The Ariel Helwani Show - Will UFC White House card boost Paramount subs? Katie Taylor's Croke Park dream, more | The Craic

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Petesy Carroll, Chuck Mindenhall, and Ben Fowlkes return for another edition of The Craic. Chuck kicks off the show by sharing his plans to attend the UFC White House card in person (4:43). Paramount also weighed in on its partnership with the UFC, outlining what they hope to achieve through the deal (16:30). After years of speculation, Croke Park is officially set to host Katie Taylor’s next fight. Petesy sheds light on the mood in Ireland ahead of the historic event (43:30). Fellow Irishman Conor McGregor’s reported sparring partners have also come to light. Are these the right names to help prepare him for his return (54:58)? Michael Bisping had some harsh words for Tom Aspinall regarding his recovery from eye injury. The lads examine Bisping’s apparent change in stance (59:50). To close up shop, the boys look ahead to PFL action (01:10:05), before answering your Super Chats (01:32:21).

Ladies and gentlemen, it is that time again. The crack is back. It's Friday, baby. I hope all you crackheads are doing well out there. Got a lot to talk about today. We are just eight days away. No, sorry, nine days away from UFC at the White House. It's been a long road, but it's getting shorter. Very, very intrigued as to see what next week will hold. And of course, one of our esteemed hosts of the crack,

Chuck Mendenhall is going to be there. So I want to pick his brain about all of that. We had a big article from the Hollywood reporter yesterday with comments from Paramount as well as Dana White, as well as producers for the UFC book. Very interesting to see the demographic that Paramount are zooming in on with this UFC deal, their hopes for the White House event. Obviously, this is all on the back of the Netflix event and what will be the biggest MMA event of the year, all that crack.

We were talking about it back then. like, I wonder how Paramount feel about this. Well, we got some indication to that with this article. We also have the big Katie Taylor announcement that Crow Park, Brian Peters, her long-time manager, getting very emotional. Crazy to see. A very tough guy, Brian. Some of you might remember him from that press conference,

the Tyson-Paul fight when they wouldn't let Eddie Hearn up on the stage of Katie Taylor and he gave that poor MVP PR guy, What's For? Interesting to see him there. We had a lot of comments from Eddie Hearn. at this event, including some about Tom Aspinall, who's under fire from a man I thought he was very close with, Michael Bisping, who was saying, come on, Tom, time to get back to work. We also have Connemar Greger, we've have an insight into his sparring partners by yours truly. And we also have an announcement with the PFL. It looks like Kostlo Van Steenis will not be able

to make it to his fight with Johnny Eblen, and they have a replacement. We'll talk about that later on the show as well. But one of these men I've already mentioned, let's bring in the great duo, Ben Folks and Chuck Mendenhall. Chuck, I mean, you must be getting excited now, buddy. It's like Christmas Eve over there, I'd say.

Embracing is more like it. You know what I mean? It's like it means a lot of things. I was just looking at the schedule today and there's so much going on on that fight week and you have no idea like what any of this will mean or like how it's going to play out. It's just such a bizarre thing.

Like I thought the sphere, you know, when they had the card at the sphere, that was going to be the strangest one that I would cover live. And now here we are or not. It was it two years later and I'm doing something even nuttier. It is the kind of thing though that you want to be at. Like a guy like you, I'd say you would hate to be at home like watching other people cover this.

Like this is, these are the kind of things that go down in history, regardless of how you feel about it. And the dynamic surrounding it all will only add to the things you can talk about as far as I'm concerned. I might pull the Hunter S. Thompson since we're talking about Gonzo journalism and just stay home. Remember, he was out in Zaire.

He was supposed to be at that big fight the rumble in the jungle and he decided to say at the pool. I might try something like that. Here's what I'm thinking. This feels like the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel. That Chuck Minnall shows up in Washington, D.C., on the White House grounds. I'm imagining he's got a little, like, reporter notebook. He's taking notes. He's wandering around.

He's trying to like see some sights there to sort of like fill out the story with a little bit of color. He rounds a corner in the White House. and sees like a secretive deal going down and just sort of like, oh, no, he's like, he's stuck. He hears something. He doesn't understand the full picture yet, but he knows this is big. And the next thing you know, Chuck is embroiled in an international mystery. Yeah. I'm crawling through like ducks and stuff like that with like a bayonet in my teeth or something weird, you know.

Don't shoot the glass. He has no shoes. He has no shoes. I'm imagining a scene where like you're, like, you're a world traveler at this point, you know, you end up and Hey, Ron, you're trying to get out. Next thing you know, you're in Venice. You get fished out of the canal in Venice by a gondolier, and you almost drown. He looks at you, and he's just like, are you all right?

And you look around and you'd be like, no, I'm not all right. Where's my hat? Boom. I fish a blow dart out of my neck and there's a guy with a raven standing up in some window, you know? Can't tell who it is. All right. I think we should probably start there seeing it's talking about. Why?

That was fun. do you know like what's going down for you next week? Like will you be in the ellipse? Like do you get a seat beside the octagon? Do you like, when will those kind of specifics be with you if they aren't already? Yeah. So you get to sit at a table and be like, so which of us are on the Epstein list, eh, fellas? You know, just sort of just start a conversation that way.

I'm hoping. But I, uh, you know, it's funny because I went back just for the show. I was like, right, let me see what the, with the approval of the credential said exactly. And basically what it says is that I am approved. for the credential and it gives you all the list of things that are going on that week that your credential to and the media center right it says it's at the bottom but then not at the bottom in the middle and then it says this does not automatically guarantee that you'll be on the west lawn um as this will be a big media event seating is limited and all that stuff and you will get

further communications if you're on the lawn you know the west lawn to follow protocols whatever and i can tell you one thing boys i have not received one single piece of information about that so I'm guessing just by power of deduction that I am in the media center and I have honestly no idea where that is set up. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And they're expecting like 100,000 people through the ellipse. Is that right as well?

Like throughout the weekend. Well, you can expect as many people as you would like. Why not expect a million? You could, you could say anything there. I don't know how many they'll actually get. I mean, here's what I would want to know. If you're at the media center kind of thing, can you wander out of the media center?

Because I think it could be interesting to go talk to people in the ellipse and just see like, what made you want to come out here, why, how did you get down here, all that kind of stuff. Other than that, because sometimes UFC will, like an event, stick you in a tent and be like, watch it on TV. My God. I know, we'll bring some fires back here. I just don't know what to expect with this. And you mentioned like talking to people.

I mean, in the lead up, I kind of anticipate doing something like this, right? because they're having like this fan fest the day before. There's like some concert going on. There's all kinds of weird like activities as if it's a festival, you know, um, which only has the bizarre nature of all of this. So I feel like regardless if it happens on fight night or beforehand, there's going to be an element of that of talking, uh,

to the people at the event, hopefully some military people. That would be cool like to get to see who showed up for that from the military side. Did you talk to any like, I mean, have you talked to anyone else that's going? Like, have they received similar instructions to you?

or are you all just going to sit on your hands waiting to hear what? Well, I have talked to a couple of, you know, one of them who Ben has worked with is Greg Rosenstein, our old editor over there at The Athletic. He said he's going to be in town. And I asked him, are you going to be on the lawn? He's like, I think so. I haven't heard anything. So again, I don't know if it's just that they're taking their time and kind of like really designating where everybody's going to be at this point.

Or if they know and they're just not communicating to those fools who are not going to be on the West Lawn. You know, it's like it could be one at this point. They're watching your coverage leading up to it and being like, see if this guy minds his peas and cues. Well, it looks like I'm in the media center than if they catch this episode, you know. I did already suggest the Epstein list idea. Yeah, no, that will be on me. Here's, I'm going to ask a question partially tongue in cheek, but also partially sincerely. Chuck, here you are.

You're going to our nation's capital for this big celebration that also I imagine. has got to have a ton of security protocols and all this kind of stuff. But it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that something crazy and dangerous could happen. Given just we had some crazy stuff happen at the White House Correspondence dinner. People are doing stand-up interviews outside the White House and gunshots are popping up. Yeah. Are you at all concerned? Does it pass through your mind that maybe this is a dangerous environment to sort of be and just hanging around? I will say that the people that I've brought this up to, you know, like just people who don't

really follow the UFC. And this is really wild too, just on that element, talking to people about a UFC being in the White House. But they're like, oh, my God, is it going to be safe? Is there going to be security? Like, you know, and that's what you keep getting is like, dude, be careful. Be careful out there. You know, that sort of thing, which is a little wild. I will say that there is obviously some kind of concern there, but you would hope that the level of security at an event like this would be, you know, above that sort of thing. But man, like you said, it's a, our world right now the way it is, yes, certainly, man, there's a level of concern there.

I try not to think too deeply about that, but, uh, yes, it does cross my mind. And when do you get into town, Chuck? Like, well, like, what is your week going to look like? So the event is Sunday, we'd usually get in, say Thursday, you'd kind of want to be there for the press conference. Maybe I think the open workouts used to be on Wednesdays for, but like, what type of, I think I'll get in Wednesday night, so I'll be, you know, since the event is on a Sunday,

arbitrarily been, and so I don't know why they put it on a Sunday for the, yeah, there's just happened to fall. Yeah, there's just happens. White House lawn was not available any other day. Imagine that. They do rent that out quite a bit. So I feel like,

I wanted to be there a few days in advance. So I'll be there from Thursday morning on, basically to, uh, to try to capture everything that's going on and, uh, and try to get some answers to the questions that we have for this event, you know,

are you know the, to the Pizzi Carol approach of what we should really do here, what the readers really want to hear is, what does every bartender in this city think of the event that's going down? Don't steal my feature ideas. Don't let me get out there. There's only one way to find out. And it would be impolite to try to be slurring by the last ones.

Pepper and with questions without at least buying a drink and sliding a tip across the bar. My favorite is my in-laws. I actually told that like three times. I know you have. There's some family. that I have that basically diminutize, I guess you could say, like the, like they, they see the UFC as like some rogue, I don't know, like, gorilla outfit. And so like, and I never, after a while, like, I'm done talking about like trying to explain what it is, this is. And, uh, they found out only recently that this event is happening on the White House lawn. And their first question was, did they get Trump's approval to do this? Like, they wanted to know if they were just going to do it. They were going to throw up and throw a show like a kind of like, you know, I was like, oh, my.

my god imagine pieces of the octagon over the wall yeah you're putting the cage they're like banksie telling you're telling ilya and justin geishi like hey if we all just show up together they can't say no it's exactly what they thought okay i'm glad you brought this up yeah this is something that came up for me over the past week i i wrote something on my substack the fightinglife dot substack by the way. Where I was saying like, you know. That's a good feed by the way. You do you write about all kinds of stuff.

I do. And I don't write about that much like fight sports stuff. True. A little bit. Bad name for the substack. Bad name for the substack. It was a play on the writing life by Annie Dealer. You wouldn't get it.

You wouldn't get it. You wouldn't get it. Anyway, I wrote something where about how when I had posted like the column that I wrote for us last week about the USC's event here and the, I noticed when I noticed when I posted it on like various social medias and it got it got it broke containment for a kind of a normie audience outside of the mhm a bubble audience and how many people were mad like like i don't like it i don't want to watch it but like mad that it's happening mad that the fighters are doing it mad at me for writing about it at all mad at people for being into this sport and and

and when i wrote about in my sub sac it it also broke containment there and became the the most red thing by far on my substack, but then it was some of the same thing where I found myself feeling like I used to feel in the old days of being like an MMA writer in like, you know, the mid-2000s and stuff where what you were constantly fighting against was the establishment people being like, this thing is stupid. This thing is just like, it's just brutality for brutality's sake. There's nothing redeeming about it. It sucks and it's awful.

And all you people who like it are awful. And it was like that kind of a same vibe because there, there were some people who, who, you know, we're just like, okay, this makes some good points. But some people being like, UFC sucks. It's for trashy idiots and, like, ignorant dude bros. And you're all terrible for even watching this ever. And I found myself being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me tell you what you're not going to do over here on Ben Folks's substack.

It's come out here. Like, hey, we can criticize the UFC because we know the UFC very well at this point. We followed it for years. We know the ins and outs. we also though know it's our drunk uncle yes it's our drunk uncle we can talk all the shit we want

about our drunk uncle you don't even know him bro you don't get to talk about our drunk uncle and it triggered that thing in me in a way that I was I was very surprised by and I wasn't expecting where I was just like you know you're not going to sneer down your nose at this whole sport

this whole idea of a thing there's plenty of criticism you could say about this particular event and why we're doing it, where and when we are doing it. There's all that kind of stuff you can talk about. We should really talk about that at some point, I think. At some point. We'll circle back. But the idea that you're going to come in here and just be like, this shit sucks.

It's for idiots. And I was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't get it. That's fine. Maybe you've given it a chance. Maybe you've never given it a chance. Maybe it's just not for you. It doesn't have, not everything is for everybody.

but also like just because you don't get the sport does not mean and just because it's doing something weird on this night doesn't mean that the entire sport sucks and has no redeeming value and I was I was surprised to be put back in that zone I was like man I haven't felt like this since like 2009 you know that's exactly what it feels like and I've had another there's another like it's a fantasy football threat but they have a second thread that's all politics like so they have two concurrent threads going on and uh but these guys you've got a couple of trolls in there who just do this. But anyway, long story short, I caught a lot of that what you're talking about right now. And I'm like, you guys, no, no, you don't get to just hop in here all of a sudden just because it came into your view and make these, you know, grand statements about the sport

and stuff. I'm like, it doesn't work that way, man. Yeah, you didn't know anything about it last month. You don't know anything more about it this month just because you saw a headline that says it's at the White House next weekend. I was at a, we have Mary God, rest of she passed away last week. He goes at her funeral on Tuesday.

And all my uncles would be like, uh, you know, 50 to 80 kind of range. And that's all they were asking. Like, so event like a UFC, the thing you, they do at the White House. Is that correct? I'm like, yeah, and Connor McGregor is fighting on it. They just meld all the stories into one. You know what I mean? You're like, okay.

Yeah, I can see how that happens. We thought he would. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, there is a definite fascination with the event, whether that's like, everyone is reacting to it, whether that be negatively or positively. And we did get this, Ben actually put this in our group last night,

the Hollywood Reporter article. And it is interesting, and Ben will give some insights after on this, but just in terms of the demo that they're chasing with this, and, you know, obviously their hopes that this will generate a lot of subscriptions for them. Here is the quote that is in the article.

One of the thing that's been really cool about seeing this UFC audience show up, which again is not a monolith, But it's the audience so far that has shown up is that we have found on average, the folks watching UFC on Paramount Plus are 15 years younger than our average audience before UFC. So for us, that's a massive unlock. We also then observe what they're watching when they show up on the platform so far. Some of those signals have been really interesting. You have a lot of crossover with the sale park audience.

So that's been interesting for us. So then we take all that information and we say, okay, how do we make sure that when this audience shows up, they're going to get the right recommendations on the service. Not too interesting that part of the quote. Kept reading it. Wasn't very relevant. You were committed. You were you were committed by that point. It was kind of blurry too. So I was hesitant there. Like usual reading performances are a lot better, I want to say. They are. They are. But, Ben, this is obviously a big factor for Paramount Plus. And when this Netflix event went down, we were kind of trying to position ourselves in that Paramount Office. Like, how did they feel

about the potential of this first event for MVP, potentially having more eyeballs on it than the White House event, which has been an event we've been talking about for the guts of a year now. How much do you think this is an integral part of this deal as far as Paramount City? It's certainly in the first year generating subscribers for Paramount via this White House event, which we said is very polarising, but hugely talked about as this article speaks to. You know what was really interesting to me about, that article was how much of it seems to be talking about here's what the UFC and its White

House event can do for Paramount plus the streaming service and not what this event and the paramount brands including CBS can do for the UFC. It was this event can drive subs to the streaming service which makes it sound an awful lot. Like I read through that whole thing and mainly I was looking to see if there's any more details on what the broadcast plan is. I've reached out to Paramount executives to be like, what can you tell us about what the broadcast plan is? They're not really saying anything. All we've heard so far is that we expect parts of it to be on CBS, the network, at least

like some undercard stuff, but maybe not all of it. That maybe we will just show a few fights and then lead into like a main car that's only available on Paramount Plus, which makes me think like you're using this to drive subscriptions. That's what you see the value as and which the UFC, I would think from their perspective, you want as many people to see it as possible. And the stuff that we hear from UFC executives and even from Donald Trump himself where they're like, this is going to be the biggest sporting event in America. And I'm going, look, if it's only available. Yeah, well, if it's only available. P.T. Barnum said that a lot. On Paramount Plus. Permanent Plus, right, like last I heard,

an update from a couple months ago was that Paramount Plus had just hit 79 million subscribers so if every single subscriber watch this plus on the night you gain 20 million subscribers which would be incredible

if you could gain that in this weekend you'd still be about 25 million short of the last Super Bowl so like you can't you're limiting your reach by putting it on Paramount Plus certainly and you're hoping that like people will watch on CBS they'll hear enough about this and they'll come and they'll sign up. But if we're using this event to help Paramount Plus and not using the event and everything Paramount has it,

it's just, it's, it's, it's, uh, fingertips to, to help the UFC. That tells you something about what we see the value of this event being. And it seems like a kind of a one way street that the UFC, like Paramount Plus has spent a bunch of money to get the UFC and it's like, here's where we start making some of that money back is if we can get a whole bunch of people to sign up. Now, I did think it was interesting and maybe not surprising that quote, you read Pizzi about how the UFC viewer tends to be younger than Paramount Plus's usual viewer. And when you look at, well, when you look at what the temple shows are for Paramount Plus, that's not really that's surprising, right? Like Yellowstone, Tulsa King, Landman. Best show.

That's a great show. Every single one of those is a show where it's like, remember. It is good. Again, not everything has to be for me. You know, some things could be for other people. But every one of those shows has something in common, which is, remember these old actors? They're old guys now, but we're going to put them in situations where even though they're old guys, they're still rad. It's a, it's boomer fantasy in a lot of ways.

It's just like, Sylvester Stallone, going to be 75 years old, and he's still, you know, picking up chicks at the bar and being an awesome old dude, beating up people. going on a rant about pronouns doing like and everybody's being like hell yeah this guy is awesome like it's playing to a much older audience base and so it's not surprising that if you get the ufc fan base in they're going to be much younger and they're going to be like i want to watch south park after i watch ufc i'm less interested in tulsa king perhaps so like that you can start to see like yeah ufc is has the potential to be really really good for paramount to help diversify its it's viewership a little bit but it is a little bit surprising to me that we have this big opportunity and instead of just trying to get as many people as possible to watch it, we're being like, how can we take the smaller audience that will come to it and ring out as much possible value as we can by getting them to sign up for subscriptions?

Because it seems to me like what they're saying, you tell me if you disagree, Chuck, what I took from this was, hey, we have this opportunity to grow the subscriber base. Right. Even if that means fewer total viewers watch it, if every total viewer pays, we'll take that. I'm almost imagining like, let's break back in a CBO on CBS. Let's break a live look back in at the White House. How's it going down there? And they've got like a field correspondent who's talking about like, oh, Justin Gage is about, you know, I know that that won't be the case. But do you get the sense that they're purposefully kind of leaving out details on this just because they, the more people who think it's on Paramount Plus,

obviously, right? In the end, we are going to want to go to that. That's what their default will be. Well, I know that it's going to be on Paramount Plus. Do you think that there's a little bit of that, but at the last minute, and I don't know what that means exactly, but like at some point they're going to be like, this is on CBS, but they're going to make a lesser deal of it because of this. That's a good question. I mean, I hadn't considered that maybe we're just trying to be intentionally vague and the hopes that people will sign up in advance. That kind of seems to me a little bit about, remember when the U.S. used to try to get you to like pre-order. paper use on ESPN and I was just like they would give you like 10 bucks off or whatever it was well for a long time they didn't give you anything off it makes sense that they give you a discount and you could be like if I get in early I sure I'll do it for cheaper but for a while there they were just being like pre-order and I was yeah why I'm not concerned you're going to run out I'm not concerned it's good at like you know it's a paper view it's got to still be there when I want to watch it so maybe they're trying to do a little bit of that I nothing I've heard so far though suggests me that going to be able to watch Ilya and Justin Gaei on CBS.

It kind of seems like everything we're saying. Yeah, and that's what it looks like. Yeah. I mean, I will say this, that the UFC has done a good job in seizing moments, right? Like seizing a big, a moment when they can jump into something and they know that they can get a big cross over audience, which is, they probably do it more masterful than just about anybody that we've watched any sport over the last 20 years. Of course, the first one being just, you know, pushing all the chips in for Spike TV. and then getting that payoff with the Bonner Griffin. That brought so much more attention to them.

But you know, you look at something like when they kicked off the Fox deal having that first big flagship show with JDS and Velazquez and how that kind of just got people to associate who weren't associating it. Like they're, okay, Fox, that's UFC, they did this. But the biggest one that they did before this White House thing was the pandemic, right?

We're going to push through. We're going to be the one that comes on. We're going to make sure that we're broadcasting when nobody else will. And you're going to put all those other ones down. We're going to do this and we're going to say all the right reasons of why we're doing this. We'll go through the scrutiny and everything that you want to give us, but we're doing this anyway. And that actually ended up being one of the greatest strokes of genius for the UFC because

I think they gained a huge, huge new following from that, from that whole thing, not just in that, but in the gambling sense, right? Because people could satisfy their libido for the gambling aspects. And like, so there was this whole aspect there. And then this comes along. And I do feel like this the strategic play. Like we want to, we want to be able to roll out in something that will seem like a ubiquitous almost like, uh, or like, you know, it's going to be broadcast if it's Paramount Plus, however they end up doing it. But everybody's going to want to watch this for curiosity. And it's going to do the same thing, right? It's going to bust open the doors for a whole new audience that may, may not have checked in on our sport before. And it, so far, I mean, if this is

their plan, and even though we're talking about it being geared towards Paramount Plus, I could see it happening for the UFC in that way. And they have, they've, they've had this payoff for them so many times where in the end, they end up benefiting in some huge way, like the deluge of new fans and then they know what to do with it. So if it works, it's going to be, it'll seem strategic from the back and we'll be like, wow, I mean, that really worked again, even though, you know, we, we have our criticisms or whatever going in, it somehow has always benefited the UFC to be bold this way.

Yeah, the pandemic example is a good one because that I still hear from people who, who email into my podcast and say, like, I started watching this during the pandemic. The idea of like that there is a pandemic UFC fan who is still in this is very true, I think, and that really did work out for them. And I feel like especially the thing that has been like a little bit of an alarm bell for me and that I'm still concerned about is like I read that entire Hollywood reporter piece, aside from the photo credits under one of the photos that had the fighters standing there in the Oval Office.

The names of any of the fighters, Ilya Tuporia, Justin Gaci, Alex Pereira, Serra con, those names do not appear anywhere in the story. There is zero talk about who the fighters are. Who you're actually going to see on this event. And for a story where it's just like, let us tell you about this upcoming UFC White House car and all the details about it. Dana White does more to promote landman in that article than he does any of his own fighters. He says, landman is the greatest show ever in the history of television. It's a good mother-daughter duo. I will say that, you know.

Pizzi goes, landman, I love Lucy, and something that only Irish people know about, I'm sure, as like his top three. So he's on board with that. But it's just like, you're so enthusiastic about promoting Paramount Plus's stuff. What about your fighters? I mean, there doesn't seem to be any real interest in that from the UFC. see, I imagine that has to change come fight week, right? Like when you get out there,

you're having media days, you're having these guys stand up in front of the Lincoln Memorial, you know, you're doing all this other stuff to draw attention to them. That's when you got to start talking about what people are actually tuning in to watch.

Because so far, the sales pitch to viewers has entirely been, the UFC will bet the White House isn't that crazy. Don't you want to see what that's like? Come on in. And it's just, it's the UFC at the White House. It is not. UFC lightweight champion earlier to Poria and Justin Gichi at the White House.

I do feel like this kind of backdrop and as polarizing as it is. It does like lend itself to a moment. Like if some fighters perform, if there is an epic fight on this card, it's obviously going to be huge. Like I'm thinking about the Rumble in the Jungle. Obviously Mabu to a highly controversial figure who was a dictator over there who paid so much money to get that fight. But there was no way. That is funny.

There's parallels. Sure. Go ahead. Sorry. No, but I mean, the funny thing about that is, like, everybody kind of knew that the fight was taking place in Africa, but the stories about, you know, him and everything like that weren't at the forefront of the show, right? Like, they weren't like, this is great. Yeah. So here's a brilliant place. Come on over here. Like, this is kind of what it is here, but obviously went on to have a hugely iconic moment for Ali against Foreman and that fight. You mentioned the trailer in Manila last week, Ben, all of these fights, like it was about getting that event there,

but the characters, Ali, Frazier, Foreman, they, they were the people driving. James Brown, he played the, he played out there, the big festival. He did. Wasn't it, uh, wasn't it George Plimpton? Was it George Plimpton who was talking about the, the shaman? And she was shaking. Yeah. And he said, like, she had possessed, I were going off on a tangent here.

Yeah. We want to go back and watch that document. It was great. But I got to say, I do. feel like I do think it's going to be a big, a big, big knife for Paramount Plus because even the people who are adamantly against this, I feel like they're going to want to see it too. I feel like everybody is going to want to see it. Maybe I'm wrong here, but even all these people, like, there was a few people at the, at the funerals as I mentioned, um, my auntie mary's on Tuesday.

And they were like completely against it, but like, oh yeah, I'll definitely watch it. I'll definitely watch it. You know, it does feel like it's, I read the closer. it gets, I feel like everybody's going to be tuning in on Sunday, which is basically all of the what the UFC want. It's all what Paramount want. And really, I don't think they give a shit outside of that, you know?

Like that is, that is, as you pointed out at the start there, that is the goal for everybody here. Even though they, you know, celebration of America, all of these things, they said they're going to put that through the podcast. The brass tax is what matters at the end of the day. And I really do feel like as we get closer, it's going to be

a massively successful in prospect and then like on night fight and I agree with the 100% do you think we come out of it though and we're like well that's my fear that's my biggest fear because the atmosphere of what it's going to be will be will be important too right like it just it's hard to imagine the atmosphere um when you've got these kind of dignitaries and like you've got like i don't know the 1,200 people that Trump is inviting I have no idea but you have like military but like uh you know I don't know how that'll look It's just it's very difficult to kind of know. But if there's, you know, when we first were talking about this, I bet we, they present Trump with a belt at all this, you know, but we don't know exactly what they're going to do in this situation.

But I just wonder coming out of it. If we're just going to have like an ick factor that we, you know, then it just feels like something that you, you hold in a very strange light going out of it, you know, like you don't. Yeah. Well, the thing I wonder too is like what, what kind of vibe do you get from the crowd at a thing like this? because I was thinking about, remember the fight for the troops events at the U.S. Yeah, of course. And they would do them at like military barracks. And those crowds were rabid, man.

Those crowds were super hot and just like. And by the way, like Luke Thomas was talking about this. He was saying they let them wear their camels, which they're not allowed to wear. And so they were loose and they felt like they were there to have fun. I mean, it was good. Those atmospheres were great. Yeah. They were.

And like you could really feel like the vibe from the crowd where it was just like the energy was so high the entire time. I remember the first fight for the troops. remember because it was sort of ironic because they kept making a point about how they were donating a lot of this money to brain injury research and then you had a ton of knockouts and it was like well there's more brain injuries for you but like you could feel like the you could feel the fighters feeding off of that vibe from the crowd because the crowd was super super into it and knew what they were watching and was also very excited about it and it created such like a high intensity high energy atmosphere and I wonder what you get here because you're going to have so. the military and I was encouraged to see that while they were laying out their guidelines for which military members get to be considered to go and, you know, some of them were seem to be aesthetic in nature, but a lot of it was, hey, we want you to be an actual MMA fan. We want you to be a UFC fan. We don't want you to just be somebody who just wants to go. How would they get to figure that out though? I mean, see, that was one of the same thing.

I was just like, I think we could come up with a great test, a great multiple choice written tests for people to fill out that. Yeah, that'd be fun. But, you know, you're going to have some of those people, but then you're also going to have a lot of like VIPs and suits probably sitting around and they are probably not going to give you that same rabbit intensity that you got when it was all troops. Like, I think if you had done it where it was just like no, no VIPs or very few VIPs and almost entirely military, like you would have gotten a different vibe from it.

I think it could feel weird with if it's not that. if it's a bunch of just like old guys and suits who are there to see and be seen and maybe get a word in the presidency or about a, you know, a line item that'd like to see added to something. I also wondered if you do get a lot of people who are not usual viewers who are Pizzi's family at Aunt Mary's funeral who are tuning in and they're not used to this sport. They don't watch a whole lot of it. If we might be watching, you know, if we get like a bloody brawl between Ilya Tuporia and Justin Gae, we'll be sitting here like, hell yeah. If we get some like Griffin Bonner type stuff, we got like a crazy back and forth battle, we'll be like,

that was awesome, that was everything we were hoping to see. I wonder how many of, like, other people would be like, that's what you guys are doing over here? You guys are nuts. This is blood sport. It's insane.

Wouldn't that make you feel good, though, after the stuff you've been put through with the soap stock? It would be, yeah, I'd be like, that's right. That is what we're doing. If you can't get down, there's the door.

You know, like that's what fight sports is. I want those think pieces back. Like nothing to do with the, obviously, the, the, the, the, the, MMA media have done a good job pointing out this criticism as well. Like, I mean, you were on with Luke today. He's done a great job

throughout highlighting his issues with it. You have as well, Ben Shuck, all of you have done a great job. But I would love one of those features where they're just disgusted by the sport. That is what I want coming out. I know. Oh, look, that we're going to get some. We're going to see some. I guarantee it.

Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm a favorite things. Honestly, love them. I think we've talked before about If you remember what it was like when CBS had the very first, like, prime time live MMA event. And it was James Thompson and Kimbo Slice. Oh, shit. The main event of that elite XC event, you know, Gina Corona was on the undercard. Yeah.

And that was one where the ear popped. And it was like you saw a lot of those kind of think pieces coming out of it where people were going, what is that? That was disgusting. And that one, the big difference was those of us who were hardcore MMA fans at the time were watching it and being like, okay, but please understand that was. not us putting our best foot forward. That was them putting Kimbo,

who had pretty, like, very little MMA experience at the time, James Thompson, who was there to look scary, but get beat. That was what Elitexc was doing, what they had to work with at the time, and what they thought would work to gain viewers and gain popularity. We all knew those aren't the best fighters

that MMA has. That's not the best MMA could show you. If you give us a chance, there's better stuff. Here, you actually do have some of the best that we have to offer. You have Ilya Teporia, arguably one of the greatest fighters on the planet right now, a true artist of the mixed martial arts. You have Alex Pereira, who's great at what he does. You have like a lot of good fighters on this, which is one of the reasons why I keep waiting for them to be like, here's what specifically you will be watching on next Sunday night.

What do you think, right? Like if you were to break it down now, you look at the card. I don't know if you have it in front of you, I'll pull it up in front of me here. but like what would you expect from this event? Like what do you think? Like if you are a Paramount executive here, what way are you breaking up? Are you stopping it right before the Omali fight?

So then you have to tune. You have to subscribe to Paramount to get Omali v. Zhabi, Pereira v. Gan, and then of course, Ilya V. Gaci. Like, is that the way you'd play it? That's a good question because you're then you're, you're, you want to lead in with something great. You want the last fight that you show on like,

CBS if you're planning to show us. Josh Hockett, baby. Yeah. Josh Hockett and Derek Lewis, always tricky to roll the dice on heavyweights. It is. Because you could get one kind of heavyweight fight that is brief and memorable, or you can get the other kind.

Now, Josh Hocke is just coming off of the rarest of heavyweight fights, the kind that goes the distance, but is awesome the entire time. Right. that almost never happens. Yeah. That that's very, very rare. And so it's like you don't know what you're going to, because you could very well. Although we've seen Derek Lewis do both.

We've seen him do both. We've seen him do both. We've seen the full range, the full spectrum of heavyweight experience. That's right. Because it's like he might go out there and get a quick knockout. He also might go out there and just look like he doesn't want to be there. Like we've seen that from Derek Lewis too. Yeah.

Well, or like, you know, Francis did want to be there either, to be fair. That's true. I think it depends. That one depends a lot on how does Josh Hokit want to fight that one? Yeah. Because like, does he go out there and be like, I know what this crowd wants? I know what the UFC wants for me in this moment. They want me to go out here toe to toe with Derek Lewis and beat him.

And that's the best chance Derek Lewis has in that fight is for you to fight him that way. Like you could Josh Hokic could still potentially beat him that way because he's fast, he's athletic. He will have a speed advantage. But all Derek Lewis needs is for you to stand there long enough for him to land one. punch and if Josh Hokit decides to be smart about it and be like, I'm taking Derek Lewis down and I'm beating them up on the mat, that might not be the greatest leader. You might be better off then going with with Sean O'Malley, who people like are excited about and they know. And then you could lead in by saying up next, the title fights. You want to see the stuff that really matters,

the title fights are on Paramount Plus. Yeah, that's not a bad way to go. Would you do that choke? Yeah. I mean, I would try. I mean, it was effective in the day. Like when the UFC used to like, Dana would get on there. Remember, he started shouting his cords in his neck would start coming out and turn around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was effective then. I mean, you want to do that. You want to do something that's basically a baton pass to the next and everybody just signs up in that moment. So, um, yeah, that's probably how I'd play it. If you, by the way, like, if you had any octagon jitters, right? They always talk about that. Imagine walking out for this one. Like this is, this is such a different type of event being outdoors, being like the world watching.

being there. It's a crazy thing to contemplate. When you're mentioning like Hokit and you're like, man, imagine actually being in that situation where there's like an expectation. They threw you on this card after your ridiculous like, you know, triage brawl, like, where he's like basically like, you know, in the ambulance and he finds out he's going to do it.

But that was after ridiculous. Now the expectation is, you got to go do that again, but do it at the White House. I mean, that's a lot of pressure on your hands there. Do it at the White House and against a guy who hits a lot harder than his plates does. Yeah. Before we move on, I really feel like they're going to try and do this Oval Office thing.

I really want them to do, right? If I'm here, I'm in for a penny, in for a pound. I want the whole lot. I want the Oval Office walk. I want the whole fucking thing. And it keeps on being suggested in these articles. And, you know, they're being very secretive about it. I think if Dane is at this point and he knows it's not going to happen, he's just going to say no.

So he'd rather not build us up in that way. I know he has done that previously with 300 and, of course, this card as well. Car is pretty good, though, in fairness. where you feel where you're feelings in that chook are we going to see a walk from the oval i think so right isn't that what they said they're going to do i mean that's what they said they're going to do i don't know i mean they did say at one point too that there was going to be a literal fight island and a uh and on the beach you know so i don't they and then they acted like we were idiots for thinking that but like what you thought they're going to be on on the beach

gullible idiot my question is i i i totally get what you're saying ptc that like hey if we're doing this yeah it's do it fucking i think They will, don't you? I think they will. How long is the walk from, that's my big question. I've not been to the White House. I've been, like I'm 46 years old, live in America all my life, never been to the White House.

So I don't know. I don't have a good sense. How long does that walk take? Because if you're showing us, if the idea is show us these guys starting in the Oval Office and then walking down to the cage, if that takes a minute and a half for everybody to get down there, or, you know. Got a bad for the long walk. out song. A lot of winding corridors.

Like it'll become a Monty Python sketch at a certain point where you're just following these guys. It'll be spinal tap. Them like getting lost and turning around corners and stuff like that. Three clicks down there. Yeah. They walk out the opposite into a little golf cutty. And they fucking start driving them towards a lot.

And then they get out again. It might just be impractical. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't know the way. Get some golf carts. Figure it out. You know what I mean?

I want to see the boys walking out. the other, maybe just the main event. That would be, that would be, it would give it something because the UFC just doesn't go in for this type of thing. I was at that, um, Times Square boxing event, you know, guys are rolling up, you know, to the curve and like, whatever. In the taxis. Fancy cars and taxis and whatnot and like, okay, that's a, you know, certain boxing events, certain MMA events, but the UFC has never really done this, you know. They're used to just rolling them straight to the hole and on and on we go. So that would be a very different feel to the proceedings if that happens.

It was, but wouldn't that fit with something where, like, this entire thing is going to be a very different feel. And that's part of what you're selling is that this is something like you have never seen before. And I think that there is a value in that. There's a real value in that novelty. That works on people. But I also, like, imagine you're standing there in the Oval Office, you're hitting pads or whatever. You're looking over and you're being like, oh, this is where, that's maybe where Nixon was sitting when he told him to cover up the Watergate burglary. You know, like this is.

This is where the Bay of Pigs invasion was planned over here. You know, this is, that's where Henry Kissinger was just like, let's go ahead and bomb them all back to the Stone Age. And you're just like, huh, now here I am out here getting ready to go fight. I'm in Zahavi. What the hell? What is life? If they got a deep cut, maybe it's a Garfield reference or Grover Cleveland or something like that.

What do you think? We don't hear about those presidents as much, do we? It's like, you don't. And I don't see a whole lot of people on this fight card reaching for Grover Cleveland. Cleveland as their first point of reference maybe Diego Lopez but anyway we'll see I'm going to Google them immediately after the show just see you didn't even know who Loretta Lynn

or Errol Flynn were come on you're not going to know these guys I know one of them has a nice mustache I'll tell you that much yeah Loretta Shave that in the later years Ben I got to tell you something you know for a long time you've cast aspersions on the wonderful national stadium crow park and today we got the

announcement baby crow park is hosting Katie Taylor's final ever fight. It's her third time to be undisputed. Well, when she fights, of course, against Flora Pili. Not a very well-known opponent, I will say, but the buzz over here, boys, is fucking crazy. I mean, I can't, I actually can't put into words what Crow Park means to Ireland. It's central to the Irish identity. It's nearly like a monument in the middle of the city erected to enhance the Irish identity through the Gaelic Games. We have had fights here before. Muhammad Ali fought here in the 70s. And now Katie Taylor.

not so long after boxing pretty much went away in the Republic of Ireland due to that hutch-kinnan situation she's brought it back with these events in three arena and now crow park boxing is buzzing here and really i was watching this press conference today and eddie heron was giving it all the you know biggest moment in women's boxing history and all this stuff but nothing hit me more than seeing hard man that he is tough guy brian peters breaking down at the press conference and i believe we have the video here um this got me right in the Fields Boys. I'm afraid that's it.

That's my Irish. But I had you just going for a second there. So look, I suppose four years ago we dared to dream that this day would become a reality and it takes all these people up here. A lot of heavyweights and not talking about anyone's weight or casting asperanges and anyone's takes a lot of people to make this a reality. I'm delighted that we have. I'd like to thank you, Eddie.

I think 2016, myself, Katie and Bridget. Shout out to Bridget. Went into your office and, you know, sorry, guys. Have a drink here. Sorry about that. I can't wait to play this back over the next couple of years. Send you this on WhatsApp every day. Well, it's real.

But look, we went into you that day, Eddie. I don't think we really had a plan. We didn't know where we were going. We didn't know how we were going to do it. You know, after Katie spoke to you, just with the conviction that she showed, I think you believed we had something very special. You know, I'd like to thank you very much.

Eternally grateful, Eddie, for where you've brought us. Four corners of this planet, all the great stadiums. And, you know, Frank Smith has been great. the match from UK team, the match from US team, all been outstanding. So we couldn't have done without you. Thank you very much, Eddie.

There it is, lads. Katie up there, sitting there, letting everyone do to talking for her, like, the deity she is. And let me tell you, if there was one thing that was asked about more than UFC at the White House at Auntie Mary's funeral on Tuesday,

it was Katie Taylor. Is this going to happen? We're all going to go. Everybody, every fucking person I've spoke to is like, We're going. I don't give a shit how much it costs. But here's the thing.

Look how they price this thing. I think we have a tweet. Do we, Andy, of the pricing? You have to read that. I think it's like 3870 for a ticket. 38 euros, 70 cents and then 12550 or something for a family ticket, which would get you four people in.

This is an 80,000 seat stadium and a beautiful stadium at that. But the way people are talking, despite the opponent, which I think some people were let down by especially boxing people, but I think this is going to look fucking insane. If the 80,000

people show up to see Katie Taylor in this fight it's going to be one of the greatest Irish Spartan moments of all time and I am fucking buzzing. I don't really have a question. I am going to go. Listen, Katie wouldn't be able to fight without me at this stage. That's true. She'll be looking into the crowd, she'd be going, where is he?

How many people fit into the O2 in Dublin? The three arena is 9,000 people. 9,000. 9,000. What is it? 9,000. Because, you know, I always think back to that. It was it 2014 or 13 when, when Connor fought there.

And I never really have like the FOMO thing like of watching Yosey. But that was the one time where I was like, man, I wish I could be in that building. It was just so different, so electric that you could feel it coming off of the telecast and just the way the fans were and all that stuff. It was one of those rare events. And I think that's why there was such intriguing for North Americans. It was like, what about Croke Park? And we'd always associate Connor McGregor to this, to historic event where they would,

they would have to be that size of place, right? If he's going to fight in Ireland again, it's going to have to be that size of place. And it never got done to the point where I know Ben and I have joked that we're not even sure that Croke part exists. We thought it was just something that people talked about. And it was like one of the myths, you know, or something. But to see it get done and like the pictures of her and all that stuff,

I'm with you, man. I feel like it's, that's the biggest boon. And I think when we were talking, we were watching the Serrano fight when you're out. out here in New York. And we were like, if somebody's going to get it done, it's going to be her and you thought she would.

And here she is. That's pretty wild. And like, how did they do it? Is this going to be an afternoon type of affair? How did they get by the noise ordinances and things that they had in place? Yeah, it's going to be at local time, September 5th. So, like, it's very tactical how you have to book this because the All Orleans championships are happening at the same time.

And that is where all of the games are contested. So to find the gap there where you can do it in this, on this kind of frame of the calendar is crazy. And also the first time Eddie Heron went, he didn't really know who he was dealing with. Like, the GAA are like a very powerful machine here. You've got to bend the knee a bit when you're talking to these people. Like, they don't fuck around. Like, they're like, we're completely happy not to take your money.

We have loads. We have this thing. You want this. Come and get it. And he had a completely different strategy this time around. Even the way he was speaking about the GA, about Crow Park. It was like the first time he went in, he didn't understand. It was like making a deal at Wembley and we just signed this away and everything's fine.

And it's a way bigger deal here. It's the closest thing to like sacred land as you can get really. You know, um, you know, Jordan. That's, you're saying that the games are going on at this, like, they're going to have to erect a boxing ring. Get all the seats like down there on the, the actual turf and everything. And then clear it out so that we can play like hurling the next day. Because that's crazy. I don't think it would be the next day.

It would be like, I think that day in the calendar, I'm not too sure. I don't have the fixtures ahead of me now, but we're in quarterfront. I don't know. Usually the games are contested into that first week of September. Maybe it's stopping the week early, but they'll have other things to do. Like exhibitions, all this kind of stuff that will be going on. Concerts as well. A lot of people use the venue.

It's just the curfew that kill the UFC because they obviously wanted to do a massive event in Crow Park, but tailor it to their pay-per-view audience in the US. And you would have to do it at an hour which just didn't suit the Residents Association. because you're talking like you walk out of Crow Park, you're in the middle of an estate, like you are in someone's front garden basically. So I can remember Bruce Springsteen, I went over the time once and I think it was something crazy,

like 10 grand a minute they charged them for going over or something fucking insane. So that's one guy who can afford it by the way, Ben. Yeah, but I mean, if he's playing Jungleland, that's, there's like 12 minutes right there. That is true. That is true. That's a $120,000 song at that point. He doesn't give up.

And the live version? Oh, brother. Rosalita goes on and on and not. Anyway, it's very exciting is what I'm trying to tell you. You know what? I'm excited by your excitement. The Croke Park stuff, I mainly, I never cast aspersions. I want to push back on that narrative.

I never cast aspersions. I just questioned that if it was ever going to happen because it seems like as a fight sports fan, the only time I hear about Croke Park is somebody's fanciful suggestion that they are going to have this big fight in Croke Park and it never, ever, ever happens. It's always just the thing people talk about. And so I was just like,

I don't know. Every time somebody brings it up now, I'm just like, you might as well have just told me that this was a dream you had. Like, it's, it's not anything that's real, anything we need to actually think about.

And so them actually doing it, seeing, seeing the, the tears there. That clip honestly had a real, I didn't cry when my own father was hung for stealing a pig. but I'll cry now kind of vibe to it where it's just like, you can imagine

that man's not crying very easily. He's not, he's not seeing like a, uh, an AT&T commercial and getting teary eyed at it. Like it takes a lot. And for something like that to, to move him, I was just like, okay, this is a really big deal. And I think that that enthusiasm will translate and carry over to us. Do you guys remember the album Blue Lewis fight that was there?

No. I'm trying to, you said that the dude's name me fly. I can't remember. Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali. He fought that Muhammad Ali kid there back at 72. Nobody really remembers the other guy. It was so funny though.

Like there's footage of like Ali playing hurling on the pitch going like, this is a fucking good game. Yeah. But like to give you an insight like in in, in, I think it was 1990, 1920. There was a football game being played there and English troops came on to start opening for her on the people there. Like, and 14 people. died. I think one player died for one of the teams. And that's all like, you know, this monumented

to Irish culture. They were trying to build this culture through these sports. And I can't remember the exact year. The rugby team usually play at Lansdown Road, which is on the south side of the city. And it's, it's the rugby ground and all the Six Nations games play there. For whatever reason, they were, they were building the Aviva Stadium at the time, I think. And they had to host the rugby games at Croke Park, which was a big deal because they don't want garrison games, as they call them. Football or rugby being played in this place. But they decided, right, let's, the rugby team mean a lot to the country, let's let them play. They drew England and they had to play England on that pitch. And they play our on the Vienna National Anthem. And you see

these guys like six foot six, 300 pounds, arm and arm, just weeping openly, like, because they're about to play in Crow Park against England, of course, our famous historical rivals. But like, it's just something that means something completely different to Irish people. So to see Katie Taylor getting this moment. And not, not to say, like, it's also like, if I'm Eddie Hearn, I'm like, I did something that Dana White couldn't do. Right.

You had the biggest star on Earth and you couldn't do this. I'm doing it. Because of their war awards, I can't imagine that he won't take that as an extra feather in his cap too. Did you say garrison games? That's what they called them because they used to play like cricket, rugby and soccer in the garrisons like when they were, you know, taken over Ireland.

So they called the g-a games will call them, the g-a-people will call them garrison games. games. Yeah. No Garrison games. It's like these are the games played in the military compounds of the colonizer. These are not our games. Okay.

Yes. I kind of like it. Yeah. Oh, believe me. They like it too. Believe me. Believe me. Believe me.

More Irish related. We will hear from Mr. Heron in the second though. I did this article on Connor McGregor's aspiring partners because this used to be a big thing. You know, when Connor McGreg was fighting, people were like, I want to know everything about it. Got about seven likes that I want to put it out. it's like, so everyone keeps sending me this shit.

Like everyone keeps sending me like he's sparring this guy and he's sparring this guy. And, you know, some of the fighters very well. Now, Lee Hammond's been there for over 10 years, a Jiu-Jitsu Ace out of SBG. They have Owen Sheridan there, a big towering well-to-weight six-fiffe, he's sparring him too. Derek Kelly, who was, who stepped in for Paul Hughes against J.J. Wilson at PFL, Belfast. And unfortunately suffered a first round knockout there. But like, decent fighters. And then there's other guys, obviously.

And I think every gym has this. Like there's a two and two guy there. There's an 0 and 5 guy there. And everyone's like, well, how the fuck? What the fuck is going on? We've come downhill since the mountain. Remember when he was sparring with the mountain? Yeah.

But I mean, I guess my question to you guys, there's also an amateur box there, Craig Kavana. My question to you guys is, do you look into this that much, Chuck? Do you look at like who's a guy sparring and what does that mean? Does that have an impact? Because remember, GSP used to famously be like, oh, I'm not fighting anyone good. No one good is. coming near me in the lead up to a phone. Yeah.

No, not really, but I think it's just the sign of our times now. I mean, in the day, you're right. Remember, Ido Portal with his, uh, the pool, yeah, all that stuff. Like we seem to pay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We were paying attention to all that stuff. I just, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's because McGregor has been away so

long or if it's just the way it is now. But can you imagine really focusing too hard on anybody's who they, who they're training with? I mean, we hear a lot about it. Maybe it's just because we've talked a lot more about that sort of of thing over the years than we used to. But yeah, I don't, I don't read too much into it. I mean, you always feel like he had a pretty good microsense and macro sense of what he

was doing. So, like, in the training, I feel like he's going to bring in the guys he thinks he needs. You know what I mean? And I don't know if they're, like, maybe because people don't know who these guys are. I don't really read too much into that. You know, I don't think that he, Connor knows what it means, you know, like, he knows what he's getting to look at. Well, then the thing is, too, like, I don't think it's worth...

spending too much time thinking about what is the professional record of the guy he's sparring. It's what is he getting out of sparring this particular person? Because when I worked on that story a few weeks ago ahead of the Gina Carrano Ronda Rousey fight and trying to talk about how different the sport is and especially training is now than the sport that Gina Carrano stepped away from in 2009, she kind of talked about it. And I talked to a lot of the fighters, especially some of them who were at Jackson's when she was there. And they were saying back then in those days, everybody was just sort of showing up to the gym and working with who was there. Nobody had the money to really set up a camp that was about them and about them preparing for their fight.

It was all super camps, right? It was less like you got Jackson's Winklejohn and Albuquerque, you got America top team down in South Florida. You had AKA in the Bay area. You know, I had the Militich guys out in Iowa. And, if you were training at one of those places, you'd tell them like, hey, I got a fight. I'm at this UFC event. Maybe I'm even the main event. It's on this date, fighting Rampage Jackson. And they'd be like, that's cool, man.

Here's who's here today for sparring. That's who you go with. It's like, who's here around the weight that you were at, who showed up for sparring today. And that might be dependent. Somebody is hurt. Somebody just fought. Somebody is drinking their woes away right now. And so they haven't been coming to practice.

And that was just the reality of those days. And, you know, Brian Stan was the one who pointed out where he was like, you'd look around the gym and you'd be like, this guy's fighting Lioto Machita in two weeks. Why the hell would he spar this guy whose style is nothing like a very specific style like Leota Machias? It's not giving him any useful looks. All it is is just timing and toughness essentially that you're working on at that point in sparring. And at this level, that's not good enough. You need to be working specifically on what you think you'll see on fight night. So who you bring in, it shouldn't be dependent on what is their own record in competition.

It would be who can show you like the physical dimensions that you're going to see from Max Holloway and who can show you a style like what you're probably going to see from Max Holloway. Like if I was bearing for Max Holloway, I'd want a guy who is lanky, but who can throw a lot of punching volume, keep a high pressure, a high pace on you and give you that sort of look so you can get used to dealing with it like both physically and psychologically what it's going to be like to be in the cage with the guy who's just kind of. constantly coming at you, never trying to throw a big knockout shot, but always throwing something. Like, that's what you need to get ready for. And I wouldn't pay too much attention to, like, are those guys really good in their own career? So check out my article, guys. It's up on on ground. I did want to get into, I don't know if you guys saw this. Um, Michael Bisping had a new kind of thing with Paul Felder about Tom Asper. So we're just going to play this and we have another video to follow.

But here is what he has said in the last couple of days. I've got to choose my words carefully here, but he just said he's still not clear to fight. But he's been very vague with the details. Yeah. Very vague with the details, you know. If I wasn't cleared, because he's got a YouTube channel, he posts content all the time. You talk about it. Yeah.

know the procedures that he had the operations whatever they were i had a surgery it was a very very serious surgery it's called slur buckle look at a bull line it's gross what they do to the eyeball um i don't know what he had but he hasn't talked about that i had that surgery recovered came back and had a fight in a shorter amount of time than what it's taking this whole ipolk saga you know it stinks michael it's i don't say it's things as a guy, I know Tom, we used to have a close relationship.

We don't talk these days. He was a great guy. But I don't, maybe, I don't know, you look between the lines. There's something fucking weird going on. I think maybe we should break this down a little bit here for us.

I mean, the thing that jumped out with me, I'm just being honest, Michael Biss being lost tonight. You know? Like, You're saying maybe that's not who you want to listen to? Maybe he shouldn't have rushed back that time, you know?

And he's a tough bastard. He's a world champion. No denying that at all. But at the end of the day, you've lost sight in one eye. You know, you don't have sight in that eye. Like, is that really the advice to be given to a guy who's suffered a traumatic injury to his eye? Yeah, I mean, that is a little bit being like, listen, I drove without car insurance, It's gotten an accident and a bankrupt dream, but I was willing to do it, damn it.

And you're just like, but should you have, should you have done that? Because it doesn't seem like it went great. And you're right about that. The part that stood out to me, of course, was him saying, you know, we used to talk all the time. We don't talk anymore. Why do you suppose that might be? Like you're not. This isn't exactly, like, if I was Tom Asper, but I wouldn't be sitting here being like, that's a good friend to me.

He's out there kind of suggesting that I am, I'm milking this. and I am the USC heavyweight champion and I'm just intentionally screwing with everybody and my eyes are fine and I just don't want to fight. Like that, we wouldn't be friends after you said that about me on the show. So like I understand that. And it also just seems like,

Tom Aspenol at this point, it's been about seven months, a little over seven months since that fight happened. Now, one thing to point out, he got poked in both eyes. He was having brother with both eyes. Just because this, surgery and recovery work this way for you doesn't mean that it's going to work that exact way for

everybody all the time. But to go from seven months and we don't necessarily, you know, we don't have a fight booked yet, but it's not inconceivable, depending on where his recovery is at, that he could be able to fight before the end of the year. That would not be so out of historical precedent for the UFC heavyweight title. It gets defended about once a year, even in the best of times. So it's not like he's been out a crazy amount of time or anything, you know, like the, I think the stuff that's going on with Eddie Hearns speaking up for him a whole lot is maybe not doing him a ton of favors. It is inviting some speculation. Yeah. But to sit here and just be like, hey, it's worked this way for me. It ought to work that way

for everybody all the time. Why isn't he back? I'm going to subtly suggest that he's actually fine and he's just screwing with everybody. That is not a. super cool move to do. And also reminds me every once in a while we talk about, why don't the fighters collectivize somehow? Why don't they, you get a union? Why don't they get some collective bargaining? They're stronger together and you see how they'll do each other.

Yeah. And you kind of go, I mean, maybe that's why. I mean, if he's going to have an ally in the game, it's got to be Michael Bisping right, he's a fellow countryman, and he has an eye situation that he can talk to. And to hear him say that is very surprising. But would it be, would it be better received, I guess, if Bisping weren't an extension or an arm of the UFC at this point?

Because that's, and same with Paul Feltar. I mean, they're having a conversation and I feel like part of the part of what this is like, oh, come on, man. Like, two UFC employees talking to each other saying, why doesn't this guy hurry up and do what the UFC wants him to do? Yeah.

Here's the thing, that's. That's a bad look to me. It's a bit of a change of tune because we have a video here from Michael Bisming Seekner at the situation when it happened, I believe we have it. The one thing you can't do with an eye is rush back. That is the one big lesson that I learned because I did that.

I rushed back too soon. I rushed back to sparring. I rushed back to competition, right? And I never saw that eye again. So Tom has got to take his time. And if he's having surgery, he's definitely going to be out for at least a few months. Retrospect is not 2020 for that guy, man. What?

Is Michael Bisping aware of this Michael Bisping video? somebody sent it to him i know he doesn't like me he won't he won't listen if i send it to him chuck maybe you send it to him we'll see if he can to watch it and have a response to that one because what the hell man that's the exact opposite of what he just said it's the exact opposite i'm glad you ran him back to back i mean yeah like the the the most recent michael bisming and and the other the other michael bisming is just like saying don't listen to this advice from Michael Fisbeck, you know?

I don't understand. It is weird, though. I think sometimes I've noticed this as a personality trait in a lot of fighters over the years that I've found fascinating. We saw it recently right with Al Jemaine Sterling where he's still the only fighter to win a UFC title via DQ. And when he was suggesting that somebody else was playing up a foul in order to get a DQ win, I can't remember who it was he was talking about. It was actually aspirin, I think. Was it?

Was it actually aspirin? Like, he was against that his, like he was like, Floyd on and all that kind of stuff when that happened. And it's like, you can understand in your situation, like, you're like, well, that was me. I, that one seemed serious because I felt it. I was on the receiving end of it. I remember doing a story once about like injuries and does everybody fight hurt?

What, where do you know when like, okay, this one I got to pull out of this fight? And I was talking to Matt Hughes and he was saying about a time he had to convince Robbie Luller, like when Matthew's essentially Robbie Luller's coach. And he had to convince him, bro, you have a torn bicep. You cannot fight. You have, I know you have this fight booked. You don't want to pull out of it. But this is not an injury. You just tough your way through. You need to pull out of this one and have surgery to repair that. And he had to talk Robbie into it. And I said, has that ever happened for you on the other side where like you've been hurt and somebody else's had to talk you into pulling out of a fight because you're too hurt. And he immediately back to back in

these comments just said, no, I would never do that. I would never pull out of a fight. And I was like, but you just said, you just said that sometimes you have to. It's like Tito. Tito or Tito. Yeah. And you're just like, there has to be that kind of mindset, I think for some fighters where they have to be like, well, I am different. I am different than everybody else on the planet. And so it's like, this is one thing when it happens to you. It's a different thing when it happens to me, the protagonist. And I think that that's something that we're kind of seeing there from Michael Bisming because you're just sort of being like, hey, just because you did it, just because it worked this way for you, which you also had previously

said was a bad idea, doesn't mean that applies to absolutely everybody. I don't understand the people who don't just want to at least trust Tom when it comes to his own eyeballs. Like, don't you think Tom Aspinol wants to fight? That's how he gets paid. Yeah. He has the heavyweight title. This is the time. This is the time to go out there and get paid right now. Don't you think that if he could do that and he, if he saw an opportunity to go out there and get paid as the heavyweight champion. He would want to do that. What do you think? You think he just wants to sit home? Yeah. And seven months, you're right about that. Like, how long was John Jones holding the belt before he finally is like, oh, I'm retiring? How long was that? I mean, it's just,

that's what I'm like, come on. That's just double standard. Isn't it? I mean, you've got a guy who has a legit. And I mean, it's documented. It's not like it's, it's not like he's just telling you stuff. He's documenting like what's happening. And yet we're having this discussion. And people are like talking like that. I mean, it's just it's absurd kind of. You know, it's like we've seen people, we've seen champions stay out a lot longer than this and they've retained their belt and there's no problem. They're having an interim

title fight, right? Like it's just, they're moving on, they're trying to still can'telize right towards that. I'm like, I don't know why we need to be even kind of dissecting what Tom, there's been encouraging news right out of his camp. Like he could maybe start at some point getting back into it. I feel like that that's

where the focus should be not like tearing him down at this point. Plus, we all saw what happened to him. It's not like a training injury where we have to take your word for it. True. You know, we watched it. We watched Cyril gone just three stooges this man. Yeah.

Boland ball his eyes. And just, and like we saw it. So it's, it shouldn't be that hard for us to go like, yeah, you might need some time. But it's also like, he is made big improvements. He has been honest. He is like, I'm able to do this now. I wasn't previously able to do that. I'm trying to get to this point.

Like, he is. is updating us a lot, actually, about how this is going. You know, like, I don't, I don't see that logic. He is telling us, like, he, when I was with them, the day he got that surgery, I left thinking, I don't know if this guy's ever going to fight again. And nobody around him knew. Not one person was willing to say, ah, this is a piece of piss, he's going to get straight back on. And that's, that's changed. If you listen to what he's saying now, he's like, I'm going to get back. Like, this has improved so much. This has started to work. This has started to work. I should be clear for contact in a few weeks, all these kind of things.

Like that is updating people. That is telling people we are progressing towards fighting again. Now, we did mention that maybe this Eddie Hearn stuff might not be serving him too well. Here's the latest from Eddie today at the Katie Taylor Press conference. They haven't invited him to the White House. He's supposed to be fighting the winner. Really interesting what's happening in the UFC right now. They've got to be careful. I'm not going to let Tom Aspen fire for the kind of money that's in his contract.

to be involved in a fight against Pereira or game for literally one-fiftyth of the revenue of that show. Fuck that. I won't let him do it. And he's not going to... It's time that those UFC fighters stop being mugs and started to understand

that these people are taking advantage of them. They deserve better. Are you saying Tom's going to retire? If they come back and say... I'm saying that my advice to Tom Aspen, don't you dare take that fight for the money it's in your contract? You are one of the biggest stars in UFC.

Everybody will be sick. to their stomach about the money that Tom Asking was supposed to get for that kind of fight. You don't need that. You nearly lost your eyesight. You want to go back and fight for virtually nothing. It's outrageous. And I will not. I'll do everything I can to not allow it. Shout out to Dona Corby there.

Who's been on a bit of a generational run here? He was putting it to Dana Hoyt there a couple of weeks ago. And now, Eddie Heron, giving him the big fellow Dublin 15, man. We know we love Dunnett around here. But yeah, you know, Chuck, we're kind of talking about this. stuff not really serve and Tom all that well. How do you think Dan and the lads are going to feel about that? I don't think they're going to respond to that well. I'm just making a prediction here. I don't see them. I don't think they'll be like any mix and good points.

Honestly. Let's up late Tom's Com. You know what I'm doing the number series. Right. That is 150th. We've got to fix this. Yeah. We forgot to carry the one on this contract. Let's get over there. Oh, man. That's not. I mean, now the drama surrounding like that whole Aspinall Hearn white thing is just, it's its own entertainment. I mean, it's, I feel like it's going to become like something completely, uh, crazier than we're even seeing now as we go on here. Especially after like the after they get this interim thing, we finally get to that point. Oh my God. It's going to, it's going to get crazy.

But if I'm Tom, I do not want to be just a pawn for these guys to, to, to argue over and to use against each other. Like this is your career, man. This is your life. You, you, you, I mean, I don't know what he feels like his relationship with Eddie Hearn is if how much of this is like Eddie Hearn is giving you the sincere advice because he cares about you and cares about. your career. That's a good point. It does seem like the advice dovetails a lot with,

here's what Eddie Hearn would say in order to continue his war with Dana White. And I, the point he's making where he's like, one of these fighters is going to realize that the U.S. is taking advantage of you. You're getting so little of the revenue from this event. Like, those are all valid points. But it's also sort of like, practically, what are you going to do about it is the question. He's in a contract, yes. Yeah, if you're saying, I would tell him absolutely not, don't take this fight for this money and do what instead. Because that's what the part you need to have a plan for that. And it's not saying that there couldn't possibly be any plan.

You could say like, hey, instead, go get your boxer's license, tell them, I'm a boxer, see if they want to challenge you and get into a thing there saying that can they stop you legally from going and fighting in a different combat sport. Like maybe you could try something like that's what Connor McGregor did. You know, they didn't want to let him box Floyd Mayweather. He went and got a boxer's license. And then they kind of said, all right, let's talk about it. And so it's not like there are zero options, but you need to have a plan.

It can't just be like, don't accept this money. Okay, well, then do what instead? That's where I would start to worry if I'm Tom Aspinall because you're just like, the time is ticking for you. I mean, at heavyweight you got a little more time, but you need to cash in on this big moment now and it's not going to last forever. Yeah. I wonder what, like, Tom's reaction is to this.

Like, you know, he's just gone about his day or whatever. someone pings him on an L link he's like, oh. Not again. We'll get a few phone calls about this, you know? Okay, what do you make though of the not, they didn't invite him to the White House

event? I think that's bullshit. Like, I think that is just, just in terms of like, for, like, you know, we're the foie fans. As you said at the start, you know, we like to see a certain bit of, you know, um, we want Tom Aspinall sitting Cadeside when the two dudes

who are fighting. Yeah, the stakes. The thing like, yeah. Like, how do you not invite him? I don't know. He is the one fighter you'd say he should probably be there. I know Rick was talking about this on boys in the back yesterday, but I completely agree with him. Like, if anyone has a real function on the roster who isn't fighting, it's fucking him. It is, he is the number one guy you want there. What the fuck is that about? I think it's crazy. So that's what I wonder when I heard Sean Strickland talking about like, I've been banned from the UFC White House event. And I was like, have you though? Or did you just not get invited? Because there's a difference. And like,

you could make the argument there where you're like, you know, why should Sean Strickland be at the White House event? Like neither of the title fights have any sort of relevance for him. It's not like he absolutely needs to be hovering over these procedures for any reason. I could see the UFC being like Sean Strickland, bit of a loose cannon in some ways. Don't necessarily want to vote for this. guy and be like, hey, we brought this guy to the party. He might do anything. He might just like, eat the scenery here. So I can understand why the UFC would just like leave him at home for this. And there's a difference between them being like, we don't see a need for you to be at this highly secure event, which space is limited. And we only get a certain amount of tickets.

You can stay home and him being like, I've been banned for my views on Israel. And it's like, I mean, maybe that didn't help, but I don't necessarily know that you were. going to be there otherwise. Tom Aspen, although that leads, it does make sense at least for them to reach out and be like, hey, are you available? Could you make the trip? Do you want to make the trip? It does seem like it would at least be worth having an invite there unless the UFC is thinking like, you know what? A, we might be headed toward a future where you just take the belt off Tom and say Alex Brera or Cyril Gahn, the winner there is your new champion or B, man, this one ain't about the fighters at all. Stay home.

This is about the UFC and Trump. It's crazy. I did hear that there are 5,000 total seats available or whatever they're going to do. And he was 5,001 from what I understand. So he just missed it. He missed out on dimensions. His waist is too big apparently. We've got to have the Treasury Secretary's wife or something there.

Can't do it, Tom. One last news item before we hit the much of large, much revered ad hoc section. PFL, they seem to have a good. good fight in their hands. Johnny Eblin, Costlo Van Steenis, they went on Ariel's show and they fucking sold, but man, I was ready for that rematch. I was like, you know what? Eblin is being an awful bollocks here

and Koslo Van Steenis does not know how to deal with him. Press release today. The Professional Fighters League today announced that former Bellator middleweight champion Johnny Pressure Eblen and 2023 PFL light heavyweight tournament champion inba Kasanganao will compete for the interim

PFL middleweight world championship at PFL, Austin on Saturday, July, at Moody Center in Austin, Texas. The belt marks the first interim world title in PFL history after an injury forced reigning PFL, middleweight world champion, Kostla Van Sienis to withdraw from his title defense against

Eblen. Well, fuck me. That is some bad look for PFL right there. Not a bad fight. I like it. That is a bummer. But I mean, we're talking about interim. Van Cetus just fought when? He was just a Bidid, like, well, it's like two months ago, like six weeks ago. And they're already doing an interim. I get why they're doing that,

but it's probably more about Eblen like, you know, he was going to have a title shot. Like, let's keep a title in play for this thing. But that does suck because I feel like the Van Cinas thing has been built to kind of like, even though Austin is arbitrary place, but it was kind of, his whole kind of cinematic take of the belt and all that stuff was kind of leading to that. And I was actually very interested to see how that would play out. The craziest part to me is learning that this is the first interim title PFL has ever had to do.

Is that right? I was wondering that, actually. That's what they said in that press release. Okay. I don't quote me on that. Not my words. There's, um, I would, I would assume that they had looked into it. I certainly haven't.

I haven't looked into it. Uh, but, uh, if you made it this far as a promoter and never had to do an interim title before, that's, that's pretty good. That's true. That is true. Well, I guess so much of it was tournament, right? Yeah. It was just tournaments for so long.

Um, interesting note, Sergio Pettis takes on Lewis McGrellin, another Manchester guy, I've told you guys about McGillan before an aggressive redhead from, Manchester who is terrifying. Uh, that is a huge fight for him. He's out of Manchester top team. Carl Prince over there as well, of course the Rome Murphy, Dakota de Chavez started there as well. Um, yeah, a huge talent and that is a massive opportunity for him.

I'm gonna be looking for this weird. Is he on that same card? Yeah, it's really, Sergio Pettis. Yeah. So weird to like have this thing in Austin, Texas. Just like you're mentioning Dakota or we were talking, I guess it was actually not you, but we, I was talking about, uh, Dechiva ended up in Long Island. you know like what a bizarre thing i think it seems like you'd want these these guys to be in their

home market there i just i'm with arreling that these pf elevants seem so much bigger when they do them outside the u.s yeah just seem even the madrid one i thought was really good to be yeah big time production wise and they had them vignettes of interviewing guys around the jims and all that stuff like i felt really fucking cool people were really up for it i just feel like right austin texas obviously like there could be a good audience there. And did you say Long Beach or Long Island? Long Island, I think is where, yeah, Dakota's going to be. Yeah, I hope it goes well for them.

But really, I just think they all pale in comparison to the ones they do overseas. Especially Dakota. She should be, that'd be a huge homecoming, wouldn't it? Well, you could do McGillan and Dakota in Manchester, you feel. Yeah. That would be fucking crazy. But how and ever, how and ever. Into the ad hoc section, boys.

Into the ad hoc. Listen, did I miss something, Ben? did you become an ice hockey champion and just not bring it up on the fucking show? Because someone saw a tweet from you last week and it said hockey champion and Jordan actually got on to me post show and said, why didn't we bring this up? And I said, well, Jordan, that's your fault. Andy would never do this. Andy is producing the show today, not Jordan. She would never do anything like that. Please tell me. Did this happen? Listen, I don't, I don't like to make this show all about me and my many athletic accomplishments. That's, that's not what we're here to do. I mean, but please. Please, please. I'm begging you. I'm begging.

Did I captain a team to the Spring League championship? Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's one goes. Factually, that is true. Did I have two goals and one assist in that game being in on three of the four goals that we scored to win four three in a dramatic victory? Technically, yeah. Sure.

I did do that. I did do that. Did we get to receive the much sought after? spring league trophy, which is a 24 pack of PBR. Best kind of. Absolutely. Is it the sweetest beer you'll ever drink? 100%.

100% it is. But I don't like to talk about it. It's not something I like to dwell on. Congratulations. Thanks. Thanks. The important thing now is that the hockey gear has been disinfected,

cleaned, dried out, and put away for the summer. I never even saw your play beard or anything. Like it's, well, in the spring league, the playoffs are, shall we say,

brief but furious. All right. But what we had to do in order to win the finals was to beat a team that went two and oh against us during the regular season. And so even sweeter. We had to believe. We had to believe that, you know,

it was a real miracle on ice moment where, hey, they might beat us nine times out of ten, but not that night. Not what it mattered. And he scraps. Love it. Any what?

Any foights? Man, look, nobody in this league is great enough on ice skates to be trying to do another thing on ice. Like, to be fighting on ice? No. That's, no, it would be a sad, sad affair. Like, even the pro hockey players don't always make it look great when they're, it's not always, like, the most technical fighting you've ever seen. I've seen one time in a game in that league where fists were actually flying after one of the whistle. And to her credit, the referee in that game, because it was already, we were ahead like seven, two and that contributed. And we were still putting on them. Brack here. Another fucking humble brag. We were still putting it on them, which is maybe why the fist started to fly. And you pulled your goal to try to get that eighth goal. But it was like five minutes left in the third period. These guys are getting frustrated. Some fists started to fly. And the referee just said, all right, that's it. This one's over. And just moved the goals and signaled for the Zamboni. And I was like, man, she really pulled a power move on.

And this took the wind out of everybody's sales and we're like, all right. That's hilarious. That's hilarious for like an adult league. You could see that happening in like a, you know, fifth graders or something, but that's crazy. She was just like not putting up with this bullshit tonight. Everybody hit the showers. What way would you approach it if someone sat trial and hans at you? You know what?

In that specific game, I do remember earlier where you could tell they were starting to get chippy. They were starting to get mad. And at one point, like, you know, after a whistle, one of the dudes kind of slaps. kind of slashed at my shin, which is protected by a shin guard. So it's not like it hurt or anything, but he was doing it out of frustration. I was like trying to get a reaction. And I looked at him and said, really? Because it's also weird to go to hockey from my main recreational pursuit since the time

I was like 20 was jujitsu, jujitsu and a little bit of boxing and stuff. And I still go to like a boxing gym for like the workout and hit the pads. But these days I don't need to be getting hit in the head anymore. more. And so you come from like jujitsu gyms as your main athletic outlet. And people in jujitsu gyms are not talking shit to each other in an unfriendly way. They're not, they're not being tough guys because you know eventually you'll get mopped up, man. Like there's every gym got an enforcer. Yeah. Every gym has somebody to enforce a sense of etiquette. And like, eventually you will realize it's a bad idea to be that kind of an asshole. And then you go into a rec hockey.

league and I would see especially my first couple seasons I would see guys where they're out there talking all kinds of shit and trying to start shoving people after the whistle and I'm like bro you are a 50 year old lawyer I don't think this is a good idea for you but they feel very comfortable doing it because they know it never comes to that in these leagues it's all just talk it's all just a bunch of like little dogs yapping at each other and I was just like they don't do this since you just too man and there's a reason it is it's very true um Chuck, I know that it's not the Nuggets here, but it's your friend Ariel Loani's New York Knicks against Wemby in the finals. Do you think they're going to do it? Like, we should have a good idea by the time next, by the next time we convene on this here, crack.

I was pretending as if I froze, but. Oh, wow, that was a really good one. That was incredible. Oh, my God. No, I'm rooting for him, you know. If a give our producers a heart attack, man. I just met the text on. That was an Eddie.

He heard thing. You did that once. I saw him do that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm rooting for him. aren't you? Look at you. Look at you. Nick's fine. I think it'll mean more to me than I will mean to Ariel. I've had this half for two years now.

You know what I mean? It's huge. Yeah. He's going about it the right way. Like usually he's kind of like bragging like Ariel's on there and he's pre-bragging. And I'm like just wait until you get it and then do if you want to do that, you know. But I feel like he's kind of going about it the right way psychologically here. So I'm hoping it pans out.

He's managing. Yeah, he is managing himself a lot better this time. Yeah. I'm going to say. I hope both teams have fun. That's what I'll say. You ain't gonna watch. If it goes to a game seven,

will you watch it? This is on you, Pete. If it goes to a game seven, text me when we get into the final two minutes. I'll turn it up. Some kind of pit. I'm gonna send just that picture

of the guy who got to get his dick chopped off. Oh, to this is what, I think these episodes of the crack need to start with like, so you can hear the kind of conversations. It's always like one minute before. With us. Yeah.

And if we just like lead, into it, you know, you hear the music and everything and all you hear is Pizzi telling the end of the story, he's like, yeah, so the guy had to have his dick cut off. Hey guys, everybody, welcome to the crack. Yeah. Terrible.

Don't know. There's a WhatsApp message going around saying a guy on a fucking stag party, right? He goes home, he gets drunk, he falls asleep. The best man to say as a funny prank would be to put a signet ring around his flute. Men, this guy gets excited.

in the morning. He's asleep. He's been drinking. A lot of blood rushes up. His dick goes fucking, it swells up and it goes purple. And then they're going to have to cut his dick off and he has to cancel his wedding. What? Oh. He's don't want to see. There's a

voice message and everything. It's crazy. I didn't need to hear this twice. You know, I really didn't. Oh, it's a UFC this weekend. Who's excited for Balal Mohammed v. Gabriel Bumphy? At the apex, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Man, I'll tell you what.

If I'm below Muhammad, there's got to be a moment where you going, I was a champion not so long ago. I was carried in the arms of cheerleaders. And now I was parading through the streets in England as the new UFC champion. He was. He was. It was like a blink of an eye. And they're going, how would you like to main event a UFC fight night at the apex? We're matching you up against a hungry young up and comer who we want to.

see if he's got the goods and if you have fallen all the way off. And also, it is the weekend before the White House event. So we barely even notice. I know. That's the part that's the slap in the face is like, it's completely overshadowed. Might not even watch this one. They got other stuff to do. Like, you got, there's got to be a moment where you're just like, ain't it some shit,

how quickly fortunes can turn in this sport. Yo, I will say, it's pretty much evens. Balala Muhammad if he got real bumpy. Yeah. I think that's fucking crazy. How do you do Balala like that? Well, because he's a gentleman of a certain age at this point.

Yeah. Yeah. Why don't even rolling? Yeah. I don't know. I want to slam that Bilal line if I was a gambling sort. If, of course.

Of course I'm not. Yeah. Interesting. I'll be watching it because I'm a sick fuck. And I really don't know what's wrong. me got bryce mitchell on the card right that should be good oh jo like the old smoyle killer for as i am of france very under rate of talent he's gonna smoke tom for tom nolan as far as i'm concerned sorry tom if i'm wrong i'll take it back tom nolan's young dude still he's what is he like

twenty he is yeah he's very two or three or something that's good that's a good fight that's actually a pretty good fight when i was on with luke thomas he he played the clip of bryce mitchell at the media day and he was like so i don't know if you guys know this when i'm in Vegas before these fights. I like to go out and explore ghost towns, essentially, like old abandoned mining towns. And look what I brought back. And he held up like three rusty nails. And he was like, these nails.

And it was just like, fuck. All right, man. Like, what do you? I don't know what you wanted people to say to that. What was he hoping for? Especially because it's like, imagine you bring those home with you. You got them, you know, they're sitting on the mantelpiece or something. And you're just like, people are coming over and you're just like, hey, look, did you see

the nails. And they was like, the rusty nails? Yeah, okay. And you're like, that was from like a ghost town. And they're like, oh, okay. I guess that does make them slightly cooler than if you just took rusty nails out of your back deck or something. But also, I don't, I don't know what else to say to that, Bryce, other than, huh. Okay. All right. Also, though, shouldn't be taking stuff away from one of those, you know, what we say here. You know, what if everybody did it, That's right. Do you think the dude who has his dick cut off is going to keep the dick there and just show it to people when they come into his house being like, you never guess what happened there?

This is a real personality test. Because there's a certain kind of person. I say this as one of my friends here in town, she just this week had her fallopian tubes removed. And her big question every time she met with the surgeon and I've heard about it several times is, will they let her take the tubes home? We got it in the show.

We got it in the show. This is fair play. They said yes. They said yes. Hold on. She took them home and is now planning to put them in some sort of resin cast thing so that she can display it. So there's a certain kind of person who loves it.

Do you think they look like like fully grown sea monkeys? I bet I'm going to find out the next time I go over to her house, Chuck. I bet I'm going to find out. Well, you know, been a great L episode today. I mean, we get a lot of topics. We've hit a lot of topics. Do we have any super chats, Andy? on.

The confrontationalist. How could a defense of Nicholas Cage as a generational actor omit the stream of his achievement in Ghostroiter and how? Okay. This sounds like a pin question. This is directed at me. Because I did write on my substack, fightinglife. Dot subdeck.

I did write about how I feel that. He is the confrontationalist. He is the kind of. But Nick Cage is one of the most fearless acting talents of our time, most willing to take big risk. The Ghost Rider, not a good film. I did not enjoy it. Nick Cage, he does as much as you can do with that role. The thing I appreciate the most is I saw some video once, and I think it was from Ghost Rider,

where they show a shot of him with his shirt off, you know, because he's in a superhero movie, so he had to get, like, jacked for the role. And people were asking, are those your actual abs? He had like a six pack. And he was like, yeah, no, those are my real abs. And everybody thought it was CGI. And I worked really hard to get those abs. And I'm never doing it again because everybody, if everybody thinks it's CGI, it's not worth it.

It's all it was a lot of work to do it. And for what? Just for people to believe it was all just like computer tricks? No, I'm never doing it again. Respect. Wow. Yeah. Fair playing.

It's a good note against Ghostroiter. Have not seen it. Will not see it. Don't see it. Don't see that one. Anything else? What's this? Pete, it's happening.

Tickets at 34 per person, FAM 125 package rings out of grand. If I don't get a ticket by Jesus, Ben, Chuck, see you in Dublin. Sorry, that was, if I don't get a ticket, but Jesus. And then on to,

got it. Are we all going? Everyone's coming, right? What's the date on that again? It's September 5th. He's got an opera. Might have a thing. Might have a thing on September 5th.

Chuck, you're coming, Chuck. Chuck, you'll be there. I would love to be there. We can watch ghost right there. Yeah, that'd be fun. Actually, you know what? Screw it.

I'm going. September 5th. Let's go. September 5th. Okay. We're all here. We're all here. Dublin.

I'm bringing people on a tour of Blanche because G.C. really wants to see it. But I'm going to do it like, do you remember when voice went to North Korea and they just brought them like to certain places and they have people smile and being like, this is great. We love it here. Life is good here. So you're going to a quick five minute in and out, but you know, you'll get a great sense

of the player. Okay. I got a great sense. Anything else? Oh, the Jordy Nation love Katie and Pizzie Carroll. Well, the Jordy Nation, I love is I did say you didn't have a coastline last week. I apologize about that. I now am aware that the Jordy Nation, Newcastle, has, in fact, a coastline.

Me and Chuck, me and Chuck sit right here. I mean, have you read the comments? They don't care that I'm here. It's just Ben and Chuck all the time. It's like fucking Pizzi, where the fuck are you here most of the time? So I'm going to take you. We had this conversation about Newcastle. I was the one who brought up the 1971 Michael Cain film Get Carter and said that it made me want to visit Newcastle, even though the film goes to great lengths to portray Newcastle as a shithole.

And I still want to go. What up Jordan nation? You just said it. You said shithole again. There was no need for that. I said get Carter said it was a shithole. I want to go even if it is a shithole. I want to go check it out.

A beautiful island just off of Newcastle, I believe. I believe I'm correct. Hey, will you take me to Donnybrook? I'll take you wherever you want to go. I'm going. Wherever you want to go. I'm a swing by Newcastle on my way to jump. You could do that.

Probably a 40 minute flight, Ben. Easy peasy. I'm doing it. If the bugs were biting, this is a super chat we just got. I believe this is what Andy just told me. The chat says, if the bugs were biting, would you walk out of UFC Whitehouse Joe? Would they let you?

I mean, the security for this event. I don't know if you're going to be able to just be like, you know what, I've seen it. I was really just here to see Kyle Dawkes, uh, and I've seen it. The bugs are kind of bad.

I'm not going to the pub. Will they let you go? They might not let you. That is a great question, but I don't want to, I don't want to be sitting there if there's a bunch of bugs. I'm going to say that right now, man. I will not tolerate that.

I will get up, even if I have to get arrested. Well, Chok, I can tell you, the fact that you're going has made me so much more excited about this. I'm not even bullshit. You know, pressure.

Well, fuck me. I know you are going to deliver absolute goal for us next week on Uncrown.com. Don't set that bar too, I'm, too, sorry. No, you fucking will. It's my, I'm buzzing for us.

Yes, you will. I can't wait. And hopefully you'll be able to join us. There'll be no restrictions. Hopefully. Yeah. I'll just be in a hotel room if that's okay.

No, no, we're on the lawn. We can do it from the lawn. Yeah. That'd be great. Andy, Andy said the lawn.

Yeah, she needs it on the line. Thank you all so much for joining us on the crack. Geez, we went a bit late there. Sorry, boys, have you had plans that I ruined? I can only apologize. But we love you so much.

We'll see you next week. Two days away from the infamous and well-thought. I mean, the White House event. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. I love you.