team now thinks that I have some sort

vendetta against him just because I'm keeping it real and telling it like it is, hey, you fouled. And when you foul someone, there should be repercussions. Whatever the case is, who cares? The point is, surreal, I think is a really, really good guy. And I think he has done things the right way throughout his career and he's overcome a lot of obstacles. But there's no denying the fact that there were multiple eyepokes which led to the end of a fight in which he was winning and in which he could have won undisputed goal for the first time

in his career. Let's bring in the guys and talk about all of this a little bit more because I'm still very fired up. G.C. Rick. P.C. I think is here on a post-Paperview Monday, very rare, but you know it's a big deal. You know there's a lot to talk about when Ptze is here. Rocking the Oakland A's head. I was going to say Peezy with the A's head. Oh, is it Oakland A's or Sacramento A's? You know yourself. Yeah. One of them. Moneyball? You saw Moneyball. Yeah.

Yep. Pee, how do you feel? How do you feel two days later? We spoke about it, the post-sharp. show on Saturday with Chuck. How do you feel now? You know, it's just really weird. And I think you've done a great job of breaking it all down there. But it's really weird seeing the reaction to this. And I don't know social media is not a real place. And that's becoming more and more real to me as the day is they're gone.

But the idea that Tom was looking for a way out of this fight is crazy to me. It's a competitive fight. It was a great fight. But the idea that, like, he gets this poke and he's like, you know what? I'm going to leg it now is absolutely. inside to me. You can see him trying to figure it out in the corner. And I just wanted to see if I was wrong

about this, you know? If I was like, have I read this completely wrong? I watched a fight again. It's more competitive than I thought. You, you saw the stats early on. Like, we haven't seen Aspinall bleeding like that and Gan caught him with a beautiful shot. There's no doubt about that. I had him winning the round. But at no point was like, he's out of this fight. This is not, like, Tom

has lost his fight. Uncrowned, we do the pay-per-view picks. And all of us vote for him. I think there's about eight people in it. And all of us, and this happens regularly on pay-per-views. All of us pick Tom Asim to win the main event. So I just got in touch with all the guys who do these, uh, these picks today. And I said, let's say if, if I asked you, if I told you you you could pick again at the time that fight was stopped. At the top, at the time with the iPod, eye poke happens, Tom will later, um, cannot continue in the fight. He can't see.

But if I stopped it there and I told you, this fight is going to continue. He's going to take a break and they're going to fight again. And you can change your pick, would you? Every single person that got back to me told me that they would have stayed with Tom. At no point was this fight away from him. I definitely gave Gan the first round. And I agree with you. There's no way this is deliver a foul from Gan.

He's having a great time. He has felled him twice, though. There's no doubt about that either. I saw that in the takedown too. But there's no way he's deliberately doing this because he knows he's having a good fight. It's just incredibly unfortunate. But the biggest thing to me is the real. reaction, not only from I'm seeing on social media, but from Dana White, as you said there,

this is a guy who has put his career on hold. This is a guy, you know, the earning potential he missed out on across this 15 months. And even more than that, really, when you consider everything that's been happening with the division waiting for Jones and Steepe, as you mentioned earlier, like this guy's career was completely on hold. The idea that this goes wrong and suddenly is like, well, look, geez, he's a bullshit artist. We should have known all along. It's a absolutely insane. My heart goes out to him. You can see the worry all over, Andy's face on the video they put out, and I thought

Charlie did an amazing job with that vlog, really, like, more than I would have expected to see, as you were mentioning, too. We've never seen that. Who puts that out like that? Who has that type of integrity where they put out that type of transparent content? He could have disappeared for three weeks, and no one would have batted

an eye, right? Dana White was asked about the rematch, and this was his response. And I know that you said you'd want to do the rematch between Tom and Cyril. It's very fresh, but any potential timeline for that? Like maybe January, the kickoff the Paramount card? Yeah. I mean, they're both in shape other than whatever's wrong with his eye.

You know, both guys are not injured. So as soon as possible. Other than whatever is wrong with his eye, they're not injured. There's literally a guy on the UFC broadcast. team who has one eye, one eye because of injuries that he sustained in UFC fights. His name is Michael Bisping. He's from the same country, by the way. He's not injured other than whatever happened, like that little thing that happened where the fucking full finger up until the knuckle went into the guy's eye. I mean, the constant reminders and examples, we talked about this

on Saturday. I think it was on the show, but it might have been somewhere else as well. The first time the UFC was in Abu Dhabi, Anderson Silva and Damien Maya fought to one of the worst title fights of all time. And Dana might as well have had steam coming out of his ears. He was so mad. He was so personally offended by the performance. You juxtapose that guy from 2010 in the fighter mode that he was in, you know, trying to build this thing into a success to the apathy that we saw on Saturday. I mean, here's another question about rebooking the fight. Look how apathetic he is about the idea of having to rebook this fight. Instead of being up there like, hey, That freaking suck, but let me tell you, that fight was way better than you all expected and thought,

and this next one is going to be one of the biggest fights of 22. Like promoter mode, right? What we want, some freaking passion. This is what we get. It would seem obvious that a rematch is right on the cards. Would you like to just rebook these guys as soon as Tom is able to get back in there? Yeah. Total pain in the ass, but yes.

Ah, ruin my Saturday night. Total pain. And by the way, like here I am fired up over iPokes. This doesn't affect my business whatsoever. I'm sitting here regardless of why. happens. It affects his business. Ipokes, unceremonious, unhappy customers. Here's his big takeaway on the eye poke issue in this sport. It's a bit of a weird question, right? It was ruled in no contest because of an unintentional eye poke. What does it take to make an eye poke

intentional? Great question, Oscar. In a way you could ever prove that. Who the fuck knows? Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? I know, tried to do new gloves before and that kind of didn't work out. Is there anything we can stop these eyepoids? Would you ever look at maybe trying to change the gloves again? Or is it just part of the sport? Just shit happens. Yeah.

I mean, no matter what you do with the glove, I mean, they're going to happen. Yeah? Are you sure about that? Are you sure about that? John Kavanaugh posted a picture of the Pride gloves. This stuff has been passed around. For years we've been doing this. Look at the gloves.

Look at the difference. Look at the difference. Look at the thumb, by the way. Look at the difference. Josh Barnett with a great tweet regarding this as well. These are people who have been around the sport for a very, very long time. Someone asked them about the rising gloves. Far superior.

The issue lies solely with the UFC here and an unwillingness and perhaps lack of understanding to make such a change. I even say, quote unquote, lack of understanding in that they use a glove with no thumb attachment slash connection, which inherently makes the glove a flawed and less effective design as it doesn't fully conform to the fist properly, which likely, has led to more broken hands. And what about this, Jim Miller? A video of him talking about the eyepokes back in February has been resurfaced.

And another video of him talking about it just yesterday. He's going to be on the show, but I think it's worth in the spirit of this conversation right here. And now to bring this up, first let's take a look at Jim Miller, who has all kinds of records about time and wins in the octagon. Jim fucking Miller himself, Mr. UFC 100, 200, and 300 himself. Here he is back in February talking about this issue. You want to know a secret?

I've got hours inside the octagon wearing these gloves. It's not the gloves. Look, I can close my fist. I can bend the ends of my fingers without the glove even moving. So if it was the glove that held my hand open, I could still go like that. But like, most of these eye pokes, it's like, like that. My hand's not getting held open like that. Are you fucking kidding me?

What causes the eye pokes is that little little bitch inside that's like being passive and avoiding the fight and not being aggressive. And that little voice needs to get punished by an immediate point being taken away. And in my opinion, a portion of the purse. And then I think you would see him stop real quick because it's not the gloves. Yeah, he's talking about a portion of the purse. That's supremely drastic. I'm just talking about a point deduction. I'm just talking about a point deduction.

Immediate. You do it once, point, twice, point. Let's keep going down to zero points. Here he is yesterday talking about this issue again. If only us stupid, dumb, professional MMA fighters could control our fingers, right? Eye gouging, I poking is a foul. And if that foul is done with intention, then the fighter that commits the foul gets disqualified as the fight can't continue.

In most cases, there's some fucking silly shit in there as well. But it is up to the referee and probably the commission on the side of the Octagon there to decide whether it was. intentional or not ridiculous and it never seems to be fucking intention never only when peter yan throws a knee i've had my vision permanently affected by ipokes doesn't affect my ability to fight um or see anything close really uh it uh it's more you know um quality of life stuff right like it's it's much harder to see a target with my bow nowadays um you know boohoo uh the only way we're gonna stop this thing is is if the the fighters that are committing the foul actually end up

getting punished for the foul that's the only way this is going to stop that would be thrown down in this not a glove issue it is an it is an issue of culture and the fighters right but nobody remembers if the fight was won for an eye poke or not the person who has poked in the eye is always the pussy is always the bad guy is always

the loser just as Tom for not choosing to continue it's it's never the person that commits the foul that gets looked at in a negative light no no no they're never punished no no it's it's the other

it's the other pussy that that decides that like, hey, I can't fucking see now, and now, you know, I'm the bad guy. I'm the bad guy for telling the doctors that I can't see. Jim couldn't be any more right. I mean, even on ESPN, love Chale and Anthony. We'll have Chale on in a bit. They're focusing on Tom's inability to continue. Ah, you're the champ.

Listen, don't listen to me. Listen to Jim Miller. It's one thing if you're getting punched in the face. it's one thing if like your orbital breaks from a punch to the face that's one thing a poke to the eye is a totally different thing multiple pokes both eyes totally different why is why is the discussion about tom's inability to continue the discussion should be dq point deduction and and i feel bad for tom and i hope he can see tomorrow don't listen to me listen to i don't know sean o'malley how about chan o'malley take a listen it is hard to stand in front of

a human being with that high level of skills and fight him with two eyes now you're gonna get illegally poked in the eye it wasn't a fuck it wasn't a right-handed get hit boom broke his orbital eye swells up you can't see that's different you get punched in the eye a legal shot your eyes swells up you can't see you fight through that Tom aspirin all would fight through that he wouldn't get punched eyes swells up we go I'm done I can't see it's different because you got poked in the eye that is an illegal strike illegal you just i mean it was an accident 100% i believe it was an accident i don't think surreal did it on purpose it's getting the better of tom but to question tom's toughness

is insane no one wanted to beat to not no one wanted that more than tom asked me he wanted to fight he wanted to fight he wanted to fight more than we wanted to watch a fight so it's hard you can't question tom's toughness based shot o'malley everything he said there including the last point is 100% right. You think Tom wanted that? You think he wants to deal with this on a Monday? Absolutely not. Now, I'll offer both sides of the equation. Demetius Johnson doesn't seem to agree with us, doesn't seem to agree with John Kavanaugh or Josh Barnett or Sugar Sean or Jim Miller and the other fighters. Demetrius is saying, no, this is okay. Now, I'm talking about Demetrius Johnson. I never talk about technique with fighters. I'll never debate them.

They've walked the walk, they've done it, and that guy is on our Mount Rushmore, right? He is one of the all-time greats. I adore DJ. But DJ, I love you. Sometimes we have to disagree with those that we love. This take from you right here might just be your worst all-time take. It is maybe on the Mount Rushmore of worst takes of all-time. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, take a listen to this.

People don't understand. They always talk about whenever we're going to fix Ipokes and mixed martial arts. Newsflash, you're never fucking going to do it. Why not? The reason why is because as human beings, our natural reaction, when somebody comes towards us is open my hands and stick my hands out. Why? When I throw a body kick, when you

learn Muay Thai and you throw kicks, they don't teach you to throw them like this. They teach you to open your hands, you throw your hand, you put your hands in front of your opponent's face to block them and then you throw like this. Boom. So, if you look at Muay Thai guys... Pause it right there. Paws it right there. He's talking about a sport,

by the way, in which they're not wearing fingerless gloves. Okay, so, so, so, so, so, So right off the bat, the equipment is different. And, oh, by the way, you're talking about a sport, like, you can't shoot on someone in moitai. Right? Like, you can't go for takedowns in Muay. So we're talking about two different things here.

Yeah, sure. When you're fighting someone in Muay, you're going to put your arm out there. I get that. But guess what? Different equipment, different rules. You have to adapt. Just like you don't have to worry about a takedown in Muay or you don't have to worry about elbows in wrestling.

you have to adapt. You can use some things in some sports and some things in the other sport they're not available to you and the equipment is different. And so to say that, oh, we're taught to throw like this in Muay, well, guess what?

Your fingers are covered. You also can't poke someone in the eye in MMA. So you've got to do something about that. Please continue. Because it's a Hall of Fame bad take here by the great Demetri John who I adore who if he was here I would kiss him on the head. But still, it's a horrible take.

Please, please, please. A kick or kickboxers. Granted, you can't see Mutai guy's hands or kickboxer's hands because they're in the gloves. So why would the technique change when you get in little gloves? It's not like you can change the technique. To throw like this is not, it's not natural. My hands are closed. In order for me to keep my balance when I throw a high kick, I have to open my hands and I put my hands on, listen to this, on my opponent's space.

Boom. That's a leg kick. We've seen many leg kicks, so you don't always see that. And obviously the accident foul was an accident, right? But the way he had his hands on Tom Asthmael's face is the correct technique to do. It is? It just wouldn't his hands, right? If you go back and watch John Jones, he's a great eye poker.

The best example. The best example. If you go back and watch my fights, when I throw body kicks or I throw leg kicks, my hands are here. They're open. So once again, you're never going to fix. i pox in mixed martial arts unless you put us in gloves that are like in actual like boxing gloves by the way um top of the dome right now i don't recall dj poking anyone in the eye so clearly he was able to figure out how to avoid this and yet he's saying well you know this is just going to

happen because that's how you throw leg kicks i'm sorry no if if dj let me ask you a question if DJ was in an IBJJF jujitsu tournament in Las Vegas next week and got poked in the eye is that okay because like you know it's fingerless and you're allowed to put your hand on someone's face and all that stuff you know you could

you could do a little cross-face thing here is that okay oh I put my hand on his face here's a little knuckle into your left eyeball it's you know I have to do it no of course not awful take sorry guys I Rick and G.C., I kind of left you hanging there. Rick, what do you think about all of this? Please, please tell us. Shoot us straight here.

I mean, we've said most of it. At the end of the day, ultimately, my heart just goes out to Tom. Like, that's where I'm at. I've seen the vitriol. I've seen everything that's being said. I don't particularly care to get into the how do we fix the eye poke situation other than to say I think there has to be a solution, right? we've kind of been rolling the dice on the fact that this never happened in a high leverage title fight main event, but it has been something that has been enough for the UFC to try to make new gloves and then completely abandon that. It was bound to happen at some point in a situation like this, and now it has and ultimately, you know, something should be done to pursue a change there. But I'm surprised and disheartened by all the vitriol that is

aimed at Tom Aspinall, who has done nothing, who has done nothing in the scenario, but get poked in the eye, and now somehow he's the bad guy, he's the villain, he's the one with know hard and quit and all this nonsense that we know not to be true. And when you look at the totality of it, when you look at the sum of everything that Tom has been through in the last two years where he sat out and waited for John Jones to accept the fight with him, that was not his fault, that he was ready to fight and the UFC was trying to make a fight, that was that it was John Jones, who was the one who prevented that from happening. And now he finally gets back in the cage, and this happens to him, I feel for him. He is in a no-win scenario, and the only thing

that will cure this is if they book this for sometime early next year of the spring, he comes out and he beats Cyril gone. I think the train will be back on the tracks, but these opportunities are few and far between, and he's missed out on two years of action because of it, and it hurts my heart. I saw Michael Bisping, G.C., say, oh, put this on the MSG card. Put this on the December card. I'm like, you of all people, you of all people who knows how serious something like this could be? Like, the fact that everyone's just sweeping this under the rug blows

my mind. What do you have to say, G.C.? It's obviously too soon for that, and I can't really add anything to everything that you guys have said. Tom got poked in the eye. He said he couldn't continue. He said he couldn't see. I just have to take that as fact. They'll get to rematch. Everyone that's saying he's a quitter that he wanted out, that Cyril was too much of a mismatch

form and dominating a pillar to post. We'll get to see in the rematch. That is what it is. The thing that is driving me crazy is this, like the fight was over. Like, Tom looked for a way out. Cyrilgan was dominating him. That was it. Like, how can we say that after just last week, RDR dominates round one

and then gets dominated rounds two through four and ends up having to quit on the stool there? I mean, four hours before, we were watching the Nathaniel Wood fight. He gets dropped to within an inch of his life. It looks like they're about to stop the fight right there. He comes all the way back, wins 29, 28. I mean, we've seen it a million times. And in MMA, you're dealing with a guy in Tom Aspinall

has 100% finish rate, one of the most dangerous dudes in the sport, and we're saying, like, he can't land a punch, he can't get a take down, go for a submission. This narrative, I see all these people going online, you know, especially when it comes to the betting, just like, I was robbed of Cyrilgan plus 3.30. I'll never get an opportunity like that again.

It's going to be even odds in the next one. It's just like, we don't know. We don't know what was going to happen. That's what's so unfortunate about it. The fight was looking great. Cyril Gone was looking much better than many people believed, including myself, thought he was going to look. He was bringing it to Tom Aspinall.

He bloodied him up. I'll agree with all that. He was winning that first round, but we have no idea how the fight was going to play out. It was taken away from us because of the foul that Cyril Gahn committed that took place. That's what's so disappointing about this. Hopefully we get to see it in a rematch. Hopefully we get to find out. I'm looking forward to it.

I think the rematch is going to be a fantastic fight. Cyril Gond came to fight, and I imagine he will in the rematch as well. Of all the fights that can be made right now, it's one of my most anticipated fights. Like the buildup for that, the animosity. There was already animosity between these two. It's going to be phenomenal. and that's why I say deep down inside UFC should be thrilled about this

like if anything this division sorely needed something like this there's nothing else going on nothing else going on of note the hate we're seeing for Tom Aspinall right now this vitriol and we saw it for the Aljo fight against Piotr Yon

the Oscar winning actor everybody hates him he's a quitter he won it out which by the way they ended up rematching that fight and Al Jermaine Sterling beat Piotr Yon in the rematch but that's neither here nor there as a massive underdog

the vitriol is going to drive viewership. The people, whether they're Jones fans, whether they're gone fans, or whether they're just casual fans who don't tune in that often see a guy end up taking a foul to a no contest and are just like, oh, this guy's a bitch, he's a quitter, he shouldn't be out there. It's going to drive people

to want to see it. I imagine a lot of people will be supporting Cyril Gahn in the rematch and the numbers will be massive for it. Pete, you want to say something? Yeah, I actually think to this point about this being good for the UFC, completely agree. I think we said it on the post show on Saturday. the rematch is amazingly more interesting.

This is great. I also think it kind of gives them more, not that they needed it, but it gives them more of a green light to pursue this Jones Pereira thing if they want to. Honestly, like they can kind of do that off the side. We need to be of unfinished business with Gannon and Aspinall.

We can let this work out on the other side. I think it gives them a green light to that degree. I just wanted to ask in terms of an, and look, I agree with what Rick saying. Like, it's, it's going to be very hard for us to break down

and invent a new protocol here on the show today. But there was new gloves as Oscar brought up to Dana. And that was last year, I believe they were brought in. They were taken out. A lot of the conversation then was like, well, they're bringing back the ogles because it's taken away from the product. A lot of people thought, like, this is lowering the percentage of knockouts we're seeing on the UFC broadcast.

What I'll say to you is this unintentional, intentional thing. I think, I think one of the reasons the UFC would be reluctant to bring this through is because these pokes happen so often. It's a joke. you know what happens multiple times every single event some will get poked in the eye if we start bringing in a situation where fights are decued immediately there

and not to say I don't do I'm disagreeing with this but if that was a situation and that became protocol you could lose five fights in every card I've heard D Thomas say take a point away what if that was the penalty I poke point away immediately no no warning no accidental point gone by the way

warning accidental should be taken out of the vocabulary. It should just be, if you poke someone of the eye, point deduction. Now, is there any world where it gets to, like, you're going to have to be reviewing the tape? Like, is there a, was it a poke, wasn't a poke? They do that now.

They don't mind that. Because if it's not a poke, they make them continue. If somebody goes, ah, I got poked in the eye, and they review the tape, and they haven't, the refs says, no, no poke, keep fighting. That was a punch, keep fighting. I'm fine with that. Do we also add in nut shots?

Yes, anything that teams around. Well, they did it earlier that day. Rich Mitchell and Mark Goddard did great. job earlier that they were calling Fells immediately. They were taking points straight away. I think it was a fence grab on a low shot and back-to-back fights on the early prelims. And I saw that and I was like, oh, holy shit, this is great. This is like

a response to what we've been complaining about. They're immediately taking points and it and it, you know, it was great to see that. However, then you see it in the main event and it kind of, the conversation's completely changed again. I don't want to see a DQ for a foul, but I'm totally fine with it. There are no more warnings and

every, there is no accidental or on purpose and it is just a No, no, no, no. But by the way, my point is, if you foul someone and they can't continue, that's a DQ. I'm not saying foul them. I'm not saying you foul them and it's an immediate DQ, but there's no contest nonsense because it wasn't intentional is nonsense. It's absolute nonsense. You foul someone, they can't continue. You have just lost the fight. And if you were the champion, you'll lose your belt, just like Peter Yan did. and Anthony Smith I believe he'll never admit it because he's a good guy

but he should have taken that victory as well because he got blasted in the head with an illegal shot and think about how his life would have changed had he taken that and he would have gotten a big rematch and a lot of money and all this stuff the window is that big that big look how quickly they'll dispose of you

look how quickly your persona non grata to them I'm still not there yet I'm okay with a no contest in this scenario I don't think Cyril did anything intentional and so I'm okay. There's that word. What does that mean? No, but that's what we're dealing with.

That's an important word in this scenario. It's not important when it comes to should you be penalized or not. It is important whether you should be disqualified or not. You could be penalized until the cows come home. If he accidentally pokes Tom in the eyes five times and loses five points, no issue for me. No problem.

If Tom can't continue, if Tom can't continue, no contest. Why? Why should it be a DQ? Because he just did something to end the fight. You are now discreet. So the fight is over, it's a no contest, nobody loses, and we run it back. No, by the way, the only reason it was deemed a no contest is because it was unintentional.

Yes. That's the only reason. That's bullshit. You do so. So when the dude got the past interference in the Super Bowl, just a couple of years ago, he obviously didn't mean to do that. Yes, but it didn't end the game, did it? Yes, they then scored. No, it doesn't end the game.

It had implications to them score. Of course. It does not end the game. The point is, the guy couldn't continue. The guy can't continue. it's a disqualification. It could be a no contact. The fight is over.

No, now you're doing semantics. There's going to be way more fights being. Yes, it is semantics because in the rule books, the only reason why it is deemed a no contest is because it says when it's intentional or unintentional. That is a made-up thing. That is a made-up thing that stupid people who put together the rules for this sport came up with.

And guess what? Like Sean O'Malley said, tell me the one time it was intentional. Go ahead. Give me the example. Give me the example of when it was intentional. There are plenty of intentional fouls. There's never been. There was a fighter.

Tell me. Tell me. There was a fighter recently who, like, was eye gouging somebody while they were on the ground trying to rip their eyeballs out and reverse a position. I forget what fight. Were they trying to do that or were they trying to get out of the move? And then they did it because they're just like Cyril Ghan is stopping a takedown and he's putting a hand to the face. My point is, you can always say it's unintentional. No one is in their brain. No one is able to determine whether or not is intentional or not.

Of course it's going to be, of course the default is going to be unintentional because no one's going to try. Why would someone who's winning the fight try to foul you? There can be penalties other than a fight ending. But if a DQ ends in Tom retaining the belt and a rematch and a no contest ends in Tom retaining the belt and a rematch, what difference does it make? It doesn't make a difference, but the difference is if he wasn't the champion, meaning Piotr Yan lost his belt. Because for some reason they deemed that one intentional. Yes, he decided to throw a knee. There was no accident there.

The guy was up three rounds to one. There was no in what universe. three downs to one and he gets a warning while he's sitting on the ground. This is a grounded opponent. Yes, he was warned and Al Jemaine wasn't in between a phase. There was no confusion. You guys think he did that on purpose? Yes.

You think he wanted to be disqualified in that moment. You think he wanted to lose the belt. He did not want to be disqualified. He was unaware of the rules. He was unaware of the fact that he could not throw a knee in that scenario. My point is you can literally say this about every single foul. You can. Yes, you can.

Who tries to foul on purpose? If you are unaware of the rules, you can clearly foul on purpose. That's a whole different set of. circumstances if you're unaware of the rules. Obviously, then you're just dumb. Why are you fighting in a fight and you don't know the rules? That's crazy to me. You brought up the example, not me.

Piotr Yan threw a knee on purpose. And I don't think if your explanation is the one that we're going to go by, I don't think he should have been dequeued then. If we're going to go with the unintentional to intentional thing, then why did he lose his belt? He should have lost his belt. Because he intentionally threw a knee.

How do you know? Did you ask him? Did he admit to that? Did the referee tell him? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he did not. He threw a knee and he thought based on what he, the positioning that the guy was in, just like this guy put his hand in his face

and tried to stop a takedown with his hand in his face. So he should have been, that's the exact same thing to me. Anyway, the point is, in this regard, Tom Aspernel keeps the belt. I get that. I understand what you're saying, G.C. I just think they need to get rid of all of this nonsense because now Tom is being viewed as the bad guy.

Tom is being viewed as the quitter. If the fight is a victory via DQ because your opponent just did something illegal, I don't think people are going to view him as a quitter-cower bad guy. I actually think it would be worse. It would be worse. Why? Because then he, I've seen people online saying he thought he was going to get the DQ.

That's why he did this whole acting, selling junk. Yeah. Because he saw the belt. He retains the belt regardless. He retains the belt regardless. Who cares? It's a matter of framing. Yeah, but I think he gets it worse.

It would be worse. Okay. I agree to disagree. It's the one on the record. It's a matter of framing. The issue with the eye poke and the nut shots as opposed to the knee is like, you are throwing the knee directly at his head. Whether you knew he was on the ground or not, the eye pokes, there's, there's, there's this gray area where it's like,

well, he was just putting his hands out, was he actually going for the eyes? The nut shot, it's just like, well, he was throwing a body kick? Was he actually going for the nuts? I mean, if you ask DJ, you have to put your hand on the guy's face when you're throwing.

That's where it's this, this is brought in, the way you're saying, Ariel, the only you disagree that if they, if they implemented this, there would be a lot more fights cut short. No, you can't do the DQ. You can't do the auto DQ. You have to, I agree that we could get to a point

we're getting auto points. I also think you'll see a lot less eye pokes if there's an auto point. but the auto DQ, you're getting fights cut short. For the record, I've never said auto DQ, but I think if everyone who did that could not continue, you get DQed, yes, you would see a lot less people doing it. If there were actual ramifications.

Now, Pizzi, are you saying you think you would see a lot less cut short because they would get the win? They knew the win was there. No, I don't think it's because I think they can't fight and they'll be like, fuck, I'm not, like, you know, I can't go in there to do this. and because we see the mentality that Chale and like of Anthony Smith have

and I believe that exists too that guys are just going back in like I'm going to go out with my shield that kind of thing. I don't think it's very, I don't think it's the smartest thing to do. Like you know, you look at Aspinol's vlog

he can't see two hours later. Like the test is always he can't see two hours later. I mean, look at the Kevin Holland one last week. It's like he's nuts. He was clearly dying. He gets to the like five minute

and 10 second point he's like sighing to go back out there and then the second it restarts the fight if he quits at that point then he ends up taking the loss and he ends up taking the loss anyway and then he's mad at Malat for saying that

he can't respect him and everything like that when there was a pressure on him to continue the fight. If you remove the interpretation of accidental or intentional from everything, including the ending of the fight, if somebody is throwing a kick and somebody moves into it and it hits them in the cup and now they're decued because of that,

it's not producing the correct outcomes. It's just not producing the correct outcome. If that person gets hit in the groin and can't continue, but it was, they were shifting their weight into a scenario and then the kick hits them and we say, fight over your decued, it just is not going to produce the right outcomes. It's not the correct result. One more time for the record. I'm not saying it should be automatic. I'm saying if the opponent can't continue. If they can't continue, sure.

But if I kick and my opponent moves and it hits them in the cup and now I'm decued because they can't continue, that's not the correct outcome. That's just not the right answer. I think that could happen perfectly fine in that scenario. If you want to try and stop these things from happening, and let's be honest, no one is sitting here saying how do we fix low blows in MMA. So let's not move the goalposts. We're talking about a glove issue right now. We're talking about a finger issue.

But what's the issue? What's the epidemic in the sport that we've been talking about literally on this show for 15 years and every other show on the planet? We're talking about gloves and stuff. So I understand, yes, we could start talking about other fouls. But right now I'm focused on iPokes, and I believe that if you take points away immediately for all fouls, right now I'm talking about iPokes, and if the guy can't continue, that's a DQ, you will have people starting to be a lot more careful about what they do with their hands, what they do with their kicks, what they do in all facets. And by the way, G.C., you brought up Cage. Yeah, take the point away. You've now just stopped a crucial moment in the fight. I agree with you. And by the way, an auto point would avoid a lot of them.

They could do whatever the fuck they want. They could do half a point. Oh, for cages, we'll do a half a point. They can do, it's better than whatever system we have now, which is intentional, unintentional, or not even anything. It's like, here's your warning. Here's your stern talking to, mister. It's crazy.

Sometimes they get three warnings. Sometimes you see guys getting three warnings. Just look at last week. Everybody here agrees on take points. We all agree. Take points. It's just incredible damning on the UFC for them to have made that effort for the anti-op eye-poke gloves.

last year, ran them for four months. John Jones was like, I'm not using these, and the UFC was like, neither are we for the rest of the time. It's all good. Trash them. I think it was a combination of the narrative that was forming around the finishes. Less chaos, less chaos, but like, oh, we did this whole expose and all this

stuff. It's just like, why not put more effort into that? And then you ask Dana White about it. It's just, well, Jim, me, who gives shit? Jim Miller has suggested what are you going to do? It's not the gloves. It's the lack of penalty. But it's the lack of penalty for it. Because if you are going to lose

a point for an eye poke, then you might not poke the eye. I'm down for that. Former fighters coming out and being like, and coaches at the highest level being like, now there's actually a glove that they could use that will avoid this. There's actually been one used in several professional MMA promotions that have

had success. But if they put those in and then the knockout rate goes down by 10%, they're going to strap it again. The sample size was this big. We saw the gold gloves like three times. It was a might. Three times. There were some, like, ho-hum cards. But they're doing it because it affects the product.

This is what I'm saying. And the same thing could be said for disqualification situation. And I'm not just saying this is right. I'm not saying I disagree with Jari. I'm saying if the UFC think the product is going to be affected as they did with those gloves, they are going to walk that back. They are not going to do it. Is there any argument to, I mean, it wouldn't make any of a difference in this case

because Tom couldn't see. But like extending the time, I mean, it was like, by the time he had talked to a doctor, doctor and was kind of coming to grips with the fact that he couldn't see. We're already like three minutes in. Now the guy has 120 seconds to decide whether he continues a championship fight completely compromised or not. By 10 minutes, by 15 minutes, it's a different fight at that point, right? All the momentum that Cyril Gahn had at that point, I wouldn't want to restart a fight after that. Oh, yeah. I agree. I'm thinking of everything. No, no, I appreciate that. We're trying. We're trying to throw it around here.

I think the five minutes is fine. I think the five minutes is fine. Again, I feel for both guys it sucks for a fight to end this way especially you know with with the i mean who would have thought 15 months of talking about tom and this is how it ends but look man we also have to recognize tom loses that fight maybe they do john versus surreal gun too there is way too much at stake and i'm not suggesting that this thought even crosses mine but come on like and especially for fighters to not recognize that like you lose a title fight and you lose your belt you go all the way back down. And it's so hard to get back there. And they move on so quickly without you. And they do John Jones versus Alex Pereira for the belt. And now you're, you know, you're yesterday's

news. Why would you risk it? Why would you risk it? You can't see. You've been poked in both eyes multiple times. Why? It's crazy to me. And I'm not expecting, you know, Mr. Joe Schmoe at home with his wings and his draft kings to care about any of this. I get it. And I'm not putting any of the, any of my feelings towards this came out before I read any of the shit. Of course, the shit that you read it and you're like, oh my God, people who would never even dare to like, you know, sign up for a 5K are, are criticizing, you know, these superhuman fighters. It's, it's comical is what it is. It's not necessarily frustrating. It's comical. It's asinine. We know who Tom is. And, and I just, I would have loved to see the promotion back him.

I would love to see the promotion care about him just like one iota and you would love to see some sort of repercussions for these fouls so that hopefully if this is instilled we don't see more of this stuff and people start to think twice and so there we are

we're doing the post show I come down my kids all asked me what happened what happened I was telling them about the fight I was telling them the back I was saying no time to talk about this guys you have to watch Joseph Parker versus Fabio Wardley

which was turning in to everything this fight wasn't in that it was a classic that was going the distance. It was amazing. Back and forth they went. The Ipswich boy who was just a white collar boxer. No amateur career. Fabio Wardley getting the opportunity of a lifetime against one

Joseph Parker who should have been fighting Alexander Usik for undisputed gold, but he's that big of a mensch, he's that big of an Uso that he says, yeah, sure, I'll fight this guy in his backyard of the O2. Joseph Parker, not from England, not from the U.K., Yeah, sure. And look at this action. Back and forth these two go. I mean, if you want to see heavyweight boxing at its best, it's these two guys going toe to toe. The fourth round, the ninth round, the second round, the 10th round. Look at some of these shots. And yeah, dicey situations there. No doubt about it for Joseph Parker. Look at some of these shots. Look at some of these moments. But he survived. And going into the 11th, according to Adam Smith, the great broadcaster, Hall of Famer for DeZone, he was up six rounds on one. scorecard, he was up two on another and tied on the last one. This is the finishing sequence.

Look how many times Fabio Wardley misses him. And there's Howard Foster, who is a controversial ref in his own right, who famously stopped. Frotch Groves won way too early. Frotch himself admits to that. Stopping that fight after a right hand from Fabio Wardley misses. The final shot is a miss. We have other angles. If you don't believe me, this is a social media angle. Look at the right hand, right before Howard Foster steps in. It's coming. If that is not an indication that this was stopped prematurely,

why would you stop a fight after the final shot misses? What? Joseph Parker deserved better. That was a travesty. That was an absurd stoppage. I think we might have another angle. Do we have another angle? Here.

Oh, here's a slow-mo for you. Does he land punches? There's no doubt about it. Were they enough to stop a championship fight with these types of stakes attached to it? And Joseph Parker being the fight. Look how many misses. There was another miss. There is another miss.

Miss. Block. There's misses here. So yes, I know in real speed, these are big shots. I get it. Chale himself said 40 unanswered. Look how many times he misses here. And then look at the final shot.

There's another miss. Look at the final shot coming up right here. That's a miss. That's a half shot. That's a miss. What are you stopping the fight for? Despicable. Absolute disgrace.

And so I was pissed off. I was so pissed. And then, of course, you watch the press conference, and Parker's like, you know, that's the fight game. I'll be back to you. And I'm like, how can you be so nice? And why am I more mad than you right? now. What a fight

though, Pt, huh? Oh, my God. We were still doing the post show as this was happening. And we were kind of like, well, you know, round one was incredible. Then round two, which showed some clips of there absolutely incredible. And the fight kind of just went like that. It was back and forth. There was danger. Ever present danger to rip the fight for both guys.

It's a sick one because Parker actually throws a punch four seconds before they stopped the fight. And, you know, I agree. I didn't like to stop Vegeta. I probably don't feel as strongly about it as you do. But I agree with what you said on X. And I had lots of people saying he's not intelligent to defend himself. I was like, he threw a punch four seconds before he stopped it.

You know, this is the kind of fight they were in. Yes. They were, it was a complete war. To step in at that point seems pretty ridiculous. You know, these were moments were happening for 10 rounds before this. So that's the part that it's hard to resolve. Honestly, what I was thinking immediately was, and I'm sure your head went to the same place. Andy Lee, man, how unfortunate can you be?

it's not that long ago that we had the Crocker Donovan rematch and I think all of us that scored that point for Patty Donovan and Crocker won't and fair play to Crocker he had a very good fight that night himself and put Patty down a number of times so not many complaints about that but just to be on those thin margins be on the wrong side of it twice in such crucial moments

devastating and Parker again just absolute class how much he's missed out on in just in the last year it's absolutely incredible and again putting everything on the line against Wardley with everything to gain this fight it's just a sick one for the whole team

and not to mention what happened a few months ago in Belfast with Donovan Crocker that Andy Lee had to witness that as well which led to the rematch but you're 100% right for those that may not know Joseph Parker was supposed to fight

Daniel Dubois in February mysteriously Dubois removed and there's Bacoli and then you think okay he's either going to fight Dubois he's going to fight Joshua or he's going to fight Usik because he should be next

he gets none of them and he gets Wardley in Wardley's backyard, and this happens to him. And, I mean, even after Moses Atama won in August, they're saying, oh, just do Atama versus Usik. Like, what? This guy's the interim champion. He's the WBO intern champion. Why isn't he next? And then he has to go and fight a brilliant fight, and Wardley was probably tougher than he expected him to be. But that fight should not have been stopped. It was, it was a travesty, an absolute travesty. And I felt awful for him. And I'm looking forward to to talking to him about it. Any idea if you could fix that

one, I don't know? Like, how do you make that right? DQ. No, I'm joking. Was it intentional? Was it an intentional stoppage? Did he mean to miss those punches? As many as he threw? If you're a quick solve, can you matchmake your way into a situation where Parker gets put back in a good spot off the top of your head? Honestly, I would love to see that one again.

Yeah. I would love to see them running back. No chance. I mean, Frank Warren was very quick to start talking about Wardley versus. He was happy as a big a shit, wasn't he? Oh, he was talking about Wembley. A Brit going back up there against Usik. What a story? Let's be honest. They didn't want Parker to win that fight. And that's the part that sucks. Sometimes it feels like they just don't want someone to win a fight. And yeah, and sometimes the bad guys get screwed. Excuse me, the good guys get screwed in this sport. You'd like to see the bad guys get screwed, but that doesn't seem to happen all that often. There was a great moment, though. There was a great moment. It was a great moment. It was a

all bad news. The McKenzie Dern moment I thought was great. She finally wins gold. A great moment with her dad afterwards. Wellington Diaz and Megaton, the man who got her into martial arts. She now joins Fabrice of Redume as the only competitors to win the IB, JJF, and ADCC and win a UFC title. This is someone that I think a lot of people thought wouldn't amount to much when she got into MMA, let alone the UFC was having trouble making weight, is a mother who has taken us on a roller coaster ride, a journey as far as being so open about her trials and tribulations. And just great scenes with her daughter afterwards, her mom in attendance, her dad in the cage, in her corner. And so McKenzie Dern is now the brand new UFC women's strawweight champion.

She becomes the undisputed champion because Zhang Wei has moved up to 125. to fight Valentina Shvchenko in less than a month in New York City right here not too far from here Madison Square Garden the question is if Zhang loses that fight

does she go back down to 115 it's the same question we have about Islam does she go back down to her weight class and fight McKenzie if not who is there for her to fight next it seemed like McKenzie was campaigning for the Tatiana Suarez's fight

Suarez got a title shot back in in February lost that fight to Zhang, but then got back on track in September beating Amanda Lemoche. It would seem to be like she would be the frontrunner. Don't love, as I talked about last week, I don't love the scenario in which a challenger loses a title fight, wins one fight, and gets an immediate crack at the belt. Same thing that I was talking about at 145.

And I feel like we were talking about it in another way class as well, and I just don't remember which one at this point. But anyway, there aren't a ton of options now. that the champion is left. Umar and Amaga Madoff is, uh, oh, actually, that's the guy I was, that's the scenario I was talking about. Umar loses to Marab. He wins one fight and now it looks like he's going to be next.

But a lot can happen, right? Marab can lose to Yan. Maybe they run it back. Maybe not. I suggest it's a hobby who's won seven in a row. But it just seems like Fed a complete that they want to give it to Umar. I don't know. interesting though again

I have to point out when the shoe was on the other foot with Paul Hughes no mention of this oh yeah in the end of happened how dare you mention that how dare you

how dare you how dare you Peecey I know intentionally said it as well yeah yeah yeah lost lost in January comes back

this weekend wins and now it's just like it's almost like an entitlement like yeah of course we're fighting for the belt next I mean the win over Corey Sanhagen was the first win

against the top 15 guy but I guess the Habi seven wins don't stack up as I mentioned Alexander Volkov with the win over Jalton Almeida not the best fight in the world but I actually thought in this regard the judges got a right and overall I thought for officials after last week's debacle like Goddard was great on the prelims you know Mitch Mitchell yeah like there was there were a lot of highlights as opposed to low lights

But in this fight, Almeda 7 of 9 as far as takedowns, but did very, very little with the takedowns. And so I can imagine, as we talked about on Saturday, Michael Vennepage was watching this fight and saying, my fight against Logan Storley should have been scored this way. If you are getting taken down but still inflicting damage off your back, you should win those rounds. And it was great to see them score the fight that way. And to a degree, they did that in the Dern Janji Robo fight, too. Yeah, great scorn. There's a few tricky ones, Tanya Woods fight with Delgado as well earlier.

I thought they did a great job. That didn't come into play when Azamat Mirzikanov fought Alexander Rackich. Just a vicious knockout, quick, short right hand, dropping Rackich, who was in great form, great shape, tough loss for him. And now you've got a new player in the 205 pound division. Quillin Salkeld took a fight against Nasrat Haqpras on 10 days notice, head kicked him in one of the more scary moments that you'll see in the UFC because Huckpras was on the canvas face first, lying down for what felt like an eternity. Thankfully, he got up and eventually was able to leave the cage on his own.

Sal Kield will be on the show tomorrow another fighter coming out of Perth looking very good there's the shot right there I mean he was out and he was convulsing tremendous mustache though Ikor Mali Scareoff with the win over Juni Young Park

Ludovid Klein beat Mateus How do you say his last name PT? Which one are we talking? Rombetsky Oh, Renbecki apparently Yeah But they call him

Rongbeckski Yeah, yeah I have to tell I had to get onto a polar speaker to ask him how to say it because Oh did you get a voice note? Um, it might have now we spent

Wren Bettsky Ren Bettsky. Ren Bettsky. Thank you, Sean Denny, legend. No, uh, no tea there, huh? But I guess there's a ren. Well, they were calling them wrong Beckski. Yeah.

I mean, where's the M? I mean, come on. And what about Walter Walker? Four straight heel hooks. Shades of Kenchie. Shamrock Circa, 1996. Which our upcoming guests didn't quite get the reference. He wins four in a row for him, and apparently he wants Hamdi Abdel Wahab next, and

Hamdi wants him. Nathaniel Wood would the win over Jose Delgado, Mitroposo with the win, Mizuki Inouye would the win in her return to the UFC. There are the results. let's get into it I'm all fired up I'm sweating here I can't wait for this chat

my old friend the bad guy the American gangster himself perhaps the future governor of Oregon joining us right here and now on this post paper view Monday to talk about what transpired

Saturday in Abu Dhabi hello Chale how are you what's happening in Arrow by the way I did not get the reference going back to the Shamrock thing I was corrected though

the kids on social media corrected it it wasn't a heel hook but i do get your joke and had i got it i would not have responded i do no it it was a w w f kent shamrock reference you know like yeah but that's not a heel hook that was called the ankle lock okay i mean it's like stick with me here chale i mean come on like we have to get we were splitting hair yeah yeah the whole argument was the splitting of hairs which is sure sure sure it just feels like i'm doing great it feels like walter is now a pro wrestler in that we know he has a finishing maneuver and you try to stop it. And if he hits it on you like Jake the Snake, Syracin, 1987 with the DDT, it's lights out. It's kind of fun.

It's a fun gimmick. You don't see that often. Shocking. It really is shocking. The heel look, you don't see it very often, but there is a very quick, very basic defense where you just roll. The problem in the cage is if you roll and then you run into the fence, but his opponent had so much mat. It seemed as though maybe a panic had set in. And a heel look isn't very panicking position. It can tear out your ACL and it's not really worth it. But he didn't really attempt the roll. By the way, can I just say you look fantastic? The belt buckle is so nice. The sweater is great. Your shape is great. Is this a Brittany selection or did you pick this one out? No, Ms. Brittany puts the clothes out every morning. Every morning, including the weekends. I come

from the shower and the clothes are out. But I do appreciate that compliment. And on the belt. Yeah. My father was a real cowboy. And if anybody wore a belt buckle that they did not win at a rodeo. My father teased that person. Now, I do want to disclose for your viewers that are real cowboys. I did not win this, but I was given it as a gift. And I thought that counted. So I was all that I needed for permission socially to wear the belt. Thank you for noticing. Was it a gift from a cowboy? No, I played myself. I played Chale Son and I was a commentator in a movie called Westbrook, a wrestler's movie. And it's actually about to get released on DVD. And this was part of the wardrobe. So when the filming day was over, the director came up, patted me on the back, said,

keep the bell. Wow. Okay, that was the gift. All right. If you would have just left that as a gift, it felt a lot more special than you keeping one of the set props. But nevertheless, Chill, I'm very fired up today because I did happen to see you and Anthony on the desk on Saturday talking about the Tom Aspinall fight against Surreal Gun. And I feel like we're coming from two different, you know, POVs. And that excites me. I'm very excited to talk. about this, because I'll quickly bring you up to speed and then I want to hear it, but I'm assuming you didn't hear my opening hour rant. Tom Aspinall, in my opinion, should have won that fight via DQ. He was hit with multiple illegal shots to the face, multiple eye pokes, and the reason

why he didn't win that fight via DQ is because the referee determined that those weren't intentional. Because it's unintentional to no contest, which is fine, it's semantics because Tom keeps the belt either way, but my point is, if we would start to penalize fighters for illegal fouls the first time they occur, the first time they happen in the cage, not the third time, not after multiple warnings, you would stop seeing them, A, and B, if fighters would get decued if your opponent who was hit with the illegal foul, can't continue, you would stop seeing those types of moves in the cage. That's my general feeling. I also am very upset that it seems as though Tom is being labeled a coward, a quitter, heartless, gutless, because he had a bloody nose,

and because he was maybe about to lose the first round, people are saying that he wanted a way out, and I don't think that's fair to Tom Aspinall. What do you think? Okay. I love everything you just said, and let me let this breathe for a minute. Okay. I am mad. I am mad as a fan that we got shorted, but I got to tell you, I don't know where that negative energy gets pointed towards. Tom did nothing wrong. Surreal caused the action. And I also find myself looking at the referee. I also feel that the no contest is a cop-out. However, I do believe that referee did a great job.

But just to speak on it without having to hedge and sound like a nice guy. We'd only have two rules in the sport. You don't bite the guy and you don't pylk the son of a bitch in his eye. That's the only rules that we have that can tie back to 1993. And when one of those is violated, I am like you. There is not room for this discussion. there is not room for incidental and accidental, particularly when it was a double. Let me take you back to the night that Giuliana Pena fought Kayla Harrison, and it was right off the back, Kayla got on top.

Juliana is down, and Juliana not only throws one kick, she throws a kick, and then she throws the other foot. She double taps her, she double violates. Now, in that situation, any referee, right, first part of the fight, the reigning champion of the world, any referee would have given that a warning. That referee took a point, brought her up, called time, took a point, signaled it to all the judges, because it was twice. There was no wait for him to say it was an accident, even though it did look like a reaction. It was twice.

And I only bring that to you, that's what happened was Surreal. Surreal did not just poke Tom. He poked Tom twice. And now we don't get resolution. And now Surreal, who did a bad act, has another world title fight to look forward to because there was no resolution. And I do agree with you. the no contest is a cop out make a call was this allowed or not if it was allowed we have a tk o against tom

if it's not allowed we have a disqualification in this case against surreal that part i do strongly agree with you about okay so it actually seems like we agree more than disagree why did it seem like and perhaps i misunderstood why did it seem like on the post show on saturday on ESPN that your stance was hey tom the going gets tough sometimes you know saddle up and let's go you should be fighting you're the champion yeah i appreciate that and when i saw the clip i thought that too and anthony and i even kind of went back and forth and it just it didn't represent the tone that anthony and i had and maybe that was because of the context that led into the clip so let me just back you what we're discussing the idea of the unintentional

foul i'm going to take it i'm going to take five minutes we're going to get a break i'm not making a decision here the athlete now gets to participate in this group thought but the idea behind that was for injuries. If you have something happened that injures you, Kevin Holland, as recently as a week ago, never should have got up from that nutshot. That changed him. He was not the same guy. He sustained a brief injury. That's the intent. And we were based on what Tom said. And of course, we show him grace, and these were not his most eloquent words. But for what we had at that time, Tom had said, I was poked in the eye and I can't see. As opposed to I was poked in the eye, I am in dire pain. Something's wrong. I've got to get to the back. I got to get to a doctor.

I'd like to see my children someday, it wasn't one of those. And so what Anthony and I were speaking to is in the fight, one guy's trying to stop your breathing by breaking your nose. You've got to learn to push through that. One guy is trying to swell up your eye or cause some blood to get in there to affect your vision. You got to push through that. That was the tone that we were speaking of, not that actual moment with Tom.

And we did not think neither of us. I'll speak for Anthony, but we did not think that Tom found a way out or was ducking out. There is a rule. Most fighters aren't aware of it. Most fighters are very confused in that moment with what to do. And the referee and the doctors are not allowed to smarten you up to say, if you don't continue, you keep your belt and you're going to get a rematch and you remain champion. The fighter just has to know in that moment. And I think that Tom was smart enough to know that rule.

I think that Tom used that rule. But I don't be grudge Tom for that at all. And so now this has led to this big debate. And by the way, thank you. And this is a great lesson for a lot of people because someone will clip off 60 seconds, 90 seconds of. a larger discussion, and now you and Anthony, at least as far as the Aspinalls and Aspinall's fan base are concerned, are the bad guys, are the assholes, are the schmucks, hey, why are you hating when there was a whole bunch of context missing there? So thank you for clearing that

up. This has now led to a whole debate. We played a bunch of people's takes on it. Jim Miller has come out, Sean O'Malley, DJ's talking about it, Josh Barnett, John Kavanaugh. Everyone's weighing in on the eyepokes, on the gloves and all this stuff. Do you subscribe to the theory like, hey, shit happens and it's just a part of the game? Do you subscribe to the theory that this should be changed? It's the gloves fault or is it just the Jim Miller approach who basically has said

I don't know if you saw his clips and he'll be on the show later to expand on it. Hey, it's not the gloves. It's the fighters, dummy. I've been in the octagon longer than anyone. I've never poked someone in the eye. Just close your freaking hands. Where do you fall on this? I love when Jim said that and he was using some potty mouth. I think that's how he described himself and put a warning up before he put the clip out that he cut a promo, but he wasn't wrong about anything.

Errol, I don't get it either. I did the sport professionally for 22 years, but I had a couple of amateur years in there, and then I grew up as an amateur wrestler since I was nine. So, I mean, I did 35, 36 years in the sport. I've never poked anybody in practice or in the cage. I can't even really imagine doing it. They're my fingers. I'm in charge of them.

Demetris Johnson weighed in on a similar thought, but DeMiches said a lot of times when you're doing good technique, technique, the way a coach shows you, particularly in mooie tie, your hands are open and they're pushing. You're often reaching out here as you're throwing a kick down below. So what do you do with that? What do you do with a guy like Surreal who is just doing the technique the way it was taught to him, but then a finger goes in the eye? And one answer to that is a glove change.

I've worn gloves before that have, they curve and they have no ability for you to poke somebody in the eye. It seems like that would be an easy switch. But we could also just defer to something else you said earlier, which is let it go as is, but the punishment is going to be stronger. Right now, guys are not incentivized to follow the rule or to not poke a guy. I mean, let's really look at surreal. Who is the one that caused this whole thing, but nobody's mad at him for some reason, including me. I'm not mad at him either. But let's look at surreal. He gets out of the match. He gets the same paycheck. He's guaranteed his

next fight as a world title fight. Oh, and by the way, he guaranteed himself a new main event. Like, there really was no incentive to make sure you keep your hands to yourself. You know, I feel very funny about questioning a fighter when they talk about technique, especially someone of the stature and caliber of Demetrius Johnson, but I vehemently disagree with his stance. And here's why. He's talking about technique in Muay. This isn't Muay.

This is an MTA. In Muay, you have closed fist gloves, number one. So you can do that. You can afford to do that, even though you're not. Here's the thing. In wrestling, so like let's say that we're going to treat everything the same. Well, in wrestling, as you know, when you're an orthodox wrestler, which foot is going forward? Which foot is forward?

It's the right foot, right? If you're a south paw wrestler, it's the left foot. In boxing, if you're an orthodox boxer, it's the left foot forward. So what I'm saying is to try to apply the same things because in one form of martial art, it's that way. doesn't mean that it should be applied in MMA. In a wrestling match, can you elbow someone? No, but you can elbow them in an MMA fight if you're on the ground after taking them down. So for DJ to be like, hey, eye pokes are never going to go away because when I throw a punch

or when I like kick someone or when I'm gauging distance, I have to put my hand out like that. That's hogwash. You have to adapt to the equipment that you're using and to the rule set that you're fighting under. And in MMA, you shouldn't be allowed to do this or this. And the fact that we continue to allow fighters to do this is crazy to me. If you want to gauge distance, if you want to do that, close your fists or at least keep them like that. Why is that so hard? Why is that such a thing?

No, that's a strong argument. If I defer back to amateur wrestling, I watch a lot of grappling now, whether it's Polaris, Abu Dhabi, Craig Jones' invitational UFC, in fairness, yeah, they don't ever make fists. Their hands are always open. They're always reaching, and they never once put it in the guy's eye. I do think there should be something stiffer. There seems to be nothing. Even me, I am more inclined here to look at Tom's actions as opposed to surreal. And surreal is the one that did this.

And the one poke versus the two, some people might dismiss that as not a strong argument. It's why I attempted to bring the comparison to when Juliana did it in recent memory. But there is something to that. He not only did it, he did it twice. It wasn't only bad. It was bad times two. I do feel that just pausing the action, bringing a doctor, if it changes Tom at all for the negative, something outside the rules, damaged Tom for a contest. There is good reason that we

stop. I just think there should be a disqualification. I feel that we should have resolution. I don't feel that the guy that broke one of our two inherent rules, don't bite the guy and don't poke him in the eyes, should be going into a world title fight, should be going into a main event, should be going into a 70-figure payday, should be going towards getting closer to his dreams and goals. Wanted it to be interesting if Tom came out and said, no, I'm not going rematch him. He's a cheater. Why would I rematch a guy that already cheated that violated not one of my eyes, but both? I gave him his chance he chose to cheat and I'm going to move on. If Tom took that stance, which he's not going to do, I'm sick, but for fun, I think he'd have a lot

of people that supported him. For some reason, surreal has come out of this thing with his hands clean. He's the one that did the poking. Did you happen to notice at around a minute and 49 seconds of the first round, Tom shoots for a takedown. It's the first time in his UFC career that he's had an unsuccessful take-down attempt, and he gets stuffed, and then he backs off. Did you happen to notice that the hands went into the eye that time, too? It actually happened. Yes. Go back and look.

We even have a picture of it. It's a little fuzzy because we can't show the footage here. We're not a UFC broadcast partner. But that's the takedown attempt, and as you can kind of see, the fingers are going into the eye. Do you see that? Is that good technique? I do now. No.

No, you're right. And Tom had alluded to this. Tom said, man, he poked me several times. This wasn't the first time. Tom had said that now I know what it was he was referencing. But yeah, I really do think, you know, we got this, this eye poke pandemic, which I'll just tell you, as a lifelong wrestler. I've seen it before for sure, but not very often. And then we've got the weight missing, right?

We got this thing where guys get called to weigh in, which is half of their job. They literally get half their check just away. People don't know what show means. They think show means you step in the octagon. Show legally defined as you weigh. in. Half of your job they fail at three times a year. We don't have that in wrestling. People never miss weight, and the solution is there. The solution is that you weigh them in just before the competition, just like the NCAA switch to in 1998. I only tell you this because I don't like

meeting about meeting and I don't like talking about talking. I get asked to come to these things all the time to talk, but it's just a show. The solution is there on weighings. Way them in right before the competition. Nobody's cutting weight anymore, just like in wrestling. Same thing with the eye poke. If there was some kind of a punishment, but even if we're looking at this situation, the repercussion is your night is over with absolutely full pay. You're guaranteed the exact same big event and title fight in the future for equal pay. Why why don't you poke the guy in the eye? Here are three things that I'd love to see the Andy Foster of the world get behind and change immediately because we have seen him do this. He's the head of the rules committee. He changed

the 12 to 6 and all that, right? Here are three things. And I'd love to get your stance. any foul, any foul, any illegal shot inflicted in the cage, immediate point deduction. The warning is in the back. You poke someone in the eye and they can continue, it's a point deduction. You nail someone below the belt and they can continue. It's a point deduction. You grab the fence during a takedown attempt and they can continue. It's a point deduction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

If they can't continue, just like Saturday, you lose via DQ, meaning the person who inflicted the illegal shot loses via DQ. And the reason why it's an automatic DQ is because I would like to see them get rid of this whole intentional, unintentional nonsense. How do we know it's intentional? You never know. And the point is, who is intentionally trying to poke anyone in the eye? More likely than not, they're not, they just have maybe bad technique or they're doing something that's a little bit sloppy. And so that's why ultimately Tom didn't win via DQ and he won via no contest. Now, it didn't matter because he retains the belt either way. But Pior Yan lost his belt because it was deemed an intentional foul. Well, who the hell is able

to gauge that? You're not in their mind. I think it should be foul, point deduction, can't continue, DQ, end of story, you lose the fight. Enough of this stuff. Like we saw this last week with Mike Malad and Kevin Holland. Dan Miguel said, no, no, it wasn't intentional, so no point deduction on Mike Malad for the

multiple shots below the belt. Kevin Holland couldn't even stand up. Do you know what I mean? It's very frustrating to have these referees playing this game. Even Jason Herzog on Saturday was talking too surreal saying, hey, man, I know it wasn't intentional, but it's still foul, which would suggest to me that he was going to take away a point if the fight would have resumed. If you were going to

take away a point, why shouldn't that be a DQ? That should be a DQ. I like that a lot, and I think that your argument would get over pretty quickly with the Andy Foster's of the world. If you just separated the two, whether it's intentional or not, if there's a break in the action, a point is coming away. That represents your warning, and the next time it's a DQ. I think maybe if you merge them together, it's a little bit strong for the commission's taste, but I like what you're saying. I like what you're saying a lot. And I don't get it. Hey, man, I know it wasn't intentional. I don't get it. Are we responsible professionals or not? Are we responsible for our actions or not? The whole world is changing. When I was a kid, the gold standard for reality is what

happened. So in this case, it would be I poked him in the eye. Now the gold standard is not what happened. It's how did it make you feel, right? It's emotion. Something doesn't have to happen. It just has to evoke an emotion. And I think that that's a very strange thing. I fully agree with you on this. And by the way, I don't know that an immediate rematch is what the appropriate thing is. I get that's the direction that we're going. I'm just suggesting for you, I don't know that that's the right move. One guy broke the rules. Breaking out those rules cost the match. It would seem as though it would seem as though something stronger, even if I don't quite have the words. And I know we're not doing that, but I think that you're right that perhaps in the

future we should. Okay, so what would you do? If you were in charge, if you had the pen, what are you doing? Because I haven't even thought of that. Oh, you would. You've got to rematch it. Yeah, you just have to rematch them. Not to mention the players are off the board. You know, the big loser in this whole thing, and we've never discussed it, is Volkov.

Yeah. Volkov, I believe, beat surreal in their last fight and lost a decision. The UFC largely felt that too, but had to pay respect to the integrity of the sport. I believe they put Volkov on this card as a quiet alternate. If anything would have happened in the main event, there is Volkov and he's ready to go. They did everything they could to make sure that Almeida Volkov was known to be recognized as the number one contenders match. And that seems to be the one that really just got pushed away. I think the fans that want to say Pierre and Jones probably got a step closer to seeing Pierre and Jones.

Now that Tom and Aspinall are both off the board and going to do it again, what you do with Volkov, that's probably the hardest, or the hardest question to answer in this whole thing is what's next for that young man. But honestly, and you're 100% right. Isn't this a gift from the MMA gods for Dana White in the UFC? You were staring at Aspinall versus Volkov 2. Let's be honest. I think the judge has got a right. Volkov won that fight, but it wasn't exactly one to write home about. And now instead, you're staring at Aspinol versus Gond 2 in which the narrative is

Aspinall wanted out, gone bloodied his nose. He was beating him from pillar to post. And Aspidol quit and there's an illegal poke and all this stuff. Like that rematch is going to be gigantic. Put that at the O2 in London and it sells out in five. seconds. So I was kind of surprised, Chale, by Dana's demeanor in the post-fight press coverage. He said it was a pain in the ass. He seemed so apathetic to it all. I was surprised. You could easily turn this around, A, defend Tom. B, say, hey, I know Cyril didn't do it on purpose,

but we're going to run it back because there's just too much inconclusivity, whatever the word is. It's inconclusive. You get what I'm saying? And let's have a massive title rematch in 2026 on Paramount Plus, baby. Did you hear what he said? Did you hear what he said? Yes. Chelle, please. This is Tom Aspinall.

This is a guy who fought Sergei Pavlovich at Madison Square Garden on 10 days notice to save your card when John Jones couldn't fight. This is a guy who was the backup fighter for Jones-Stepe. This is a guy who's been sitting around for 15 months because John was, I don't know, doing whatever and not wanting to fight him. Here's what Dana White said. Let me play this for you real quickly when he was asked about Tom. and surreal too about the main event coming into this fight between the two of them

cyril was the the underdog and tom the most popular with the few things we've seen into this fight i feel like serial was doing pretty well do you feel the same and do you feel so that people would care even more when you make this fight again and the odds would be more equivalent yes yes i agree i think that i said earlier because of the john jones fight I think everybody was sleeping on Cyril Gahn and sort of rode him off. And he's right behind me. He's coming in next, so you guys can ask him how he felt. But I feel like, you know, I'm sure in his camp, he was training like a animal for this fight.

And it's unfortunate that it ended the way that it did. And yes, I think that there probably will be a lot more interest in the rematch after they saw, you know. I mean, he had Tom bloodied up. And, you know. Tom didn't want to continue in the fight. So the rematch is very interesting. Is that fair, Chale? Tom didn't want to continue.

Is that fair? Yeah, yes, it is. And that comes off, by the way. Why? How's that fair? All right, if I could just go in order because I love that question. But one thing about this,

is we did see two and a half minutes of fighting. And Tom was a three and a half to one favorite at one point. I think when the fight went off, he was officially a three to one. It won't be like that next time. there's, if there was a mythical line that was coming out as early as today, there's a chance that Surreal is the favorite. I mean, we did as fans see something, which is, these guys are a lot closer and a lot more competitive. Stopping that takedown was a really big deal. Tom threw some

bombs at Surreal, the same kind of power and the same kind of shots that put six other men down, but surreal with that kickboxing experience, boy, he was able to just catch him and just roll and fire back. It really was turning into a very nice tussle. But I know, I know what you're saying, Because it sounds like you're kicking Tom, right? And we don't kick a guy when he's down. Tom did nothing wrong. We do understand that. But with Dana says that it was Tom's choice, that's what the rule says.

The rule says it goes to the fighter. The doctor comes in and the doctor clears it. It's now on the fighter. And that is accurate. Tom did not want to go on. What did you make of the fight up to that point? And by the way, for the record, four minutes and 35 seconds. So we saw four and a half minutes.

I thought that Cyril was on route to winning the first round. He was a lot more aggressive and fighting a lot better than I think a lot of people expected. What did you make of what we saw in those four and a half minutes? Yeah, it was great. I mean, Tom was stepping into the fire. One thing about Tom, that young man, he does believe in himself to step into that range where all you got to do is reach out to touch somebody.

I mean, so many people go in there with elite strikers. Anderson Silva comes to mind for my own career where guys, they wouldn't step quite into that fire. They were so dangerous, Anderson would touch him and put him down. Tom Aspinall jumped right in there. Surreal's got like 29 professional kickboxing matches or even. it's 29 wins in professional kickboxing. That's a scary place to be at with that guy.

And Tom tried to take down one time, but I felt like that was more just to offer to threat, to let Surreal know, hey, I can do this if I want to. And then Tom went right back to fist of cuffs. Tom hit a couple of spinning techniques, which showed a level of being dynamic that he hadn't shown before. But ultimately, yeah, they were in Surreal's wheelhouse. Surreal was getting comfortable. Surreal was respecting the power, but he was staying in there and throwing back himself.

He was doing a lot with leg kicks, pain, you know, making it. an investment pain off a little bit later in the fight, but he really had Tom's respect. Tom was lifting that lead leg and checking them when kicks weren't even coming because he was hesitant that they were. I think they both got a real good gauge of each other. I think they both felt really good. I don't disagree with you. I did think that surreal ever so slight, but I would have, I would have thought that round was going to go towards surreal. And what did you think was going to happen going into the fight? How were you leaning? I picked Tom. I just had one reservation, which is I knew Tom was in a fight that was a lot harder than the world was saying it was going to be.

Tom couldn't go to a press conference and talk about Surreal unless Tom steered the question back to him. Everything Tom got asked about Pereira coming up, is Pierre going to fight Jones? Are you going to fight Jones? Will you be on the White House card regardless? It had nothing to do with Surreal. And Tom's future likely did involve Surreal. If Surreal was to beat Tom, they would have immediately rematched it. These guys would have found each other anyway.

And if this was a long drawn-out battle, the headline today would be how great John Jones was, because he did not have a long drawn-out battle was surreal. They put Tom in a very tough position and all upsets in all sports. Doesn't matter if it's Phelps in the pool or Tiger on the nine. The athlete finds himself in something that is more difficult than they thought it was going to be. And I had that real concern for Tom. You know, if all these people talking eventually seeps in, how is Tom going to do three rounds in? How is he going to do at the 20-minute mark with all those muscles? He can sit and guess, and his corner can guess, but we don't actually know.

We don't know until we see him there. Tom has not had any adversity because he has been so dominant. I like Tom going into that fight. I would pick Tom in the second fight, but I would understand that it's very close. Surreal has the ability to go with him. And Tom's plan B of all just take him down and keep him there, which is what all of the media said that he would do. If he can't strike with him, he'll just take him down and keep him there. I challenged that the whole media tour, Errol.

I said, with what evidence? With what evidence do these people come in and talk about Tom's great wrestling? And the answer is that Michael Bisping allegedly saw him in a practice room one time four years ago and his wrestling looked pretty sharp. Like he has never shown that in the octagon. If he does go fight surreal again, he's going to have to out kickbox surreal, which for those four minutes and 35 seconds, one guy's opinion, I thought surreal was a step ahead, though. Did you chalk any of that up to the fact that Tom had not fought in 15 months?

Do you think that came into play? Meaning if they rebook them and they fight in four months, five months, that will see a different guy because he's more active now? You won't see a meaningly different guy, but that does come back and really hurt people. Two quick examples. But Mike Tyson, when he found himself in the ninth round against Evander Holyfield, he was falling apart. And the reason he was falling apart isn't that he had ring rust, but he hadn't been in the ring very much. Even though he had done four fights before he got to Evander after prison, he hadn't been in the ring very much. Ronda Rousey lost to Holly Holie home and people tell the story that it had to do with that right head kick.

I don't think so. I think it's because those six other girls laid down so quickly against Ronda. She hadn't been in a hard fight. She'd have been in a round two. And I have that same concern with Tom. When you knock out everybody in the first round, all of a sudden three or four years goes by. And Tom has less experience than a guy that made his debut but got all 15 minutes in. So, yes, I do think it's a concern.

I don't know that it's straight up ring rust, but, yeah. Yeah, he hasn't been in the cage very often. And you can only guess how you'll respond later in the fight. You can only guess how you'll respond if you're losing. You'll only guess how you would respond if all of a sudden now you have the use of one eye instead of two. And everybody thinks that they would pass that test with flying colors. But until you get there, it's really just a guess. And by the way, you've worn the UFC gloves.

You wore the Bellator gloves, which were, I think, a little bit more like the pride gloves. There was like a different shape, a little rounder. You've been in other promotions and whatnot. Do you think the UFC gloves are at fault here? Do you think that, you know, there's a picture. We could show it to chill. John Kavanaugh posted a picture. We don't have it?

Okay, there's a picture that John Kavanaugh posted of the Pride gloves and the UFC gloves, and the Pride gloves are completely curved. Anyway, you've tried other gloves. Are the UFC gloves at fault, or do you think that it's just a matter of of being reckless. Well, I wouldn't worded that the glove is at fault, but Dan Henderson used to fight and pride and he would come back. And if I ever put his gloves on, I can tell you, they're just, you couldn't get your finger straight, right? To your point, or Coach Kavanaugh's point, it did curl it down. Boxing, we never see a poke in the eye. Well, there's no fingers to

poke. So could a glove be more helpful? Yes. Is there gloves that would take this out of it where you simply could not poke a guy in the eye? Yes. But the UFC glove doesn't make it just so. Bare knuckle boxing, by example, they had a show over the weekend, too, and they had nobody poked in the eye. And they had no glove helping them. You had a responsible athlete that closes his damn hand. I mean, at some point, to blame it on the gloves, a little bit weird. And it drives Jim Miller crazy, and I'm sure he'll speak to that later. But it's your hand. You know when you're reaching it towards his face. What are you doing with open fingers? And how do you not know where his eye is? I just feel like that punishment is non-existent. And if there's something where there's

not a punishment, then there's not an offense. Right. Like, there is no law or no crime. there's not a punishment to it. So I think that's where we need to look to. We don't need to look to the glove or try to change a glove. We get these glove experts that want to come out and sew and start a business. And I hear this stuff all the time. The athlete poke the guy in the finger. The athlete poked the guy in the eye with his finger, not the glove. In the immediate aftermath, you have Pereira saying, hey, John, let's make heavyweight great again. You have John accepting the challenge. Do you think we see this fight in 2026? And what do you make of this talk? Yes, I do think we see the fight. John is playing this wrong to one degree, which is John is accepting

and then he talks about the White House. He keeps on talking about the White House. John doesn't understand fighters want to fight. John is the only fighter that doesn't want to fight. John is the only fighters, okay, taking three years off to drink some protein shakes, sitting out on a suspension. Now he's sitting out by choice completely, removed himself from the sport, jump back in the pool, can't decide what he wants to do. I'm just saying if John thinks he's going to to find a dance partner in Pierre. And one of the contingencies is that Pierre sits and does nothing while being 38 years old, Pierre is going to sit and do nothing for a year. It's not going to solve the problem. And it's also not going to solve Dana's problem with John and the White House,

which is, show me your earnest. John could get this fight with Pierre. He should be calling it out for February. He should be looking at a date of March and then turn around and do something else at the White House. I would like to stay on Pierre for a moment. Because Pierre has not gone to social media or come to the public with an interview where he has not made it very clear that he's a heavyweight or made it very clear that he wants to be in a heavyweight. We need to listen at some point. If we're not getting Pierre back to 205, if Old Ridge and some of these guys are sitting around waiting and Pierre has decided he's a heavyweight, let's take the belt back. We need to get on with a division. And Pierre's everything, he said, all points to heavyweight.

Now, Pierre gets a little grace because he's got a broken foot and he can't fight anyway. But I'm just sharing for you, we do need to take a guy at his work. we took Iliate Tepore's off of a phone call that we never even witnessed that happened behind closed doors. We took Islam Machalchev's when he moved up to 205 pounds. I don't know what more Pierre needs to do to let us know that he's no longer

a light heavyweight. I suppose we should ask him that question directly, but he should directly be asked that. And if we need to find two guys to fight for a vacated title, let's do it. So you like this? You like this thing where I like the old days. When BJ Penn fought George St. Pierre

UFC 94, it was championed versus champion? Why do we always have to take away the belt? Well, I'm suggesting that Alex Pierre in this case is not moving up to fight for a belt. Fighting against John wouldn't be a belt. In fact, I think that the slickest thing that could be done here is if John accepts the belt or accepts the fight but says we do it for your belt, I'm coming back to 205. That would solve a lot of problems and make a lot of sense. But why is the guy got to walk away from the belt? It just seems like if you're going to hold up a division and do it John's way, which is wait until almost July of next year,

but the light heavyweights get the belt back. I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too. I don't think you can accept Jones at the White House in June. Oh, by the way, and I'm going to hold on to this 205 pound title, which, by the way, if he beats John Jones, are we then to believe he's going to return to 205? Of course not. We then know that he draws right into the winner of Aspinall and gone.

So if he's no longer a light heavyweight, great. But let's ask him clearly, let's get that answer. If he is a light heavyweight still, great. let's find the number one contender and start lining up the match. Yeah, the timeline is the weird thing, but as you all know, Anderson moved up to 205 as the 185 champion to fight James Irvin, to fight Forrest Griffin, and he kept the belt to fight Stefan Bonner. And so people have moved up, BJ did it.

Like, there's a part of me that wishes Zhang Wei-V versus Valentina next month was champion versus champion. You know what I mean? Islam versus JDM was champion versus champion. I don't love it. And especially as we're moving into the Paramount era where, you know, you don't have to sell pay-per-views anymore, you don't need a champion at the top of the numbered event. You don't have to take away the belt so quickly, in my opinion. You know what I mean?

Sometimes it's kind of nice to have a champion versus champion for the promotional shot. It just feels a little bit more prestigious. By the way, are you running for governor or not? What's happening now? Have you made a determination? No, no, but I am going to very quickly. I mean, I have no choice. My answer has it changed. I shared with you that it largely has to do with what happens in the team of ESPN and how's that relate to Paramount. But I'm in that same, that same paradigm. And I spoke to Dana a couple of times, and I'll get clarity. I would be happy to tell you an answer to that, but I'm in the same limbo.

I'm still waiting. I have a big speech coming up, though. I'm a big speech at something called the Reagan dinner. November 1st with one of my all-time favorite New York Knickabockers and Portland Trailblazer, the great Chris Dudley of Princeton fame. You're hanging out with Chris Dudley? I love Chris Dudley. What is this Reagan dinner?

Through rumor, through rumor, but he's going to announce at that dinner that he's going to run. He ran before, by the way, he did a great job. It's a real uphill battle in Oregon. But Chris Dudley really did a good job. And when he left the first time, I had a feeling we'll be seeing him again. Now, I don't know what he's going to announce. I don't, but rumor is that he's going to throw his hat in the ring. Wait a second.

So would you be competing against Chris? If I got in, yes, Chris and I would be on the same side in the primary. Oh, my dear. Yes, there's a wonderful gal named Danielle Bethel. She's wonderful. And then one of my favorite politicians is named Christina Dresen, like just overall everything. Another gal that I really like. I enjoy them all, Ariel, and I will be a gentleman.

The day will come when I will stab all of them in the back. But that day will not be at the Reagan dinner. Wow. That's November 1st. One on 1, 2 on 1 or 5 on 1, Ariel. Eventually, they'll all need 9-1-1. But again, not at the Reagan dinner. That's the Saturday.

Yeah. November 1st. That's the Saturday. Yeah. So does that mean on Saturday you announce whether you're in or out? I would love to be able to announce it by then, but in the position I'm in, and with some of the rules that come with working for a network, no, I will not be announcing to that. Okay. Is there a deadline? Yes, but we have all the way until early next year.

Okay, okay. You don't want to meet, you don't meet the deadline, though. You got to get started. There's a reason that people are announcing it, and Dudley's about to do it, and Christina just did, and Bethel's on board. And yeah, you, you want to get started. I don't like the delay. I work on it every day. Every day I get a little something more and more organized. Like what? If that reveal comes.

Do you have a chief of staff? Do you have a comms director? Like, how's the team looking? And why have a dive-in-ass? Rennie Muzzy is heading things up right now for me. But it's the same spot. I'm trying to answer your question while I'm trying to kind of play this a little bit close. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. But, yes, I have very good people working behind me. We have very good finances working behind us. I will, okay, I'm being humble. I will walk through this thing so incredibly easily. Yes. I will walk through this thing so incredibly fast like a knife through butter. But then they will find out there's different ways to campaign.

There's different ways. I see them doing it right now. First off, they talk about the opponent nonstop. Never talk about your opponent. Never even say the word, your opponent's name. Starting, number one, which they'll never get their head around. And then two, stay away from any tough issue. We got to get the ones in the middle.

Well, yeah, unless you have talent. If you have talent, you'll get the ones to the middle and you'll pull them to your side. You're only in the middle because they haven't been smartened up yet on the issues. Everybody has a feeling one way or the other unless they haven't been spoke to yet. So if you're any good at it, go get them and bring them with you. And I can assure you that's not the way the others will play. They will come out and they'll be nice guys. And there are nice guys.

There's those that want to hear your concerns. I don't want to hear your concerns. If I want your opinion, I will beat it out of you. I've already got it figured out. You want to go be a leader? Do it somewhere else. You want the one seat and the one chair, be a boss. Come in and already have it decided.

I'm going to move to Oregon just so I can vote for you. Ariel. You don't need my head. I will slice through this. All right, fine, fine, fine. I just want to let you know. I got your back. By the way.

No, I appreciate it. It's very sweet. I appreciate it. But, you know, you try to like be a humble. Yeah. competition, try to be humble. Ariel. They've already started.

Hey, Oregon, I'm going to listen to you. You're going to listen to you. There's plenty of offices to run for. I'm looking to be a boss. You want to fly the one that soars with the Eagles? I believe it goes to the one that can slither with the snakes. You think that chair goes to the best and brightest? I believe it goes to the dirtiest player in the game.

And Ariel, I am that player. Oh, yes. By the way, by the way, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. October 27th, 2007, 18 years ago today. Do you know what you were doing? That's what you were doing. You were defeating K.C.U. Scola by T.K.O.

And then you had this great sign challenging Frank Shamrock in a fight that never happened. At that time, though, that was like, that was guerrilla marketing. At that time that I had that, I mean, that was like unspoken of, oh, my gosh, he's not being disrespectful. I can't believe he did it. Yeah. We lived in a very gruesome and tough sport. band in 48 states, that was extremely G-rated.

Like, I mean, you could hurt somebody's feelings really easily back then. It was a great moment, by the way, and I loved back then because it was Barone and Shamrock. They had like a guerrilla marketing beef. Do you remember that on YouTube? When no one was using YouTube, Barone was cutting promos, and then Shamrock was responding

to him on YouTube. You went on to Greener Pastures in WC and UFC after that, but I thought it was nice that it happened exactly 18 years ago today. There's a lot of nice cities being thrown around here. This is a totally different interview than I was expecting because I thought your stance would have been, you know, Tom Aspinall quit, although it does appear as though we disagree on what transpired in the boxing on Saturday, because I said that it was an absolute travesty that it was absurd that

Joseph Parker had his fight against Fabio Wardley stop. And then you quote tweeted my take saying 40 unanswered shots. Here's the proof. 40 unanswered punches when I said it was an absurd stoppage. Could we go to the slow motion footage guys for a second and show Chale what, in fact, he's missing? Chale, look how many times. People watching in fast motion, but are you saying that they missed. Some of these shots are.

A lot of them miss. Chale, a lot of these shots are missing. Yeah, I hear you, but the firing back is still. Missing, missing, missing. Now he's making some of them. He's hitting some of them. The final blow, Chale, the final blow which leads to the stoppage is a complete whiff. A right-hand whiff.

Another one there. Look at this. Here it is. Watch this. Watch this right here. Watch the right. Look at that. Whiff.

Look at that whiff. Look at that whiff. Come on. I'll admit. I thought those landed. I did not see. I will admit, when I made that comment, I thought that those landed. Yeah.

Yeah, perhaps that does change things. That was a very good clue for you, Erawani. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Wait for you. I'm pretty good, right? I mean, for a guy who's never fought, I kind of know my stuff. You called that one right.

You called that one right for sure. I appreciate that. That's very nice of you. Thank you. See, again, I feel like, this is another example. You talk it out, you show some evidence, and you're actually on the same side of the equation. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. I feel like you've been trying to get rid of me for a few minutes. I'm giving you the opportunity. Are you bringing someone else in? No. I actually

have a little bit more time, but do you want to leave? Am I in studio? Am I joining you in a week or so? The week of New York, Madison Square Garden, the Monday, you'll be joining us in studio. Yes. I'm looking forward to that. We'll save the other topics. I'll take my cue that you want to leave. Do you have other things to do? You have YouTube shows. Do you have interviews?

You know, if we're done here, if we're done here, thank you for having me on. I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Okay, all right. That's it. I'm good. Oh, by the way, final thing, I knew there was one thing. Thank you. Thank you.

You wrote a nice comment regarding our BKFC documentary. Here's the proof, unless that was someone else writing on your behalf. This was very nice of you and it meant a lot. That was awesome. You're very welcome. I'll be in touch. Okay. Thank you.

And please tell Derek Moneyberg. I say hello as well if you speak to him. Goodbye, turkey. There he is. The great Chale's son and kind enough to join us on this Monday. I think he wanted to leave, guys. I think he wanted to leave. A little bit.

Yeah. I think you want, why do you think you want to leave? I don't know why. Maybe he thought in his mind, this is how long you're going for, but this is it. He's never really done that. You think he had somewhere to go at three? Yeah, three o'clock, I guess, noon Oregon time. Twelve Pacific? Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe campaign stop? Maybe. Maybe. That's right. Or he's got some speeches to write. He's got the Reagan dinner coming up. In about 50 minutes time, guys, we're going to be joined by the Big Oos himself,

the man that we were just talking about Joseph Parker on this post-paper-view Monday. After that, we'll be joined by Jim Miller to talk more about these eyepokes and gloves. I was expecting a real contentious chat there with Chelle, and it was all lovy-dovey. And then we'll round out the day with the brand-new UFC women's strawweight champion, the one and only McKenzie Dern. Some other news and notes that we can talk about. at this time. You know, last week we were talking to Bo Nickel about, hey, you know, early prelims, humbling yourself, all that and more. Well, it appears as though the UFC isn't paying attention

to any of that because it was announced on Saturday that he is, in fact, on the UFC 322 pay-per-view main card. And the fight that we thought was going to be on the main card, BSD versus Binald-D-Dar-Dar-Dish is the feature prelim, and here's Bo-Nickel weighing in. Main card, UFC 32, Maybe I have hundreds of thousands of grassroots American wrestling fans, or maybe it's just rage bait. Either way, I can't wait to fight. G.C., what do you think of this? Good move, bad move? I don't know. I didn't mind them on the prelims for this one. It's such a stacked card.

I don't hate it. By the way, we've talked about this a million times, and it's not going to be an issue in like three months. But if you're a fan of BSD Benile, like if you are personally offended by this, you should be happy that you're now going to get to watch it for free. You know what I mean? Yeah, but they were going to watch it anyway. Sure. But does it really matter? Why do people care about this so much? Is it really that big of a deal?

Everyone's getting paid the same. Is it just a prestige thing? Yeah, it's a prestige thing. Yeah. On a super stacked card, we're getting Bo Neckle versus Adelph of the Air. I think that's a supremely intriguing fight, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I agree.

You don't think that's an intriguing fight? I agree that it's an intriguing fight. I'm excited to see how Boe Nickel bounces back up to the Lost RDR. Which fight do you think has more intrigue surrounding it? it. Man, I guess like intrigu-wise, how Bo-Nickel bounces back is interesting, but the fight that I'm more excited for is BSD-Banio there,

yes. Yeah? Yeah. All right. We're also talking about ranked lightweight, too. No, I know, but I think that there's a great story to be told about how this guy who we had such high hopes for, how he's going to rebound from his first professional loss, his first setback. It's kind of like the Tom Aspinall story, too. Like, how is he going to respond?

Like, to me, a rebound is always, very interesting. BSD and Benile are well on their way. They're in fine form right now. Two incredible fights. Like you can really, you can do no wrong. Both great options, but I don't know. I thought... Rick was pissed that as

in Tracy Cortez, Aaron Blanchfield on the main car. He was hoping for that? Yeah. Oh. I wish it was true, but I can't be fucking bothered about card order. I think it's the stupidest thing in history. But you know, like... You want that you want Islam-Machishv JDM to be third on the

prelims? If it was... Hard order doesn't matter? fucking fantastic. I'm done after three fights. I'm out. It's perfect. By the way, WW does this all the time. They'll put like a main event match first and some people actually love it. I do. Look, I understand they don't do it in boxing.

I understand you crescendoing with the big event. I understand that. But like when we're getting into, should this be four or six, like I honestly cannot be bothered to care. Well, I don't think it's four or six. I think it's prelim versus main card, you know? I know, but that's four or six, right? That's the second fight of the main card or

is it the second fight before the last one on the prelims? Who gives a shit? Who truly, like, I know a lot of people give a shit, but they shouldn't. And I noticed no clamoring for Phil Roe Siokion Coe not being on the main card of UFC Apex 110 this week. Oh, that's a big one.

That is a big one. In other interesting news, guys, it appears, according to Neil Magne's team, this is according to Jared McCluskey, one of his coaches, that the appeal filed by team Jake Matthews, has been denied. Dear Mr. McCluskey, following the review of Jake Matthews versus Neil Magny,

the bout held at the UFC Fight Night event on the 28th of September, 2025. I can confirm the referee's decision will remain as final in accordance with the unified rules of MMA and under Western Australia's Combat Sports Commission. The referee's decision will remain final. Neil Magne's win is confirmed. So there you have it. That's a disaster. The collab post as well. Who's it with? Oh, with Neil? Neil Magnet and Jared McCluskey. Why is that big? I don't know.

You like that? I mean, they're on the same team. Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't familiar with Jared McCluskey. Oh, okay. I thought that was the referee making this thing. No, no, he's the coach. He's the coach.

My apologies to Jared McCluskey. We're fighting. I truly believe that sometimes we're fighting the wrong battles in MMA. This is way more insidious than anything that's happening in the Tom Aspinol, Cyril Gahn, or anything else that happened on Saturday. Or the thing that happened last week with Murgliata, Kyle Nelson, and Fribola, right? That is the truly bad stuff in MMA. Like, you know, you and I had a pretty passionate debate.

Like, should it be a no contest? Should it be a DQ? Ultimately, that part of it is way less insidious than the idea that Jake Matthews, who won that fight, is walking away with a loss. And the commission was just basically like, yeah, no, the referee called it and it's good. But unsurprising. It's bullshit. Like, I actually would have been surprised if they had to. turned it over. It's on tape.

They never do. They never do. They don't want to go against their referees. This is worse. This is more insidious. This is the wrong call and this is bullshit. Well, you know what's interesting about it? It's like, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not. There are some people who I feel like they immediately go. Yeah. First thought conspiracy. There's something amiss. Perfect example. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Frank.

Like, let's go to Reddit and let's see what everyone's saying. But I do have to admit, maybe sometimes I kind of feel like I'm too naive. And you see what happened in the NBA last week. Maybe shit's happening here. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, people are sharing. To be clear, we're not talking about this specific example, but what you're saying is there are things that happen in this sport all the time that could lead one to thing.

Could you not surmise that in that Kyle Nelson fight that perhaps someone, had the over, and they're like, nah, I'm not letting this go. I'm going to do just enough to stop it, but I'm not letting, hey, let's go. Like, it's actually not that crazy. If it's happening in the NBA. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if they're making that much money, Terry Rozier, who knows what his career earnings are and he's still doing that. Choncy, Billups, Damon Jones. These guys have legacies and Hall of Fame resumes in the case of... I mean, maybe not Damon Jones. No, no, no, in the case of Chonsie. I mean, he's a freaking NBA head coach. He's a, he's an NBA MVP, a He's an NBA champion.

He's a well-respected guy, former broadcaster. His career could be over, and who knows who else is going to be implicated? The point is, like, and there's an Adam Silver involved. Here, like, who's stopping any sort of nefarious activity from happening? I mean, also, in these leagues, you have to report injuries, whereas here it's just, it's all good. Get hit by a car, fight the next day, whatever. I mean, you know, serious injuries? You know, T.J. Dillishall doesn't have a shoulder.

Yeah, let's send him out there the next day. Derek Minner. I mean, there's endless examples of it. Yeah, I can't point to any specific example other than the Derek Minner fight, but if something nefarious was happening, I would not be shocked. I would not, you wouldn't have to be picking my jaw up off the ground. Boxing has a much longer history, but there have been many, you know, ties to mafia activity and all kinds of other stuff that have come out of it. it would be naive to think that it's never happened right we would be we would be oh it's happened there's no question um but you do have to hope that like there's enough regulation in place that it is not continuing to happen but to your point the NBA is much

more buttoned up on a lot of this stuff and it was happening under their noses as opposed to this sport where I think you know there's still a little bit of the while while west there's a consolidation of power that happens with the UFC being um the the biggest and most and significant organization that runs these events. Like, there's a lot of different ways this could potentially happen. Also, you're right. It's such an international sport. Some of these guys are coming from places that we aren't familiar with that have very

rough upbringings where corruption is the norm in those places. You just, you truly never know. Guys, some big news and breaking news, Frank. Michael Chandler coming back. He'll be back in action quicker than. and you probably thought November 29th, to be exact, Thanksgiving weekend. Oh, wow. Yep.

He is back at the Win Trust Arena going up against former title contender Chad Mendez. And that will be at Real American Freestyle Wrestling number three. In Chicago, what do you guys think? Chandler v. Mendez. Should RAF lean towards these guys? They had an event this past weekend. It was at the Bryce Jordan Center. There wasn't a lot of MMA names on that.

It was just like kind of pure wrestling. Do you think it's smart for them to lean in with a few of these matches to draw us, our community in, that maybe doesn't follow the ins and outs of collegiate amateur freestyle wrestling? Or does this water it down? Should they just stick to the top dogs over in that world? What do you guys think? I think they should double down on the high level amateur wrestlers. Okay.

They have hosted. Don't do these. Two events I've not watched. You can't get, you can't. Even if it's like, are you interested in this? No. This is wrestling. I'm not interested in wrestling.

Oh, interesting. I'm kind of interested in Chandler. I've never seen Chandler wrestler. So maybe there's a portion of MMA fans that can't be drawn in by this. I very rarely watch Pure BJJ as well. Like, I'm just, it's my thing. I'm not particularly interested in it. Maybe, you know, Craig Jones every once in a while, like, if he does the invitation, I'll watch that.

But that's more just because as a promoter, I'm interested in Craig Jones and what he's kind of cooked up, it's not necessarily to watch high-level jujitsu. That's not my bag. I don't think that will work, but we'll see. I mean, we're kind of in the same boat, and you're saying you will, and I'm saying I won't, so at least 50% there. Also, I'm tapped out on subscriptions, and Frankie won't give me his Fox Nation. That's not cool, Frank. I feel like he gave you his ESPN Plus.

Yeah, I did. I did. Yeah, tomato tomato, you know. I think that you can sprinkle one or two of these on a card with, like, six, seven, eight fights, and it's no harm, no foul. But I could also see a hardcore wrestling fan being like, I don't want to see this. Are these legends of the game to that? Like, Michael Chandler isn't accomplished. Well, I guess so my point is kind of agreeing with you guys in that I don't know if enough of me's out there are going to tune in because Chandler is going up against Mendez.

And then are you alienating the hardcore wrestling fans who are saying, just give me the best guys in the world. No, but what I mean, though, is like, those guys might also appreciate Michael Chandler's collegiate career as amateur career. Yeah, Mizoo, you know. And then be like, okay, I still want to say. see that. So I don't know the answer. It could potentially even be a better idea to put Michael Chandler up against one of their guys, one of like the elite wrestlers and just see how he... Like a 25-year-old stud? Maybe not 25. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of think it's cool. I don't know. Someone you can see at the top. Oh, I get that. I get that. I think they're going to have a hard time

with getting the fans to watch amateur wrestling. You know, it is just not, it hasn't taken hold here. It's for wrestlers. People with, who have participated in the sport, I feel. Yeah. It's interesting because I haven't talked to any hardcore wrestling fans, but I wonder if they get turned off by this, so

then you're kind of alienating your actual fan base. I do have some other great news for you guys. And this is like one of the great honors of someone's career. I mean, is there a greater honor than, well, okay, I would say the greatest honor is to be a

mortalized on this set. Vienna, Jesse Jess, King Casey, D.C., all these people. I would say the next great honor that a person can receive is being tattooed on another

human being's body. Is you going to tattoo? No, but Don Davis has been tattooed on some blokes. What is that? Shin, calf, leg? there's Alfie Davis

winning the PFL tournament but there's Big Don right behind him this isn't real right this is a thousand percent real look at that this can't be real I love the fact that they kept Alfi Davis's leg

I have serious issues with that oh my God BITB makes an appearance there I love the fact I love the fact that they kept because they could have easily photoshopped them like why would you include Don Davis in the

back there. How does that work, by the way? Frank, you have tattoos, right? Yes. So how does that work? Do they stencil it? Yes. Okay, so why didn't they just Photoshop Davis? There's two Davises. Don out of the picture and just have Alfie by himself. Look, as a seasoned PFL fan, I'm not going to do shit without Don Davis himself. Do you think the person and maybe, you know, by the way, who is getting the Alfie Davis tattoo to begin with? That is a question that I needed to do quickly. The other question I have is, what if this is just a member of the Davis family, Alfie is a cousin, Don is a distant uncle. There's actually a tie to both. And they said, I'll get Uncle Donnie and I'll get cousin Alfie at the same time. Okay. How do you feel if it's Alfie getting a tattoo of himself winning the belt? bit weird still

bit weird but it's like all right whatever you had an unbelievable accomplishment but like I feel like at that point you get like Alex Pereira like I feel like you don't get yourself and you definitely don't get Don Davis in there with you

Is it possible that it's someone in his family or a good friend and they feel like Don adds to the allure of the moment just like you would have Dana there with the belt this is the boss he's the owner and so of course we have to keep him in because it makes the moment feel that much bigger.

Yeah, do you think that's what they were thinking? I don't know, but I want Don to call in on Thursday and just know what he thinks about this and... Oh yeah, he's probably pissed because you guys didn't do voicemails last week. It's not a... If it's even if it's like your friend, the glaze is crazy.

Like, who's getting this? Do you think it's AI? Is it possible it's AI? No, no, no, it's not AI because who the hell is creating an AI of Althe... For this reason. For this reason. It's actually kind of brilliant. No, no, no. I found. the tattoo artist, I'm trying to find if she tagged the person. Okay, what I'm finding here

is that, unless I'm mistaken, is that this is an Austin, Texas-based? Well, that's even weirder. I thought it would be UK 100%. Okay, wait, no, no, no. Now I've located the tattoo artist. Adam Lee Killsby. There are saundered tattoos on IG. There was also a saundered tattoo who was a woman based in Austin. This guy definitely does. All right, big love. at GRB 3.2. I've found the man. His name is George Beggs. His account is private.

I can't find out anything else about him. But it appears to be George Beggs. Alfie Davis did comment on the tattoo post. He said, my brother with the heart emoji. Okay, so you think he knows this guy. And then GRB3.3 responded and said forever with a heart emoji. Wow. So that could mean two things.

That could mean he's giving a shout out to the guy who made the tattoo on his leg or saying thank you for doing this. Thank you for immortalizing me and my moment on your leg. I think they know each other. What did Don Davis come? Jake Hadley weighing in with a heart emoji as well. Oh, wow, wow. Did Don right as well?

Don has not responded. I think Don's last post is of him and Todd Gurley in a PFL shirt. Oh, yeah, that was a great era. That was a great era. Ray Lewis, Todd Gurley. Who else? Wiz Khalifa was showing up at those. All right, I feel a little bit bad now.

The caption is one of the highest detail pieces of my career and not a better man to do it for. Big love. Okay. That also still suggests that it might be on Alfie's leg. No, no, no, no, no. It's a thousand percent on GRB 3.2. No, I see another comment that says real friends do real things. And our friend, GRB 3.2 responds, you know the drill, heart emojis.

So it seems like they know each other. They're big on the heart emoji. Like, he probably knows Don Davis. One of the all-time great friends, by the way. I mean, like, imagine my friend. you know gets a tattoo of me like winning the MMA journalist award I'd fry them up

when was the last time you saw Rick's back I'd fry him up yeah Rick Petezy show us your back all right what do you got over there no it's a great scene I mean PFL should be all over that

I mean the tattoo is incredibly well yeah we weren't saying the tattoo is bad just for the record no the opposite it's quite good my only question is why keep you know

why keep Dawn in it that's the only question but you know what my my theory is they kept him to to make the moment feel it's great picture as well a lot of emotion you know nice uh nice angle i'm just going to go with it's it's his boy i can't see it without him frank is there any sort of scenario in which you you would get another man like a moment something like that like tattooed on your body yeah who would that be i'd get don davis no seriously seriously is there anyone uh the guy No, would you get the guy from tool?

I would stay away from portraits of any kind. Or words. I think words is usually everyone's like, what does that mean? Oh. So I just do the, yeah. What do you have? A hexagon? Yeah, yeah.

Heptogram. What is that? Seven pointed star. Why? Yeah, you know, it's... I don't think you can say that on here. Why, why? Well, you know.

What does it mean? What knows the story of the seven pointed star? My seven aunts and uncles that perish. Oh. Is this like... like one of those Sergio Pettus things again? Yep. He was talking about the Illuminati

and all that. Is that what it is? No. No? But yes. What are you doing? All right, well, I don't have any tattoos. Do you see you have tattoos? No, no. I've been thinking about getting a sleeve ever since going bald. Friday?

A little snake up the forearm, something on the bicep, into the chest. I can never pull it off but my dream is to have like one of the Samoan type of tech Oh you're going tribal Yeah yeah okay Because I'm an honorary ooze

Joseph Parker himself told me If I did I'm going full sleep for sure Oh my God I would love that Is Parker here by the way No Oh okay We were just saying What

Just letting him float Well I was I was Bringing down Don Davis's tattoo I was hoping that that would be What is Don Davis is the one that got the tattoo Joseph one second We're talking about tattoos I was hoping that would be the perfect setup

for him coming at Oh, and speaking of the man who made me an honor, can we reach out to him? Yes, we have. Oh, okay, all right. There's like an algorithm we follow. Do you want me to reach out to him? He's probably still upset.

He's probably still upset over what transpired. I mean, Lord knows I am. Jim Miller will join us after that, and then McKenzie Dern as well. Let me see, let me see. We have an opportunity to get through some of the other news and notes. Iliate Tuporia weighing in on the anniversary of his victory over, I think it was Max Holloway.

He posted something time passes, but the throne doesn't move. Who deserves the next shot? You know, Dana was asked about the Armand Syruki and Dan Hooker fight, and it being the number one contender, and it felt like he was a lot less definitive than the first time or the last time. Which show was that? Maybe it was Vancouver or something like that, where he said, yep, that's the number one contender fight. I was a little surprised, and I wondered if that was them trying to hedge a little bit, because historically they don't do that these days. They don't name anything in a number one contender fight beforehand. And he was even asked about RDR and

Brendan Allen, and then is Emovob next? He's like, I have no idea. How's that possible? Who else would to be. It has to be Hamzad versus Imov. I don't know. That whole scene. I mean in their defense, it was kind of late. Was it not? I think it was like 2 a.m. by the time the press conference happened.

It was a little bit late. So I don't know. I just thought it was very apathetic on his part. It was very apathetic the whole scene. And it was very different than the scene that we saw back in April of 2010.

Wow, a lot of superchats, Frank. Yeah, why don't we do a couple? Yeah, let's do a couple. All right, look at this one. This one doesn't say anything. It's from El Bon. Thank you, El Bon. Thank you, El Bon.

This one does say something. I can't help but point out that Luke Thomas would be a great addition to uncrowned at any capacity, particularly technicalities analysis. Thank you for pointing that out. I do believe that he is gainfully, employed. He has the Morning Combat Show and his YouTube channel and all that, but yes

he does a great job with all of that. Are you suggesting that we don't? Is that the implication? You know what I would love for some of these? Are there timestamps attach to them? Because sometimes I feel like people send them in in the moment and then we

lose the context. There's kind of time stamps. Something to consider. Yeah. What else, Frankie? What else? Well, this one was at some given time. After watching the replay of Aspinall's left eye

was poked worse than the right. I am confused at how Tom's right, I was damaged more than the left. Oh, this was a lot of fun, seeing people saying like, oh, did you see that he opened his eye? Yeah, of course he was opening his eye. He was trying to see if he could continue.

And who are we to say, this one's better than that, and this one's worse than that? Oh, yeah, and this one time I saw a fight in which this guy got poked and he was able to continue. Like, what? Not all injuries, not all ankle twists,

ankle breaks, leg breaks, arm breaks, arm twists, wrist breaks, wrist sprains, ankle sprains, knee sprains, knee brakes, all that stuff. Not all of them are created equal. And neither are, you know, eye pokes. So it's eye gait, man. Yeah, it is iGate. What else, Frankie? What else? When gone has his fingers closed, he's credited with an intentional punch. When his fingers are open, why is it not counted as an intentional eye poke? Whoa, sorry, let me read that again. When gone has his fingers closed, he's credited with an intentional punch. When his fingers are open, why is it not counted as an intentional eye?

That's a great call, Jim, Coe. It is an interesting question. Yeah, that's a great freaking call. Yeah, I don't have an answer because I think you're right. Rick, do you want to weigh in on that one? Yeah, because one he's trying to punch him, one he's not trying to poke. How do you know? Because his hands like this.

Ah, stop it. He's poking multiple times. What else, Frankie? People forget, man, Cyril gone fowls. He came out hot on that one. Do you want me to read it? I wasn't sure. People forget, man, Cyril gone fowls literally in all his fights.

Eye pokes, going shots, and the back of the head shots. is he known as a as a serial offender in that regard no but is he is he i can't remember is this is this a label that he's had to uh to deal with i don't think so yeah you have the nut shot in the john jones fight yeah i poke so yeah it's the first for everything back of the head shot uh what else frank what else he intentionally framed on the face, which risk and did result in an eye poke. If it was a disqualification, fighters will quickly change to framing on the chest. He intentionally framed on the face with risks and if it was a DQ fighters would probably change to framing on the chest.

Oh, oh, oh. Wait a second. Wait a second. Are people actually agreeing with me here? Is that what's happening? The DJ one is an all-time bad take. I mean, it really is. Oh, you can't. No, there's no way. You have to put your hands on the guy's face. You have to put your fingers like right. You ever see the three stooges? Double eye poke. Back to the other guy saying,

if you're responsible for like this is an intentional punch and this is an unintentional eye poke, I think the implication is you are in control of where your fingers are at all times. 100%. Whether they're close into a fist or they're open up. 100%. What else, Frankie?

What else? The eye poke was a conspiracy orchestrated by Dana similar to the land moonding. Do you think you meant, wait no i think is that a joke so did i read it right no yeah he i think he means to say moon landing but i think he's making a joke yeah it's clever is it a joke it has to be i don't think it was this is a wink of like i'm obviously fucking around but it does bring up like i i alluded to this we do agree the antedelia comment the andy aspinall three more fights than boxing no doubt

irked him right and i feel like that's where the apathy came from Oh, we just crown this guy champion. He just becomes our heavyweight champion. We're pouring all this into him. And now his dad's talking about leaving. He's talking about vacating the title if he has to fight his friend, which is obviously way down the line. It's kind of a crazy question to ask at this point.

There's like three, four, five fights that need to happen before that could even be discussed as a possibility. But I feel like that's where some of that came from. They hate that. I mean, they hate, there's two things they hate. tweet you tweet all the nonsense you want be as offensive you want talk about this guy that guy talk about this dictator this killer this murder say anything you want but don't you don't you dare don't you dare talk about vacating rather than fighting a teammate slash friend and don't

you dare talk about fighting out your contract and go into boxing oh my god is it not true Is it not true that that would piss them off more than saying Hitler was a good guy? Or saying like, you know what? I actually thought Osama bin Laden had good intentions. I think he was just trying to be a nice guy and land some planes. This is getting clipped off. Did you know what? That's right.

Please. Do you understand what I'm saying? 100%. Do you understand what I'm saying? It seems like that pisses them off more. Let me be very clear than if you would say something completely outrageous and offensive like that. Do you think I'm wrong, Frankie? Do you think I'm wrong?

No, I don't. I think you were wrong about what you said a moment ago. No, someone's going to make a... That'll be in the clip. That'll be in the short. Someone's going to make like a dubstep remix of that. What else, Frankie? G.C. stating that Aspinall are gone would only be minus 1,200 versus Hamdi

is the worst take in the history of the internet. Eric cracked with minus 10,000. Please defend yourself, G. I mean, I don't have to defend myself. It's a fight that will never happen. and also, I can guarantee you it would not be minus 10,000. Really?

Minus 10,000, dude, we've seen some major mismatches in the history of this sport. Like, the biggest favorite I've ever seen was like Alexander Romanov versus Chase Sherman, and that was like minus 2,800. You just don't see those in MMA.

Yeah. By the way, what time is it in London right now? Maybe minus 2,000. 828? No, they changed the clocks. What the hell? Clock gate. When did they change the clocks in the U.K.?

Is this you wording out your Google? Sunday October 26th. Why didn't Pizzi say anything? Oh shit. Fucking hell. Yeah, Pizzi, you're supposed to tell me. So where, so Joseph Parker thinks it's an hour. Yes, he just told me, I told him 8.15, UK time.

He's like, it's 728 right now. Oh, how unfortunate this is. Yes, they changed the clocks on October 26. Why did you guys? Usually we change him first. Yeah, we actually, yeah, it sucks. I think it's, I think it's we change it first in the spring, maybe. Ptze, I'm tired.

How does it? At some point, can Peezy have not said something? The plane goes to Peezy. It is Pizzi's fault. The kitchen scrap, all that shit that he talks. I lost track What time When did they change the clocks

In Ireland Oh they haven't yet They haven't? No I would imagine they changed At the same time Why did you think Ireland's part of the UK Because the time zones are divided By it's distant away from the meridian

That's not what Arizona says What's the crack man Petey I just want to let you know The clocks went back over here Yeah Petey I have Joseph Parker

hitting me up saying Well you told me 815 It's not 815 You don't think at some point You would have told us Hey, by the way, guys I'm living in the time I just told us there a minute ago

Yeah That's a good boy I mean Here I am I'm saying Joseph's immense This guy is the greatest human being And I'm like man He stood us up

What the hell Here I am Having to dilly dally Reading super chats with Frank Yeah, I'm going to Joseph too Actually To be honest with you I'm glad you brought this up

Yeah Joe it is The new digital Situation is They just do it for you You know the manual way back in the day. Like, you make it feel

apart to the whole thing. It doesn't do it anymore, so it didn't really have to do that much. So just kind of slip in one to let you guys know. Apologies. I only ask for one favor in October and March

of every year. If you could just let us know that the clocks have changed over there would be very helpful. I can do it from now on, but I can't retroactively do it, you know what I mean? It's very frustrating

because I can assure you you don't usually do it before us. We do it this weekend, and there's always a period there where we're first. I know. It's a weird one, But you know, I love it because the NFL's on an hour earlier.

Okay, all right, all right. It's great. Thanks, PT. Great shot there. You're having last. Yeah, yeah. I'm joining. Yeah, no, we're really trying to kill some time here.

Appreciate it. Thank you. That's shocking. I mean, I'm embarrassed. I'm actually embarrassed. Here's Joseph Parker doing us a favor after a disappointing weekend. And he's like, hey, man, can you chill out? It's actually 7.30 over here.

Anyway, he says he's going to join us in a matter of seconds. It's very nice of him. there he is yeah oh is he there well we're sending him one more question he would never let us down yes go ahead go ahead biggest loser from 321 is gone albeit close thought he never looked better now instead of Tom having minutes to adjust he'll have months yeah shame on chale and Anthony for their post well we've yeah we've cleared that up so these time stamps do you want them for like the old times or the new times now that we know that they've changed times yesterday I'll adjust

Don't love that. Don't love that. Oh, there's one more, right? Look at the Imov v. Izzy fight. Izzy poked in the eye, decides to continue, gets TKO'd, which he later regretted. That's what they want from Tom. You're 100% right. You're 100% right. Too much at stake, and there was no belt on the line there. You're 100% right. And so everyone's like, yeah, continue, continue. In that fight, Imov poked him in the eye. He said, yeah, yeah, let's continue. He tried to do the shrug-off thing. And he paid, dearly for it. Imov now, Imov loses that fight. Let's just say, he's not fighting for the belt next. Izzy's maybe fighting for the belt or has fought for the belt already again. Anyway, in a matter of seconds, my friends, we're going to be joined by one of my favorite people in all of combat sports. And I feel horrible because I just bothered him. I told them the wrong time, but I didn't realize that they changed the clocks over in the UK. So that's on me. He was in action on Saturday. I thought he was screwed. I thought he was going to win that fight. I thought the fight should have never been stopped. I've gone on and on about it.

I want to talk to him about it. He's kind enough, so very kind enough to join us. Let's not keep it waiting any longer. The big goose himself, Joseph Parker, is here. Hey, Joe, I got to apologize. I didn't realize you guys changed the clocks over there in the U.K. So that's on me. I apologize. That's okay. The time just changed the night of the fight. Yeah. I wake up in the morning and the time changed. No worries. It's all I'm here. You were probably thinking, what's this guy talking about? He's blowing me up. He's at 8.15.

It's 7.30 over here. So I sincerely apologize because you're kind enough to join us after a very big weekend. We've been going on and on, Joe. I've looked at the highlights. I've shown the highlights. Every single angle, slow motion, I mean, every single possibility. And I feel as strongly right now as I did on Saturday watching it from home. I feel like you were robbed of a victory. I feel like it was an absurd premature stoppage by Howard Foster.

And I can't commend you enough the way in which you've handled it in the aftermath. I saw the post-fied press coverage. You've been an absolute gentleman. Can I ask two days later, do you still feel the same? Are you still kind of taking the high road? or are you as upset as some of your fans? You know, I am. Like, firstly, I just want to congratulate my opponent

for the fight that he put on. He came prepared, he came ready. I did feel that the fight was going back and forth, and I was leading on the scorecards, I do believe. But when he, in the 11th round, when he had that flurry, there were some punches that called me in also. I was dodging and weaving and moving. And when he did the last three punches,

I was aware of what was happening. And when the ref jumped in, I just said, hey, I'm fine. But I guess it's not my job to decide whether or not the fight can continue, you know. So I can stay and complain. I can see and go back and forth. We say, you know what, poor me, but I'm just going to, listen, what can you do? Accept it and take it and turn to move on. In these moments, Joe, how do you remain this sort of level-headed and respectful and classy and professional?

I feel so offended by what happened and you are handling it so well what is it about you that allows you to react to these situations this way? You know what? I think it's having the right people around you but also understanding that there's listen I prayed before the fight I did everything right and trained hard

and prayed and I said whatever happens happens and this is what's happened so as much as I can go on about listen this is unfair and the fight should have continued on and I can say all of this but it's not going to change anything you know and I guess I just want to congratulate my opponent and hopefully you know down the line if he doesn't get the fight of you sick

I would love to do a rematch again because you know he yeah he was a tough competitor tough fighter was he tougher than you expected him to be he was he was tougher than I expected him to me but also I was a bit I wasn't listen I had a great training camp so there's no excuses but what I did in, you know, inspiring and what I did in training compared to what I did a fight night, maybe it just didn't click, you know, but again, there's no complaints, there's

no, no, there's no, like, excuses. My opponent did what he had to do, and he got the win and fair play. Yeah, and I'm not trying to set you up to offer any excuses. I know you're not, you're not built that way. I'm just curious about the fact that this was a big step up in competition. His last fight was against Justice Hooney with all due respect to him. he's nowhere near the fighter that you are and he was losing almost every minute of that fight and so I think a lot of people thought okay this is a huge step up

Joseph has looked to be in the best form of his career he's going to walk right through him and onto the undisputed and I wonder if subconsciously you don't seem like the type to do this neither does your head trainer Andy Lee but if maybe you you expected someone different who wasn't as good as the Fabio

that showed up on Saturday you know what areas it's it's good you bring that up because I know the fight was locked in and a lot of people were saying you know, this is going to be a sort of a walk-go-fight or an easy fight for me. But I treated this fight, the same way I would have treated if I was fighting music. And obviously on fight night, things didn't really play out how I thought it would play out or the way that I was going to perform.

But, I mean, that's boxing, right? It all comes down to whatever you do in training camp, whatever you do on fight week, and even if everything's perfect, and just on fighting night, if something's not right or if you don't perform, it all comes down to what you show in the ring. the referee Howard Foster has been criticized in the past for stopping fights prematurely a little too soon did you have any issues with him roughing the fight beforehand did you know of this history did you know of any of these critiques you know I never knew of any of the his history or anything that sort of came with his style of riffing but for me you know and being in my

fight I did feel like he stopped prematurely I was I was aware um I got caught a few times but also dodging a lot of punches and I wanted to continue but you know that's again that's not my job you know my job is not to say whether or not we can't continue that's his job so just got to respect what he said and and it's a tough one to take it is a tough one to take we're showing the the finishing sequences here joe and the reason why I wanted to show this was because I feel like he missed a lot of the punches that the public at home or even foster thought that he landed including the final one as you could see there's a lot of misses there And so even here, this is the actual, like, that's a miss right there.

And these aren't landing clean. And that last shot, that shot, the final shot is a miss, is a right hand that missed. How could that lead to Howard Foster stopping the fight? I mean, like, as soon as Howard Foster jumped in, I was like, I mean, you know, I looked, I looked him straight and I just said, listen, I'm fine. But I guess once the ref, once Howard Foster made up his mind, it was it. You know, there was no arguing or there's no continuing. It was just that was it. That was the end.

On the broadcast, Adam Smith said that at that point, so going into the 11th, because that happened in the 11th, you were up on one scorecard, up six rounds, another two, and then another had it even. And I have been unable, Joseph, to find the scorecards. They weren't posted. I asked Queensberry for them. Are you aware of where you were sitting? and is it accurate what he said?

Were you up six, two, and even? I know that the first round, listen, first round, I came out strong as a second round and he got me a few times. But then from the second round onwards, I do feel like I was controlling the fight and I was catching him. There were flories going back and forth,

but I do feel like I was leading the fight. So I think the one with the six, up six, I think that's the most accurate. Was there a point in that round or even in the previous round where you were getting worried that you were days, that you were rocked to the point where you thought

this might happen? Did the thought ever cross your mind? I know you're being attacked here. You're not thinking of a bunch of different things, but was it ever to the point where you were thinking like, I'm swimming now in the deep end and I need to get out of this? You know, like he didn't catch me with a good flurry in the 10th round, but again, I wasn't hurt. And I wasn't, I went to the corner,

regroup myself, I came out, and I was on to it again. And I say, it's quite hard just to, Now, when you look back at the fight, as a fight, I was really to continue, you know, and there was at no point where I wanted to stop the fight or thought, you know what, I'm taking a beating or he's catching me with a lot of shots and I'm done here. The whole focus of the fight was to, you know, try and dominate and then, you know, or if I couldn't get him out of there, finish strong. And I was going to finish strong because I think he blew himself out.

It did appear as well to me that he was getting tired. And by the way, just for the record, I think Fabio, and I'd love to. to get your take on this, seems like a great guy, respectful guy, professional guy with a great backstory. It didn't seem like there was any animosity or trash talk between you two. And so this isn't coming from a place of malice. I just think it was the wrong call.

Did you feel the same about him in the buildup and in the aftermath? In the buildup to the fight, he's a nice guy, very respectful. And again, he has his goals. He has the things that he wants to achieve in the sport of boxing. So there's no malice or there's no anger towards him

or there's no, it's just, this is the game we're in. And sometimes when you think the fight should go one way, all of a sudden it goes the other way. And you just have to be, I mean, boxing is very unpredictable. And so what's the best way to overcome it? Just have to accept it and move on. Because if you're going to, I don't know, if you stick, if you just keep thinking about it, it's just going to eat away at you. I've seen a lot of pundits, not myself, but other boxing pundits say, hey, it was premature. And yet it seems like the powers that be are moving on to trying to book Wardley versus Usick.

Why isn't the talk Parker versus Wardley 2? It was an incredible fight that I think over-delivered in most people's eyes and it ended controversially. Why isn't that the talk on this Monday? I feel like there is a lot of talk from the public saying that there should be a rematch, but the goal was Usik

for the winner of this fight to fight. If Usik is not available, if Usik has other plans, then we can revert back to, I'll love to take it in the hobby. Give me the rematch I'm ready to fight in next month or the next few months

So if we can If Yusik is not available I'm here I'm ready Let's do it again Knowing Ussick like you do Do you think he takes the fight Against Wardley

I think Usick He's had time off He's had time to spend With his family He's been in a few dances He ran there He's played football

He's enjoyed himself And I guess If he is ready to come back At the beginning of next year This could be a fight for him but it all comes down to what he wants to do at the moment he is a shot caller do you think that he is happy

about this result it seemed to me like for whatever reason he wasn't interested in fighting you I'm not suggesting he was scared of you or anything but it just didn't seem like it was right there the fight was to be made and he didn't seem that interested in it do you think he is happy that you are not

the guy standing in front of him now I think so again not not not shy away from taking a challenge now you've seen done at all but I guess in terms of of, you know, I'm from a small place in New Zealand, you know, New Zealand, Samoa, from that side of the world. And the fighters on this side of the world get more of a following, more attention. And maybe that could have been another reason why, you know, probably bigger money

fighting someone else from other parts of the world. If for whatever reason they decide to now go the direction of the rematch, would you not want it to be in the UK because of what happened on Saturday? I'll fight anywhere. Anywhere, anytime, any place. just lock it in and I'll be there. It doesn't matter where it is. You're very different, Joe. You know that, right? A lot of people wouldn't be handling it this well.

Like, if someone just tuned in right now, they would think that you want the fight. A lot of people might think, oh, I'm happy. And, you know, again, I never trained so hard to want this loss on my record. You know, I wanted to win and move into big fights. But the way I approach it now is if I just, if I ponder on it and give it all my energy, then it's not going to do me any good. Right now that I've finished the fight, I spend a lovely day with my beautiful wife and kids.

And that's what really matters in life, is what you do outside of the ring, you know, with your family and how you handle things. Were your kids at the fight? My wife was at the fight, but my kids were at the hotel room waiting. Okay. Did they watch live? No, it was a bit late for them. Yeah, yeah. But I guess they did see the highlights, and they did come back with a bit of a bruised eye. and you always get that oh you're right dad i'm like they're like i'm like i said to them who wants

a box and my my all my three girls said me oh my and i said what about what about if you look like daddy and then two of them sort of went uh that's okay and then the other one said that's all right i'll do it wow wow awesome i also put my kids in whatever they want to do in the future are any of them training they're training they're training uh jihitsu they're training kickboxing also training boxing wow okay so it sounds like they might go down the uh the m m m m m ms A route? You never know. How would you feel about that as opposed to boxing?

Would you be okay with it? I'm okay with whatever they want to do. As long as they give it their full attention, the full, I mean, just give it the attitude where you want to go out there and give it your best. And I'll support them and back to them with my wife and I and see what they can do in life. Have they been to city kickboxing over there with Eugene Bairman? It's right next to you, right? It's not far from me.

They haven't been there yet. They've started off in the gym close to where our house is. And hopefully if they go through the ranks and make it to their gym, then that'll be amazing. Have you re-watched the entire fight from start to finish? No. I haven't really jumped on my phone. I haven't really, I looked at a lot of things. It's just been communicating with family, a few friends here and there, just enjoying what matters now. And so you even responded to me. That means I'm actually an unofficial ooze. I'm an Uso, right? Family and friends. Family and friends.

Yes. I appreciate it. I mean, that means. I mean, I'm part of the Uso family. That's tremendous. The Uso family was welcome. Yeah, thank you so much. And I won't keep you much longer. Can I just ask, what did, I have so much respect for Andy Lee as a trainer and how he conducts himself as well.

Can you share what he said to you in the aftermath, how he's feeling about this? Again, I mean, Andy Lee is a great trainer. Him and George did an amazing job. And Andy did a great job in camp and what I was showing, inspiring. and what I was showing in training wasn't quite what I was showing on fight night. And again, I'm not sure what's happened you know, five weeks, maybe.

But no excuses. Look to fight another day. And I guess we still have a lot of work to do. We still have a lot of things to work on. Do you have any regrets about taking the fight? Do you wish you didn't take it? I have no regrets. I want to challenge everyone and anyone.

And listen, if I wasn't good enough on the day, give me another shot and I'll show you that I can be good enough. how about regrets in terms of the game plan or how you performed are there moments yeah my performance wasn't the best no there wasn't it wasn't up to scratch and it wasn't the performance we've been seeing and it wasn't what we really expected from what we were seeing in training so I guess going if we can get a rematch or going into another fight whoever it is and wherever it is we have to make sure that we stick to to what we've been seeing and what we've been doing historically when you when you suffered a setback like this you tend to come

back relatively soon. After the AJ fight, four months, after White, five months, Joyce, four months. Does that suggest that we're going to see you sooner rather than later? I am coming back. Listen, I'm going to be in boxing for a little more and I just want to give it everything I have. I know I can perform better than what I did, but there's no point talking about it and saying you. I just have to come out and show it and do it. And as far as if they go Usik Wardley, who would you like? Who makes most sense for you? If they go Yusik Wardley, I guess Yusik is the one that everyone wants to fight.

But for me, I'll just have to wait and see if they can make their fight and see whoever wins their fight, then. So you'd want to wait and not fight something like, you know, would it be an A.J. or someone of that caliber. Oh, you know, listen, if that fight gets locked in, then I'm going to chase another fight for sure. I don't want to be sitting around waiting for too long, no. Right. So if Wardley and Usset go down their own path and they fight each other, who makes sense for you? Who do you think you'd get in four or five months from now? Who is there? There's Joshua.

Yeah. There's Daniel Dubois. Yeah. Yeah. And what else is there? There's Herkovich. There's a few options out there. Yeah.

I'm sure we can make a big fight happen to one of these top fighters. What if they try to do Moses? Yeah, anyone. I'm not really in the sport to be walking and dodging and weaving. You're unbelievable. You're truly one of the kind. Well, listen, Moses is a young, talented, explosive, fast heavyweight. and it'll be a pleasure to share a ring

with someone like that. Wow. So no restrictions, no stipulations. Whoever they bring to, you're going to say yes. Yeah, because I don't want to be ducking and diving and waiting for too long for a fight. And a lot of fighters price themselves out or they wait for long or they say no to this fight,

no to that fight. We're in the sport to fight the best fights out there. And if that's one of the best fights, let's get it on. In the aftermath of the fight, did Howard Foster give you any sort of explanation for the stoppage? Did you talk to him? No, I didn't get the chance to talk to him.

Listen, I'd love to chance to talk to him just to see what he saw because I thought I was fine. What about the commission? Anyone from the commission talked to you? No one, no one. I mean, I guess seeing me out of the picture or seeing me out of this world title challenge is a lot of people happy about it. So it's fighting to fight and then fighting everything else and everyone else. Why do you think that is, Joseph, you're such a good guy, you're such a great fighter, you're always in exciting fights. Why do you think people would be happy about this?

I'm not from here. I'm not from not expected to be doing well. I'm not from this side of the world. I'm not from America. I'm not from the big places. I'm from New Zealand. I'm from Samoa, a small place of not the biggest following and not the biggest market.

So you can understand why people want their own fighters to win. And listen, I accept that. But it makes me more motivated to show that I'm not done yet. Not at all. Can I ask you maybe a bit of a tough one? do you think that Queensberry and Frank Warren are happy about the result? Probably. I mean, who knows?

But what's his name? Fabio Ward is one of their own. Yeah. You know, he's a fight from this side of the world. He's not from Louisiana. He's not from San Juan. He's not from Australia. He's from here.

And, you know, they just got to accept it. Would your next fight be with them as well? I have an option to fight with Frank. I have an option to fight with Frank. Or we can go in and do our own. fight. But I do trust in my team, David Higgins, Spencer Brown, Andy Lee, or George, so I'm sure we're going to come up with a game plan soon to fight soon. There's no point waiting around and dragging out too long. As more as I can fight, and as often as I can fight, the better I'll be.

And do you think there's a chance maybe it's back home in New Zealand, your last fight there? I love that. I haven't fought in New Zealand for a long, long time. 2021. Imagine bringing someone down to New Zealand and having a big fight there. Yes. Enough of you being on someone else's. turf. You deserve a homecoming. Yes. I want to be at that one. New Zealand is one of the countries, by the way, at the top of the list for me. If you ask me places that I haven't been to, Auckland, New Zealand is number one. You want to come to the next fight? I would love it. Let's do it. Who do we need to talk to?

Deal. Deal. Deal. You're the man. Joseph, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I'm sorry for the miscommunication regarding because, you know, you guys went an hour back. And so I did five hours, which was 315 our time, 815, all that. But I'm happy it's not like the middle of the night over there in Auckland. When do you go back home by the way? Do you get to go home soon? I'll fly home tomorrow with the family and I'm excited.

I'm excited just to be home and just spend more time with the family and just being comfortable to be home. They see my dog. Go for a swim and just relax. Yeah. It's been a long training camp. It's been long. It's been long, but it's being enjoyable, but it's nice to be home. Man, I wish they were

all like you, but I guess that wouldn't make you unique. You're such a unique guy and such a great guy and such a great guy to root for. Congratulations on a great fight, Joe, really, a phenomenal fight. I don't know if you saw, but in the UFC, there was a heavyweight title fight that was happening at the same time as yours. And it ended unceremoniously with the eye poke. And so you were the perfect antidote to that.

But then I was double upset because I didn't like the way that fight ended, and I didn't like the way your fight ended. And so it was a horrible night, Joseph. We still have time to make it right. We still have time to climb back, and that's all I'm going to do. Okay. You're the man. All the best to you. Thank you so much for coming on and safe travels home. Big Goose, you'll be back. We still believe in you. For now, the uncrowned champion of the heavyweight division. Thank you, Joe. All the best. You're the man. There he is. The great Joseph Parker, the pride of New Zealand, the pride of Samoa. Is there anyone better than him? Honestly, is there anyone better than this guy? Is there anyone nicer? More salt on the earth? Salt of the earth? And I'm sorry. it ain't glazing. I'm sorry. It ain't glazing. Okay, tell me I'm wrong about the stoppage. Tell me I'm wrong about the eyepokes. I'm sorry. It just so happened that, you know, the good guy's lost. And by the way, I think, I think Cyril Khan is actually great. I love Cyril Guy. Like, I think he's a phenomenal guy of no issues of him whatsoever.

um that one sucked and and both actually all four guys all four guys are great guys and i would but you may not believe me but if but if tom would have poked them the exact same set of circumstances i'd be sitting here on this monday saying the same thing you may not believe me you may not believe me and if if if joe got the win caught oh what is it oh mike malott was on the show last week kevin hallin doesn't come on the show mike malott's on the show and i told them i thought that those were too low blows i didn't beat around the bush literally last week Frank, was that not last week? Seven days ago.

Here's Darren Till weighing in. Is he watching our show right now? How is Bo Nickel getting further up on the main card slots than the likes of Leon Edwards in that? Make it make sense. Guy hasn't earned a striped. What? I thought they were friends. I thought they squashed the beef.

And by the way... Keep my fucking name out of your mouth. I'm sorry, but you tweeted and you were probably... Hello, Darren, if you're watching. They posted the graphic. Is he higher than Leon? Let's see. Yeah, I believe so.

I believe it's Leon Proches is the first fight on the pay-per-view. Okay, but you know sometimes they do that, right? They'll come out with a banger. Yeah, the Bound order changed like four times this weekend. And so, you know, it could happen at any moment. They'll come out with a banger. You know, they'll start with a big-time fight,

and then there's like a sort of swing bout. So I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't get too worked up about that. All right. still to come the brand new UFC stradway champion McKenzie Dern but for now

we've been talking a lot about Jim Miller on this Monday because I think that everything that he has said dating back to you know

several months ago regarding the eyepokes regarding the gloves and as recently as yesterday on his social media on Instagram

on X has been a thousand percent correct and it's one thing for me to sit here who's never fought in the UFC who's never had a

pro-MMA fight or even an amateur fight. It's another for a guy with his resume, with his accolades, Mr. UFC 100, 200, and 300 himself to come out and say these things. And so, again, you can listen to me or you can listen to him. And I think he's one of the very few that's actually telling it like it is. So I wanted to have him on the program to expand on some of these thoughts. He is kind enough to join us right here. And now, hello, Jim. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing, buddy? I love how you've been thrust into this very volatile and hot topic because you kind of put yourself out there and I appreciate it very much because we need more people like you putting yourself out there. So thank you. No problem. My pleasure. You know, it's an issue like if it's the hill that I have to die on, then I think this is one of the big ones, you know, that I'm willing to go out and to really be vocal about it because I think this is a serious issue that we have in the sport. And I feel

like not a lot it's been done to fix it. Okay, so let me ask you, why do you feel so strong? It's rare that we'll see you, you know, cussing on your Instagram or things like that. So why does this...

I'm cussing all the time. Okay, about MMA things, I guess. Why do you feel so strongly about this? What irks you so much about the way this is handled in our sport? You know, I just feel like, you know, the sport of MMA is, It's essentially like about personal accountability, right? Like you prepare and then you need to execute.

And if you don't prepare or you don't execute or you don't do both, you get your ass kicked in front of millions of people. Like now here we have something that is considered a foul. It is in the rule books that is illegal to gouge the eyes. And it happens all the time. and no one has ever held accountable for their actions. I've put on UFC gloves 46 times to fight in the octagon. You know, do they affect your ability to fully close your hand?

Yes, they do. But they don't affect your ability to, like, at least partially close. we lost him there he was about to start cooking and we lost him did we fully lose them sometimes I don't know if it's the internet or okay

oh wait uh Jim sorry we lost you there you froze up on us yeah as you said partially closed yeah yeah yeah like uh there's there's obviously material in the palm of your hand when you're wearing a USC glove or any MMMA glove and a rap.

So you can't do fine stuff. You know, like you're not going to do brain surgery wearing a pair of UFC gloves, but you can close your hand. And when fighters don't close their hand, that's when the eye pokes happen. And no one seems to be held accountable when it actually does.

For those who maybe are very new to the sport, just for the record, the man we're speaking to right here, most fights in UFC history 46, most wins in UFC history, 27. Second most finishes in UFC history, 19. Number one is Olivera with 21. Second most submissions in UFC history, 13. One is Oliver 17.

Total fight time. Seven hours, 29 minutes, 38 seconds. That's fourth longest in UFC history. So this man knows how many times have you poked someone in the eye in your UFC career? Not even talking about your pre-UFC career, just these fights that I mentioned here. How many times? if I never throwing a strike

right for the first time that I fought Donald Seroni he hurt me to the body and now we lost

we lost you is it a Wi-Fi we lost you again to the age and I went sorry about that you said the first is it is it that why are you on Wi-Fi over there what's what's what's the status yeah yeah yeah I'm on my Wi-Fi but you know the kids are home so they're stealing it okay okay so you said you said the first time you fought Donald Soroni I think it was mm-hmm yeah first time I fought Toroni he hurt me to the body he pressed me up against the cage I didn't want to be there so I tried to shove him away

And I felt my finger on, on his face, go into his eye a little bit. He then hit me really hard after that. It wasn't hard, you know, a bad enough poke to require the rest to hop in or for him to stop hitting me. But that's the only time. Like I've never, I've never tried to gauge the distance with my fingers open like that. I've never tried to prevent somebody from taking me down by sticking my hands out. And if you look at the guys with the most time spent in the octagon, you see a handful of fighters that you've never seen poke somebody. Like, you know, I can't remember seeing Frank Yeager poke somebody.

I can't remember Josanyos poking somebody. I can't remember Clay Gloucita poking somebody. Like, if it was a natural part of the sport and something that is just going to happen, you would think. that the fighters with the most time in the octagon would have just as many eye pokes as anybody else. And so specifically regarding what happened on Saturday, Tom Aspinall-Sarrel gun, he gets poked in the eye multiple times, once in a takedown attempt, which no one seems to be talking about, and then once the finishing sequence, if you will, what did you make of that and the aftermath of that sequence?

You know, like, Don was doing really well, right? like and that's kind of one of the the defenses of him is it's like hey he he he was winning why would he why would he poke him in the eye but tom's not a guy that he wanted on top right he wanted to keep the distance he wanted to make it make it a striking battle um so there there were some moments where that that first one uh in the first round where he kind of got him and uh that that that one exchange yeah he's like he's trying to push away and he's creating that distance um you know and and for some of the some of the my peers that have fought before to you know to to be judging tom on how they felt when they got their eye poked you know like

it i've been poked really bad and i've been poked bad enough to like need need a second you know um and it's it's all going to be different you know we can't we can't be in in tom's body and understand how it felt um you know like uh i i got poked uh when i fought dad hooker the referee didn't acknowledge it he just asked if i was okay which in my mind in that instance i can't say no um so i just continued to fight and i could not see out of my left behind anymore and it was really difficult to to even see out of my right eye you know if you've been hitting the eyeball really hard, you would, you would notice that like it's not, it kind of shuts things down, you know? So, um, I think Tom's getting a, uh, a pretty raw deal on it.

You know, I don't think that, uh, Cyril meant to poke him in the eye. I think he was trying to keep the distance. I think he was trying to keep Tom away. And it, it is a natural stance to, to open that hand and try to palm. But I feel like if we started punishing the fighters this was getting to be the good stuff right here

that I was just about to ask him about the punishment and how you try to deter people from doing this, making them think twice. He had been warned. Already.

Okay, we lost you there. But I think you were getting at something that I just wanted to ask you about, so this will be an opportunity to reset. I think that there are three things that I would love to see all the commissions, the state commissions that adhere to the unified rules of MMA. I'd love to see them implement this. The first time a foul is committed, not the second or third time, the first time an illegal shot is landed, poke to the eye, low blow, all these things, knee, all that. Point deduction. The warning should come in the back.

Point deduction right away. If the fighter who was hit with the illegal, shot can't continue. That should be a DQ. That should be a DQ victory for the guy who got hit with the illegal shot, a DQ loss for the guy. This whole nonsense of intentional, unintentional, to me, drives me nuts. No one's actually trying to hit someone with the illegal shot, in my opinion. So they'll always hedge and say, oh, it was unintentional, so let's call it a no contest, right? So everyone goes home happy. If an illegal shot has landed and the fighter can't continue, now you have to move on and call it a DQ and get rid of the language of intentional, unintentional. How do you feel about that?

I 100% agree. That's kind of the way that it reads in the rulebook. You know, but you like you said, it brings up that word intentional. Now, are there instances where somebody blatantly does it, you know, we had the one fighter a few years ago. She's in a rear naked choke and she's feeling around and looking for the eye and like she ends up getting submitted with a a rear naked choke and it seems like that was punishment enough it's like you you tried to eye gout your way out of the submission and the the commission never took any action after that i think that's wild like if i jump out of the octagon i am i'm getting fine right if i show up and i had gotten cut three weeks prior to a

fight and it gets cut you know uh open back up in the fight and the the commission finds out i'm getting suspended for that but we attack somebody's eye ball and we we don't even get a little bit of suspension or even a fine it's uh it's it's it's crazy it's it's absolutely crazy to me how um it it's like it's like this you know They're fouls or they're called fouls, but we don't treat them like foul. So how do we prevent the behavior if we don't actually penalize it? So we're on the same page, but I want to offer a differing opinion. The great Demetrius Johnson has weighed in on this, and he had what I thought was an interesting stance and one that I very much disagree with. Now, I feel very

silly disagreeing with someone of his stature. I've never fought. I have the utmost respect for him in all fighters, but you have fought, and like I said, you've got a pretty damn good resume. So I wanted to play you his sort of take on it and hear what you have to say, okay? Here's DJ. People don't understand. They always talk about, whenever we're going to fix eye pox in mixed martial arts. Newsflash, you're never fucking going to do it. The reason why is because as human beings, our natural reaction when somebody comes towards us,

is open my hands and stick my hands out. When I throw a body kick, when you learn Muay Thai and you throw kicks, they don't teach you to throw them like this. They teach you to open your hands, you throw your hand, you put your hands in front of your opponent's face to block them, and then you throw like this. Boom. So if you look at Muay Thai guys and when they throw a kick or kickboxers, granted, you can't see Muay Thai guys' hands or kickboxers' hands because they're in the gloves. So why would the technique change when you get it? get in little gloves. It's not like you can, you can change the technique. To throw like this is not, it's not natural. My hands are closed. In order for me to keep my balance, when I throw a

high kick, I have to open my hands and I put my hands on, listen to this, on my opponent's face. Boom, that's a leg kick. That's a body kick. People don't realize that. And obviously the accident foul was an accident, right? But the way he had his hands on Tom Asperon's is the correct technique to do. It just wasn't his hands, right? If you go back and watch John Jones, he's a great eye poker, but if you go back and watch the great to do body kick, if you go back and watch my fights, when I throw body kicks or I throw leg kicks,

my hands are here, they're open. So once again, you're never going to fix eye pox and mixed martial arts unless you put us in gloves that are like in actual, like, boxing gloves. How do you feel about that, Jim? Um, you know, we, we don't, we don't, we don't hold our fists close when we're, when we're throwing those strikes, but a lot of those, the eye poke, they're not happening while somebody's ripping a roundhouse kick, right? They're, they're usually pushing away, preventing a clinch, preventing, uh, uh, trying to create space when, when somebody's closed the distance to throw strikes. Um, you know, like, we don't, we don't kick each other. in the UFC we don't kick each other to the head when we're when the opponent is on the ground because we lose because they they have a very good track record of penalizing people that do so i believe that if we brought in fine right hey you you you the warning is in the back

like if you're going to take my money away i'm going to make sure that my hands are closed when i'm reaching out. I'm going to make sure that I don't poke somebody in the eye if you're going to take my money away. But like they're not, they're not even, uh, uh, they're not really penalizing people, you know? And the thing is, is a lot of the times when somebody gets it poked in the eye, their chances of victory are super slim. Like the person that gets poked in the eye, very, very rarely wins that. it's coming he's coming he's coming we're fighting through it we're fighting through it

like a flurry oh now he's back I thought I heard him no I thought I heard him maybe we lost oh okay now he's back you're back you're back

oh no maybe we should just reconnect Do you guys want to reconnect? Oh. What's that? Do we still have them? Guys? Do you hear me, Jim?

Yeah, yeah, okay. Yes, I do. Okay, okay, okay. Sorry about this, man. It's a connection today. It's all good. It's all good. What I was thinking when I heard that from him

and I wanted to get your take was, yes, you could say, okay, when you're kicking in Muay Thai, this is how you hold their hands, this is how you hold your hands. But number one, as you know, they're wearing like, you know, close fist gloves, so it's different. And number two, you can't compare the rule set in that sport to the rule set and the equipment that you're using in MMA because it's completely different. It's completely different. I think we lost Jim, by the way. I think I'm speaking to myself here.

He's completely frozen. Can we just reconnect with them, guys, and try to reestablish the connection? You got it. Okay. I felt like his face was too locked in there. I'm like, what's the point of saying this if he's not going to be there? Something just flew out the window as well. I just saw that too.

All kinds of craziness happening here. We'll reconnect with him. And I'm just trying to offer as much knowledge and insight into this as possible. I did want to ask him about the gloves because back in February he tweeted it's not the gloves. It's the culture. The shameless win at all cost mentality amongst fighters. and the, quote, eye pokes are an accident and not a foul mentality. Most people seem to have the good news is that we can change the culture.

Penalize the foul immediately during the pause and action after confirming a strike or post was thrown with outstretched fingers. I believe not only a point deduction, but also a purse deduction would have a rapid effect on how many pokes we see. I've come to these conclusions after being taped into those gloves 45 times, it's now more, totaling over seven hours inside the octagon, landing over 1,200 significant strikes, none of which were thrown with extended figures. And I also slept at a holiday Inexpress a few times. He also added to that and said, and that doesn't mean that all pokes are intentional. A vast majority

seem to come from a passivity or a lack of aggression, trying to create space or avoid being hit or clinched, penalizing them would make a huge impact. And so, again, that goes to what he was saying regarding what DJ was saying. Okay, we do have Jim back. Okay, there he is. So I don't know if you heard what I was saying there, but it was basically that you're not using the same type of equipment in MMA, and the rule set isn't the same. You can't, you know, take someone down in Muay Thai, so you can't compare the two.

You're using different gloves. So I found his explanation to be a little bit off regarding what we were talking about right now. uh so did i so did i and you know and and dj's phenomenal right yes yes i love him you know um but yeah i i i feel like that i i don't agree with that take uh there's there's a lot of takes on this whole thing that are crazy to me um you know the the the the the comparison to michael bisming you know it's like oh michael bisman won the world title without an eye uh you know so then they're they're given tom crap like he should do the same thing This thing didn't lose his eye in that fight with Rockhold.

You know, he, he was kicked by Vitor and had complications because of that. And that's what happened. That's how he lost his eye, not actually in that fight. What's been experiencing the pain of losing his eye or being poked in the eye or hitting the eye in that fight with Rockhold. So it's a, it's a completely different scenario. and I think it's like it's ridiculous

to even compare the two. You've talked, I read your tweet from February regarding the gloves and your stance is it's not the gloves even though we talk about the rounded gloves

and all this stuff so you don't believe anything because I wanted to ask you regarding something that Josh Barnett tweeted out regarding the gloves as well which I thought was interesting

because we've shown the different gloves like the pride gloves were more curved the UFC gloves are a little more straight can we show can we show Jim Josh's tweet

here it is. Someone asked him about the rise in gloves because they're very much like the pride gloves and he writes back that they're far superior. The issue lies solely with the UFC here in an unwillingness and perhaps lack of understanding to make such a change. I even say lack of understanding in that they use a glove with no thumb attachment

slash connection which inherently makes the glove a flawed and less effective design and it doesn't fully conform to the fist properly which likely has led to more broken hands. What do you think of that stance from Josh? You know, You know, the gloves are different. I honestly, I don't believe that it is a glove issue.

You know, and some people like to tease me a little bit when I say this, but I believe it is a cultural issue, right? The culture of fighting in the UFC is different than it was in pride. In pride, you had yellow card, if somebody was passive, or if somebody threw a strike with their fingers open and poked an eye, they were getting find 20% right there on the spot inside the race. If the fight ended because of that foul, then they're losing by DQ. People bring up pride as well. And, you know, with like, you know, you never,

you really never saw iPokes happen. Those guys were soft out of their minds. Like, all they wanted to do was punch a hole in each other's head. Like, the, the culture of fighting there was fight as a great. aggressively and hard as you could. And if you lost fighting like that, it didn't matter. You were getting a callback. You were getting the opportunity to make more money.

In the UFC, it's win at all costs. Like, that's what it is. You got to stay here. You got to stay here as long as you can no matter what. So fighters aren't fighting as aggressively here. They're trying to just maintain that status. and honestly you do see that a lot of times even when guys win the title right they come up and they're super aggressive and they're destroying everybody and then they get that title and they defend it a couple times and then it's like okay now we have to make sure that this belt stays around my waist because i'm making big money now you know so like i think the culture of fighting in the ufc has made it to the made it that way where fighters feel like they they have they just they have to try to win it no matter what even if it's boring

even if it's being passive and you're and you're pushing away and you're you're making sure that like you don't get into those those grappling exchanges those clinches just to stay away like they i feel like that adds to the issue as well i don't i don't think it's just the gloves and those like cyril was posting more so with his palm in those in those this is what I saw. I didn't get to watch it live because I was I was commentating a local event but like his

he was posting with with his palm. It's just the way that they moved when Tom came in that his fingers found their way into the into his eye sockets and like that those were some brutal brutal eye poaks.

You know like a and I think even using the word poke is bad. Yeah. It's it sounds too innocent. It's an eye gouge. That's what it is. an eye gout. And if it continues the way that it's going, unfortunately, we're probably going to see someone losing an eye in the octagon, right? Buddy of mine, Vitor, uh, uh, Shalvin Hiberio,

he lost his eye being cut by the, the tape or the Velcro, um, on a, on a fight, uh, or in a fight, uh, in Japan, you know, and like he was front headlock position, kind of turtled up, grabbing the grabbing jc's uh uh wrist and when j z pulled his wrist out it it sliced his eye open like and i saw him go through this you know and and have to try to like refill his eyes had to sleep face down for for months and all sorts of crazy stuff um and yeah i i just feel like if we don't start punishing the foul in in one way or another whether that is with a monetary fine, or if that is with immediate point being taken away, the behavior is just going to continue. And sooner or later, you know, something worse is going to happen. You mentioned in

your video that you posted yesterday on your Instagram that you are suffering from some kind of lack of vision as well. Where did that come from? So I think it too pretty good. I, pokes throughout my career uh the first one was in uh the fight with dan hooker um you know he got he made pretty good in in the left eye um you know two two i were doing well there for a second I had it stitched close. I had to just watch and feel the surgeon, you know, stitching my eyelid, which was fun. So, you know, my vision has been not as good as it was after that.

And then when I fought Alice Hernandez, he caught me, I think it was in the first round on the outer side of my right eye. And it caused a traumatic cataract that amazingly, they're not supposed to get better, but it got better. And maybe it's just my brain kind of seeing around the blurry spot. But, you know, it hasn't affected my ability to fight. It hasn't affected really too many things. Like I jokingly said, you know, in the video, the biggest thing that I have from that is that now when I draw my bow back and I look through my keep, it's harder to see.

It's harder to focus on targets far away where, you know, a handful of years ago I could, I could see it there. So, you know, I was like, ah, boo-hoo, you know, I can't, I can't shoot my bow at 100 yards anymore. So, you know, it's, that's, that's kind of one of those things. It's a, they're, they're nagging, you know, not nagging, but like permanent injuries that I've had from, from fighting. And it's, there, it could be worse. So, you know, it is what it is. On a personal, last time we saw you was in April. Yep.

When will we see you again? You know, I was hoping to fight in the summer and then the fall and, you know, things kind of just got in my way, dealing with an injury going into that fight in April. That took forever to heal. And just dealing with some personal stuff, you know, in the home now. you know, some health issues in my family. So I'm just kind of getting back into getting a little more consistent with training. So hopefully beginning of next year, I'll be able to get in there. And then, you know, maybe if I can get in there, be healthy and fighting like February or something like that,

I wouldn't turn down fighting on the White House card. I think it's going to be absolutely ridiculous to be fighting outside and probably the security issues. You know, dealing with that, it won't be the easiest venue to fight on, honestly, but I wouldn't turn it down if it was offered to me. No, I don't think anyone would think that. And we're shooting for 50, right? Yeah, that's the goal. That's the goal.

So another four, and the goal is to obviously win all of them. But, you know, if I can get at least three of them and get to 30 wins in the UFC, that that'd be nice even numbers for me, and my brain would like that, you know? Well, good luck in that pursuit. Great stuff. Keep spreading the gospel. Keep speaking the truth when it comes to this stuff. I appreciate it. And hopefully some sanity starts to come to the sport. Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it very much. Thank you for having me. There he is. Jim F. and Miller, great stuff from him. Follow him on social media. He's been all over this particular topic. Okay, one more guest to go.

go and what a weekend for her. Finally, after all these years, she becomes a UFC champion, the UFC Strawway champion, and joins the legendary Fabrizio Verduem as the only two competitors in the history of martial arts to win an IBJF, to win an AECC, and then to win a UFC title. It's her and Vaikavalo. What, I mean, what company that is. We're talking to the great McKenzie Dern, who is the brand new UFC women's 115 pound champion. She's kind enough to join us on this Monday afternoon. Hello, Mackenzie. Parabans to you.

Congratulations. Thank you, Ariel. Man, it's been such a long time coming. So thank you so much. It feels amazing. I'm like, ooh, my first, like, interview now. Okay, what an honor. Thank you, yes.

We've done this a lot after regular fights, but never after a title fight. And now you are the champion. By the way, where is the belt? Oh, it's in my living room. Okay. Do you want me to get it? Yeah, let's see it. Let's see it.

This is a big deal. It's the most beautiful thing. Is it heavy or heavier than you thought? Yeah, it's heavy. Had you ever held one before? I don't know, actually. I don't remember. Actually, I think I've held one.

It's here, right? Look, it's right here. I'm going to show. Oh, yeah. Wow. Right here, right next to my one when I'd be Gabby. of my world. Oh, yes.

10 years ago. So. That's incredible. What is it like? Like, you're touching that in your home and it's yours. It's yours. What does that like? Like I said, it's beautiful.

It's just, it's very fulfilling, you know, every time. It's fulfilling and it's fulfilling, but more than fulfilling. It's motivating, you know? It really is just motivating me to get. I said, man, I trained this good for eight weeks, you know? Imagine I live my whole life like this. like just every day, you know what I mean? I feel even weird. Of course, I'm like recovering right now. Yeah. But I just feel weird not, um, not doing what I was doing the last like eight

weeks, you know, I just want to keep doing that more. And I feel like if for the last, I mean, obviously I've been training my whole life, you know, so it's not that we just trained eight weeks and that's what made you a champion. But you know what I mean? If I can get to the organization and everything I did for this camp and just keep it instead of like two weeks or two months, be six months, a whole year, three years, you know, it's like a magic. imagine the type of the beast I could become. Yes. You know, it's interesting.

I thought your demeanor in the post-fight press conference was really interesting because it felt like you were happy, but also you were talking about, okay, what's next and motivated to do better and all this stuff? Are you allowing yourself to smell the roses here? Are you allowing yourself to just enjoy this accomplishment? No. Why? I mean, I'm trying to.

I was on the airplane with Bruce and Mike Visping. Um, and, you know, basically we're like in the lounge, the lounge on the airplane just coming back, you know, and this was just kind of really, my first impressions are just kind of like me just thinking about how I wanted to get like a submission or a knockout and things like that and just, you know, Bisping really just told me like, hey man, like you got to just take it in. Like it was a, and my manager, Tiki was there and just how it was like a well deserved fight. You know what I mean? Like we fought for it, you know? And first I wanted like, man, I wish I could get this, the, the, the, the belt like with this beautiful performance, you know, but it's like, man, that war, that was worth it, you know what I mean? Like, I'm glad I won the belt like that too, you know what I mean? I wasn't like dethroning someone. It was like, Venus is a tough girl and she was giving everything and she was focused in there and like I could just, I speak Portuguese and English, you know, so I'm like hearing her coaches and I'm hearing how they're like in, in, um, they were aligned, you know what I mean? Her and her coaches, they were like very,

um, good, their connection. I could feel it. the fight and me and Perilla we were super connected so it was like it was a really really fun fight just thinking about how that was my and then I mean of course you don't want like the eye poke and everything but basically my fight kind of like became the main event yes so it was like it was just crazy that that's how it happened so it's still surreal but um you know bithing just kind of got me into like really taking it like taking it you know taking it all in and um but yeah definitely makes you want to work harder how is your eye by the way because Like in the shots over there, we could tell that it was a little bit, you know, swollen.

How is it doing now after the flight? Yeah, no, it's totally swollen, you know? I mean, it's not the worst I've been, but my hand is super swollen. Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow. You think it's broken? No, I don't think it's broken. I just think it was from a lot of my elbow, too.

My elbows like killing me from all the elbows. Oh, wow, wow. What is it like on the plane with your face swollen and your hand swollen, your elbow swollen like that. What does that like? Oh, it was just like a lot of pressure, you know? Yeah. Of course, I'm doing like interviews and I have like blood dripping down my face and I'm like, oh my gosh, but it's all part of it, you know, and it was like just dealing that during the flight. But I mean, they have people way worse. I could have like my jaw broken or something like that, my nose broken, but everything's good. Everything is just kind of like superficial, you know.

December 2020, you beat her. Here you are fighting. or five years later. Was she a much different fighter five years later? Um, I mean, I, yeah, yeah, she was,

for sure. I mean, the first time we fought, she didn't try to take me down at all, you know, she didn't go for any takedown, and she got like the most, she took me down the most times I've ever been taken down,

you know, so she had a different game plan for sure. I think strength-wise, I felt her the same. Um, I felt like, I was faster, you know, and the last time I felt like me and her were a little bit, like, more similar, you know, in our striking, just as kind of giving heart and just kind of throwing

some bombs and stuff like that. But I felt like, I felt her, I felt her better. I felt her more focused. I felt her more confident than the first time. And I felt her just, like, attacking the takedowns and really wanting to win, like, strategically and just, you know, it was important for her. You could feel that. did you not expect her to try to take you down because she didn't the first time around like were you were you surprised by her game plan this time no she did exactly what i thought she was going to do i thought she was going to be like striking and then trying to get the takedowns i didn't think that she was going to like want to take me take me down on the first minute and do like a whole grappling exchange i didn't think she would want to take me down and try and pass my guard and try and open up too much on the ground and pound i thought she would do more like the way she did is kind of like more takedowns to kind of just steal the round or control and try and stay safe on the feet and then just try and like you know be the champion you know try and win like do like not get overexposed you know something like that and just kind of win the rounds like that and that's what I feel like she did you know or tried to do the scenes afterwards

were I mean it's so emotional so beautiful to see you and your dad and we all know about the history between you two then you and your daughter we saw your mom in the in the crowd as well I mean there's just so much emotion so much you know just look at this stuff this is incredible incredible. Can you even describe how you're feeling in that moment? No, I mean, I just, yeah, for me, I'm super. I'm so, so blessed, you know what I mean, to be able to have my father in my corner, you know, on this ride and to have my daughter there, too. It's like, you know, these are the most, like, the two people, I mean, three people that we have the most, like, unconditional love in our lives, you know what I mean? It's like

your father and your mom, your dad, you know, that they give up, like, everything they do, you know, you and then my daughter who everything I do is for her kind of thing, you know, and just to have both these, both them there with me. It's amazing that I was able to have that, you know, because some people, you know, their parents aren't even here anymore. So, yeah, I'm super, super blessed and I just feel like, man, I feel like I've been doing something right. You know what I mean? I feel like I've been doing something right in my life to be blessed like that, you know, and I just got to keep going. How do you separate, like, you're your daughter's mom. and she obviously you told a great story

at the post-fired press conference like sometimes she'll tell kids at the park like I'm going to go tell my mom she's a fighter like you guys are bothering me like she understands what you do but she's still so young and so I'm sure on fight week she wants her mom at times

but you're cutting weight you're doing all this stuff and then you're performing in front of her you're fighting in front of her and you don't want to let her down I suppose that's a lot of like extra pressure to put on a person and I think more so than if a fighter

is fighting in front of their kids because, let's be honest, like, the connection is just different when it's your mother. That's what I think. It's just different. And so how do you handle that? How do you deal with balancing that out? You know, like, honestly, Moe is so good with just, like, my wins and losses, you know? It's like I've coming back from my fight with Jessica Condra to New York that she didn't go to

in my fight against Amanda Lamos that she also didn't go to. And both of those, I got beat up pretty bad. I mean, Jessica, it wasn't too injured, but, I mean, I got Takeda like three tap four times in one round, you know? So when I did come back and she's like, oh, did you win? And I'm like, no. And then she'll like kiss my face. And then she like, okay, let's go play.

So then she, like, her herself, she turns that on like my mom. You know, you're just my mom. I just want you like, okay, that's fine. Let's go play. You know what I mean? I want you like as a mom right now, not as a fighter. She doesn't, you know. And I'm kind of like, and that helps me because I'm like all sad.

And I just see how like for her she doesn't care for it's a winner. It's a loss or things like that. So I don't feel that. pressure you know what i feel is just like i want her to um i just what i want to her the most to get from just being part of this is just seeing the wins and the losses and how we have to just keep going you know for whatever we want to do in life you know like whatever she decides to do hopefully she doesn't do m-m-a you don't want that i mean i don't know i i i if she loves it then yes you know but if she doesn't love it then i don't want her to do it in any mean um like

for pressure, just like for money or something like that, you know. But if it's, if it's what she loves, then it'll be worth it for her for sure because it's hard, you know, it's a really hard journey. You're kind of a long, you know. What about competitive jihitsu? Oh, yeah. I mean, no, she doesn't even need to compete, you know, but at least you get her black belts, I can feel, you know, feel safe with my little girls far away from mom that she can defend herself, you know. and um but yeah definitely if she'd like to compete and get sponsors and do all these super fights and who knows fight at the um the jihitsu for the UFC eventually when she's older i would love that and you know you mentioned those two losses uh la motion and and drudge they're not that long

ago the end of 23 24 if we would have talked after the second one because they were back to back yeah and three fights you'd be ufc champion would you believe that everything would have turned around, did you still have that hope or did you lose the hope at one point? No, I had the hope because for me, if I would have beat Jessica, then I would have been a number one contender. And for me, if I would have beat a mandolemos because she had just fought for the belt, I would have been a number one contender. So I felt like I was like, I felt like I kept feeling like every time I was almost there, I would like fall short. You know what I mean? But the opportunity was there lots of times. I feel like I've had

the opportunities against Ian if I would have if I would have been young. that I would have probably been like maybe number one contender. Even Marina, I was on like a good street. You know what I mean? So every time, that's why I was kind of like a little bit pressure going into this fight on a personal level because I felt like every time I was given the opportunity to like show up, I was falling short, you know.

So I felt like it was near, you know. It's just I needed to learn something that I wasn't learning. My daughter's running out of the house. The famous, the famous Moa. yeah she was playing with the dogs she's so happy to be back home too but yeah you know so it's like there was something that I was needing to learn or some experience that I was needing to gain but we knew we knew going into this fight that a big difference was going to be like the meanness and just kind of being everyone on the gym you know they all know that I'm like really mean

in a good way you know but like Cheeto and nick and all the guys we train with they always like you know they're playing light with me and I'm throwing like 100%. Oh, wow. The winning ADCC, IBJJF, like some of your greatest Jiu-Jitsu accomplishments, Gabby Garcia, and comparing it to this one,

to winning a UFC title. Which one means more to you? Which one means the most? Oh, man. No, this one for sure. Really? Why is that? Yeah.

Just everything that was involved in it, you know what I mean? Like the height of it, you know? I mean, it's one thing to accomplish, like, a jitsu tournament that I've been training my whole life, you know what I mean? Like, so it's like eventually for how many years I've been training, I feel like it was something, you know, it would be like really, like that's like 20 years I'm training a sport, you know what I mean? And then for me to get it, it was very fulfilling. But man, to get to this level against like I'm fighting other girls that are like champions in their own sport. like, you know, we could be Olympic wrestlers or judo Olympians or, you know, kickboxing

world champions, you know, and then like kind of who has the best, you know, who's able to adopt their weak points and everything. It's like, that's a totally different, a different level, you know what I mean? And yeah, I think just like just kind of with my daughter doing the whole phase of like me being, you know, pregnant and being a mother and just all the other divorces and the, you know, the whole fame and everything. It's definitely a lot more pressure than when I was like, you know, just training when I'm 14 years old until I'm like 20 and, you know, school and the gym, school in the gym, and then my dad, like, just supported me. It's like you didn't really have big problems in life. You just train. During any of those early days, the weight issues or even

getting pregnant and, like, was there any moment where you're like, you know what, this was a nice little run for me competitively, but I'm done. I've had enough. Did you ever consider just walking away? Yeah, I mean, there were a couple of times when I thought, like, I thought, man, maybe my journey won't be me being a champion. Maybe my journey will just me being, like, an exciting fighter that maybe gets a lot of perform, like maybe does a lot of good performances, but, you know, I mean, how many great

fighters we see that are, like, they have amazing fights and they have everything to be a champion? And you can tell they're like a champion, but it just, it didn't come, you know what I mean? And, you know, sometimes I thought maybe that was just kind of going to be my journey. But I didn't want to, like, give in to that, you know, I thought like, okay, well, at least I'll do my, I'm going to try my best all the way until I feel like I can't do it anymore. Would you have been okay with that or do you think it would have bothered you if you didn't climb this mountain too? No, it would, it would have, I mean, I wouldn't be, like, frustrated. But, I mean, I was trying to like already, you know, prepare myself for that, you know, just in case. And then, you know, you're kind of like trying to figure out, okay, if I don't make it, you know, what, you know, what ways are going to be making money outside of the fighting world, you know, just fights and things like that.

How can I try and think, you know, for Mova's future, for my future and things like that? So, you know, I think I was just kind of trying to prepare myself in those ways so I could have like a play in V and C. But on a, like, personal my dream goals, you know, I was like, man, I can't, like, I'm coming too far to not get there, you know what I mean? Are you hoping Zhang Wei Li loses next month and comes down to 115 and then you could beat her? Is that, is that the hope? No, no, no, no. I'm not sharing like anyone. I'm not hoping for no one to win or lose or anything like that.

Like, on those terms, I'm just, I'm taking advantage of, like, the feeling right now just kind of, soaking in all that confidence and all that like to believe in myself and just like okay kind of organize my mind and organize see exactly all the good things that we did in this camp and just trying to figure out as soon as I can start doing that again you know even without a fight schedule and then just be kind of prepared for whoever gets offered next you know because I'm not going to be like a baby a baby champion you know what I mean I'm going to be like someone who's like whatever they want us to do you know what I mean

and we'll be ready and we'll train for that you know what I mean it's like that's that's how that's why I want to beat the best you know what I mean I am the best right now

but I want to be able to beat whoever's coming you know what I mean so it's like that's why I train so I think that's why I went through those losses because I'm like

exchanging with strikers and I'm like you know grappling with grapplers and you know accepting to be on bottom with like good wrestlers and all these things so I feel like

that that was the whole goal my whole journey so I can be a well-rounded champion, you know, not like just one style. If it's not her, do you think Tatiana

makes the most sense? Do you have any sort of feelings as to who might be your opponent in your first title defense? No. I mean, I know they have,

I know they have, I think probably someone with like a win streak, you know? I think Whaley, even if she was to lose to Valentina, but her win streak got,

like her being the former champion. That makes sense. And then Tatiana It's coming off a win, you know, so, I mean, I think, like, maybe if she had another fight, like, two wins, but there's, I mean, on the top, in the top, whatever, five or six or seven, I think Lucinda is fighting Julian Robertson, and I don't know how many of them are coming, like, how big their win-shicks are. But, yeah, I mean, I think even, like, just two fights is already good enough to, like, kind of come and fight for the bell. I mean, that's how I fought for the bell with two wins. and yeah right now it's a little bit wide open but you do have a history with some of these people so they can run it back as well I just wanted to ask you a couple more questions and then we'll let you go because I know you just came home before the fight did you happen to see what dean Thomas said about the title fight and did that bother you considering he's a commentator for the UFC in case those at home or maybe you don't know

he called this you know an insignificant title fight the the specific quote was I'm trying to be as as possible, but has there ever been a more insignificant title fight in the history, not maybe in the history, but maybe in the last recent memory of the UFC? Did that bother you hearing that? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I just, I don't know, it's like John Jones gave up his belt, you know, and Tom Aspenol became the champion. It's like, what, what do we in the division have to do with, you know, like people can't retire, people can, you know, want to just leave the go up a weight class and change the things so it's like if there's a vacate vacant and belt who else were they thinking who else would fight for the belt so i don't understand what would be so

insignificant about finding a champion when i mean waley if she wanted to she's she's accomplished everything she's accomplished everything she didn't even need to go up to the way if she wanted to just retire she could just retire and then what are they going to do they're going to keep the division open right they got to have a champion so i don't understand how is it how is any champion fight like insignificant you know what i mean so it's just kind of crazy for me to like hear unless he's talking about stylistically wise but it's like i mean vina was on a five-fight win streak like some mating and taking down this girl she's like a like a strawweight mini kabib kind of girl you know what i mean and then it's like you know i don't know who else he wanted

to fight with you so i mean i don't know yeah i don't understand as a as a commentator and i think he's even like helps the training and coaches and stuff i thought it was kind of a little bit you know i didn't understand it um we did see uh bea mesquite uh make the transition over to the ufc from uh the world of judas to another legend if you will uh did you happy to see her fight and what do you think her ceiling is yeah via did amazing i was super excited and super happy for her um you know we know we trained together since we're like little kids you know so um um she's someone she's an aries too you know so i know she has that in her just kind of like to be a leader and go and always pushing for more and very like intense and everything she does i think she's

super adapted well you know like with her takedowns and ground and pound like at her first first ufc debut and i think for like the 135 division she can go really really far um you know i think i could see her being a champ too so yeah i'm really really really excited for her and i think she's going to have a great career. And by the way, what about you in PBR? I saw a video of you going crazy at the PBR event. Are you a big fan of bull riding? Is this something you want to do as well? No, not do it, but yeah, I'm super, I think it's so cool, you know, just what these athletes do, you know, the guys, it's like, it's crazy. I mean, we fight against people, you know what I mean? I can fight it like that skin and bone. These are like, these bulls that are like, you know,

every time they go out, they can die, you know, and they have like a tournament. almost every weekend. And so it's just so crazy how, what they do. And just the vibe too, you know, everyone's like, they're very, like, they have a lot of faith and kind of just, you know, family and, you know, simple. And it's like, it's a cool, it's a cool community. You know, I really like it. And, you know, I was born in Arizona.

I used to barrel race when I was young. So I'm totally into this kind of stuff. Last thing for you, can I ask if you even remember, you may not remember. What did your father say to you when you had a chance in the back, you know, in the locker room, you're the champion, you've been through so much together. He got you on this path. You said in the post-fight press conference, if it wasn't for him, you probably don't even go down any sort of martial arts path, right? He's a legend in his own right. Do you remember anything that he said to you afterwards?

I mean, he's simple, you know what I mean? It's like he doesn't need to say too much. I mean, even until now we got home from the flight. From Abadami, and then I asked him, like, oh, Dad, are you proud, you know? Like, how are you feeling? Like, it's pretty cool, huh? And then he was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know? I'm proud of you.

I mean, just, like, very, very simple. But it's like, I can just tell, like, the way he hugs me, the way he's, you know, he's happy. He just feels very, like, very proud. You know, he doesn't even need to say anything. He just feels very proud. And just kind of before my fight, you just kept telling me, you know, like, go get, go out, go after what is your. you know what's yours you know what's yours he just kept saying that to me um before i went out to the fight and so yeah he's he's definitely proud but of course i think he's just always always

i don't think he even wants to say too much so he doesn't get emotional honestly well what a journey in jihitsu and mMA i remember your your legacy debut in 2016 everyone was taught okay what is she going to do does she like to get punch in the face can she handle getting punched Can she make weight? UFC debut in 2018 and all the ups and downs. You have a kid. You come back. You become like a freaking Hulk out there.

All of a sudden, the muscles show up after becoming a mom. Amazing to see the transformation. And now you become a UFC champion. It's been an incredible journey. You've withstood it all. You've overcome it all. And now you get to enjoy the spoils of the victory. So congratulations, McKenzie.

Thank you so much for coming on the program. Really means a lot. And I hope you enjoy it. you allow yourself some time to smell the roses as well, because I know this has been a long road for you, and you deserve that. Man, thank you so much, I appreciate that, and yeah, it's been, like, such a pleasure just getting to know you, and, you know, you're always covering, like, great stuff, so since the beginning.

So, yeah, it's a pleasure to be here and talking to you about this, and, yeah, thanks to all the fans, and super excited, and I think there's going to be lots of great things coming, so thank you again. Thank you, McKenzie. All the best. Bye. There she is, Mackenzie Durham, the brand new UFC women's strawweight champion. She is the 115 pound champion in case you don't know what straw weight is.

You probably do if you watch this show. And I'm really curious to see what happens. Now the next step is the Zhang Wei-le fight. If Zhang wins, you know, she's now the flyweight champion. If she loses, what does she do? And the same question can be asked of one Islam-Mahouye fight. much of. Wins, sticks around. Loses, does he go back down to 155? He's been talking about Ilya and all this stuff, White House. This is classic. They're in the same way class. They

don't fight each other. They don't want to talk about each other. Different weight classes. Teasing, teasing, teasing, teasing, teasing. All kinds of teasing. I do believe we have a few other super chats and then we'll call it a day. Tomorrow on the program, Frankie, yeah, I've been keeping my eye on the super chats. I'm happy to read the superchats. I just want to let you know that tomorrow on the program, the victorious Quillian, or is it Quillan? I believe it's Quillen. A very unique name that I want to learn about is going to join us. Charles Jordane is going to join us. Didn't have a chance to speak to him last week, but we will talk to him. This is after his big win in Vancouver. Dr. Brian Suter, one of our favorite guests who has that great YouTube channel where he talks about

sports injuries. He's going to join us to talk about the Tom Aspon injury and others. Also on the nose tomorrow, I'll get the post up. I was supposed to do that. I forgot. We'll get that up and we'll answer your questions. And I like this on a Tuesday after a pay-per-view because it feels like the topics are hot. And then Wednesday's another great day. But as far as super chats are concerned, I do see shown plant here saying get Gasev on the show now, please call him now? This was when we were, you know, killing time.

If you want a timestamp this, when someone messed up the clock and we'll just blame Peter Cowell. Ah, yes. Ah, yes. I do remember that. Here's an interesting one from what appears to be a Toronto Blue Jays fan.

Remember, Blue Jays Dodgers, first pitch tonight at 8 p.m. Tide 1-1. We won it all, and I thought we were all in it together, but apparently not according to Danny Alfaro. Number one, unbiased, Ariel, glazing,

any harder for Aspinall would literally, literally, hey, wait, he changed his picture because here it's a Blue Jays logo, just for the record. Anyway, make you his manager. We all know Asperon wants to go to boxing now. Chill. Okay. Again, I know if you defend someone, you're going to be called the glazer. I know that's the way it works, but yeah, I don't think that I was wrong with my assessment in any way, shape, or form. Here's Chase saying, Ariel, I'm a huge fan of you and uncrowned, but the entire team glazed. Tom, at a level, is sickening. What happened to sports journalists being unbiased?

Yeah, I think we're actually being unbiased. I think we're actually telling you the truth here because I think that people are afraid to tell you the truth. They'd be like, oh, no, no, no, no, let's all be friends. Why can we be friends? No contest, no intentional foul. Everyone is a winner. No, that's not how it goes.

You poke someone in the eye to DQ. That doesn't mean that you're a bad person. That's not an indictment on you as a human being. But you poked him in the eye. It's a DQ. And why is Tom getting all the blame? Why is Tom the topic on this Monday more so than Cyril? That's what I want to know. Shouldn't that say it all? Stephen G. says it's taught to keep fingers up rather than out. Cyril had fingers up when he poked can getting rid of that be a simple rule change to implement. Yeah, they got this big thing

where it's like you can't do this, but you could do this. I say, how about none of that? How about none of that? How about this? How about this? How about this? How about this? And how about no palming to the face? How about that?

And how about no intentional, unintentional. Meshugas! Oh, here's Danny again. Maybe he's wearing a Blue Jays hat when he's typing this. Ariel start losing... Oh, you see, look. Was it two different guys? Because the first one...

No, he changed it probably to up his chances of you reading them. Well, I mean, it's a super chat. I'll read it. Arrow start losing argument versus New York, Rick. It's hard to watch. watch. I don't know what that's about. I don't remember losing any type of argument. I know exactly what that's about it. Oh, I remember your tweet from Saturday. We didn't get to that. Let's talk about

it. Bring it back up. Yeah, he had a great tweet. Jordan has it. Yeah, here it is. The takes about about the first round of Tom Aspen versus Surroghan are getting wild. Couldn't agree more. And then he goes on to say, reminds me of Leon Edwards versus Belal Muhammad and the tales being spun about being a foregone conclusion of who was going to win before the eye poke stopped at it. So I guess What you're trying to say is everyone's saying, oh, Tom wanted out. Don was whooping his ass. We know how this fight goes. It's over.

So what's the part you disagree with? And so how are we equating this to Leon Edwards versus Belal? Because that fight ended 18 seconds for the second round after an eye poke and everybody said Leon Edwards was kicking his ass. We don't need to see this anymore. Balal stinks the same way they said it about. Belal wanted out, basically. No.

Yeah. It's the same thing. yeah, I guess Bilal wanted out, but more that they were saying Leon won, Leon won, Leon won, yeah, Leon won. He was smoking him. Oh, okay, so Gan won then, is what you're saying. You were saying, gone one. Let us go, please, to the stats. Here we have significant strikes, 19 of 39 for one Leon Edwards, eight of 26 for Bilal Muhammad. Comparing that to the significant strikes of Saturday's main event,

27 for Mr. Tom Aspinall of 39, 30 for Sir Ogun. So gone one. Seems a lot closer. Seems a lot closer. But it's still just one round. It's one round. Gone one. No, no, no. We're not even talking about this anymore. Now my issue is of you saying that Balala Leon 1 wasn't a foregone conclusion. Totally different fight. It was a foregone conclusion. He was wiping

the floor with him. Stop. He was wiping the floor. You're trolling, surely. Go back and watch it. He was piecing him up. There's nothing to stop. This is trolling of the highest level. 20 of 40 total strikes, 14 of 32. I mean, he was beating him and again, as I said, oh, let's go, let's go to the

body punches. Five of six for Leon, one of three. We've never seen a fight change. We've never seen a fight change. Four of four, zero of zero. I can't do this. What is there to do? I'm not asking if the Knicks are down 40 to 32 in the first quarter. Games over? No, but I'm not saying that in this. What you're trying to say is, what you're trying to say is that these two situations are the same and that anyone who says Tom wanted out is is a bullshitter and anyone who said Balal wanted out as a bullshitter because Surreal wasn't up big and Leon wasn't up big that's what you're saying, right? Yes, it was

one round of the fight. For the record, I never said Balal wanted out. I never said Bilal wanted out. But the only thing I'm debating you on is Leon Bilal was not as close as Tom Sorrell. But who cares? That's not the conversation. Of course it's not the conversation. That's why the whole thing was funny. I completely went on the tangent.

You're missing my comedic relief here. My comedic relief here is that for the last five years, I said Leon was beating Bilal Pillar to Pose. That's my issue. That's it. There's no other issue here, just for the record. You missed my issue. My issue is that fight was not close, and Tom Surreal was close. Do you understand now?

Do you understand? But it was not over. I never said it was over. I never said it was predetermined. I would never accuse a fighter of wanting out. I think it's the craziest thing. You've just got through a whole training camp. You just...

I'm still not sure what's. happening, but I think we're on the same page? We've always been on the same page. My only issue is your assessment of comparing Leon below. A fight that ended due to an eye poke after one round of action where nobody was walking away with it.

Tom Cyril, closer first round, much closer first round, than Leon below. Do we agree? Do we agree? It was so much closer. Okay, so much closer to the point that Leon already won. Leon won the fight. I didn't say, I never said that. I never said that. All I'm saying is, don't put the, there's a million different examples.

Why are you picking Leon below? What's another example of a fight that had one round of action and ended after an eye poke? You think I get that? I've been here for four fucking hours. I'll say you asked him to pull an example out of his ass earlier in the show. Yeah, and did he give me one? He gave kind of like a... That was one hour into the show, and I've been sitting here for four hours speaking.

You guys got Google in front of you. Can we laugh at Jim Miller bringing up the exact same fight? Where he's like, oh yeah, reaching around trying to poke the eyes. Yeah, no one even knows. Tell me the fight. I don't remember. No one has any recollection. I've been on the air for one and a half hours.

You haven't been talking shit. I don't know what you guys are doing. It was. It was Priscilla Casuerre. Yeah, thank you. That's it. Someone does some research. I appreciate it.

Thank you. A quick Google search would have helped you guys. You're going to laugh at that. Yeah, I'm talking to people. I'm talking to people. Yeah, yeah. You think I'm supposed to be doing the research? Okay.

Yeah. The point that I will reiterate, after one round of action. And for Tom and Cyril, it's like almost one round of action. It's four minutes and 30 seconds. The fight was not over. The fight was never over, and we can make no definitive conclusions at the point that the eye poke happened. Couldn't agree more. My only gripe with the tweet was that Leon Belal was not a close first round.

That's it. But that's not the point of the tweet. Doesn't matter. That's the funny part. That's the funny part. My only issue was, don't compare it to Leon Belal because Leon Belal was not close. Leopel is like your holy grail of, like, beat down first round beat downs. We can piece them up.

Pillar to post. Yes. Were you even, you didn't even watch in the bay back then. Go and watch it. Battered and breathing through his mouth. He was beating him up. This fight was not that far.

Like, by the way, if you go on Twitter, they would actually, they would actually say it was. Tom was done. Tom was cooked. That's crazy.

Cyril was beating the shit out of him. Here's the point, by the way, there were still 25 seconds left in that round. Yeah. That first round, which by the way, for the record,

if it would have ended at the four minute and 35 second mark, I would have given it to Cyril Gan 10, 10-9, no questions asked. But it was so close of a first round that if Tom would have poured it on in the last 25 seconds, rocked him, he wins that round. Does he not? Does he not steal that round?

Drops him, yeah. Drops him. Go back and watch the watch. Jimmy likes. With like a minute 15 left in the round where like, yeah, I edge this one to zero. Yeah, it's a close round, but I give it to zero. There was still 25 seconds left.

I agree with you. Tom Aspenol still had a... Take down, ground and pound, elbows, body shots. The point is it wasn't so insurmountable that he couldn't have at least tried to steal it. It wasn't moving in that direction. Leon was en route to a 10-8 second round. That's what I'll try to say. Sometimes I feel like...

I'm going to my grade. I feel like there's a reflexive like... This is great. Disagreement with my takes. And then when we actually unpack them, it's basically us agreeing what my takes. Here's Aunt Evans, Antoine. If 2011 promoter Dana met 2025 promoter Dana would it be like matter and anti-matter colliding and the universe blows up? That's way too dense

for me but I mean yeah the difference is I think it was 2000 am I wrong? Was UFC 112 2011 or 2010? I think it was 2010 UFC 112 yeah 2010 yeah so the first Abu Dhabi show

was in 2010 and go to that interview with me and him and how mad he was and there was no controversy in that fight it was just an awful fight and Anderson was acting a little funny and then go to this one where there's actual controversy first time ever on the night that a UFC title fight ends in a no contest and he's just like yeah whatever do we have that clip that clip I just want to end on that clip that one clip where he's like yeah whatever fuck it who cares the I poke one you know the one I'm talking about there's a clip where he's like he's asked it's again it's it's such a good one it's so good

here it is here it is it's a bit of a weird question right it was ruled in no contest because of an unintentional eye poke. What does it take to make an eye poke intentional? And is there even a way you could ever prove that? Who the fuck knows? Who gives a shit? What are you going to do? It's so good.

I know, tried to do new gloves before and that kind of didn't work out. Is there anything we can do to stop these eyepokes? Would you ever look at maybe trying to change the gloves again? Or is it just part of this sport? Just shit happens. Yeah. I mean, no matter what you do with the glove,

I mean, they're going to happen. on that note wait wait can I ask you one question yes yes please let me do five minutes on this I need the answer to this I know Andy Aspinall came out and was like oh we're gonna go to boxing and yada yada but you have

by the way can I just say I think that was ill-advised I would not you know as I'm trying to keep it fair here if I were him and that was a weird thing it was like almost and I saw DC even talk about how he was disappointed that that was caught on camera him talking about the heavyweight division now was a completely different thing But I think there's conversations happening, and there's so many cameras nowadays.

It didn't feel like an interview, but maybe I'm wrong. D.C. said about his earlier on the show he does with Chale that he thought it was embedded, and they wouldn't have kept that in. Sure, sure. So he thought he could speak freely. This was different, but it felt the same. You know, like the angle felt the same. And it felt like a kind of private under the breath conversation.

If I were advising Tom and Andy, I would say keep that one to yourself, especially with three fights left. Well, there's nothing good comes out of putting that out there. Nothing good comes out of it If you're on one fight left, maybe But Andy's charm is that he kind of You know, shoots from the hip And he says what's on his, you know, his sleeve, his heart And you've got to respect that and appreciate that

But if I were them, I wouldn't have said it Also just the Antedelia thing It's like nothing good comes from even answering that quite Let's be like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to cross that bridge when we get to it But okay, let's say even with those two things in mind Which I agree with you on, right? Like I agree that like it doesn't

serve you best to have those two positions because we've seen in the past how Dana Waite reacts to them. Even accounting for that. Is it not in Dana White's best interest to get behind Tom Aspinall? Is it not the best for the promotion to not bury Tom Aspinall? This guy who has the shortest average fight time in UFC history who goes out there and smokes opponents and in this scenario didn't for the first time and everybody's acting like the sky is falling. But this young, handsome champion who's been waiting on the sidelines, waiting for John Jones to resolve whatever issues he's got, and ultimately it doesn't, and he gets back in there, and it's an unfortunate turn of events. Is it not in your best interest with three fights left with

Tom Aspinall at minimum to care and to promote him and to defend him and think about your future returns on Tom Aspinall fights? And then if he goes out there and he does beat Cyril Gun by K.O., everybody's back with him, and it's, you know, hey, you know, Tom Aspinall's back. Isn't that just better for business to care and support Tom Aspel? Am I crazy? Like, I don't understand the position here. I don't get it. Yeah, but it's also a better business to not be asked about I pox and be like,

oh, give us a fuck. Imagine another commissioner of a sport acting like that about it, like trying to actually solve the issue. By the way, it actually would be, it would actually make more sense if it was the commissioner. Imagine the owner, right? Imagine the owner of the team has something controversial happen. and you're asked like, what are you going to do? I don't give so fucking. Like, is the plane ready?

Like, can we just get on the plane? That, to me, is even worse. This is your baby. This is your thing. You own this thing. You run this thing. You're the president of the company. And this is how you feel.

I'm almost more forgiving of that from the sheer frustration of it. But the idea of, like, you were in the Tom Aspinnell business. He is your heavyweight champion. He is a superstar in the making. If you play this correctly, why not just, like, defend it?

not just come out in front of it and say, hey, like, look, nobody wanted this to happen. Tom's a superstar. Cyril fought better than I think anybody expected. We're going to do this again. It's going to be massive. And we've got an exciting times ahead in the heavyweight division. That's the best for business. I don't get it.

I just don't get it. This is not a real question. This is a rhetorical question. No, this is a real question. It's a rhetorical question because there's nothing that I can add to defend it. There's nothing that I can say, of course. The answer is, yes, of course, yes, of course, yes, of course to every single point that you raise. And that's why I brought up Eddie Hearn, because if Eddie Hearn saw that happen to his guy, Anthony Joshua, even if he was fighting another matchroom guy, he would be there defending him at the hospital with him by his side, doing everything to make him feel appreciated and love and respected because he has earned that.

And he, you know, he deserves that. Tom isn't Anthony yet, but he is well on his way. He is becoming a global superstar. He's certainly the face of MMA in the UK, and he didn't deserve that. At no point in that press conference, did Dana White defend him? At no point did he say, he's the man. I would never question his heart, his determination. I would never question his ability to see or not see.

I would never question his ability to continue or not continue. That sucked. We never planned for that. It's historic. It's never happened before. We're going to rebook this. God willing, he's okay. We pray that he's okay.

It was nasty, it was two fingers in the eye There was another eye poke before that It was awful, it was turning out to be an all-time classic By the way, it was turning out to be better than all you idiots In the media and at home thought it was going to be Like spike the football in all of us You believed, you believed and we didn't And instead it's like Tom couldn't continue on a map

But even forget what Tom deserves Which I agree with you that he does deserve that It's your business Two fights from now you're going to be in business with Tom Aspinall It's never worked this way it's never worked this way at least not in the last five, six, seven, eight years.

Bizarre? Yeah, it's truly bizarre but when the gap is that big there's no one creeping up and there's no one nipping at your heels but I can assure you and I haven't asked him this I can assure you

if Tom Aspinall sees that clip he feels some sort of way how could you not feel some sort of way? The narrative that is being spun is that he couldn't sorry, he chose not to continue he chose. Not that he couldn't

he couldn't see he chose he had an option and he took the out that's being spun by the top dog if he would have come out there with the same type of passion and vitriol that we've seen from in the past that said are you out of your fucking mind Tom Aspinall is looking for a way absolutely not the guy could be blind

we've seen people lose their eyes their eyeballs no he did what was right it sucked we hope to never have this situation again we're going to rebook this in the first quarter and it's going to be even better that's all you have to say but he didn't do that and I feel like

the reason he didn't do that is because of what Andy Aspinall said and because of the comment regarding Antedelia, which, by the way, he knows about them because he was asked about them, Adam Caterall asked him about it, and he said it was the dumbest thing and all that stuff. And it's the same type of stuff that Aljo has experienced and GSP experience, John Fitch, experience, all that. Nothing news. That's why I say, just don't say it. Just say we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Anyway, we'll have plenty of time to talk about this. I'm sure there'll be some questions regarding this tomorrow on the nose, but it's time to go. And by the way, we're still keeping this hat here, all right? And the picture is still over there. So don't think that we're going to switch up like some of you others who switch up so easily. All right, we're not that type. And that's what makes us the number one unbiased. Just because you don't agree with our stance and just because we have a stance,

doesn't mean we're unbiased. That just means that we keep a real. I'm telling you right here and now. I don't think they should have said that in the media. But, you know, sometimes you speak from the heart and you'll get burned for it. And ultimately, it doesn't matter. It's not like they're stripping him of the belt. They're still going to make the fight.

He's still going to be the top dog. And the fight is going to be gigantic. The fight, the rematch is going to be gigantic. So everyone's winning in this situation, just for the record. Tom's still the champion. Surreal's getting another, as Chale laid out, surreal is getting another crack at the belt. What? This will be his fifth?

Right? Derek Lewis Interim, Francis Inganu, John Jones, Tom Asperol, Tom Asperol, five petal fights. That might be a record. O and three in one-no contest. But it's 100% the right fight to make. And guess what? The alternative was Tom Asperlars versus Alexander Volkov, which has no heat behind it whatsoever. And he already beat Alexander Volkov.

Volkov deserved to win that fight, but, you know, like, in a way. class right now that doesn't have a lot of juice in some ways it's a it's a nice little silver lining anyway a great day here on the program thank you chale thank you mackenzie thank you jim thank you big ooze jose joseph jose parker thanks to all of you thanks to all of them back tomorrow safe time everybody says indies go jays