The Bill Simmons Podcast - Arch Manning, NFL Announcers, a New Deal for 'PTI', the Ballmer Scandal, and a Crawford-Canelo Megafight With Van Lathan Jr., Bryan Curtis, and Chris Mannix

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Van Lathan Jr. are joined by Bryan Curtis to discuss Arch Manning, college football, media storylines, and more (3:39). Then, Chris Mannix joins to talk about the Steve Ballmer scandal (51:40) and the Crawford-Canelo fight (01:17:05). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Van Lathan Jr., Bryan Curtis, and Chris Mannix Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Steve Ceruti The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bill Simmons podcast, presented by a Fandul Sportsbook. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where I put up a new rewatchables for you on Monday night. We did Legend of Billy Jean. It came out 40 years ago. It was a one for us for me and Chris Ryan. It's an absolute cable classic. It was on for 25 straight years.

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We tried something with the studio where he joined me, almost like it's a TV show. And we brought Brian Curtis on to talk about some college football, University of Texas, media stuff, the new NFL college, all the media storylines that are happening, non-players versus players. We talked about PTI, a whole bunch of media things. And then after that, Chris Mannix, we had to talk more Ballmer, Clippers, Aspiration, Kauai, a scandal that I am now finding a lot of humor in,

but Mannix gave us an update of where we're going with that. But then the big reason, Ban requested this, we want to talk about Crawford and Canelo, which has a chance to be one of the biggest fights of this decade, if not the biggest, if it's actually a good fight. A lot of great storylines with that. It's coming up this weekend. So this is an action-packed one.

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or visit ccpG.org slash chat in Connecticut. Paid endorsement. All right, we're taping this on Tuesday afternoon. We are in the Aspiration Studio, Van Lathen and I, our new sponsor. They just, Brian, they just gave me $7 million out of nowhere. I don't even have to do anything, but I decided to name the studio after them. It's really nice.

You got a no-show job, too, out of this whole deal. I did. My no-show, I just have to remember to say the thing. This is your kind of season. Football just started. College football just started. Absolutely. Announcers are back.

University of Texas in the mix. Let's start with our guy Arch Manning. Let's try to have a calm conversation. You're talking about this on. Measure. Bring her tailgate all the time. Measured. Curtis, what were your expectations going in and what are your expectations now?

Well, first of all, when I was in Texas, Chris Sims. got recruited by the Longhorns. So this is actually my second NEPO quarterback. I've never felt older, you know. This is the story. Chris Sims comes over. A guy named Major Applewhite was the quarterback before from Catholic High in Baton Rouge.

And they feel like they have to play Chris Sims because he, at that point, was the godsend NEPO QB. It's the second time it happened in Texas. He came out and he looked like Arch Schmanick did in his first game. He really did. He looked like he didn't know how to play quarterback, which was the weird part. And Bill, of course, now that we're in the NIL

era, we're watching Texas, Ohio State, and it goes to commercial, and there's a Warby Parker ad starring Arch Manning. He's just like, wow, the world's really different now. He had like three commercials. At a point, he had more commercials and he had completions. People were

like, what's going on? There was a couple commercials that were coming on. Do you think he shakes back from it, though? You think that the best from Archmanian is yet to come? I do. The only thing I'm worried about is, I don't know if conspiracy. That seemed very positive, Curtis. Yeah, I do.

I mean, I think, look, he's got like three cream puffs in a row. So he's going to get a bunch of stats. And I think he'll get better as the year goes on. The one thing I want to make sure that conspiracy Bill knows fan is about the videos that are out there. Because there's like a bunch of Abraham's appruters of college football. And there was one of Arch throwing a pass this last week. And he was grimacing like he had a terrible shoulder injury. Was it like an AI?

thing no it was real from the from the broadcast and they asked the texas coach about it and gave this really weird defensive answer at the press conference so that's kind of where texas fandom is like i think still in on arch high on arch but a little worried what is the what is the texas football reddit twitter um what are the other sites that texas fans would go to they got all kinds rivals message board everybody's got message worth what like what's the number one like people going nuts post. I think it's, I think it's just the arch, like, what the hell was that? You know, because I think there was, with quarterbacks in college, you always think, you know, they're often 18, like Michigan last week against Oklahoma. You know, he was like,

these are young kids. They're playing for the big lights. But Arch is a junior, or he's been in the program for two years already. Yeah, that's not great. He's, he played football last year. He had starts last year. People talking like it was his first start. It wasn't his first start. He played a lot last year. It wasn't against great teams, but he played. So there was just this little bit of like, are we sure? Are we sure he's the chosen one? Yeah. Were we putting too much into the surname?

Are we sure? Are we sure, Vand? No, we're not sure of anything. But you know what? We're not just not sure of Arch. We're not sure of DJ Lagwing. We're not sure of Drew Aller. This was supposed to be a quarterback class that had as much talent as any quarterback class

in recent memory. And we're watching these guys play, not just Arch. watching these guys play, as I say this, LSU has to play Florida, so watch DJ Lagway come out and throw for 4,000 yards and run for another 2,000. But we're watching all of these QBs, and a lot of it, we're not seeing it show up quite yet, which says two things.

Number one, it's early in the season. Let everybody get into their offense a little bit and figure out what it is that's going on. Number two, it's probably best to evaluate a quarterbacking prospect on the games that they've played, and not on the trajectory of their talent. Now, even Kay Klupnik, who was supposed to be a QV that for all intents and purposes

figured out his game last year, took Clemson to the playoff, he was supposed to come out there and light it up. Two games, hasn't done it. So maybe Kay Klubnik is who he is, and maybe we should let these guys figure out how they're going to be successful as football players before we made them the next John L.A.

I agree. Didn't Texas recruit Raj's son? He's coming in the next year? Yeah. And Arch might just stay all four years. Yeah, I think that was a plan all along. Yeah. I think that's what they were always planning on. And quarterback's like, I don't know, I didn't think Ohio State had a quarterback who win the national championship last year until the national championship game was over.

Right. I mean, you know, like college seasons are weird. It's really long now. Texas also had all these hidden things like an offensive line with a bunch of new starters, skill position players that were new or not broken in yet. And so it's like, it could be long. I still would bet on Texas long term because the schedule's not terribly hard for the SEC. And I think it could be in the playoff.

Did you feel like, you know, Arch comes out and obviously they obliterate San Jose State. And if you look at the stat line, the stat line looks good. But if you looked at the actual game, if you looked at the tape, which now that I'm one of the foremost experts in college football in the entire world,

that's what I do. That's what they're saying. I have Joel number one. Joel is right there. I'm coming for a spot. I grind tape. If you look at the tape, A lot of those throws were into gigantic windows and those balls weren't really on the money.

So there's still people asking questions about even in a game where he seemingly played well, whether or not Arch has it. Absolutely. I mean, I looked like I was covering some of those Texas receivers like Parker Livingston on Saturday. I mean, it was, you know, I wouldn't have been in the frame and neither were the San Jose State defensive back. So, yeah, it's weird. I mean, it's just like, you know, you get games like that. Like, what do we do with something like a win like that?

you're happy if you're a Texas fan you're a little relieved because if he'd come out and struggled in that you're like oh my god but you also don't really it's very very hard to project all the way through the season it was funny how good the first weekend and how interesting all the storylines were and then last weekend they basically

kind of punted on the weekend see this is the thing I was watching so I'm casual college fan bill that is Tony for the casual you guys like myself I wish that you guys could ever I wish you guys could like be connected to Bill's college football

fandom. I remember when Bill was the world's greatest Colorado football fan. He was really into what was going on. A really fun year. Last weekend was the weekend for the diehard college football fan because you have to think about some of the stuff that happened. You had USF go on the road to Florida, B Florida. You had Arizona State lose in Starksville to Mississippi State after some of these games weren't even on. I would have had to get like a new bundle subscription on ESPN.

There was like an ACC network. I would have had to subscribe to all of these games were on. Yeah. No, but they were on these bundles. I'm casual Bill. Only watch a CBS, box and NBC. You saw the thing, Bill,

with the ESPN app, they're trying to do college red zone or some form of college red zone. Yeah. For the casuals, college red zone is absolutely the thing you need. Because you'd be like, we're going to Starkville right now. That sounds great.

Oh, I've been to start doing that. Yeah, college red zone will work because like now and then you get to kind of see, you don't have to get into, I watch every part of it. I was upset that they did not televise the halftime show of the Grambling band at Ohio State. I wanted to see that matchup, the matchup of the Ohio State band versus the Grambling. Who won that matchup? Did we ever find out? I didn't see it, but I'm telling you already that I know Grambling won.

But it just, I didn't have to see it. You're like minus 500 favorites. I didn't have to see it. But no, you know, it's a really, this is one of the more interesting seasons because at the top of the sport, there's no dominant team. There's no dominant program.

Dare I say the playoff, which everybody hated and resisted forever, is actually sucked in people like me. Because I think it has. I think so. I was a little skeptical because I was, you know, the old school,

the regular season is so cool. It's the only sport where you have to be perfect. Now I love it. I mean, it's like, there's so much. And it was, it did feel a little, long last year.

It felt weird to have that final on a Monday after a huge NFL weekend. But man, the regular season felt great last year. There was so many big games and we're already off to a really good start. You know, I'm going to name drop. You know, Larry David hates

field goal kickers. And he hated that the Jets lost on a 60-yard field goal. He just doesn't think, he's talked about this on a million shows. He doesn't think those people should decide football games. And so we were talking about like,

if they just got rid of kickers people would be like oh my god they got rid of kickers and then i think within like four weeks people would be like this is fucking awesome everyone's just going for it on every fourth down i fucking love this why do we have kickers and i think the college football playoff is kind of like that where people are like no we can't do this it's going to ruin them and now we're now we're here and it's like yeah it's pretty good so much of the sport is about tradition i get it it's about that's i think that this was the trepidations, what I'm saying. So much of the sport is about tradition,

it's about robberies. It's about, this is the way we've always done it. This is, these are cultural fights that are playing out on college football fields. This is parts of Alabama.

So somebody told me something is like most graduates, most fans of, I was talking to a guy and he said, most fans of the university of Auburn, most fans of Auburn, they went there, right?

And it goes, most fans of Alabama, they go to Walmart and Quick Trip and all of those places. Basically, that's the rivalry between the two places. And there's no way to really talk about Michigan versus Ohio State. There's really no way to contextualize. It's about emotion. And people were wondering if those games and those moments would lose their emotional resonance if you had a playoff where essentially Ohio State. could lose to Michigan

and then win the national championship. What we didn't realize was it's extremely interesting to think about whether or not it's a successful season for Ohio State if they lose to Michigan and then win the national championship. It put their fan base

and us as college football fans in conflict, conflict that we wouldn't have if we didn't have the playoff. It turned into a yeah, but... Yeah. We won the title, but... So what is your take that being immersed in this? So you're pro for the most part.

But like, now we've, the conference disaster and all the moving around seems like it's had. I think that's been what's been the negative impact. Yeah, I saw on Twitter today. Michigan State's playing UCLA. That's a conference game. Just as a reminder. And it starts at 11 p.m. in East Lansing. A conference game starts at 11 p.m. at 9.

Are you serious? Yes. Yes. So who gave us the top three Texas rivals have stayed the same or has anything shifted? Yeah. So it's Oklahoma, it's Texas A&M, and it's Arkansas. But because of all the conference moving around, they kind of got separated. Now they're back in the SEC and now they're playing more of their old rivals than they were before, which is kind of weird.

Now we play all three. We weren't playing all three before. The one thing I am a traditionalist about is regional conferences. the conferences should be set up by region. Well, I mean, this is college sports, and this is why we had conferences where all the schools were near each other, so student athletes wouldn't have to travel too far

to play sports against each other. And that has been just tossed out the window. And not just for football, but all the sports, it's ridiculous. Even from a competitive standpoint, though, I remember I watched the game, I think it was last year when Penn State came to SC. If you watched the first half of the game,

Penn State's walking in quicks in. Yeah. They haven't adjusted yet. And it puts them at a competitive disadvantage. I mean, you know, you have to travel for these games. Playing on the road is always hard to travel all the way across the country to play them. Right. And then SC, look at some of the losses they had last year.

Some of those losses is because, like, that's a lot of travel time and to get ready and to turn all that stuff around. So it actually changes the game on the field as well to me. I don't like it. It was funny. Old ways you used to get like only get a big vacation to the West Coast. He made a bowl. It's like, we're going to the holiday bowl. This is awesome.

We're getting to go to San Diego. Now it's a conference game. Give Van your top Texas moment of all time. My junior year, 1998, Ricky Williams was one class ahead of me, and I was in the stadium when he broke the rushing record. That's crazy. Against Texas A&M. And then Mike Dick had traded this whole draft for him.

Yeah, I remember that. I think no limit was the agency at that point. I think Pee was. I don't think they're still. Yeah. I think then Ricky left. Ricky left. But he was that, I know that's like a boring answer.

Besides Major Applewhite who came from Baton Rouge, watching him run the ball at Texas. Ricky, yeah. He was fantastic. Casual Bill was all in on the Ricky games. Give us the media overview of the college football scene. And then we can do NFL too. But college football, like the pregame shows,

they have just beefed up now and they've tried to turn in. It seems like it's worked, whether you like where you're watching or not. but it does feel bigger. Yeah, I mean, it's what a world where Lee Corso is escorted off the stage at Game Day and Barstool is brought on at the same time. Right. I mean, that happened the same week.

Right. And in the same place because they're outside the same stadium in Columbus for Ohio State, Texas. I mean, that was weird. I feel like the whole thing is really in flux, but in a good way. Like people are trying stuff, you know. And it's funny, you know, for Game Day, for people like me watch that, for 20 years the relationship on that show was corso the coach and herbie the player and you know herbie was a young guy and then he got older and course i got older and he was helping him on tv and it was just

it was a very interesting relationship just to watch and now that's been replaced on game day by sabin the coach and pat mackafee the young guy or comparatively young guy and that's obviously a completely different vibe i mean it's it's a weird time how how are you feeling you have anything on that No, I was just said, I cannot believe how good Nick Saban is on television. I would have never thought in a million years that he would have been as good on. And I think that's the number one thing he's good at, in your opinion. To me, he is good at teaching the game. The same thing that would have made him a great coach.

He's good at giving the reasons that he feels like why a team will win, not just from like an X's and O standpoint, but let me tell you about college football. and he's just a great ambassador for the game. It was the thing Belichick never totally figured out how to do in his one-year media tour last year. Like, clearly, the same DNA and they're trying to do the same things, but Sabin seems more accessible.

Belichick always kind of going to Ed Reed, who was unbelievable player. Well, I mean, last year, Belichick didn't have any energy left over for that. Well, he's getting wiped out. Yeah, he's like all night long, every night. Literally trained. Yeah, so, like, he's just going to them. Yeah, maybe Sabin.

Maybe if Saban have a 25-year-old girlfriend It's not too late. It could happen. You agree on Saban? Yeah, don't tell that to Ms. Terry, by the way. Nick Saban, very happily married, I apologize to Ms. Terry.

I do. And I also think Nick Saban committed to being in television. Right. And didn't care about it. Bill Belichick wanted to coach. Yeah. Like, he was like,

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We had Belichick doing NFL. And it was like, oh, my God, look at this. Look at this. What is it this year? I think it's JJ Watt after week one. On the number two team? Yeah, because you know how this goes, Bill. Yeah.

It's like the backup quarterback when your quarterback's struggling. Everybody looks over and we go, ooh, what about that guy? I mean, I was like, I was talking to Shoemaker on the press box and I was like, how soon are we going to get people calling for Tony Romo to be replaced by JJ Watt on the number one team? And then I looked on Twitter and basically it had already happened. Wow. I was like, oh, it was like the first quarter of week one.

And like, oh, this guy's much better. So you don't feel like Romo got right at the ship at all in the last two years or now? I'm not saying that's correct, but I just think when you put somebody in the number two slot, I mean, look at the Olson Brady stuff and that's a different dynamic. But you're always going to have that. And this is some, a network guy told me this when the whole Romo salary explosion happened. I was like, what did you take away from this? And he was like, always have a number two.

Always have a backup plan so you don't get held up by your number one guy. Interesting. Olson did the San Francisco Seattle game. He's really good. That one is so glaring, though. Yeah. That's so glaring. After a while, I was about to say, actually, I can't say that.

to say it makes me almost feel bad for Tom Brady. Nothing can make me feel bad for Tom Brady. Well, what about his wife? Tating a jihitsu instructor? That's what I'm talking about. I mean, that's good for her. You know, he knows how to do all the different poses and stuff. But, like, for me, nothing can make me feel bad about talking.

But that's a glaring one. The Watt situation, that's interesting to me. Because I actually do think that Romo, who started off on fire, and then kind of obviously became a character. caricature of himself. I think Ramos kind of got it back together now. Yeah, I thought he was better last year. I definitely he slipped.

There's no question. But I thought he seemed a little more locked in. I thought Aikman and Buck are the best right now, and I don't even think it's arguable. You know, Brady was better week one. Yeah? I don't know how much sound you helped. We didn't have the audio for that.

I didn't hear any of it because it wasn't on our multi-view. That game was complete trash. Yeah. Like, there was a moment right before the half. He just sounded like, first of all, he just knew what he wanted to say. He was making one point, said, trying to make five points, which is the rookie announcer mistake. But he had this moment right before the half.

Jane Daniels, they were about to go in and score again. And he throws the ball away, and Brady's like, that's going to be intentional grounding. Ten second runoff, half is over. And you can feel like Kevin Burkhardt and Dean Blanino, like, wait, what? And then the ref comes in, and he was right. And it was one of the first moments I've heard, because you know this. announcers can give you good information, but what you really want is them to be in control and to be like five to ten steps ahead of you.

as a viewer bring up something that I hadn't thought about yet and that was one of the first moments of Brady did that for me where I was like oh wow he saw that way before anybody even in his own booth did were you surprised inside the NFL basically died so you mean it's on x it's on Twitter as like a like a short video show I thought that to me inside the NFL would last I'll be dead and it'll still be on it was one of those shows and then something started to happen with it. And maybe what is it? Is you think it's just the arrow we live in now

where everything's so fast? I think a couple of things happened. Number one, I think the Fox Studio show market corrected inside the NFL a little bit. And podcasts, I would throw that into it. Podcasting as well. I know it's not the same thing. But when I was growing up,

the coolest bunch of guys, the coolest football discussion was happening on inside the NFL, the way those guys were talking about the game. Then it moved to Howie and Terry and all of those guys. And that was the coolest one. And they had all kinds of other subject. Glaser was on there.

What was the lady that used to come on there when they first started? It's like a really beautiful woman that used to come on there. Oh, Gillian Barbary? Gillian Barbary. Jimmy Kimmel? He used to come on. Yeah. So like all of that stuff, they became kind of the cool football show.

Yeah. And that inside the NFL to me was, never the same. And it was still on HBO at that point, which also was different for a lot of people. You know what I think part of what killed it was all the clips are just online now. Yeah. Like I watched yesterday

last night after that Viking game with J.J. McCarthy throws the pick six, has this dramatic comeback as Caleb's cratering on the other side. It makes some big throws. But they had the locker room. I love the locker room stuff. Kevin O'Connell giving him the game ball

being like, everybody in this locker room knew what this guy was going to do and he did it. And then they cut to J.J. McCarthy and he's like, yeah! And he gets the ball and they're all mobbing them. And it's like, that's the kind of thing I would watch it inside the NFL for on Wednesday nights because they would have those things

and now I'm getting them instantaneously on wherever. So once I think they lost that, plus you know, it's just, the discourse is just constant. It makes sense it went away. I'm still surprised though, Curtis. I felt like that was a staple. Yeah, and the NFL films

footage was always really cool. I mean, that's something that you really couldn't replace. Even if you watch the whole TV game, even if you saw the clips on Twitter, it's still really awesome. The guys talking shit to each other, the wide receivers getting into it with the debacks. I ate it up. That still though is better than

anything that's coming out, football related. It's 7 o'clock in the morning at Commander Stadium or whatever. And then the guy, the music comes in. And then all of a sudden, the player comes in. A player comes We're going to get wild today, baby.

Yeah. We're going to take them all the way. And then after the, and then the whole way that that would come out would be fantastic. There's nothing like that now. But it's, but even that now. Or there's too much of it now. What do you mean? Like there's no one that I don't feel like it's putting that type of production value.

Oh, yeah. That's putting that type of production value into covering the actual game. But does it need production value if it just exists all the time? If I'm getting it 24-7, why do I need it to be a produced version of it? Yeah, we get to fast. It just feels like we're in no man's land. But what Van's talking about, that camera coming out of the tunnel into a stadium with the music. Oh, man, that's, I mean, that just, that gives me chills.

There's certain things we just did. And it's really weird because the technology is better. The people are smarter and the equipment's better. And yet, like, sometimes you'll see on Instagram, they'll have like, I don't know, they'll do an intro to the AFC title game from 1997. And it's like, this is fucking awesome. He just got you more high. Why?

I don't know why we kind of peaked with this stuff. Now it's like too elaborate. Well, Brent Musburger, 40 years ago, going, you're in Game 5, the Lakers didn't realize that they, you know, and they just would get you ready to go for the game. A couple of things have changed. Well, obviously, technology is one of them. Right now we have a camera that's zooming all over. That's the draw.

It's not the actual guy setting up the game for you anymore. It's the next gen stats, say he's running at 25 miles an hour or whatever it is. All of that stuff is kind of the stuff. And I'm a little older. I'm a little older, so that was the way nostalgic for the old days. That's the way I'm still nostalgic for it. But Curtis and I are constantly nostalgic.

Oh, my God. You know, the thing I miss that you're talking about is the tease before a big game. And Bob Costas was incredible at the tease. And I don't know why they don't do the tease anymore because, like, if you are a casual fan coming in for the NBA finals or for a big football game, you need to know who the players are, right? You need to know what the stakes are.

But if you're somebody like us, the three of us, you're like, hell yeah. Yes, I'm even more fired up than I already was. Yeah, I swear it used to be better. YouTube tried to cover a football game. How did that go? Oh, not so well. We got Derek Carr out of the deal.

Derek Carr was good. Were you surprised by that, Ben? Yeah, I'm surprised that he's good at anything. Derek Carr was a good studio guy. Like, shocking. Good for him. It'll take some time. Fans, yeah, Van Neney and see him pale.

It'll take some time. I'm happy for him. I'm happy for his family. everything went well. It'll take some time before I'm okay with it. What do you think YouTube learned from their first YouTube experience? Well, it was weird because, you know, with Netflix, when they get to do these little one-offs, they basically have their pick of any announcer, you know, so they can put like a cool team. It's like, what if we got, you know, Greg Olson and Noah Eagle and put them together?

You're like, that sounds good. YouTube had a weird one because every NFL announcer had a job that weekend. So they could not go around and be like, let's pick a dream team. together who we want so they just have to find people so i think in a way it's probably just a one-off if youtube had more NFL and they probably will have more NFL when the NFL tears up these contracts in 2029 um i think they'll be better at it i think it was it was just kind of weird but it was it was so strange we're sitting on a friday night everybody's focused on it right it's day two of the NFL season it's kind of like it's in brazil you know what i think it's kay adams and

cam newton and half time i like that um you like cam yeah I think Cam is making a fantastic career for himself post-playing days. I think he's a lightning rod. He's not afraid to stick his nose in there and giving an opinion. I like Cam. You know what I thought that they should have, especially this thing. Interesting take. I like him.

Fourth and one especially. Cam on fourth and one especially. All right. Just watching him, he's got a lot of charisma. It's going to work out. It's going to be great. You know what I think they should have? I think they should have a since the games are going to go to YouTube.

We know that this is going to happen eventually. They should have it. where you can call the game on YouTube like you and your friends alternate stream from your house and then people can watch you call the game you should be able to be you should be able to NFL should have a system where they let you call the game

I think all this stuff's coming and then I actually think we're going to have all this in 10 years people can watch they can go oh I want to go watch Van and Jomey called a game and then me and Jomey called a whole game and then we build subscribers based upon us as a little unit calling football games. I actually think that could happen. Democratize it.

You know, Bann and I didn't play in the NFL. Neither did you, Brian Curtis. We're non-players. Are non-players qualified to discuss sports? Because that kicked up again. There's these cycles of the same stories

that happen with sports media. And we've had, what is this average? Like, once every 18 months, this happens? For the last 100 years since reporters walked into the locker room? and said, and the player, how could you possibly understand because you didn't play the game?

I thought there were two layers to that. One is the whole, you know, you are disqualified. You don't get to have an opinion here because you couldn't possibly understand part of it, which, as you say, it's like as old as time. But then, if I may infer a little bit, there's only so many reps to go around at ESPN part of the equation.

There's something underneath it, you say. Well, and I don't know that. I haven't talked to Ryan Clark about that, but here comes this guy, new guy, who starts in the spring, Shrager, and you're like, oh, he's getting run on, get up, first take. Shiny new toy.

Right. He's getting on some shows. Yeah. So I'll say this. And this is the question, if anybody cares to ask. We've seen this go back and forth. Like, when JJ was on first take,

he never outright said this, but he did carry himself a lot of times with the era of, let me tell you what happened and how the game was actually played. Yeah. Right? And you see guys... I understand this better than you because I played. There's got to be a level where that's true, right? By the way, that

is 100% true. There's, it's maybe not in the way that Ryan expressed it to Peter right there. But at some point, the players are on these shows because they actually did it. I remember one time, Kevin Durant, who was notoriously

he's notoriously he doesn't talk a lot to people on social media he doesn't really use it that much but it's a joke but he actually said something that was very it took me a second he said something that was very funny on social media he was like you shouldn't be if I can't

if you can't hit seven elbow jumpers in a row you should not be able to talk basketball with me and that seems like a dick thing to say yeah but I on a level I get it like on a level I do kind of understand someone saying that if you're going to tell me

what I need to be doing in the game and how I need to be moving the ball and getting to my spot, shouldn't you have at some point in some way either had enough skin in the game covering it over the course of decades or have done it yourself? I had this one, the year that I did TV with Magic Johnson where it would be arguing like you and I would argue. But at some point he's Magic Johnson and he's just, yeah. At some point, I probably lose if we're like diametrically opposed on an argument because

he's just going to know more about basketball than me. But I think the thing you can do is do as much homework as you can. Be prepared. Come up with ideas and takes what I didn't like about what Ryan did. I don't know him. You know him. When you're on live TV with people, there's a nakedness to that. You really have to trust everybody you're with.

And I've been in situations where you completely trust the people with and it's great, and I've been in situations where I did not trust at least one of the people I was with. And it sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if somebody tries to flip something on you or make you look bad in some way or screw you up on live TV and either they're doing it intentionally or unwittingly, intentionally is worse, it's just fucked up. And I felt like that moment, whether Ryan intended to do that or not, he was doing it in a way to make put Peter on his heels on live TV. And

live TV is a we thing. It's not a zero-sum game. Like you're on a show. Everybody's got to win if you're doing the show. And once you bring that element into it, I think it's really hard to put that genie back in the bottle. That was my take. And he apologized for it. And he

obviously knows like, hey man, that's not where I want to be when I'm doing television. Let me tell you what another thing that I'm kind of about. And obviously it's something that's regrettable and he regretted it. He apologized for it. You know what else I'm about? Because I'm this toxic. I'm about just sometimes having the fucked up interaction. Right. I'm for actually, hey, I said the wrong thing. I did the wrong thing. Because in that saying, what people don't talk about was Peter

defended himself on live TV. He said, yeah, don't belittle me like that. Right. So, which I love. I think he had to do it. So in that situation, we could all say, hey, that's not what we would want do to one another. But I don't mind making the mistake and getting up right to the level of what's appropriate and being able to set that boundary with a co-worker. I think the real thing is, do you leave with more respect for that person? And that was the issue. And that's the do you leave with more respect for that person and an understanding of why you shouldn't do something like that or why it's not good for the viewers to see it? It was the, and the thing is, Curtis, like, I actually thought what Ryan was trying to say was pretty

interesting. He was basically like, I see your point. Here's why you're wrong. And I'm just saying this as somebody, like there was a way he could have said it. It was like, I'm just saying this is somebody who played. I don't care if I had a good game. If I made the play that fucked up the game for my team, that's all I would think about

that night. And none of this other stuff would matter. It's just the way he said it. But I actually thought it was a really interesting point. You know what it reminded me? I remember when Lamar Jackson and the Ravens lost the bills in the playoffs last year. And every smart football person, you know, got on Twitter. And it's like, this is not Lamar Jackson's fault.

This is not, it's Mark Andrew's fault. It's not his fault. And then if you actually listen to Lamar Jackson in his press conference, he was like, I didn't play well enough to win today. Yeah. Like, he wasn't thinking like that. He didn't want football nerds to be like, no, no, we're defending. Like, he had a very personal reaction to the game.

And I think that's what Ryan was actually trying to say, right? Right. C.D. Lamb bawled out for 95% of the game, but he didn't for the last 5%. He's not going home looking at his stats, being like, I did great today. you know but but again i think it's other baggage coming into it that had nothing to do with what they were talking about it felt yeah yeah it's tv to van's point i think if it was a podcast you would actually just lean into that interaction like wait let's talk about this for the next 20 minutes commercial it's a good point well and also mike greenberg did nothing he just sat there

like the the host should actually be like whoa wait a second guys let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's rein this in but you know you're it's it's funny i do live tv every now and again I go on CNN. Bill loves to see me on CNN. He drives me crazy. He loves it when I go on CNN. I do too. Abby Phillip, man.

That's a great show. See, look at it. Look what he's doing for me. Don't encourage it, Brian. So, but, and there is a very delicate dance that you're doing with people, even at that table where we all have these opposing political points and points of view, there's still a way that you want to make sure you don't cut people off too much. you don't want to come across yelling at someone.

Right. There's still, we're on TV right now. So let's try not to make each other look bad. We can try to make each other look stupid because we're throwing out intellectual points. But now let's not bully each other and make everyone look bad. Or undermine.

It's so easy to undermine somebody when you're doing any kind of show with them. Right. You can undermine somebody's point. In all these subtle ways, you can do it with how you're sitting, what your demeanor is, no selling.

It's like we always talk. It's like professional wrestling. You're doing your move, your pile driver on me. I'm going to act like it hurt. And then I do a move. You're going to act like it hurt. And that's how you do it. And some people on TV, especially now as like the louder and louder you get on TV,

the more people notice you, the professional wrestling selling part seems to be going out the window a little bit. And it's something I think Stephen A is still really good at. When he's with the right people, like when he's with Mad Dog, he sells the shit out of Mad Dog. That whole thing, it's like really, fun to watch because it's because he gets it. That's why Stephen A is really good at what he does. PTI is another one. Coinizer, the best person I've ever done TV with. They just re-signed

for three more years. Cornheiser is technically contractually signed to do PTI until he's 80 years old. Wow. And this show started, I think, what, 2002, Brian? 2001. 2001. It makes really no sense with anything else at ESPN at this point. It's not for a half hour. I don't even know who leads it in. It just seems like it's going to go on forever. They'll never cancel it. It's those guys show. They should be the ones who decide whether it goes away or not. And Cornizers for 10 years is like, I'm too old. I called him today to make fun of him. I'm too old. I look like a Muppet. I shouldn't be on TV anymore. He'll never leave that show. That show will go on forever. But what was your reaction when you heard it was coming back? I think the reason we're happy

it's coming back is because it's one of the last links to old ESPN. Yeah. That company's changed so much over the last couple years. And I think you can argue for the better.

They had to change, you know, the world's changing, like so rapidly, the whole media world. But you look back, it's like, it's 2001,

right? That's what old ESPN counts as now. Not the 90s, not the 80s, 20001. And, you know, what else?

Maybe Berman, you know, doing prime time in the form it's in now. Dickie V. still around? Like, what are the other links to that world? Oh, 2001 was when I got to ESPN. It's 2001. People

who were born in the year that show existed are now getting married and having kids. A little early, they need to go out and experience life more, but yeah, they could. Good advice. But, you know, I look back at

PTI or I look at PTI. PTI is the best version of the sports two men because the sports two men went from PTI and then it went to first take. And first take is a groundbreaking show, particularly the iteration of first take that I'm talking about is Skip and Stephen A. It's a groundbreaking show. But we have to be honest about first take insofar as first take is a show that you can make an argument broke sports media in a way. Because it took this. it changed discussion from having a take and it was the slogan was literally embrace debate

embrace debate and people hated it for years when you are always doing that it becomes not the ethos of your show it becomes the shtick of your show sometimes cornhizer and wilbon they have completely awesome conversations about things that they agree on yeah about things that they are, sometimes they're going against each other, but sometimes they're just yes and in each other. And it's in the curation of the topics and the actual, them opining on sports culture, that is the interesting thing.

It's not the fight itself. Well, you know what's interesting about what you just said, they've earned that because you know they'll also disagree if it's time to disagree. When it's time to disagree. So when they agree, it's almost like what Siskel and Ebert had, we were like, oh yeah, these guys both like this movie, they're not going to like try to tag against each other.

I still think it's a really good show. I think it's the most important thing anyone created this decade or this century from a sports standpoint. It certainly is the most ripped off of any show, right? I mean, there's something, I don't think there's anything that comes close. You have to go back to 2001. Like, we're all kind of in the same business now in the media. We're all in the TV, audio, right?

It was one business. Back then, it was not one business. It was writer or television. Yeah. And all of a sudden, those two guys go do TV, and everybody who's in writing, took us a while, but everybody's in writing, is like, I could do something like that.

That looks appealing to me. That looks like a version of what I would be talking about in the Washington Post newsroom or talking about at home with one of my best friends. And I think that's still the magic of PTIs. You can still look at it, be like, man, if I had a show like that, that would be the most fun thing in the world. I think all roads lead from Mike and the Mad Dog and PTI

for all the shit that everybody is doing with sports. now. It's like whatever, even like what we're doing right now, whatever that is of like, I'm hanging out with somebody I like and we're arguing about shit. It starts with that with Mike of the Mad Dog and PTI. And PTI was way more structured and better and like tighter. Here are my opinions. They'll go back and forth. The format was just perfect. People could step in and host it for them. But it was never quite the same if they weren't on it. And I don't know. I was called them my uncles. But they're just like, the two of them together, I still get a

fucking kick out of it. And it doesn't make sense because it's 20, it's almost 25 years of, you would think like you would even get tired of like hearing your two uncles argue about sports after a while, right? Well, now they're almost the only game in town doing it that way. So if you want what they do,

you kind of have to go to them for it. So it's almost made them more valuable in a way now than even they were because, you know, at some point ESPN, it flipped. I remember PTI came out. PTI was this gigantic deal hit from the beginning. But then at some

point it flipped. At some point, you know, cold pizza, remember when it was cold pizza and all of these shows they come along and PTI becomes more like the consistent show there. Well, now it's a lot of these shows are going away. These personalities have changed and it exists

and it's still kind of the only way, place you can get what it is that they're doing. So it's even more special. Did you believe Burke Magnus when he said the show last as long as they want to do it? Like I wonder, Once they don't want to do it, does the show still exist? I believe in when he says as long as they want to do it, because I think they're in that handful of people.

At ESPN, you have the lifetime contract. Hubey had it. Big Vital had it. Lee Corso had it. They walk away when they want to walk away. Yeah. It's a really tiny list, as you know. Most people don't leave ESPN under their own power.

I didn't crack it. But I was about to go there. Do you want PTI to exist post Tony and Mike? I think the show should leave it. The show should leave. Just like inside the NBA, like they are the show.

You can put other people in it and guest host it, but it's not the same. Is there anyone out there, anybody out there right now that you could see filling in for those two guys? Just create a different show.

Just make it something slightly different and do it that way and keep most of the elements you like. That show should, that show should, with them. And they shouldn't, I don't know. I just, that's how I feel, but we'll see how it goes. Anyway, Tony's going to be doing it until he's 80. How old was CoSell when he lost his mind in the mid-80s? Like mid-60s? Yeah, I don't think he was that old. People looked older in those days.

I'm excited for Tony to start getting a little like gamey on the air. We'll get the next step. If you're like, whoa, Uncle Tony. Let it fly. You know, a red mustard moment. I mean, it's not like he hasn't gone to the edge of controversy before. No, he's not afraid. It's happened. It's not afraid.

Yeah. All right, Curtis. Anything else we have to cover? Are we good? I think we're good. We did it. It's great to see you as always. It's Curtis and I.

This is our 15th year working together. That's insane. Yeah. 15th year, we're going back to Grantland. Yeah, 2000. hired Curtis in spring of 2011. So, yeah, we're... Bill's like my uncle.

How has Bill changed? God, I think almost less than anybody. Yeah, I mean, like Bill, the person? Pretty stable, yeah. Well, Curtis interviewed me for the first time, what was it, 04? He did a piece on me. That was when we met. You reached out.

When the Red Sox book came out. Yeah, yeah. I don't even know if that piece is on the Internet's at this point. I think it is. It's called the Bard of the Red Sox. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that was how I met Curtis. And then always kind of monitor him.

And then when I was thinking about Grantland, I had this list of writers. And I was like, if I ever, they ever let me do this site, I have this person and this person. And he was always on that list. And now we're still working together. And he says to the press box with your guy, Joel Anderson, you share custody. Yeah, I did. And my shoemaker as well, but with Joel as well. I did press box with Joel.

It was fantastic. Me and Joel, you have to listen to Bringer Tailgate. Me and Joel's dynamic. Me and Joel might be the new PTI with take there as a referee. Joel is, any worries about Joel being comfortable on the show? We're erased in about five minutes. Done. Yeah.

He's into it. He's aggressive with it. It's a great show. Oh, my God. He's the best. And I'm fortunate enough because Joel just trolls me all day. Don to college football Saturday, just text me all this shit over and over again, especially when the longhorns look bad.

And I'm like, he's a natural for this. I guess you didn't make that thread. Excuse me, I like this. I'm good to know that he's not just doing it to me. Yeah. Because this is just his personality because the first time. He shares the wealth. The three of us are on the podcast, and we're all talking about college football.

And Joel comes out at the end. He goes, you know, fuck LSU. I'm like, what? Why do you talk? Why would you fuck me? Why did you say this? And now I know, because this is what he does on Ring Your Tailgate. Now I know he does it to you, too.

And that makes me feel better. I thought he had some kind of problem with me. I was going to go let the ear out of his tires. Every week, he loves it. Curtis, a pleasure is always good to see you. Hook him, Bill. Hey, I'm a big fan of Fandul's new Thursday touchdown jackpot promo available every Thursday night football game.

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over at our friends on Fandville Sportsbook. All right, we're taping this. It is Tuesday afternoon Pacific Time here with Van Lathen. We have Chris Mannix on the TV. I feel like this is like a real TV show, Van. Yeah. Bring it in Chris.

Van Call for this. Van texted me last week. He said, I've been studying Crawford and Canelo nonstop, and I just want to go into it on the pot. I'm like, okay, that's fine. But first, we have to talk about this Clipper scandal, which I know you've covered a bunch. Did you get up to speed on this fan?

I have. Okay. Manix, you have been on the side of maybe this is the Massachusetts in you. Very suspicious of the Clippers story. I would describe you as a skeptic of the Clippers being like, how did this happen? What have you learned the last few days and are you still as much of a skeptic? Well, my skepticism, it really flows from the idea that if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, chances are it's a duck.

Yeah. And it also flows from the belief that stuff like this is not, you know, uncommon in the NBA. That we see teams doing some kind of deals that provide sweeteners to players. What is astonished me and what's astonished most of the league types that I've talked to is the sheer magnitude of it, the amount of money that appears to have been, well, that was given to Kauai Leonard and may have been directed his way. I mean, $7 million per year is not nothing. I mean, I don't know what Kauai's deal is with new balance, but is it $7 billion per year? And Kauai is up there doing commercials for new balance. He's wearing new balance gear.

But this company, he did absolutely nothing. So I wouldn't say that I've learned anything new over the last few days. It's just that every NBA person I talk to is deeply suspicious that this is some kind of, you know, rogue outfit that on its own paid Kauai lettered $7 million per year to do nothing. And that's the key van. He didn't do anything. He didn't even do, like, local ads. Yeah, I guess the question is that part of it, everyone knows. But I saw Cuban.

He went on Pablo's show, and they duped it out for what Pablo said. It was three hours that they cut down to, like, an hour and 15 minutes or whatever. And the question, the central question is, how much of this did Steve Balmer and the ownership of the Clippers know, right? There is a world where you could make up a scenario where this is, Uncle Dennis going around trying to get what he's trying to get from the Raptors and then from the Clippers.

But if that's not the case, then what you're saying is that all of this is taking place, somebody runs it up to Steve Balmer as Steve Barmer goes, yes, go ahead and do that. Which I could believe, but it does seem like Balmer is going to have a lot of space between what happened and him being involved in it to say,

I didn't know anything. And what is the smoking guy? done to prove that. Can we talk about, you know, this has been such a... Can I just one thing, like, the one thing that gets, and I think Howard wrote about this on the ringer today, like, there doesn't need to be a smoking gun for there to be punishment. Like, they're, you know, this is not a court of law where they have to have an email from Steve Ballmer that gives like the thumbs up emoji to go and do this underhanded deal

between Kauai and aspiration. The NBIT has to believe it. There has to be enough circumstantial evidence for the NBA to believe something like this happen. I think that needs to be taken to account. This is what I've been hearing from execs being like it, look, I think Adam Silver would love to have that smoking gun. Remember the Minnesota situation, there was the smoking gun. There were actual emails between the two agents. Yeah, like a written thing.

Yeah. It was all down on paper. But as much as Adam would like to have that, he doesn't need that to bring the hand of God down on the clippers. Can I say something real quick just to that? So let's say he doesn't have it. Think about how destabilizing it's going to be to enact a punishment against the clippers. It's almost to me,

it seems as if you didn't have that smoking gun, you'd almost want to punt on it because the hand of God that comes down on the clippers for engaging in this type of malfeasance would have to be so severe. But if you don't have the smoking gun, would you even want to do that

based upon circumstantial evidence. I don't know that this league office is going to have the appetite for it. Especially with the All-Star game coming in February. Yeah, a lot of variables. A lot of variables. I don't know if this league office is going to have the appetite for it. But, man, use the word destabilizing. How destabilizing, though, is it to do nothing?

Like, theoretically, there are people that wholeheartedly believe that the clippers skirted ironclad rules. And if they did, look what they were able to do with it. Number one, they were taking some money out of owner's pockets because if they had paid Kauai, the full max, the second time around, then that would have added to their tax burden, which would have meant more money flowing out of the LA Clippers. They also were able to do things, you know, cap-wise or signing players-wise, like guys they were able to pick up because they had more flexibility.

So I would turn it back to you on this van, like how destabilizing it would be for a league to have the richest owner in the NBA allegedly, theoretically, just flop the rules in order to keep some money in his pocket but more importantly, be able to build the kind of team he wanted to. Yeah, I mean,

there seems to be common knowledge that everybody's doing this. Like, I haven't heard about it on this level. Not at the number that this got. Not at this number. So this is what I'll say. I definitely believe, I don't think this anyway,

and it was interesting to hear Cuban and Pablo go back and forth because Cuban almost seemed like he was defending his own reputation. Like, these are my guys. Remember, like, remember Blue Chips? Yeah, yeah. Tony's my guy.

My guy. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that. Tough-ass kid from Chicago. That's what Cuban was doing. It seems to me very unlikely that Steve Bomber didn't know about this. It seems impossible, right? That he didn't have any analysis.

Chris made the big point, though. The suspension or whatever, whatever can happen, losing draft picks, avoiding the contract, whatever it is. this is basically the OJ civil trial versus the OJ trial. You only need to kind of think something happened and have enough evidence to be like, I think that happened. So we're doing this. This isn't an actual trial where like,

we are proving this indisputably that you did this. I don't think they have to do that for the lead to crack down and be like, dude, something smells with this. You gave 50 million of these guys. He's getting 28 million to do nothing. Like you can say there's no smoking gum, but something happened here and we're punishing you.

And I think that's how this plays out. It's the $28 million and it's the nothing. Like if he had just got out there and done one of those stupid H.E.B commercials that the Spurs did back in the day, or if he had posted once a year about his love for eliminating the carbon footprint, we would not be having this particular conversation. I think it comes down to it either has to be a Timberwolves-like hand of God punishment because they believe that,

the clippers circumvented the cap, or it's got to be nothing. They cannot find a middle ground. There can't be like, okay, we're going to dock you. I disagree. I think they can still punish them for some piece of this. Like a second round pick? No, I think it's somewhere between Joe Smith and nothing would be my guess on this. It's too.

It's got to lean closer to Joe Smith, though, to me. But if they do that, then it's like them trying to say that you can get a little bit of pregnant, right? Because either you did it, and if you did it, it's such. a shot at the competitive balance in the league. Can you imagine them not doing anything now? Well, that's what I'm what I'm saying is

the choice is for the league is whether or not to make this story right now which is a huge sport story. The choice is whether or not to make this the biggest sports story of the decade. Which is what you... Like a Donahey level tip thing. Donahy was way worse. Which is what you do.

Let me put it on something up. Like the one thing that Stern did Well, it's always going to come back to what would Stern do. We are barely going to make those costs. It would be a secret to your retirement. Stern liked to make examples, right? He liked to throw an elbow. You know, in 2000, you know, the Timberwolves did it.

He came down with the harshest punishment he possibly could. Malice in the palace, he said to run our test, you're out. You can't do this. This is the harshest punishment we could possibly come up. But even something on a small there. I remember when the spurs were like, mention guys dnp old and stuff like that like they handed out one of the largest fines ever for for something like that like old NBA was willing to throw an elbow and to come down

with swift punishments and severe punishments to make an example of someone it remains to be seen whether this version of it is willing to do the same can we talk about how funny this story is I know it's not supposed to be funny but let's be honest nobody got hurt rules were broken but it didn't help the Quippers. Nothing really happened. They've won three playoff series in six years. First of all, aspiration. That's what's called, right? Aspiration.

I've lived in L.A. this whole decade. They were allegedly a sponsor for Clipper games. I'd never heard of the company. I'm not saying I have to hear about everything, but it was like this. We're trying to make the environment safer, but they're somehow funneling all this money, and it's basically a Ponzi scheme slash,

let's just try to take as much money as much money as we can from people. Kauai, getting $28 million for four years to do nothing. And then my favorite part of this, Uncle Dennis, who was a hilarious character in 2019. We all heard these stories.

It became like that Bill Braskey S&L sketch where it was like, I heard Uncle Dennis asked for a yacht and an elephant. And you just never knew what was true and not true. And now Uncle Dennis is back in our lives just asking for shit. I just think this is almost a funnier story than like people are taking this so seriously and it's like yeah if they did it they're going

to lose all these picks but this is like crazy that they thought they could get away with this I'm almost like in awe of how stupid this is you know what I mean yeah I know what you mean I'm interested more though in the ripple effects of what a punishment could be like if I knew the punishment was just going to be some money in a second round pick I probably wouldn't care quite as much or be quite as invested in finding out exactly what they're the truth here is, but the reality is that the outcome could be, A, catastrophic for the Clippers, and B, in like the nuclear scenario, could put like a top 10 player on the open market to be signed by somebody if they decided to void the contract of Kauai Leonard.

So that, to me, is the most interesting angle of all this. What the fallout could be if the NBA determines the Clippers did this. Is that like the worst thing in the world if they avoid it, though? And had him go back. I mean, they don't have to pay him $50 million a year. I don't even know if he can play 50 games. I mean, I know it's not great. They have title aspirations.

You're talking about it from a basketball's perspective. I would say losing the draft picks would be the thing that killed me. But there's also something else that's going on here. And it's like a social thing, right? Steve Ballmer's one of the richest men in the world. Yeah. Right. And so when you watch these interviews or watch these people talk,

it seems like this is a situation where there are some people that are looking at this. It's like, shouldn't he have to follow the rules too? Shouldn't Steve Balmer have to follow the rules too? There are rules that are put in place so that mega-rich guys can't just go spend whatever they want on any player that they want so that there is some balance. You know, I get deeply into, way too deeply into Twitter, much to the chagrin of a lot of people around here. Including this guy. There you go. But there are people who went, yo, man, I just want to let you know.

This bomber, clipper, situation, this is a microcosm for our whole society where rich people feel like they could just do whatever they want and make whatever rules they want. And the rest of us just have to go along with it. So there are people that look in this, they're saying, hey, if Kauai is on no-show jobs or if he's getting no-show jobs to the tune of, what, is it, $50 million, $30 million? $20 million. $20 million to circumvent the cap. They want to see their basketball gods,

like, rein their hand down on this and kind of nip it in the butt. I almost want it to be more money than it was. It's right in that middle zone of, like, the 28 million, sure, that's great, but Kauai was making 50 plus million a year, right? And it's, it's like, all right. It's a lot of money to the rest of this bill. No, but you got to grease them up with extra money, but it's not worth, it's not enough money to risk like his reputation for the rest of his life. Balmer being suspended, but with seven draft picks, it's not like he's funneling $200 million worth of stock or some crazy thing. It's like, it's like he's wetting

his beak. Here's a little extra for you, Kauai. Here's, Here's 8% extra on top of your salary that I'm going to funnel your way. So you'll stay with us. But here's one of the things I don't understand. Kauai was hurt when this happened. He tore an ACL. So why did they have to pay him beyond the salary cap to make sure he stayed on the clippers? Where was he going?

He was hurt. Well, I'm not focused on that first contract. I'm more focused on the second contract. Well, that's what I mean, though. Well, that was less than max. Was he hurt then? Yeah, he was hurt. Three years ago?

And it was less than Max, but it's been hurt so many times. But it's less than Max, but what does that less than Max allow them to do, Bill? Like, what did that less than Mac? Did that open up avenues for them to do certain things? He got them Russell Westbrook who helped them lose in round one. I mean, it didn't really do that much. I'm not saying their decisions. That's why I think the story is funny.

Like, first of all, if they did do it this way, where they're like, hey, we, Uncle Dennis wants more money. Bombers like, all right, let's use that aspiration, that weird tree site. we'll all give them money and just have them give half of it to Uncle Dennis and nobody will find out this fucking random company what's the worst thing that could happen out nothing this will never come out

I just think this is so stupid that that would be what actually happen and yet it might be what actually happen the funniest thing about the story to me is the two people that could give a shit less about any of this are Uncle Dennis and Kauai oh yeah

I would be be so surprised if Kauai Leonard's heart rate or blood pressure went up one beat or one point. Is he going to apologize to his fans? None of this. I'd like to apologize to all the Kauai. No. Kauai believers out there. I'm sorry.

Never. He he's the one in the middle of this. It's all about and over him and I can guarantee you he couldn't give a shit about any of this that's happening. In the worst case scenario, if he is back on the free agent market,

him and Uncle Dennis get to go to another team and ask to be environmental list somewhere else. So, like, maybe he could go to another city and he could help him about climate change. Yeah, help him clean up the city. Well, do you even blame Kauai in these circumstances? No, because guys ask for stuff all the time.

Like, that's been something that I've had conference, even just a couple hours ago with the GM. Like, guys asked for things constantly. It's like if, it's almost, the analogy would be like if you have, like, a young, you have a young kid who is up at 10 o'clock at night says, hey, can I get a candy bar, right? I want to go, I want a Snickers bar before bed.

You don't blame the kid for eating it. You get blamed for giving it to them, right? Like the kid, it's the kid's job to ask. It's almost, it's Kauai's job. It's even Frank and Uncle Dennis's job to ask for as much as you can possibly get. It's the general manager's job, the owner's job to say no.

And it is a possibility at least that they didn't say no. Manix, how many what's the over under players, owners and front office executives who were sweating fucking bullets this last week with all the chicanery

that happens in this league and all the, yeah, use our team plane to go to wherever and then just make sure you bring it back. And,

oh yeah, your buddies, you guys want to go to Vegas, take the plane. Oh, here's this. Oh, here's this little endorsement thing.

Like, there has to be people sweating bullets. Look, If over the last 10, 15 years, your star player took less money, you know that if the clippers get punished, you're going to wind up in somebody's crosshairs. You're going to wind up, you could wind up being investigated. Look, that's the humorous thing to me about the Cuban defense.

And I have no knowledge of what was going on with his teams. But like, you know, who in the history in the last 20 years has taken less money to stay with a team that Dirk Novitsky did years ago. Like, I mean, it was a, it was a huge, dude, I was on this podcast when Dirk had that documentary and Cuban's company bought it. And I would make multiple jokes on multiple pods about how he spent like Ironman level money on the Dirk dock. Here's $48 million for your diet.

Like, who knows what he spent, but it was technically legal, whatever he spent, right? Magnolia buys the doc. Sure. It's like smart business. There's just a lot, there's a lot of things that you can do that, maybe don't necessarily pass the smell test. So I think that season tickets. How about like the guy's the best friend of the guy who's always sitting

courtside? I wonder how he got those tickets or that's the suite or just whatever. Like what do people think happens? Look, it's they think this stuff happens. It's just this would be the most. Well, this would be, again, that's the big thing, the number. The number and the fact that it did nothing. That keeps coming up.

The fact, you know, stuff like this, like you remember the DeAndre Jordan stuff from 10 years ago. That was like 200, or 200 grand or something like that, some kind of endorsement deal that the NBA caught them trying to do. Like those kind of things, I'm sure happen on a regular basis. Here, borrow my jet, here, my private estate in Aspen, whatever that may be. $28 million is a number that people can't seem to come off of.

Well, and then the other thing that's funny is, Bomber's defense is basically, I have a bunch of idiots working for me, and I guess I got fully realized it. Yeah, that's a scam. Yeah, and I got scammed, and I have a bunch of dumbasses. That's your defense. The funniest part to me is imagining just like, you remember the Sopranos episode where they're all sitting around,

all the mobsters are sitting around, and Finn walks up, and they tell him, Finn, sit down, you don't have to do anything. We're just hanging out, you know what I mean? Before he gets sexually harassed by one of the capos and the family. And just imagining Kauai in that situation. Kauai, essentially, a part of illegal by the NBA standards scheme, no-show job. He's a part of the scheme.

He's a part of the racket. That's hysterical to me. That's funny to me. Well, how about aspiration? Nobody at any point during any of the meetings is like, I mean, he's got to film a commercial for us. Right? No, no, no, it's fine. It's fine.

Just make sure the check clears to Uncle Dennis. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they didn't even try to fake some sort of like, like the flower shop in the town. It's like, yeah, no, Kauai opened a flower store. Kauai opened a karaoke place in Korea Town. Like, none of that.

It's lazy. All he would have had to have done was take one flight, build one basketball court. I'm Kaua Linden for us. All he would have to do is one thing, and it'd have been like he earned the money. And the fact that it's him of all athletes. I think you're even overestimated what he would have had to do. Just tweet one time like a season. Like give yourself some plausible.

deniability here. Like that, you know, that is one area where it looks like, if it plays out like it looks like that Kauai might have screwed the clippers over there, by not doing literally anything for this company and having a contract that spells out that you don't have to do anything. Like, it's just, it's, it's so implausible to believe that this is not what it looks like. So the only case that I could come up with for bomber. And I think Michael Roseberg at Sports Illustrated made some variation of this, but basically

this place is trying to hustle Balmer. They're trying to get as much money out of them as possible. And they think, if we just give Kauai this huge thing, that'll tie Balmer to us even more. He's already given us $50 million. We'll give $28 back to Kauai and maybe we'll be able to

get like $300 million from Balmer. And this was like some sort of long play Ponzi scheme thing. I was like, all right, I test her of that for a couple minutes. And I was like, that's interesting. But it doesn't add up to the him not doing any work whatsoever for $28 million.

I just can't figure it out. The thing that makes the most sense, which is always how these things are litigated in people's minds. I don't know, the investigation that the NBA will do have all these different steps. But the thing that makes the most sense is that Steve Baumers and the Clippers and the Clippers tried to go around the salary cap to pay Kaua Linder more money. That's the thing that makes the most sense.

Well, it's like that Amy Bradley, where she falls up to cruise ship, that Netflix thing. And there's like 17 theories of what happened. It's like, or maybe she just fell off the cruise ship. And that might have been what the answer is. Well, we'll find out. I have reached the, I think a lot of this has been pretty funny. Like even ESPN yesterday, they were talking about it.

And they were going through all the sponsors that, like, Joe L. Embed, well, he, I think McMahon was doing it. Joe Embeddee, the team had to deal with this. And Joel McDee, he also did a thing. It's like, no, but none of those people were making $28 million to do nothing from a team sponsor. And they did something. That's the whole thing. Like, Jason Tatum's got to deal with a Celtics sponsor.

Like, he's in all these commercials. Like, they're all doing something. It comes back to the fact that he did absolutely nothing. Got paid $7 million per year. That, I don't know how you explain that away. That, to me, is going to be the hardest part of it. You're saying that Tatum's involved in something. Hey.

No, no, no. He made some calls. That's what I want to see. That's a war with me and Pablo. I want to see part two. If he goes after Tatum, I want to see. That's it. I want to see, that's the franchise that we really need to be keeping our eye on.

No, that's the show. As someone that regularly appears in NBC Sports, Boston, there are lots of Tatum commercials doing that stuff. So he's providing services. He's putting in the time. All right, we're taking a break and then let's talk about the fight. Now it's time for a special part of today's episode brought to you by NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV. I know technically there's no such thing as too much NFL, but on 1 p.m. on a Sunday E.T.

a.m. in the morning on the Pacific coast here. You're flipping through the channels, you're trying to follow these games. You don't need to do it that way. It's the whole reason NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV is basically must have from September to January because of multi-people. We'll get to that. It's the only way to impose order on the chaos, get every game, every Sunday all in one place with features that help you stay on top of all the NFL action. Local and national games on YouTube TV. NFL Sunday ticket for out-of-market games, exclude digital-only games and commercial use terms embargoes apply no refunds okay so we have week two we have nine early games as we call it out here because it comes out of ten and i'm

going to give you the four to put on your multi-view i think jacksiville cincinnati weirdly is a must Cincinnati's offense needs to get going jacksonville's offense might have a chance to get going since these defense i'm in on that one i'm in on chicago detroit uh what are we getting from Caleb two own one teams whoever loses that game is in a lot of trouble i think i'm in on buffalo and the jets the jets look good last week buffalo obviously coming off an amazing game and then last but not least seattle pittsburgh two teams that i think both have a chance to be playoff teams uh seattle probably not if they lose this game notice how i didn't put the pats in miami in there uh because i'm an honorable guy and it's not one of the best four games sorry sorry pats fans just remember with

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clips i have real takes and i was like well i'm going to talk to manix about it so we'll do it the three of us i'm going to start here the biggest fights of the 21st century which i was like like, oh, I'll be able to rattle these off. Like, if I go back to when I love boxing in the 70s and 80s, I can just rattle off all the biggest fights, like instinctively. The 21st century gets a little bit hazier, right? Like, I felt like Mayweather Canello was like a big fight. Mayweather Day La Jolla.

I mean, Mayweather Day La Jolla. I'm sorry. Mayweather Day La Jolla was big fight. The kind of press that like Hagler Leonard or Hearns Leonard or the kind of fights from the 80s. We've had some heavyweight stuff. Tyson Lewis was big, but from an interest standpoint

and a legacy standpoint, this might be the most interesting of the last 25 years. And I don't know if I'm in the minority on that, but there's so many ways this could go. And yet, I don't feel like anyone's talking about it. I don't, I wouldn't say it's the most interesting. Like, top of my head, like my list of

what's here. Roy Jones, John Ruiz was, I think, at 03. Oh, and he moved way up. We moved to heavy weight. Way up to fight at heavy weight. But Ruiz wasn't like George Foreman, you know? Yeah, but that had never been done, I think, at that time before. That was like the real test of Roy's greatness. I remember buying that on pay-per-view back of the day. Delaware,

Mayweather, of course. Delaware, not quite at that level, but it was still pretty big. Delaware, or, sorry, Mayweather, Canello was big. And then the biggest is Mayweather Pac-Yout. Like, that was a cultural event. I mean, that had you had CNN that was there.

CNN, ESPN, the New York Times, everybody that covered sports, even on a nominal basis, was there covering that. This is up there in terms of marketability because you have two very different fan bases, and you have the Netflix fire hose involved, which is going to lead to the biggest viewership number that a traditional boxing match has ever seen. But it's on a very short list of the biggest fights of the 21st century. You know one thing I love about it, it's a good fight to argue about it. Yeah. where you could really make strong cases for each side and you could like i still don't know who i'm betting on i have a sense but i i could still be swayed four days in it's it's a fight to me where the traditional wisdom and the boxing knowledge the traditional boxing wisdom and the

boxing knowledge hardcores are like budding heads the traditional wisdom says the bigger skilled man wins this fight if you're jumping up two weights and that's canelo alvarez however most of the hardcore boxing people are so amazed at the skill and toughness of Terrence Crawford that they really feel like he can beat this version of Canela Everett's. They really feel like he can't.

And that's the key thing, this version of Canela Alvarez. Right, and that's the tension in the fight. I guess for me, it's also an interesting fight because it's a fight between two guys that are all-time greats in their sport. Yeah. But in my opinion,

And maybe I'm wrong about Canelo Alvarez. It seems like they failed to become all-time cultural pop culture greats. Do you know why that happened? Because neither of them really have the awesome fight. Like Leonard had the Hearns fight, right? And he also had the two Duran fights. And by the time he got to 1982, he felt like you still have to have like the memorable something. Even in the NBA, you still, like Bird and Magic needed the 84 finals to elevate.

And I, like, if you ask somebody like, what's, what's the most amazing Canelo fight? They'd list stuff, but it's not something like you would be watching 50 years from now. Well, Crawford has that fight. He's been, Crawford has that fight. Crawford's just. Crawford killing Spence. Yeah, that's one of the top. An evisceration I've ever seen before.

Yeah. But Canello doesn't, do you think he has a fight like that? I'd argue that the second Golofkin fight was up there. I think most people believe Golofkin was going, you know, Mostly believe Gloffin had won the first fight and he was going to win the second fight. And then Cinello not only won, but the way that he won. Taking the fight to Golochkin, who at that time was the predator at 160, was at or near the peak of his powers. It was just it was such a long time ago now.

It was at six years ago, seven years ago at this point that we kind of forget. The Crawford stuff is interesting to me because I think a lot of people are looking intently at Canello Alvarez's last fight, which was lackluster. I was there in Saudi Arabia for that fight. But they're not looking as intently at Crawford's last fight. And look, you bring up Spence fan, and that was awesome. But that was two fights earlier. That was at 147 pounds. When Terrence Crawford made the jump to 154, mathematically, he was life and death with Israel Madrimov. Israel Madrimov is a good fighter. But I encourage people to like to look at the statistics of Terence Crawford as a Welterweight versus the statistics that he had at 154, the one fight he had there.

At Welterweight, he was a volume power puncher. He was a guy that hunted you down. Against Madrimov, the number of right hands he threw, dropped precipitously, the punch output per round dropped precipitously, the landed punches per round dropped precipitously. Like he was a very different fighter at 154 against a good, solid, B, B plus level opponent. Now he's jumping up two more weight classes. And look, people have done this in the past. I mean, Sugar Ray jumped up two weight classes to fight.

Down in the line. Yeah. It's a big one for us. They did something kind of in between there. He did it for Hagler, sort of. He was kind of a welterweight. Hearns jumped up two divisions. Hearns did it, of course, Roy did it against John Ruiz.

But more often than not, size ultimately matters. And look, I'm not trying to compare Terrence Crawford to Jamel Charlo, but Jamel Charlo, because Terrence is a better fighter, I think. but Jermel Charlo jumped up two way classes two years ago against Canello and got blitzed. Didn't win a single minute of a single round, got knocked down. Now, I think Crawford

can have more success, but I think it's wildly dismissive of what we saw from Crawford the last time out to not take that into account. Well, that's the other thing. He's only one fight a year for five years. He's getting older. What I would say about the Magromaw fight, and what I think some of those

people would say about the Mademaw fight, is why, Madrimov is a B to B plus fighter that he does present to Crawford who was jumping up. I thought the matchmaking was bad in that fight as far as if you're going to move up to 54, the first fighter that you fight should not be a fighter that's as awkward and stylistically as hard to figure out as Madramov was. And there is a boxing part to that. Like the weight is one thing, but then when you look at the style that Madramov, presented to Crawford, he muted a lot of his offense because I think it took

Terrence a while to figure him out, right? And maybe he figures him out easier if he can overwhelm him at 47 or one of the lighter weight classes, maybe it wouldn't have been as big a deal. But at the higher weight, with there being more on the line, more that can come back at him, I think it took him a second to kind of figure match him off out. The question that a lot of people are asking is the fact that Alvarez right now is so meat and potatoes. I mean, he is now, he still has great head movement.

He's still very tough. But he is a seek and destroy boxing machine. There's not going to be a whole lot of movement from him. Like even in the skull fight, when we talk about people's last performances, he could not cut the ring off against him, which in past versions of Canelo Alvarez would have cut the ring off against that guy and put him to death. But he seems to not be able to do that anymore.

He seems to be meat and potatoes. And if Crawford shows up and the size is less of an issue for him, it seems like he would be able to fight his way to a victory. That's what I think a lot of people are thinking. You agree with that? Well, no. I'm sorry. I did not.

The school fight had a couple things going for. One, you had a guy that ran as much as any fighter at a championship level of fight I've ever seen run. He was on his bike from the opening bell. and could Canello have done more to cut the ring off? Absolutely. But this guy was a Cuban-trained, you know, undefeated boxer who fights like that. I mean, he was on the move. The other variable that doesn't get talked about enough is the fact the fight was at 6 a.m.

Like the fight was early in the morning in Saudi Arabia to make it prime time in the U.S. And yes, Canelo did everything good to acclimate his body towards that type of start time. But there's only so much you can do when you're talking about. about getting up at midnight. He told me he got up at midnight, jumped into a cold plunge to get himself awake to get ready to go to the arena.

These are all things that you don't see a fighter do ordinarily to get ready for a fight. I also think there's a lack of motivation there in fighting William's school. Like Canello, he wanted to fight Jake Paul that week. Like he was on the one yard line with Jake Paul to do that fight

on that day before. Turkey Alashik came in with all that money and said, you got to make this fight. We want to be undisputed against Terrence Crawford. You got to do it. You got to do it. So I think all those played into the fact that Canelo didn't look as good as he did.

That's a long way of saying, I don't think he's anywhere near as bad as he looked that night in Saudi Arabia. Maybe he's not the guy that was running through super middleweight between 2018 and 2000 and what, 22. But I think he's maybe 80, 85% of all that. The other part with Crawford is,

and I've said this a lot about Canelo opponents. To beat Canelo Alvarez, you have to throw right hands. Look at the guys that have either beaten or were successful against him. Ganadi Golofkin threw a ton of right hands. Dimitri Bevel threw a ton of right hands. You cannot jab your way to success

against Canello Alvarez. Many have tried. You wouldn't say that Be able jabbed his way to Beul was all. Look at the numbers. Bevo Boatrace them. Beable pressured him. He was bigger.

He was stronger. He was in his face. He backed him up all night long. That's what Beable did. No, but the jab in that fight was, I can't believe I'm going back. and forth with boxing with Christmas. I'm having a great time.

The jab in that fight was Beowell's. To me, Bebole took a couple of rounds to really jab, use the educated lead hand, to put Conno where he wanted him to be. And then later on in the fight, when he saw that Conno wasn't going to give him anything, that he had to figure it out, that's when he started opening up against Conello Alvarez.

With Crawford, I'm fully expecting him to come into his fight and fight it Southfall. Like to me, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for him to come in and fight this fight orthodox. I'm fully expecting him to fight the Southball. So it's going to be the lead hand that we're going to see kind of whether or not he can use that

to mute Canello a little bit and whether or not he can use his feet good enough to stay away from him and maybe Tyre Canelo out a little bit. I think it made the point, though, that Bebele did eventually open up, right? And that was a big reason why he came out on top of that fight.

guys I've seen jab and then not open up. Caleb Plant for the undisputed championship, Sergei Kovalev, who threw a million and one jabs that night. Buddy McGirt was like in training camp, Buddy McGirt was literally tying Kovalev's right hand to his body to make him throw jabs out there to keep throwing it over and over again. Like there's a belief that you can score on Kinello with the jab and you can. But I don't believe you can beat him without throwing right hands. And the Crawford that I saw against Madrimoff statistically did not throw. a lot of right hands, or at least nowhere near the number of right hands, or I should say, forget the right hand. Power shots, let's go with that, the power shots that he was throwing in, in that context.

He did not throw anywhere near as many as he threw against Errol Spent. So I think that's going to be a problem. If Bud comes out and tries to jab his way to success, yeah, I'll have some moments there, just like Kovalev did. Kovalev was in that fight. It was close until he got knocked out. I think he'll have some moments, but I have yet to see someone then jabbed their way to a victory over Kinello Alvarez. So, well, I will say this real quick. Somebody did, and they robbed them. Golofkin jabbed this way to a victory of a lot of

not even that, but he was throwing rights too. But if you go back and look at the fight, he controlled that fight with the jab, like, and even the second fight. That was a bad decision. Even the second fight, I'm going to be honest with you, man. I think Triple G won that fight. It was close.

Yeah, I think Triple G won that fight, but anyway, I digress. So Crawford's only gone above 147 once in the Abermae fight. now he's jumping 21 pounds past that. I always like, I've been watching boxing a long time. I always get nervous when the guys jump 20 pounds. Should. That just seems like a lot of weight, man. Yeah.

It's just, there's a physicality that you just have net. Like, Canello is supposed to be around the weight. Like, what's he going to come in at? Like 175, 174. He might gain 10 pounds. Yeah, yeah. But he's kind of naturally built. built that way.

Now, I've read all the stuff about Crawford's been gradually trying to add and he's doing it correctly. He's not just... What do you think Crawford way fight night against Madrimov? What was it?

169. I mean, he looks slow in that fight, though, for him. By the way, this is not me saying that Crawford will beat Canelo Averess. This is not me saying that. But what it is me saying is that,

like, if Canello was going to lose, a fight of this magnitude, this would be the guy that he would lose it to. This guy is a dog. He has tremendous power. He's got skill. Well, the Spence thing, that's his, the Spence thing is his resume because that was a violent, vindictive fight. Like, just really wanted to like snatch the guy's soul. And that's why, so one of the things I wrote

down, because this reminds me of the Hagler-Leonard fight. But if Crawford was both Hagler and Leonard, he's moving up he's moving up weights right like leonard did where it's like oh shit you're going to go all the way up there oh man i'm nervous for you but then he has the haggler side he's got that kind of fuck you to him that i don't know if canello has like canella's like he's he's cemented he's one of the most famous fighters of this century i don't i i know crawford is in the boxing community but like my mom doesn't know who he is i don't know if he's had his moment yet And I wonder, like, I hate to do the first take, you know, like the morning sports show thing,

because obviously the fight means more to both, but it really means more to Crawford, I think. Oh, way, way more. A more point. A more legacy-wise, everything. Way, way more. He could become the first three-time, undisputed men's champion in the four-belt era. That would be something. And he would also, I'd argue, add the first Hall of Fame.

fame fighter to his resume. You look at Canello's resume, loaded with Hall of Fame guys. Yeah, he's that awesome. Some he won, some he's lost. Crawford, like, what's the best opponent on the resume of Crawford? It's Errol Spence, right? I wrote down, Gamboa.

Yeah, he fought Sean Porter, Jeff Horn. But none of, I mean, I think you can make a case that Spence gets in the Hall of Fame. It's an arguable one. I don't think it's a first ballot. But did like Spence was damaged goods in that fight? I did. I did, but that takes nothing away. I don't want to take away from Crawford there because, you know, he tried,

He tried to make that fight for years. He tried forever to make that fight happen. Well, and a lot of the guys that you were that, in terms of like at 47, a lot of those guys were with Heyman and them and like he had problems, like get into those fights. But I also say this, man. So Canelo's Hall of Famers, we would say are Miguel Cotto. We would say they're Sergey Covalette. We would say that they're triple G. All of these fighters.

I could look at all of them. Laura, they may be. Oh, yeah. Laura, well, if Laura's a Hall of Famer, then. I don't even know what Kovalev is. Kovalev's kind of... But he, yeah, but Kovalev and Bivar were like, guys, I don't know if they could be a hallfam. But Bivold, he lost.

But by the time he fought, by the version of Sergei Kovalev that Kanoa Alvarez fought, like, the name mattered. I lost money on that name. But the version of the version of a certain of Kovalev that, like, that Kanoa Alvarez fought, we're not

talking about Kovalev of 2014 or 2015. But he's been fighting relevant guys now. Really, and he fought, when he fought Floyd, he fought Floyd pretty early. You know, in his career, he was like, I went to that fight ironically. And he just felt like he was two years away from it,

but took it anyway, because it made sense for him to take it. But he's been taking big fights for 12 years. Some of this isn't Crawford's fault necessarily, because like you said, he was trying to make that Spence fight forever. Sometimes he just didn't kind of have his class that came with him. And he's 41 and O. Unifat, he's 31 chaos. And I was thinking, like, if you're talking best fighters of the last 25 years,

there's been all these last 25 years list. And Floyd has to be the best fighter, I think, of this first quarter century, right? I think everyone would be like, it starts with Floyd. And then you could kind of talk about all these different people. But Usik, Andre Ward, and Crawford, I think would be two, three, four for me in some order, because none of them ever lost. And then you move into that. I don't like the loss part.

Like, you know, Canelo lost, but he never lost, but a low level. he lost to elite guys. Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, those guys have to be after Floyd mentioned, I would have them, two, three, four, but they have to be. Yeah, I'd put Canello ahead. I'd put Canello ahead of Crawford at this point, just based on resume alone. Yeah, but that's why Crawford needs the fight. He needs it.

Like, the two things that you guys touched on there that are, I think most, one thing you've touched on is the most important is the weight. Like, muscle is heavy, and Crawford looks fantastic. He looks like a bodybuilder. But this will be his first time ever fighting of 168 pounds. It'll be his second time ever fighting above 147 pounds. I have this argument with Sergio Moore all the time. I feel like I'm on crazy pills where he doesn't think it's that big a deal.

He drives you crazy that, Sergio. He really, it really bugs you. I'll listen to it as very, you guys are a good crew, man. We try. But he's like, the weight doesn't matter all that much. You can't convince me of that. Like the second half of the fight when Crawford is moving as much, is going to have to move,

trying to be as reflexive it's going to have to be that the added muscle isn't going to matter. Muscle is heavy. Muscle is going to wear on you as a fight progresses. And Canello,

well, me neither. And Conello has been fighting at this weight for so long. He's fought 12 rounds at this weight so many times. He's not going to have any problems. We don't know yet

what kind of issues Crawford's going to have with that extra weight. The other reason I like Canello is that Canello can be kind of a spiteful body puncher. And one of the, little areas of weakness that Crawford has had over the years has been some of those body shots. We saw Agus Cavalasquez

at 147, catch him with a body shot that bothered him. Madrimov in that fight caught him with a couple of body shots. I thought they bothered him. One of the reasons guys do not let go of their power hand against Canelo is because they know what's coming back. They know that if you overextend on that power hand, you're leaving yourself open to a big body shot. I guarantee you, Canello, Eddie Rinozo, their entire team, they're looking for counter to the body against Terrence Crawford in this fight. If they land it, that's going to be the first time, Ben, that Canello gets hit or Crawford

gets hit with that kind of speed and that kind of power in this kind of weight class. The thing that bothers me the most from the Crawford side of it is his fight tendencies, the way he likes to fight. Even when he is the clearly more talented fighter, he enjoys a firefight. There are times when Crawford doesn't use his athleticism and his feet to get out of situations like he should. Crawford will take a couple of shots. He likes to show you the dog a little bit. It's a Philly fighter, but even though he's not.

He has a fight tendency to engage in firefights and to feel his opponent a little bit and want to return, one, because that's his mentality, but also because he believes in his power. He's not just a powerful puncher, but he's an extremely precise puncher. The coordination and the quick twitch of Crawford is insane. And he believes in that.

I don't think that that would be smart to doing this fight. I don't think it would be smart. He would have to fight this fight, to me, a little bit more like a Floyd, a late stage Floyd would fight a fight, which is be there, not be there, punch, punch, and work to get out. Yeah.

And if he, I don't know if that's in him. But I tell you one thing, I don't know why. I have a feeling that he's going to win. And I know I'm on one of the biggest sports podcast in the world saying that it's, I have a feeling that he is going to win on Saturday night. I was shocked by the line. Because I'm with you. I was leaning a little toward Crawford.

Canello, at least on Fando, it was like minus 190. It's like almost a two to one favorite. And Bud's like plus 152, something like that. I wonder if we get closer to the fight. But were you surprised by that? I know the lines, they put them, you know, they're trying to balance the action. But you weren't surprised.

No, it's, to me, it's about respect for Crawford and everything he's done. And a belief that after the skull fight, Canello has lost a step. I think that's what everyone right now is looking. I'll tell you the good bet so far is Canelo by decision. That's at like plus 130. I want to say when I looked at it there.

Isn't that a knockout since, what, 20 or 21? And I don't think Crawford's going to get knocked out. Like, I think Crawford's even jumping up this much in weight is too mentally tough and too skilled to get knocked out in a fight like this. I just think that Canelo's I don't think Canelo's lost

as much off as fastball as people think. Also, getting a decision against Canelo Alvarez and Vegas, it's not going to happen. It's, I mean, one of the judges in the mayor of the fight. Yeah. scored the fight for Alvarez, which is impossible.

It's impossible if you watch. It was a draw. No, he scored a draw, right? I think it was a draw. It was a majority decision for- Yeah, so he scored the, that's impossible if you watch that fight at all. Question for you.

That judge also had stock and aspiration. Same thing, right? Do you think that Alvarez, you say he's not going to knock him out? Will Alvarez hurt Crawford? I'm going to vote, yes. Yeah, I'm going to say, yeah. The body punch.

He always gets at least one body punch in. Even though he hasn't knocked out anybody over the last, what, five or six fights, he's hurt everybody during those fights or at least knocked them down. Like John Ryder and Guadalajara had a busted nose in the fifth round. Jaime Mungia was knocked down and I thought he was out cold in the final round. Cinella just kind of carried him all the way to the stretch. Edgar Berlanga had a parade because he went the distance with Cinello, but he got knocked down

in what the third round of that fight so we always especially early on he always has some moment because guys don't really get the speed and power

combination that he brings to the table he cruises a lot more than he used to and you can even go back to the third Golofkin fight to where you started to really

noticed that like he was up six zip seven zip on Galafkin and then Galovkin mount a little bit of a comeback in the second half of that fight so that's

that's eroded from his game but the first half half of a fight, he's dangerous. And I do think he's going to catch Crawford with something that buzzes him. Could you give us the, because I'm sure you've spent time around Crawford. Yeah. Give us the vibe. You've been around a million NBA players. You've been around a lot of famous athletes. What's the vibe with him? How would you describe him? I mean, he's, he's ruthless. And I say that in a complimentary way. Like, he's singularly focused on winning and believes that there's nothing that can stop him from doing it. And I see that in some of the

all-time great NBA players. And Kobe, he's got kind of a Kobe vibe to him for being honest. Like, he's got that relentlessness, that the belief that he can do, do anything. He's also, I don't think Kobe had this, because Kobe wasn't really around as much during the social media age. But Crawford's got rabbit ears. I think Crawford's season hears, everything people are saying about him. He claps back on Twitter, not quite in a Durant-like way. But he's been known to get jump on Twitter and fire back at his skeptics. Like, he and I have had issue. He and I started having an issue after I scored the fight close for him against Madurov.

He was upset at how I scored that fight. So he sees everything. He actually got upset with you online or like how did you know he's upset? But like when I see him and run into him and I've run to him several times. It's fine. Like it's not acrimonious. But it's, you know, he sees skepticism and he puts that in the old fuel tank and absorbs all of it.

no matter where it's coming from. That's the difference. But in terms of, like, the comparison, I think Kobe's a good one. Like, he's, he's relentless. He's a killer. He believes that his talent and his willpower is enough to do anything in the boxing.

I'm into him. I actually just really like him as a character. I don't feel like he's gotten as just due. Of all the fighters that I've loved at the lower wage Riggindal, uh, I loved Riggandown. Loved him.

wow that's i've never heard that before loved him you know why i loved him i just he was not an aesthetically like pleasing fire to watch yeah he was not that's not what he did however do you remember him against whatever i want to start going back through all but it i loved rigandale i loved lomacheenko the guys at the lower ways that i really like i used to like paul to punisher williams like he was one of my high volume puncher at like six one at at 47 And then he got knocked the fuck out. He did. When he went up and wait, right?

Wasn't that at 160? Oh, my God. That was like, before 60, forget what it was ever. But him going up to 160 was what he was what was supposed to happen. He was never the same after that, right? Well, he got into a motorcycle accident and that was that happened. But that was, by the way, he got knocked out in, I think it was the rematch against Martinez, if I were, if I remember, no, was it not. I can't.

I was not sure. I was there. I was in Atlantic City. I was there and you could, you could see the eyes open. on the canvas when he got knocked out kind of face first like that. That was one of the best knockouts I've ever seen. You only have one of those. You can't, you're

never the same out. I don't feel like Paco was ever the same after he got sent to next year by Marquez. What I'm saying, though, is of all the guys at the lower ways that I've liked, obviously, Lomachenko in his heyday was like a ghost. He was an apparition. He was there. He wasn't

there. He was all around you. It was something like I had never seen before. Crawford is the one that carries himself to me more like a heavier, I'm going to throw my weight around the ring and impose my will on you type of fighter. He's the guy that steps into the ring with you. And like every single part of that ring, it's like you're in a lion's ding. Like he is a stalker. Like a freak. And so I think there's a mentality there to that. What he did to Arrow was actually like tough to watch after a point.

After a way. No, it was like Ali Cleveland Williams type, like Floyd Patterson. Just torture. Torture boxing. Everywhere. Yeah. Just he could do nothing. We're going to see how far that goes. And that's what I love about boxing. What I love about boxing is always when

everything that the fighter has, not just their skill set, but their cultural presence, their identity, who they think they are. When a fighter is fighting and you get to see the moment in the ring, that he realizes he's not who he thinks he is against this particular guy

on this particular night. And does he run from that or does he push past it? That is why this fight is so interesting to me because that's the type of challenge that Canelo Alvarez presents to Terrence Crawford. Well, the funny thing is Netflix had that horrific Tyson fight.

I mean, one of the worst events that's been put on at least this decade, right? Now, this is the opposite of that. Like, this is a gather together And this could be like a generational fight potentially. I don't know. That's the thing too.

Like I think it's an incredible fight. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not aesthetically pleasing. It's disappointing. Yeah, it's possible. I don't believe that you're looking at Hagler Hearns. I don't believe you're looking at Hagler Leonard. Like I think you look at two guys that have proven to be judicious with their punches, especially Crawford.

as he's moved up in Wake. Canelo, you know, more selective with his shots as his career has gone on. Both these guys are kind of information seekers in the ring. They feel guys out over the first one, two, sometimes three rounds before they really start to engage. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a very cagey fight with kind of limited spurts of action in between.

Well, you left out two pieces with that. One is one guy's 35, the other guy's 37. So it can't be Hagra Hearns. The other one is both guys have been a lot of money boxing. Which changes the desperation variable a little bit. You brought that up, that's good. Crawford notoriously slow starter. Like, legendarily slow starter.

Can he afford to do that in this fight? I don't think so because I think the longer this fight goes, the more it favors Canelo for all the reasons I laid out there. The physicality of it all. I think he's got to try to find a way to build that early lead. And Canello has given opponents, opportunities in the past. There have been a couple of rounds of fights of Canello that I've called

where he hasn't landed a punch or he hasn't even thrown a punch. Canelo, Callum Smith, first round, didn't do anything. Canelo, Billy Joe Saunders' first round didn't do anything. Like, he just, he eases his way into a fight. I think Crawford and his team have to find a way to take advantage of that and at least squeeze out some statistical wins in these early rounds. Can you sell us on the co-main event? I have no problem with it.

It's probably not the kind of sexy co-made event you're expecting to see on a Netflix show. I mean, last time we saw Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano as the co-made event of the Tyson Paul fight. This one, look, I think it's going to be really entertaining. I think both these guys are bangers. Like, I think Fernando Vargas is one of the Vargas brothers. I'd probably put him at like number two or three on the list of the top Vargas is out there. I think Emiliano Vargas is probably the best of the bunch. You know, Callum is a good fighter.

shown he's a banger, shows he's willing to engage. So I think it's going to be a really fun fight. If that's what you're looking for, I don't know if you're looking for high level, meaningful, impactful, championship level stuff, this probably ain't it. If you're looking for a banger,

you're probably going to get it between these two guys. I don't know why they did the co for that. I do. Well, you may know. All right. I mean, Calum, I mean, look, well, Calum is, you can say it, Calum's a TKO fighter.

Calum is effectively co-managed by Dana White. He's been fighting on UFC Fight Pass for his last six or seven fights. So it's all who you know, Bill. It's all who you know. Real quick, as far as that, just big picture, where are we? There was a thought that we talked a little bit earlier about the Mayweather-Delhoia fight. I remember when that fight came out, that was when that fight came out. When that fight happened, that was the fight to save boxing after a lackluster couple of fights

and you're going to put these two guys in the ring. Mayweather then becomes the A-side for the rest of his career in a big, big way, and he carries boxing through the next decade. He leaves, and then sports in the wilderness for a little while, as the business changes, as the zone comes around, HBO boxing leaves, and then everybody runs to different promotions, have different relationships with different streamers. We have some really interesting

fighters right now. Usik is on an all-time run. He might be done some. Right now. Like, we have some guys, a lot of different personalities, but it's hard to gauge, like, where the sport is right now. Turkey, the last couple of years, has really come in and consolidated the matchmaking. But is the sport healthy with all of this stuff happening? It seems like there's a new business move made every week.

It seems like there's a new app you have to get. Is boxing healthy right now? I think it's in a challenging spot right now. I think there are healthy aspects to it. it. But I think overall, it's still challenged. The Saudi effect has had positive and negative effects, right? Like the positive impact is that we're getting fights that we either were never going to see or we sure weren't going to see twice. Like Bevo Better Beav is a great example. I can tell you, we were never going to see that fight. There was no money in it anywhere.

Both those guys have no fan bases and no ability to sell pay-per-view. So you needed Turkey Alashik and the Saudis to come in, pay for that fight. Getting Fury and Usik twice in the same year is the kind of thing you'd never get. So you get a lot of great mega events as a result of the Saudi influence in boxing. Among the problems, though, is that a lot of these fights are taking place in a different part of the world, which means that people are being asked to watch it in the U.S. at like 3 o'clock in the afternoon, often when college football's on or the NFL is on or whatever's on on a Saturday. You're going to the beach in the summertime. So there's a challenge.

And I think a bigger issue is that because these Saudi purses are so big, fighters are willing to wait around and not fight with the hopes that they'll get one. I'll give you a quick example. Teofimo Lopez, still one of the bigger names in boxing. By all rights, Teofiomo Lopez should be finding a guy named Richardson Hitchens at Madison Square Garden in November or December. two New York area fighters, 140 pound title holders to both of them. That is an excellent fight

to make at MSG. Instead, Teafimo, who would probably make like two or three million to fight Hitchens, is sitting around hoping that Turkey Alashik

will come forward and give him six million to fight someone like Shakor Stevenson, you know, over in Saudi Arabia in January of this year. So I think that's...

And aspirations are for him seven million not to fight at all. Asperate a minute. We're trying to give him a check. We always, we always come. come back to that. But it's, the point is, for boxing to thrive, it needs activity. UFC thrive because it put on great event after great event. Boxing still puts on great events,

but you can't have a great event and then four months of nothing. You need to be putting on great events twice a month to get some momentum for the sport. Well, I mean, look at Crawford and Canello. Those guys are fighting once a year now. Well, Canello is different. Canello's been pretty active for a guy his status. But how many fights has he had in the last four years? He's at least two fights a year. All right. Two fights a year and Crawford's one fight a year and these are two of your four biggest stars.

Usik will he'll pull this, he'll still get out there hopefully at least once. Wait, maybe two times a year, maybe, hopefully. No? I think I think Ousick's probably got one fight left. If Joseph Parker beats Fabio Wardley, I think that's the fight he'll take. And then look,

if I'm Ucic, like, then I'd call Jake Paul. Like, I think then if I'm Usick, then I try to go get the bags. Yeah, yeah. Why not? He spot so many tough ones over the years. He deserves a man. He cleaned out his whole division. He earned it. He cleaned out his whole division on an all-time run. Why not get the... So if we go... Yeah. If we go Mount Rushmore for the century before we go. And Floyd's on there and

Uisksik's on there. Who are your other two? Andre Ward would have to be on there for me. He was to be the fighter of the decade between 2010 and 2020, even though he retired in 2017. He had a tremendous run. A Pachia has got to be on there. So that's your four? That would be for the 21st century. First 25 years of this century in boxing. So that's your four. That would be my four, yeah.

With Canello looming right there. Probably those, I would think about Bernard Hopkins. I looked at him. I would think about Bernard Hopkins in that situation. And maybe even on the outside level, just honorable mentions Tyson Fury would be there as well. Tyson Fury, however his career has played out since then, ended one of the greatest runs in heavyweight boxing history.

Like when he beat Klitschko, people will underrate Vladimir Klitschko because talking about guys that didn't have a lot of, you know, gigantic names because of the era that they fought in, he was the most consistent, technically pure fighter at heavyweight for that long run always came in in tremendous shape

added more levels to his game changed it up stay relevant and the guy who ended that run was Tyson Fury and then you know

he had it for a little while until you know Usset came along so I give Tyson Fury a little bit of of a I have the Kuchko's on a different list

what's the list the you guys ruin boxing list it's like 20 people the Kitchko's Batali Kuchko the heavyweight Kuchka

had the heavyweight division and just felt like it was in zombie land. That was the problem. I know, I just, I look back at that era now. I'm like, I don't even, I remember. I can't even say, Van, I'll tell you this. I'm not convinced Vladimir's done. I'm not.

What? Oh, my Lord. I think, look, Vladimir, Vladimir, I think, is extremely happy for his countrymen, Ologen to Usoc. But if Ousick had been beaten by Tyson Fury in one of those two fights, I think Klitschko would have come out of retirement in Fonthe. And I still don't take that off the table. I still don't.

But even every fact of consideration. No, no, he wouldn't do that. Yo, you know what fight will go hard right now? A. Klishko AJ rematch. Why not? Why not? Why not? That's a winnable five for that?

Bill hates AJ. Bill, Bill, Bill's down. Bill's not back on AJ. I've lost on one side or the other of this last 13. But see, here's the thing, though. I know we're going long, but here's the thing about AJ, though. AJ gives you a good example of kind of the precarious situation. that boxing gets into.

AJ was a draw, is a draw, remains a draw. If he was as dominant a fighter in the ring as he was a personality and sort of a business machine outside of it, you might have seen if he could have won a couple of these fights, he doesn't lose to Andy Ruiz. You see in that situation somebody who could become a major worldwide boxing megastar,

but it just doesn't happen for the sport. Was Anthony Joshua the Joel N. of the heavyweight division. We'll discuss that next. Is Bacoli, can I get a Bacoli update before we go? Oh, you need a, oh, no, I think. Oh, Bacoli, you're like the,

the texts I get from Bill. There's usually, there's at least two. It's Celtics-related, or it's Martin Bacoli. He loves them. It's the two topics. It's over? It's not over. He's dealing with some promotional issues over in the U.K.

His promoter, boxer, lost its TV deal, and I was kind of sort of getting one back. But he's like he'll be back. He's in the Saudi pipeline and because he did Turkey Alishik, the favor of taking that fight against Parker on like

24 hours notice, you know, flying in from Africa to take that fight. There'll be another opportunity for him to There's a weight limit that he cannot go over. That's it. I don't know whether it's 277, 280, whatever it is. He cannot go over that weight.

If he goes over it, he can't fight. When he fought, Anderson, he was in the shape and he was a monster. The best version of himself. That's it. You know. That's the way.

There's still a lot of questions on the table for Vicole, but when he fought Anderson, he looked like just a pure force. Do we see Jason Tatum next season? Oh, shit. No. I just think they're going to be...

Did you see how he stopped? They're going to be so mediocre that it's probably going to be people wondering why bring him back, right? Like, they're like one three-week stretch injury from Jalen Brown. of being, you know, way outside the play-ed mix. Like, who's the starting center right now?

Who's the starting power forward right now? As bad as the East is, they're... I just think there's going to be no appetite to bring it back. I think, honestly, I think they should just contract the whole franchise. I think they should just get rid of the franchise. You just went to Boston and paid how great it was. I loved Boston. I loved Boston. And Bill, like, the, yeah, what people have to keep remembering

is that they have control of this draft picked. like what is the best thing in the what's long-term interest to the Celtics what's the best outcome for next season to get a lottery pick the coach and I say this in the most complimentary play way possible is an absolute psycho and I don't see him rolling over during a season and being like yeah whatever he's a maniac he's not doing it there's no way sometimes you just don't have the horses though man I he'll figure out he'll be like we'll shoot 73s the game chris manis they can do it Chris manis good luck at the tables in Vegas say how to

our guy, bud. So your pick is Canello. Canello decision, we might think. Yeah. All right. Great see you. Thanks for coming on. You got it. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Van Lathen for sitting here the whole time. Thanks to Brian Curtis. Thanks to Chris Mannix. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo and Sir Rudy. And I will be back on Thursday on this feed. We'll have a guest and then we're going to do some Ringer 107, which did not go well in week one. This might be my worst idea ever because we're one and four heading into the second week. So I'm going to be trying to turn it around. I will see you on Thursday night. call 100 gambler or visit rg dash help.com.

Call 188-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mddgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here, visit gambling helpline, ma.org or call 800-327-50 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 18778-Hope-N-Y or text hope-N-Y in New York.