The Bill Simmons Podcast - Dana White Returns, Plus Knicks Fever With J. Kyle Mann and Bananas vs. CT With Dave Jacoby

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by J. Kyle Mann to discuss the Knicks’ win streak, the superb play of Julius Randle, playoff scenarios, and more (3:20). Then Bill talks with UFC president Dana White about his 20 years with the company, how the sport has grown, historically great UFC fighters, how the pandemic's Fight Island came to be, inking a deal with ESPN+, incorporating gambling across major sports, Conor McGregor’s upcoming fight, and more (47:30). Finally Bill talks with ESPN’s David Jacoby about the finale of MTV’s 'The Challenge: Double Agents,' where CT and Amber finished in first place, as well as Bill's million-dollar idea for next season (1:50:00). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Dana White, J. Kyle Mann, David Jacoby Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're also brought to you by the ringer.com as well as The Ringer Podcast Network. So we're switching the schedule a little bit Sunday, Monday next week. We're running Predator on the rewatchables. Brought a dream cast together for that one. That is running Sunday night. And then my podcast will run Monday and Tuesday and Thursday next week. So little programming note there.

Coming up, here's what we have. Kyle Mann from the ringer. We're going to talk about Julius Randall and the Knicks and a couple other players in the MVP race. We're going to run a long interview I did on Tuesday with Dana White. You might've heard of him. He runs UFC about what's going on with them. Big pay-per-view coming up for them as well. And then finally, wanted to run a clip that was the last episode of Double Agents from The Challenge on MTV. One of my favorite shows. Dave Jacoby and I, we recapped every episode on the Ringer Dish podcast, which really took a leap, that podcast, this year. Because we had every single album with Taylor Swift, put the Challenge stuff on there.

We still have Tea Time and Jam Session. It's a fun podcast, but I wanted to run a little thing that we did about CT versus bananas and then an idea I had for next season. So that's on the tail end of it. You should have been listening to our challenge recaps every week, but if you didn't, this is the filet mignon version of it, the CT bananas argument, which is really the Jordan jordan lebron of of of reality television in my opinion that that same argument we'll see if we have a last dance for ct or bananas maybe someday uh coming up kyle man first pro jam All right, Kyle Mann is here from the ringer. We're going to talk a little Knicks and maybe a couple other players.

Julius Randle, I was watching him last night. We're taping this. It is 3.30 on Thursday, Pacific time. Watching the Knicks last night. And look, I was watching him last night. We're taping this. It is 3.30 on Thursday, Pacific time. Watching the Knicks last night. And look, it was nothing new. He was doing a lot of the stuff that he's been doing all season and especially this stretch the last, I would say, three, four weeks. They're on a win streak.

The sophistication of his game now, offensively, has been really staggering. I threw him out on Sunday for the MVP, and some people thought I was joking. Other Knicks fans in my life were like, finally, somebody fucking noticed. But we're going to go through some of his numbers and some of his stuff. But just fundamentally, you did a great video about the Knicks a few weeks ago, I guess in March. But fundamentally, what are you seeing that's different about somebody who's been in the league since 2014? What changed for you? Well, I mean, I've been watching Randall for a while. I'm a Kentucky person. That's the way I'll

put it. But I mean, I've been watching him since Kentucky recruited him back in 2012-13. And Randall has always had a lot of these things. I think it's just been a, I don't, I've never really loved this phrase like unlock, but this literally is kind of what has happened is he really went into the lab, so to say in the off season and worked on his jumper, worked on his mechanics, on his touch and stuff like that. And I think it's really like just unlocking a lot of things. I'm not saying that those things haven't improved, like his playmaking, his decision making, things like that, his finishing. But it's really unlocked a lot of his skills that were already there that were sort of stifled by his play style in the past. He's not super big. He's not super long. So when he's just finishing in close proximity to big athletes,

he can have a harder time. But one thing that he's always had is he has really quick first moves. So if he has space to do that and you're up guarding him, he can beat a big guy off the dribble and get into the lane, draw fouls, things like that. But the shooting has just really unlocked all that, I think. Yeah, and it's not like he's out of nowhere. If you go through his basketball reference, like he did score 20 points a game in New Orleans and, you know, best case scenario for him,

he's like a 19 and eight, 20 and eight kind of guy. He's been in that vicinity. But the biggest thing that's changed, well, there's like three things that have changed. The playmaking, which a lot of people have talked about. He's six assists a game, which is nothing to sneeze at. There's different levels of when you're at six, seven, eight assists, like how you're actually getting them. He's creating shots for other people. Like they, you know, if you're going to go the levels of how did I just get an assist, he really makes good decisions. I was impressed on Sunday when they really need him and his supporting cast isn't that great,

but he seems like he consistently makes the right pass. And I remember dating back to Kentucky, watching him, thinking the Celtics might get him in the draft that year. Just all the way through, I always felt like he was more of a black hole. So was the passing always lurking in there? Or how do you explain this piece of it? I just think up until this point, I mean, I never expected him to become the shooter that he's become.

I always thought he was fine. It was just kind of like even when he was here, it was like if he took one or two threes a game, we were like settled down maybe a little bit. I think once he got into the league and there's a little bit of a longer line, you know, he doesn't shoot an easy ball. Like his, his touch was, was pretty questionable, I think, but he's that that's the thing is he, he hasn't hesitated to take them. It's just that teams have been able to like sag back into the

gaps. And for a guy like him, you know, I think that you have to be to play that way and to still be like ultra productive. Like you either need to be really big or just like a nuclear athlete. Like you need to be like a Zion. Like Zion's able to get away with shooting because without shooting, because of the fact that he can just blow by people and get to the room and be crafty. Randall's not the same type of athlete. Like Giannis is the same kind of a thing, you know. But yeah, I mean, you're right. I think it's always been there. Um, I mean, some of the biggest, so you think because you think, cause his shot is so much better and has to be respected in a completely different way. That's opened the floor for his

playmaking. So it was always lurking in there. It was just, that was the thing that unlocked it. I absolutely think that that's what it is. And I think that you can see it in the numbers. Because they have to play them differently. When you can't shoot, people just don't close out on you in the same way. So they're sagging back. And the NBA is all about attacking imbalance. That's just

kind of modern basketball in general. So he was never attacking guys coming uphill at him. So he was never like attacking guys like coming uphill at him. So he was always set like attacking more like set defenders and things like that. And you could see in the numbers.

I mean, he's driving. He's hit career highs in drives in pass percentage. Like he's passing out of drives more frequently and assisting out of drives more frequently. So I absolutely think

that the shot making has opened all that stuff up for sure. So that's one piece. So maybe it was always there. The three point shooting just went, took a huge leap to the point when he should sit down. I think they're going in and there's been a lot of stuff about, they hired Kenny pain.

I think he's the highest assistant, highest paid assistant coach in the league. Um, pretty legendary assistant for Kentucky, but Kenny pain also legendary for just working with people, just putting them through the ringer, constantly trying to make them better. And there's pieces about this. You can find them on the internet. There's also stuff like the Knicks, whoever covers them, they'll tell you he's done a lot of stuff to specifically

make him a better shooter, to make him craftier and things like that. And it's now at the point where, you know, as a forward, he's really unusual, right? You mentioned he's not the same kind of crazy athlete as Zion. He's not overpowering like a bulldozer like Zach Randolph was during like the peak of Zach Randolph. Yeah. He's not like the ridiculous athlete

in a different way that Barkley was, like especially like Philly Barkley, where Barkley's 6'4", but he was just so coordinated and so gifted. Twitchy, yeah. But he's got pieces of all three of those guys. Yeah. So the three-point shot unlocked that.

But the third piece, which I guess has always been there, this weird herky-jerky game he has, which is a little reminiscent of what Steph's added the last couple of years, especially this year. But sometimes they'll clear him out. He's on the right side. So he's a lefty.

So that's already automatically weird. He has that quick first step, as you mentioned. Sometimes he'll drive right, and then he has this crazy, he's kind of falling he has that quick first step, as you mentioned, sometimes he'll drive right. And then he has this crazy, he's kind of falling out of bounds, lefty shot that you always seems like the worst shot in the planet. And three fourths of the time goes in or he makes it seem like he's going to do that. But then he kind of puts his shoulder in, he has the guy going backwards, which is a little Zion-y and all of a sudden he's near the rim and he can finish with both hands, he's kind of unstoppable.

I don't feel like there's 24 games in an accident. He's playing 37 minutes a game, but I do feel like they can throw him the wall at the end of the game. He's surrounded by Quickly, who you never know if his shot's going to go in. Same for RJ Barrett. Derek Rose, who knows? New Orleans Noel, he's not shooting.

And the defense kind of knows Randall's going to be shooting, but yet he's figuring out these really high-level shots to get off. I'm just really impressed. I do not think this is a fluke. I think this is who he is now. Yeah, I mean, we've gone through a process, and I guess this is sort of like a microcosm of the Knicks in general. I went through, like, okay, this is sort of like a microcosm of the Knicks in general is like I went

through like okay this is a fun storyline to the point where even through making the process of making a video I was looking at their schedule and I was like yeah I mean he might the sample does have to get to a certain point so we've seen guys surge and kind of come back to earth but I think you made a really good point about like pace and I think that Steph is like the ultimate you know end of the spectrum example of this but whenever you can shoot the ball you have the op you have the option and the ability to freeze people because if they don't think that you can shoot you're not I call it on the hook like if you watch Steph dribble the ball other than being like a crazy mobile shooter and he can make you guard the entire court he he

just has a great handle too so he can really really weaponize like his hesitation it's like every tiny hesitation with steph you can't stay down like it's it's insane so but with randall i mean yeah he's combining some of that herky jerkiness now with at the at the rim power which is which is really tough to deal with i think you're right and every time he shoots it i'm i'm not used to it like i'm really not used to it because even, even now when he shoots, he loves to shoot this like stepping right and back like diagonal three. I don't know if you've ever seen. And every time it goes up,

I, I in my head go, surely not because I've been watching him for so long that it's like, I just can't get used to it, but they're going in and he aggressively hunts them too. So it's, it's been really impressive, the growth.

Well, it's funny that crazy sideline shot he has when he's going right basically and he's falling out of bounds, but people, left-handers always have an advantage. You always forget he's lefty and he has the ability to kind of fling this pseudo one-hander as he's going out of bounds. Now, RJ Barrett's doing it too.

Yeah. I have never seen that shot before this season. That is not a shot that has happened in basketball where somebody is like, this is one of my moves. Watch this. I'm going to land seven feet out of bounds after I shoot this baseline jumper. The numbers are pretty nuts. And we're in an era where it's hard to totally take the numbers at face value, but they are what they are. He's 24, 10.5 rebounds, 6 assists a game, which puts him, let's just go 24, 10, and 5 for forwards all time.

Bird did it twice. Giannis did it three times. Elgin did it three times. Barkley did it one time. If you go to 24, 10, and6, which is where Randall's at, now we're in Bird territory. This is Bird did that twice. And that's it.

Bird did it during two MVP seasons. And what's crazy about this Randall season, so 84 Bird, the first time he won the MVP, he was 24-7-10. We just said Randall's 24-11-6. I'm sorry, 24-11 rebound, six assists sorry, 24, 11 rebounds, 6 assists. Bird was 24, 10 rebounds, 7 assists. And then Elgin Baylor in 1969 was 25, 10, and 5.

This one really freaked me out. Barkley, when he won the MVP for the 93 Suns, he was 26, 12 rebounds, 5 assists. Wow. It's kind of in the neighborhood of Randall. I was looking at his efficiencies, and I was just like, are we going crazy over a guy who is just getting in the perfect situation to elevate a team? I was just trying to make sure our context dials were right.

But I think what you're describing hits on why this is so cool and why it's so interesting is that it's not like a really pointed, crazy volume, crazy efficiency of one thing. He's watering a lot of plants for a team that really needs him to. It's a team that really lacks a creator. And I also think Portis and Morris leaving the roster too was the Knicks saying, we trust you to take on this role. And he signs this next deal.

Yeah, good point. And I just think that they really need him to function like that. And I think that kind of says something about the gravity that is coming his way to every single game. Like defenses are trying to sell out to stop him. If you watch a lot of those passes he makes, he's making them like through contact. Like he's a physical player. Yeah, he seems like he would be fun to play with, which is what I judge everything with.

He's played 59 and 60 games, which helps the MVP case. Basically Jokic and Randall are the two durability guys this year. Randall's 37 and a half minutes a game, which by 2021 standards is like playing 47 minutes a game in 1985. It's career high. 41% from, yeah,

41% from three, 81% free throw shooting and 46 field goals. So he's 46, 41, 81. Pretty good. Uh, 6.1 free throw attempts too. I was like looking at the, the free throw attempts, but you know, in 2019 and 2020, the previous two seasons, if you add that up, he was 21 and nine. So this goes back to the, this isn't a fluke thing. And you know, I, I, I've watched them a few times the last couple of weeks. I think what's really interesting about this whole thing, because it ties into what they've tried to create with the Knicks that they've since Leon Rose and worldwide West got there

and they got Kenny Payne, all this stuff. And they were just culture, culture, culture, culture. The kind of people they wanted to be in the team. And you see how they rally around it. It's really like watching a high school or college team. Randall's the alpha dog, Jimmy Chitwood guy. Everyone else is a role player. They're all really happy for him. They all really pull for each other.

Somebody, especially you say they're in a close game, somebody makes a big shot and the guy runs back to the bench. The whole bench is coming out. There's a selflessness with this team that I think is really interesting. And the reality is it's because they have one awesome player in Randall and they've empowered him to be the awesome guy. And you watch this and you're like, man, if New Orleans had done this with Zion, they would be in a completely different situation. They have different

reasons because they have Ingram. They've got Lonzo's playing for a new contract. Bledsoe's unhappy. He doesn't want to be there. Their coach is a unfrozen caveman coach. Randall's the good way to do this. So I guess my question is, is this a complete aberration or does this tie into something we've talked about on this podcast a bunch of times? The best inefficiency, if you're actually looking for a star player,

is to concentrate on these top five, top seven lottery picks who have a ton of talent, who've produced a little bit, and then try to figure out how to put them in an awesome situation. Because to me, that's what this is. They bet on the talent. They went all in on it. And he's in an awesome situation. And now it's blossoming. I don't know if it happens anywhere else. So what do you think of, like, I threw something major at you, but what do you think? No, I think you're right. I mean, I've studied this. I did a big project about failed lottery picks. I remember that was a great one. Can they get back on course? What's the history

of that? Now, Randall didn't fail. I think it's really been a case of preparation meeting opportunity for Randall. But also, I I mean if we're being honest I mean the Knicks did try to get better free agents than than Randall at the time and I think it's they did it's just been kind of fortuitous like in his in Randall's situation to another thing and I mentioned this in the video is that like he's he's been in really awkward roster fits like if you look at some of the early Lakers rosters he was on and i think that this ties back to the knicks is what you were describing made me think that like the difference between i don't know i don't want to speak to like the pelicans players specifically but i think that there's sort of

a lack of the disease of more whatever the whatever the phrasing is there yeah i don't think that there's a lot of like need for like disabusement of like role on the on the knicks like if you i mean rj is the guy that I would have suspected would have been that type of guy, but he's like fallen right in line and has like taken. No, they love him. Yeah.

He's taken his, his improvement. Really? Really? He doesn't like think he's Kobe Bryant. Like there's just not like a huge, like I'm banging on the coach's door asking for more shots vibe. I mean,

I'm not looking at Austin rivers. They just, he was gone. He's gone. Yeah. He was playing a little bit. He apparently was shooting a little too much. I don't know what happened. And they were like, you don't fit Well, look at Austin Rivers. They just... He was gone. He's gone, yeah. He was playing a little bit. He apparently was shooting a little too much. I don't know what happened.

And they were like, you don't fit. You're out. Yeah. And I think that I told KOC this on the Ringer U pod that there are a lot of coaches out there that have good ideas. Like, there are a lot of smart, you know, there are a lot of smart basketball minds out there.

But a big part of it is just being a salesman. Like, and if you look at... Kenny Payne has been a factor in this, too. like you were talking about he's the big guy whisperer like that's the big thing all the big guys that come through Kentucky love Kenny Payne and and I think that that's been a big part of it but I think that Tibbs has just had the right personnel who have said like we believe in this and the best players believe in it and I think that's why it's working because if you watch the Knicks it's like they don't have any like super outstanding defenders. Like I think Nerlens is actually

more defensively talented than people give him credit for. Like he's second in the league. I think Randall, by the way, Randall is too. Yeah. Randall is actually a very good defensive player,

which I was not prepared for. That was not on my Randall to-do list was good defense from him. Yeah. But the thing, I think that the common denominator they have among all those players is that they just have positional buy-in and effort.

If you watch them defend, it's like multiple efforts. They're playing for each other, things like that. And I think a big part of it, too, is they're funneling drivers towards Nerlandz, I think is an underrated part of this, too. Like you said, they don't have like a crazy off the charts, like Gobert type, Giannis type talent on this roster, but they're a testament to buy-in raises your ceiling.

We're going to take a quick break and I want to talk about the Knicks culture piece of this because I do think it's important. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer.

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All right. So you saw, you're a Kentucky guy, is you admitted at the top, you've monitored their program. This is a big thing as Kentucky was the quote unquote one and done school, but they were always big about the bragging about the kind of kids that they would bring into their program. Right. And you never know. It's like if it's snake, snake oil salesman stuff,

whatever. But, you know, it was interesting when it's snake, snake, oil salesman stuff, whatever. But you know, it was interesting when the Knicks, they have the two draft picks and they take quickly and everybody mocks them, but they, I think one of the reasons they took them was they knew what kind of kid he was. And if you look at everybody they have put together on this team, um, there's a certain level of personality. And I think that's why they have such good teamwork. It's almost like they're putting together a college team. So you have that piece.

The Rose, Wes, none of those guys, nobody does interviews. Tibbs barely does, you know, he just does Tibbs post-game press conferences, stuff like that. There's never stuff about their players, right? Because the Knicks are pretty good right now. This would be right around the time normally you would would hear these stories about could, could Carl Towns be next? Could R.J. Barrett and picks like none of that stuff is happening. It's like, these are our guys. Um, if they end up doing something down the road, it'll be with cap space, which they have a shit

load of. I think they have only 45 million heading into this summer. They have over 60 million to spend. Um, they have the Dallas pick plus their pick. I do feel like it's really important for them not to, to, to bank on the guys they have, but also make it clear to those guys. You're our guys. That's why they have that catchphrase that we hear because if they go out and they fix this roster, it's not going to be at the expense of the people that are on the roster. And you look at like new Orleans, everybody's expendable, right? Lonzo's in trade rumors, heading up to the trade deadline, but so, well, obviously they don't want him. They just took him because they had to take contract back with Drew holiday, like on and on all these other NBA teams. It's always, somebody seems to be expendable. Even the fucking Celtics, James Harden, when it was the James Harden, Jalen Brown rumors for a second,

they never came out and said, we're not trading Jalen Brown. This is stupid. So I think the way the Knicks have handled this kind of ties into why they're succeeding. They're just trying to pump these dudes up like a college team. But can you compare that to what you saw Kentucky over these last 15 years? Because I do think it's the same blueprint. Actually, I might contrast it in some ways. I mean, I think one thing I was thinking about before I jumped to that was, you know, we did give New York a lot of grief for those like fat short term contracts that they did like a year ago.

I think it was a year ago. They signed a bunch of veteran players, but they're in a situation where I agree. Yeah, it's like they really are going to supplement something that they have as opposed to punting this other stuff. I mean, differing it from Kentucky, Kentucky's in an odd situation where, you know, in terms of culturally,

they didn't really, if I'm being honest, they haven't really set guys up to stay. Like it's become kind of a, like churn them out, like a short-term kind of a thing. Like Johnny Juzang for UCLA was a good example of a, um, like churn them out, like a short term kind of a thing. Like, uh, Johnny Juzang for UCLA was a good example of a guy that like,

I would have loved to have seen, I threw a huge fit when he transferred. Cause I wanted to see him. So in terms of like runway to develop and like investing in guys, I think the short term pressure of winning big at Kentucky sort of chokes some of that out, uh, for Cal specifically.

Yeah. Um, and that's why, you know, they, they went from like a two year or four year program to like a two year program or less's why, you know, they went from like a two-year or four-year program to like a two-year program or less. So, you know, it's like guys just felt like they had to leave.

So that's how I would like, I would differ those two programs on that level for sure. Were there certain, it seems like there were certain types of guys they were trying to recruit. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think as Cal, as Cal cal got going i think he was like pickier about the types of guys that he wanted i don't i don't know i think he was just kind of going for the very top talent regardless of who it was i think you can kind of see some of that i mean there are a lot of kind of conspiracy theories out there about like uh things we won't go into with Kentucky behind the scenes. But I think that with Cal, yeah, I mean,

I think definitely there was a different type of player the second half, during the second half of his tenure, for sure. Quickly is a guy that, another one of those guys that I would have loved to have hung around, but really, really bright guy for sure. And somebody, people were really surprised on him. He was one that I'd seen enough that, but, um, really, really bright guy for sure. And somebody, people really surprised on him. He was one that I'd seen enough that like, I wasn't, I wasn't surprised on that one. Cause he's really clever. Like he picks things up, like his little foul drawing game. Like he

picked that up in like six months. Like he, he wasn't doing that before he gets Kentucky. So it just shows like how adaptable he is and things like that. Interesting. So if you're, if your theory is correct on this Kentucky, it's two years but we don't want you for four, then maybe I'm wrong. Everyone's expendable in the next. They might be cashing in and doing it the other way. Maybe that's just not the example. I think that you're right. I think

it's just Kentucky definitely is like a head them up, move them out type situation. It feels like that. I don't know. I'll be interested. RJ will be the guy that, because I do think they want to build around Randall quickly. RJ, maybe

Noel in the cap space would be like basically the keepers from this team. Who knows if Kevin Knox will ever make it or not. Or Toppin. But you look at well Toppin it looks like they blew that one. Now the case for Toppin would be, look, there was no turnaround time

between the bubble season and this season. He plays the exact same position as a guy who is now one of the, who's having one of the six or seven best seasons in the league, who plays 38 minutes a game. He doesn't really know how to compliment him at other positions. Give us the offseason with him. We'll figure out what's happening. The counter to that would be,

well, he's already 23. He's old. This should be in motion already. And he looks really raw to me. And you might've missed that one and you should have taken Halbert. I thought they should have taken Halbert and I thought they blew it. Should have taken Halbert was the thing. Yeah. I was teasing a lot of my Knick fan friends about that. I mean, they're a team that, and I thought they blew it. Should have taken Halbert was the thing. Yeah, I was teasing a lot of my Knicks fan friends about that. I mean, they're a team that, and I tease Knicks fans a little bit about this and got a lot of shit for this, but I was just teasing them about the creation on the roster. Like, they just don't get a lot of easy, easy baskets.

There's not a lot of, like, implied easy offense for the Knicks. It's like Randall works hard, and he creates shots. And I think that's a reason why their defensive rating keeps them in games because they don't have this overwhelming thing that you just absolutely have to stop every game. They just have this defensive philosophy that pulls you to their level. And then they're good enough offensively to beat you.

They're really physical. Yeah. For a team that isn't like overpowering size-wise, they're a physical kind of rugged team. Even somebody like Rose is really hard to guard. He's going to the basket. He's going to bounce off you. RJ, I think, is like that.

I'm really interested to see what happens with his career. I do think he got better. I was always a believer because he was always one of those. Everybody said he was a lock myself in the gym until I get better guy. Yeah, that's the key. I think ultimately with him, because he'll be in the trade rumors, right? The town stuff will start, I would say, from the moment the season ends. So, oh, Nick's Towns, Toppin, RJ, five picks, bring in Towns, now you have Towns and Randall.

And I just think they're going to be pretty adamant that that's not how we're building this. We're building from within. This is a long plan. We're trying to build a culture. If they're going to make any trades, it's going to be with the picks, I think. But the cap space part, a couple interesting names.

So they have the Dallas pick and they have their own pick. They have Randall locked in at $20.7 million next year, which is one of the best bargains in the league, right? That's a good one. Plus another $60 million to spend. The thing that's killed them, they, I mean, this was pre the current regime, but they whiffed on

Nitalinka. Don't tell KLC. It seems like but they whiffed on Nitalinka. It seems like they whiffed on... It seems like they've whiffed on Kevin Knox. And Toppin is, at least right now, whiff, it might change. But they've had three

top 10 picks to go. 0 for 3 on those is pretty rough. And to be in the situation they're in. Yeah. Yeah. Because you think like

you hit the lottery with Randall like they did. If any of those other three picks had hit, like even if they had taken Halliburton instead of, um, Toppin. Now it's like, holy shit.

Halliburton quickly. Randall, RJ, let's fucking go. But they don't have that. Anyway. Um, free agent wise.

I think this is an interesting name. I'm throwing it out there. Chris Paul can opt out. Ooh. Yeah. Chris Paul, Wes, and Leon, those are his guys. Are they his guys enough is the question based on where he is. Oh, 100%.

But here's the thing. He can use the Knicks as leverage to get one last giant deal from the Suns. Yeah, that could happen. Right? Especially the Suns might be the one seed. They might be two, three playoff rounds in. Booker's, I think, playing the best I've seen him play. I just love the way that team plays.

You can't let Chris go if you're the Suns. If the Knicks came in and were like, we'll give you $120 million for three years, which would be hilarious because the Chris Paul contract was the untradeable contract two years ago, right? It's like, you have to take, take, um, two first round picks with him just to get rid of him. And now he's potentially lined up for an extension. But I do think there's going to be a Suns KnKnicks thing happening this summer. Because if you're the Knicks and you're like,

we could just add Chris Paul. There's no free agents anyway. And add him to the mix and then Phoenix will have to match and he'll end up staying in Phoenix. Anyway. That would be him just defying God at that point.

I mean, for like a six-foot point guard at the point of regression in the career. It's already happened. For him to add... Yeah, I mean, it would just be likefoot point guard at the point of regression in the career. It's already happened. For him to add, yeah, I mean, it would just be like he's basically immortal basketball-wise. This is like Tom Brady.

Yeah, this is like Tom Brady shit at this point where it's just, it makes no sense. Lowry is a free agent. I think Lowry is another one to watch. That's like the perfect kind of guy for them. DeRozan's interesting. I don't know if DeRozan and RJ Barrett make sense, but if you're just

talking veteran guys, Dragic is a free agent. Then it drops. Then you're in the Dennis Schroeder, Kelly Olenek range. And then the two, the three restricted guys are Lonzo, John Collins, and Markkinen.

Markkinen doesn't make sense on this team even though i like marketing the lonzo what do you think alonzo on this team i feel less confident about it i want to like get somebody that i know for sure is like an active ingredient drink stir like i need somebody that can really i like people that can shoot at the point of attack i'm really bizarre like that uh i think that's really important. You're old school. Yeah, it's such a weird, obtuse take I have. But I think that the names that you said that I like, I like CB3, if that could even happen. I think DeRozan is interesting because DeRozan is an underrated pick and roll creator. He's really grown in that sense. He's actually an interesting template for an athlete who really honed his decision making and basketball basketball skills for like a comp for a guy like Anthony Edwards a guy I did a video on but and then also like Dragic is an interesting guy I mean you saw what happened when you took Dragic just the very basic stuff it's it's interesting how it's just kind of continued

to be a thing especially in like pace and space like if you can pass dribble and shoot you're very valuable that's why you know Halliburton would have been really huge. But I also think it needs to be somebody that doesn't absolutely need a big usage rate. It needs to be somebody that's very competent, can play off the ball, can spot up, and can run pick and roll. I think that's what the Knicks need.

They need a guy who's interchangeable in that way. Even somebody, I don't know, I don't have a cheaper example, but I think that's kind of what they should aim for. Yeah. So it's a veteran point guard, I think is a must. I think one more rim protector, unless it's Mitchell Robinson's a hundred percent healthy, then you might be able to do Robinson altogether. Um, one more shooter. So you're not relying on the book thing. That's can find a 3 and D guy. Every year there's a Jay Crowder for $10 million a year. And then trying to figure out what is topping.

What do we have going forward with this guy? But short term, they have a chance to be a four seed. I think 4v5, they could beat every single team they're playing against. I'll just tell you, as a gigantic Celtics fan who is watching this season, just seems like a black cat got thrown at it. The Celtics are soft. This Knicks team could

actually bully them around, and I think the Celtics would have a lot of trouble with them. I don't know how that series plays out. Celtics obviously have more talent, but the Knicks and Tibbs and the whatever, how many MSG things, that could be a real problem.

I think Miami is the one team that couldn't beat if Miami is healthy. The Knicks, I mean, but how do we know Miami is ever going to be healthy? Do you see a world where the Knicks advanced

to round two? It's going to be, I think that it would need to be a grinder of a series, obviously. I don't think, but I also don't think that they, I, I think that it would need to be a grinder of a series, obviously. I don't think, but I'd also don't think that they, I don't think that they play like a gimmicky regular season style that is

going to be easily, you know, like we make one defensive adjustment and you're done. Now, a lot of their offense, like we were saying is kind of bottleneck to Randall. I think some of their like offensive variability I guess, would be the word. How much on a given

night do they have guys that could just have outbursts that could swing a series? So you figure Rose could swing one, right? RJ Barrett maybe one. Randall wins the other two. That's the path. Yeah, we get a crazy Emmanuel Quigley game

where he goes crazy and hits a bunch of threes. I don't know. I don't know if they have that much. You know, I feel like if you're going to, if you're a team that advances, you've got to be able to like play different styles. I don't know that they're going to be able to do that. They're not like an overly efficient half-court team.

But since the All-Star break, you know, they're 14 and 9. I mean, they've really, they've really kind of settled into a groove here. And I mean, we're, it's the first year that we've seen this lineup together. So they're 14 and nine. I mean, they've really kind of settled into a groove here. And I mean, it's the first year that we've seen this lineup together. So they're still growing. So yeah, it'll be interesting. I think you win eight in a row.

That's legit. Yeah. That's a level of consistency at that point that has to at least be taken a tiny bit seriously. But yeah, I mean, Knicks Atlanta, we saw it this week. Like that would be a really fun series. Atlanta, now that Bogdanovich has been unleashed, Atlanta, I don't know who knows how long Trey's going to be out, but Atlanta is fun to watch.

They have a lot of scoring and they're so different than the Knicks that to watch Tibbs go against that team would be fun. But I have a lot of Knicks fans in my life. They're just completely delighted by all of this, especially the Randall piece, because you think all the stars that they missed out on, and they have a guy who I think is going to make the all-NBA team. I think he has a chance to get fifth place

or maybe even fourth place MVP. I was a friend at the NBA, worked on this list about since 1965, the latest a career has made their first all NBA appearance. Oh, wow. Um, so for year eight, so Randall would be year seven. Is it year seven or eight? He's 2014 draft. So 15, six. So this is the seventh year. Yeah. Um, year eight was Tom chambers in 1989 to Rosen in 2017, Parker in 2009, Willis in 1992. Then year nine was Oh three mash burn 74 Goodridge and 79 Bobby Dandridge

in 2006, Chauncey Billups. And then it goes up double figures where were Detlef Schramm, Zach Randolph, Kyle Lowry, Tyson Chandler, Sam Cassell. This reminds me of the Tom Chambers thing because Tom Chambers was really good. Like there's a world where Tom Chambers is,

I wrote about this in my book. If you just flip him and James Worthy, Tom Chambers is big game Tom and he's doing all the same stuff. He was, you know, low to mid 20s score and a really, all the same stuff. He was a low to mid-20s scorer and a really, really good offensive player. And then in the 89-90 season, jumped up a level and was suddenly at 27 a game.

They were a contender and the whole thing. And so there's a lot of names in that list. The reason I bring it up is this is one of the many reasons I think the Randall thing is legit and why I think this is here. Because sometimes you have late bloomers you just do and it can be circumstance it can be health um i think he's here to stay and it sounds like you do too right yeah i think it's i think it's in like a convergence of all those things an interesting kind of commonality that i was thinking about when you were naming off all those players. It's like Billups, Chambers. I'm trying to think of Mashburn. A lot of those guys

were kind of like top 30 to 50-ish players in the league. And then they get in the right context to sort of elevate what they do well. And I think that's what's happening with Randall. I mean, a lot of the things that were kind of lying dormant there and like I said the weird roster fits in the past I think just the fact that he's no longer a bully ball for that's not super athletic like athletic and he's in a situation where he can shoot now it was the missing piece for his game and I think that it's the ripple effects have like driven the Knicks yeah let's let's make people mad would you rather have rando or kevin durant for the next five years i mean durant are we gonna see kevin durant on a basketball court though like at some point the durability

piece of this has to matter right yeah the reason i said that was just because the next they thought the fans thought they were getting durantant and Kyrie Irving. They stumbled into this alternate universe that they're in now. And it's like, can Durant stay on the court? Is it a good bet at this point? I have no idea. I don't know what to expect anymore. I don't know what to expect with that Brooklyn team.

I will say, though, heading into round one, where it's like, oh, Brooklyn's going to take New York, all this stuff. New York's going to care way more about the Knicks in that round one than they will about Brooklyn. The Brooklyn thing will be happening over on the side. And that's just the way it's going to be until the Knicks get eliminated. If they somehow played in a series, oh my God, just the fervor and the vitriol would be pretty incredible. So you laugh. This is very conceivable. Right now, we're taping this. Now it's 4-10. Brooklyn's in the two spot. The Bucs are two games behind them in the loss column.

The Knicks are in the four spot. The Knicks could easily drop to seven. They're only a game and a half ahead of Miami, but there is a two, six, three, seven Brooklyn Knicks potential, which I think would be amazing. Cause at that point you have Durant who's still playing himself back in the

shape. Then the playoffs would be starting three weeks from now, four weeks from now, you have the heart and hamstring thing. Who knows when he's coming back? And I don't know. That would be a fun series. Now, I say that, and then we have the series,

and Brooklyn sweeps them and wins by 30 points a game. Very possible. Brooklyn Knicks I would be excited for. Yeah, I mean, the temperature of New York would be just off the charts for that. I mean, and I do think that Tibbs, Brooklyn is just so much more flexible. They have so many more pieces and just shot creators and things like that. It's like you get them in a series against the Knicks.

But like I said, I've said this before, but like the Knicks are just, they're going to take a bite out of whoever they play in the first round. Like it's going to be one of those. Yeah, there'll be some bruises. Yeah. You should see the other guy, one of those situations,

whoever plays them. Before we go, give me your prediction for the next julius randall who's our next who's our next hidden gem who has a chance to be like holy shit that guy's gonna make the omba team i did not see that coming who is it oh gosh like a guy so a lottery pick who's gonna change circumstances i mean i don't think it's gonna be kevin knox um it'd have to be somebody who's like put change circumstances. I mean, I don't think it's going to be Kevin Knox. It'd have to be somebody who's put up big production. I mean, a lot of people thought it was going to be Aaron Gordon.

I mean, maybe here in the short term with Denver, with Murray. That's not happening. Well, yeah, you know, maybe with the lack of the opening for production there, he could step in. I don't know. I don't know if I have a good comp for Randall, honestly. I was wondering if it could be John Collins.

Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. Because it has to be somebody who's produced a little bit, right? I'm looking at points per game.

So it's, you got to be at least 20 or around 20. And done it. Who has an offense that he could go into and stretch his legs and really level up? Like Sacramento?

Yeah. I mean, of course, Bagley's there, obviously. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Bagley's another question. Bagley could be the next Julius Randle. That could be your next video. Yeah, two big views. I think I'm kind of losing faith on Bagley.

I was pretty hardcore. Could it be? You lost faith on Bagley? It's been hard not to. I mean, every video that I watch, I go through and watch defensive possessions, and any time Bagley is involved, it's just a total shit show.

I don't know. I don't know. I'm not totally out, but I've definitely come down for sure. No, it sounds like you're out. You're not invited to the Bagley party when he makes the NBA team. Well, I didn't appreciate you saying that you were the only person on Malik Monk Island because

I've been, I never moved. Me and Chris Ryan both, we were both hardcore on the Malik Monk. Bullshit. I built the island. You guys just got to live there in shacks. I think I had one more. I don't know if he counts because he's been too good already,

but Sabonis to me is somebody, but I feel like he's already kind of made the semi-jump. It wouldn't be out of nowhere like this Randall thing was. Could he level up the scoring in the same way? I don't know.

He might be able to find a better... Because I do think he's creative. He's a creative passer and I almost wonder on a different team could he be unlocked differently. Possibly. Yeah, that's all. If you go through the 20-point-a-game scores, that's pretty much it. Bagley

would be a fun one. The prototype would have to be... You'd have to be like a top eight pick in the last few drafts. So I guess John Collins is automatically eliminated from that. And not like... Yeah, you can't be like a clunker.

Like if you're somebody that like falls off a cliff immediately, like I use box plus minus to measure it. Like if you fall off immediately, most guys don't climb back typically. Like I haven't looked at top ends, but that would be a good thing to go look at like historically. Like if you fall off immediately, most guys don't climb back typically. Like I haven't looked at toppings, but that would be a good thing to go look at like historically.

Like if you're not close to zero, if you can't keep your head above water, like as in just give up more than you score, it's really, really hard to catch up typically for rookies. A lot of people like that real, real plus minus.

Box plus minus? The one I know. Box plus minus, yeah. Yeah, basketball reference. I mean, it matches my eyes a lot. That's kind of why I go by it. I mean, I don't love all. You have to take every catch-all metric kind of with a grain of salt, I think,

because it's kind of imperfect. But I like that one a lot. All right. Kyle Mann, what's your next video? We are going into a big project. Myself and a few of the staff writers on the top five players in the league. So we're going to be doing

sort of a video roundtable. So it should be fun. All right. And you can hear Kyle on the Ringer NBA show doing a little Ringer U2. We got the lottery coming up. A lot of fun stuff.

Really fun draft. Oh, yeah. Is it a top five or a top six for you? I would say like tier one would be Cade and Mobley. I think that they're pretty solidly.

I have Cade ahead of Mobley. And then I think Suggs is a really good player. I think he'll be around for a while. I think all-star-wise, those three are the guys. And then it does kind of come down a little bit. I think it differs from this past year's draft in that it was kind of flat with quality players. There are a lot of good players in this draft.

I think if you have a pick one through six, you can get a good player. But in terms of like a star, it's like one, two, three, I think right now. Okay. All right. Kyle, man, thanks for being on. Appreciate it.

All right. Dana White is here. Somehow we haven't been on a podcast together since 2010. I've looked it up. It seems like a million years. I'm so old now. I barely remember even talking to you. I figured two mass holes.

We would have gotten together more in the audio format. 20 years for you with UFC. 2001 is basically when everything starts to blow up, the first incarnation. Does it feel like 50 years, 10, 20, 7? Like how fast does it fly for you? Yeah, I'm sure you feel the same way, but the last 20 has gone by so fast.

And I know the next 20 is going to go by even faster. I mean, my days go by in seconds. So it's been a fun ride, but it's been a fast ride. You go back to 2001 and you talk to yourself, back to the future Marty McFly style. What's the first thing you would tell 2001 Dana about everything that happened over those 20 years? Listen, I wouldn't change one thing.

Stay the course. You know, we made some mistakes, but we learned from them. And, you know, we made some mistakes, but we learned from them. And, uh, you know, everything literally was perfect. I wouldn't change one thing. I really wouldn't. What do you think when you say made some mistakes, like obviously not major cause you're still here and you're doing really well, but what, what are some things you would take back? Uh, you know, some of the things back in the day, we thought that, um, when you had a guy that you believed in and you thought could be a world champion and, you know, you put too much into it. You know, when that guy lost, we're like, oh, my God, this guy lost. People are going to win. All is going to play out however it plays out you you you can't predict it's what makes the sport so fun

you know like in boxing boxing got to a point where you know these guys would fight and somebody was five thousand to one and you know if you wanted to bet on the fight you pretty much guaranteed you know which guy was going to win there's none of that in the UFC I mean underdogs win you know every Saturday a big dog will win and it's what makes this thing so fun you can't control those kind of things stop freaking out about the things that you can't control you know when in 2010 we talked about you know but the thing that I was thinking about as you guys were heading in 2010s this this motto we had in sports where you just need superstars, the NBA needed LeBron and Kobe and those guys.

And you guys had your first wave and then those guys started losing and you guys would build up the next guy, like basically what you talked about. And I remember saying on the pod, how do you account for this? How like you basically need this never-ending pool of superstars. And then you look back at the last 11 years and it was like, you account for it by over and over again, these guys pop up. And it just seems like that's what MMA is now. More people are in the sport. The pool is just bigger and bigger for superstars. I don't know if I could have necessarily guaranteed that in 2010, but looking back, it seems silly that I doubted it, right? So true and and that's basically what i'm talking about we would have a guy you you would feel like oh man this guy's just starting to get some traction and if he lost it felt like oh my

god this guy but that's not the case it actually when a guy would lose it would lead to another fight that made it bigger and it all just you, reality is way cooler than any thing you could ever plan or script. So just let this thing play out, man. And that's the way it's been for 20 years. Now, now we got all these good guys when you, when you, when your philosophy is you go out and you find the best absolute talent in the world, you bring them in, you work them, you know, they worked their way up. And when the best fight the best, you always get, you know,

you find out who the absolute, who the real world champion is. Doesn't need to be told to us by a sanctioned body or who's going to fight who. The fights tell the stories themselves. The fights play out however it's going to go. And then you have a whole generation and a half now of people that grew up being influenced by the product, which it's funny. Like I was talking to somebody about 30 for 30, how when we were putting it together at ESPN at the end of the 2000s,

documentaries were still pretty primitive with the amount of people that were doing. It was really hard to find 30 directors. And then when we got to volume two, which was like 2012, 13 range, it was easier to find directors. Now in 2021, there's a shitload of awesome directors and people can learn how to do it faster. They can learn in high school and college. And you have younger people that are coming in who were like, you know, finished artists and it's incredible. And it was not the case in 09. Do you feel like that's happened with MMA, where it's just, you have, you know, somebody who's 21 now, they don't know life without the

UFC. They've been influenced since they were a kid. Do you feel that generation coming in now? I always used to say that too. The other thing is this generation that's coming in will end up being, you know, uh, in the media or television executives or whatever it might be, which changes the whole landscape for us, you know, but most of these kids now are going to grow up with the UFC on ESPN, um, which ESPN wouldn't even cover us 15 years ago. It was a human cockfighting. I remember I was there. They were like, no, no, too brutal.

Can't do it. Would not cover us. Yeah. Now we're on the network and a big, powerful part of the network. The whole ESPN Plus launch was built around us. I remember I asked you, you know, that first 10 years, the thought was always,

well, what's going to happen when something truly horrible happens in the octagon? What do you do? What happens when you have your Dooku Kim moment, your Emil Griffith, Benny Paré moment, whatever it is. And you were basically like, look, we'll deal with whatever is going to happen

when it happens. But, you know, we feel like we have some pretty good safety measures in place and we've done a lot of, you know, studies on this stuff and we actually feel pretty good about this stuff. And now 11 years later, I don't know, you've had some tough moments, but nothing like major. And you, you were basically right. Never been a death or serious injury in the UFC in the, you know, 25 years, even in the crazy days. But, but the thing is, and that's absolutely right. What you said, you know, safety is number one to us.

And we spend a lot of money to make sure that the, you know, you have a healthy athlete that shows up to compete, the right people there while they're competing, and they get the proper medical attention after the fight. As long as you stay on top of that stuff, it's a pretty safe sport. Who in these 20 years, who's the biggest star you've had in your opinion? I don't care if you hurt somebody's feelings here. McGregor won? 100%.

McGregor. It was Chuck Liddell. GSP was massive for us especially up in Canada and then Ronda Rousey and then Conor McGregor So who would be second behind

McGregor in your opinion last 20? Because there's two ways to answer this question One is like who hit the mainstream in the biggest way? And then the other would be with the real fans, who was the Jordan, which that would be GSP probably. McGregor and Rousey were the two biggest. And then with the fans, it was either GSP or Liddell.

Hmm. Yeah. Both beloved guys by the fans, you know, and crossover guys, you know, like your wife would talk about GSP or, you know, and Chuck Liddell is just, if you looked up an ultimate fighter, there would be a picture of Chuck Liddell.

I mean, that's what he's supposed to look like. You know what I mean? Yeah, he's like, when you almost think of like this now is like the NBA or something like that. He was like your Bob Cousy. The early years in the league, you needed like that one guy to put on there.

Is it fair to say John Jones most talented? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. What do you, what do you think you could have done differently with that? Or was there nothing you could have done differently? Yeah. Listen, we tried, you know, obviously, you know, it's, it's, it's in everybody's best interest for his, uh, his life outside the octagon to be as, you know, as good as inside. But, you know, these, these are all grown men and women who make their own decisions with, you know, their personal lives, their money, whatever it might be, you know?

So those are some of the things that I can't control. It seems like you've had less self-destructive out of the great ones than maybe if, if I had to pick the over under whatever the percentages would be they actually seems to be lower than I would have guessed but maybe that's part of having to succeed at this level is you need a certain level of discipline to even you know to show up every day

and every week. 100% and these guys are martial artists you know from a young age and they have a different mentality than let's say a a boxer or guys who play in the NFL or whatever it might be. Right. Well, let's talk about Jones for a second because I would say Jones-Nagano is the biggest... Is that the biggest fight you could have right now? I mean, I'm sure McGregor-anybody is probably bigger, but the biggest non-McGregor fight,

I guess. Yeah. After McGregor, anybody, yes. That's a pretty big fight for us. So how does that happen? How do you make that happen? Listen, we just keep, what we do is, every Saturday night I put on fights. And whoever wants to fight, we'll make it and we'll put them in there.

We tried to work with John and we eventually have him in there. We tried to work with John, and we eventually have to move on. Because realistically, in all honesty, Derek Lewis is the guy who deserves the fight. Derek Lewis is a heavyweight. He beat Francis Ngannou. He's looked good in his last couple of fights. He's ranked in the top three, I think. And he deserves the fight. So that's the fight that should happen.

We'll just roll and do what we do. When John's ready, he'll let us know. When you say John's ready, what needs to happen for John to be ready? Is it just a dollar sign or what else is going on there? This happens a lot. What happens a lot in this sport is these guys are under contract. They sign deals, and then a fight will pop up, and they're like, oh, well, I don't want to fight for that deal now.

You know, I want a new deal. So we try to do the best. You know, listen, you want everybody happy. You can't make everybody happy, but you want to make them as happy as you possibly can. So, you know, we'll try to figure something out. And if we can, we will, and we get the deal done. And if we can't, we won't.

And it's up to him whether he wants to fight again. So like, tell me the numbers, like what, like how high, what's a realistic number for both parties in a Jones championship fight? Heavyweight title. In his, in his deal, he's he's talking he's talking he wants 30 million guaranteed um you know sign him up that's it i'll chip in 50 bucks yeah the way that this works is you know these guys all share in the paper so as much you know you just said yourself you think that this is going to be a big fight i agree with you and think it's going to be a big fight.

Well, he will share in the profits of the fight. So, um, that's how it works. That's how you run a business and you don't go broke. That's how that works. Well, this heavyweight champ you have now is almost out of a movie. He really is. You know, you've tapped into pieces of this. I think Lesnar, there was a split second there and obviously you've had some great champs, but this is the first one where I'm watching and it's like watching a Schwarzenegger Stallone

movie from the eighties or something where you're just like, I just wouldn't want to fight this person under any circumstances. Right. So from just the concept of a heavyweight champion, on paper, this seems like the best version of this, I would say. What do you think? Yeah, I agree. No, he's a scary human being. And, you know, when you think about a guy walking into a room and saying, oh, that's the heavyweight champion of the world. That dude looks like the heavyweight champion of the world. And one of the cool things is right now we have three Africans,

Francis Ngannou, Ousmane, and Israel Adesanya. And one of the things for me, one of the, you know, many monumental times in my career, but one of the things that I've always wanted to do is have a fight in Africa. You know, the, the Ali foreman, you know, the rumble in the jungle, all that, that stuff that I remember growing up. I haven't had mine yet, but it's coming. We're looking at Africa now in 2022.

So I'm really looking forward to that. So your promoter DNA is kicking in on that one. You saw like the Ali. What was that when we were Kings? Still, I think the best sports doc of all time. I've seen every Ali thing they've ever made. Anything Ali, I have watched many times. And the whole storyline behind the fights back then,

what a phenomenal job they did at selling the fights and getting people interested in it, whether it was Frazier and Ali or Foreman and Ali and the stories that were built around it. Sprinkle, Don King in there too, and it's all good stuff. We even think like Evel Knievel during that stretch too. It's kind of the foundation of how the next 45, 50 years we go. And then Don came, Bob Aaron, Vince McMahon was in there. He was involved with the snake Canyon. And then he did,

he did the Ollie versus Antonio Onoki. And it was just, just shoot people trying to think outside the box to get money basically. So true. I got a great story. You remember the $6 billion man, Lee majors. I fucking, Hey, this is my favorite show. When he did, when Andre was on in the two-parter, that was like the greatest moment of my life. So I've become very good friends with him and he, he lives down in Texas. He's coming to the fight in Houston. And, uh, I think it's going to be his, his 81st or 82nd birthday.

And he was telling me a story how he came into Vegas for the Ali fight. And Ali called him as soon as he got to his hotel room and said, I need you to meet me out in front of Caesar's palace right now. And you know, Caesar's still to this day is packed and rocking. That place is always whatever. So the place is packed. You know, everybody's in there. They meet out front. Ali says, come with me. is packed and rocking that place is always whatever so the place is packed you know everybody's in there they meet out front ali says come with me they walk through the casino and ali is yelling screaming at the top of his lungs i got the six million dollar man with me i can't

possibly be beat and he's you know the majors are walking through the casino and lee major said it was one of the coolest things that's ever happened in his entire career. Oh, my God. What a fucking legend he was. I mean, he was on the coolest show of the mid-70s. And then he was married to Farrah Fawcett. Exactly. Look at, we both said that at the same time. Who was doing better?

Who was more of an idol in 1975, 76? Go backwards to this last year. So basically sports shuts down. You look at it and you go, I'm not accepting this. I'm not shutting down. I'm not doing it. There's got to be some way. How many days slash weeks into the pandemic? Because you figure like, let's start the Rudy Gobert game when the NBA shuts down is March 11th. And everybody's like, well, this is what we're going to have to do. How many days into March is your brain starting to tick and you're starting to think, well, wait a second.

No, I'm having fights. This is happening. Yeah, it was surreal. That is exactly how it went down too. The NBA announced that they were shutting down. And then, you know, me and my guys were talking. We're like, okay, well, let's see who else does. Then everything starts to shut down.

Then once that starts to happen, you know, I started thinking there's got to be a way around shutting down is, is, is insane. This doesn't even make sense. I mean, think about this, man. I grew up here in Vegas. I never in my life thought that I would see the day that a casino would close. Casinos are open on Christmas, you know, 24 hours a day. The restaurants are open. It's just closing is not a Vegas mentality. You don't close, you know? Um, so I started saying, wait a minute. So,

so you're telling me that if we close down for a year and nobody works and everybody, and let me, let me explain to you, I got a pretty nice house. I can, I can bunker down, you know, for a long time and, and, and, and enjoy myself and hang out with my family. But something inside him just said, this isn't the right thing to do. This isn't who we are as a people, as Americans. We just, we run in our houses and hide from this thing. This doesn't even make sense. And how do you hide from a virus?

There's got to be a way to work around this thing and create a safe environment where people can not only compete, but get back to work. We all joke and stuff and say, oh, I want to retire. If I had this much money, I would do this and I would do that. Bullshit. Because the reality is, as human beings, we have to wake up every day and be a part of something. We have to get up and do something and be a part of society and other people and working together and building something. And it's in our DNA. It's the way that we're built. And when you talk about retiring,

there's only so many trips you can go on only so many movies you can watch only so you there's only so many cars you can drive and the list goes on and on there has to be more to your life than just that is what I'm trying to explain here so I uh I said if we have to build a lab here in the office for testing and, you know, there's a way to figure this out. So we got together. We started working. And obviously it wasn't a very popular idea at the time. And the craziest part was I would come in here every day with my lawyer and we would get something figured out to put on an event. I live 20 minutes from the office. I'm not shitting you. This is the absolute truth.

I would leave the office. By the time I took my 20-minute drive home, my lawyer would call me and say, the whole thing just fell apart. We did this for weeks, you know? And then Disney wasn't happy about it either, right? What's that? Disney wasn't happy about it initially either, right?

They told you to kind of back off. Well, no. So what happened with Disney was I figured out a way to get into California without the state being able to mess with me. It was an Indian reservation. And, you know, only federal can mess with the indian reservations okay so we had we had this this this indian reservation dialed in and you know espn disney during california you got the governor of california calling and saying this can't happen

we were ready for anything. I was saying the only way they could stop is if they try to block the roads to the Indian Reservation. And we found out that there was a, you know, they legally couldn't do that. And, you know, that's how deep we were getting with this thing. So, you know, if the governor of California calls ESPN or Disney and asked them to whatever, and Disney was very good about it and ESPN or Disney and asked them to whatever. And, and, and Disney was very good about it. And ESPN, when, when they called, they said, listen, do us a favor. And,

and, and, and we said, okay. And they reciprocated big time. So it was doing business with, with, with Disney and ESPN has been an amazing experience. These guys are as solid as solid could be to work with, man. You know when you're a guy like me and someday you say, God, I hope someday I could be on ESPN with my product, and I think it would be big. You don't know until you're on.

It's just a whole otherher level when you're with these guys. It's been an awesome experience since day one. Well, I was going to say, ironically, they got a really good deal out of it. I would say almost too good. And it seemed like at the time when you made the deal, it was like, wow, that's an amazing price. The only way that's a bad price is if the media rights go way up. And what happens? The media rights go way up and ESPN actually got a good deal. I'm sure you're going to make them pay for that a little bit more the next time. You are a smart man. You know your shit. That is true. ESPN did very well on our deal. Well, I think, look, you guys needed something,

especially the WME side of this, as they're trying to do the IPO, all that stuff. ESPN needed to invigorate ESPN Plus. And I think that whatever their strategy was initially for ESPN Plus, they kind of missed the boat on, here's what's going to make people subscribe to ESPN Plus. Live, live things, fandom, people who really give a shit about certain whatever.

And then you guys create this model that now Peacock just did it with WWE. And you're basically buying an entire fan base and your fan base not just is domestic, but international, which I'm sure, I don't know what the international numbers are lately, but I know it's expanding, right? Big time. Yeah. You know, it's amazing. So everybody was talking, so everybody was talking shit when we did the, uh, when we did the deal with ESPN plus, because we have UFC fight pass, you know, UFC fight pass grew like 66% during the pandemic. So yeah, the ESPN plus and UFC fight pass going like this.

Who was talking shit? Who, who looked at that? What was the biggest criticism of that deal that ESPN overpaid or that you guys sold out? Media. The media goes in there and starts talking. All these guys think that they're going to have customers that are going to be on ESPN Plus and pay for UFC Fight Pass too. UFC Fight Pass is going to tank.

How many people are really going to go over to ESPN? Your fans are your fans are maniacs what are they talking about your fans travel to the freaking middle of the earth to go see events every fucking time we do a deal we have these guys that are you know the sky is falling and all this deal is horrible and they just i've been hearing that shit for 20 years. 20 years. So when was the first, what was it? Mid-May, late May, early May?

I can't remember when you had your first year comeback. I don't even remember when it was. But I remember the reaction for people like me who just really miss sports, like gambling and stuff, just liked having something that wasn't on-demand entertainment. And it was like being fed a cracker in the freaking desert. It was like, thank you. Live events where I don't know what's going to happen. This is so wonderful. Thank you. But it was really weird just being able to hear the fighters and the grunts and the hits and the fighters being able to hear the announcers.

And it was like, it was just like this mind blowing experience. What have you learned over the past year about just how to deal with the lack of crowd? What worked? What didn't work? What was your biggest surprise? Well, we learned a lot, actually. If you look at the last 20 years, know uh 08 and 09 we were recession proof you know 20 going into 21 we're pandemic proof um we can uh when you watch our product

with a sold out live crowd with 15 000 people it's incredible when you watch our product with nobody in the arena and just really good fights in the octagon, it's a really good product. So, um, well, you learned, you learned, you didn't necessarily need the crowd, even though the crowd's better. Right. That's absolutely right. Didn't need it, but it's way better with it. This Saturday, we're going to Jacksonville again because Jacksonville was the first fight that we did they opened up for so I told them I'll come back when it counts and sell this place out and and uh whatever so here we are this Saturday let me tell you what I can't fucking wait

because I stay in the back and watch the prelims in my room, right? At the arena. And I come out for the main card. When I walk out of that tunnel to go out into the arena and there's 15,000 people there and we're getting ready to start the show open, to start the main card. I don't know the last time I've been this excited. Yeah. It's funny. The two things I probably missed the most were the entrances, because it's the same thing for wrestling. You kind of took the entrances for granted. The entrances are fucking cool. They get you hyped for the fight.

And just to not have a crowd reacting to each person coming in, it was just weird. And then the oohs and ahhs of the actual fight I missed too. Just like somebody tagging somebody, the person rebounding, and just the ebbs and flows of the crowd reactions, I missed too. Just like somebody tagging somebody, the person rebounding and just the ebbs and flows of the crowd reactions. I really missed. So for wrestling, I think that was huge

for wrestling to have crowds back because wrestling is not the same without the crowd. The crowd is such a huge part of the show. I agree. Yeah, they need, it's almost like, what, 75% of what they're doing is to elicit some

sort of reaction from the fans in the place. 100%. You can see them. UFC, ultimately, these guys are trying to get the better of each other. At some point, the fans aren't really mattering to them. They're just doing their business. Exactly right. I was surprised

by how much more... it's weird to say this because it's not like the sport isn't violent, but it seemed like 20% more violent without fans because you can just hear things that you took for granted, right? As a viewer, where even like somebody kicks somebody in the leg, it's like, oh, that looks like it would hurt. But when you actually can hear it, when there's no fans, you're like, oh my God, that looks like the most painful thing ever. So true. Um, the, the whole, the, the Island and all that stuff. How did that, who gets the credit for that idea? Yeah. So basically what we were doing was we were trying to figure out again, it's no different than, so I let's, so I figure out how we can put on

fights in the United States without us getting shut down. That's great. But the whole world is shut down. So I got to figure out how do I get, what about international fights? Most of our business is international. So I got to get these fighters. i can't get them in the country i can't test all that i can't there's no way i can do it in the united states so we have to figure out another place to do it a destination and we started we literally started looking at islands mike tyson called me and connected me with some i literally i wish i could remember the name of the island but i can't we talked to these people I hope it was an Epstein Island. That's probably, you probably ruled that one out. On the other island. I can't remember which one it was, but we talked to these guys,

talked to a few other guys. And then, you know, I've had a 12 year relationship with Abu Dhabi. Yeah. And, uh, you know, Ari and I were on the phone every day, you know, trying to hammer through this thing and entertainment business is going in all these weird directions. Money's dropping left and right. And you guys figured out a way to kind of survive. And I think the ESPN thing, as you said earlier, I think has been really valuable to you. And there's something to it, right? There's a reason hockey just came back.

When ESPN shines their little, when they sprinkle their little fairy dust on you, it does matter. Yeah. 100%. Think about this. We're a part of the Endeavor group. I think we're the only ones that are back to work.

Right. Who knows? I wrote some stuff down to ask you. With the no fan energy, do you think that affected results? Do you think there are certain fighters that actually fed off the crowd and it made them better? Basically, your takeaway after a year of this,

does the crowd effect matches more or less than you thought? Less. Less than I thought? Less, less than I thought, you know, um, uh, there's obviously a sense of anxiousness and nervousness when you're getting ready to walk out of a tunnel in front of 15,000 people, you know, but once you get inside that octagon and they close the door, it's a fight. I've seen some of the fighters be interviewed and asked the question, and they're like, yeah, no, it hasn't really affected me at all.

But it's going to be badass to be back in front of the fans. It's just such a better experience. All right, I got to talk about this Jake Paul thing with you because I ended up getting it on Saturday night. I was in Florida with my daughter. She had a soccer thing. I'm like, fuck it. Where do you live?

I live in LA. I was in Florida this weekend, too. I was in Orlando at the ESPN cheerleading competition with my daughter. Oh, nice. I was in Sarasota. So I ended up getting the chore thing. I was more curious.

I was kind of curious. I actually think Jake Paul's like not bad as a boxer. I was more curious for how they're doing the production of it, what the website was going to look like, you know, the weird announcing crew they had, all that stuff. The thing did gangbusters. Like somebody wrote that it did. They'd made more or they had more subscribers for that fight

than any UFC fight in the past year, which I was like, is that, is that true? Like what, what do you learn from this Jake Paul thing for your business now that you're in decade three? Is there anything to learn? First of all, there's no fucking way that's true. Number one. Okay. There's no fucking way in hell. Did you do 2 million in a paper? Have you done 2 million in a pay-per-view? Well, you can say whatever you want to say when you're the guy controlling the numbers. And it's not like you're dealing with a company like ESPN. They're not going to lie about what their numbers are.

You know what I mean? Very fair. Number one. And I'm not denying that this thing had buzz and energy behind it and people were interested because that's a fact um but uh yeah the the the show itself is a complete shit show um to say the least yeah um the fights are not great it's bad it's bad fighting um but this kid, um, you know, he's, uh, he's got the stick right now and, and, and, you know, he's got people interested and that's, that's how this business works, man. You know,

you, you, you get people interested in what, and you say, he's not a bad boxer. Well, who have you seen him fight that, that would show that he can or he can't fight? You know? Fair. I guess out of the celebrity boxers, he seems on the high end. 100%. Yeah. It's like, you remember Tough Man when Tough Man was on? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's the type of stuff they got going on right now. When you have 45, 50-year-old guys fighting each other. Who the hell wants to see 45 and 50 year old guys shouldn't be doing anything competitive at that age. All these guys are retired for a reason.

You retired. The boxing match between Frank Mirren and the boxing kid, they're both retired fighters. Why? Why did you retire? You say that. And yet I paid for Tyson and Roy Jones.

I did too. I'm going to pay for Tyson and Holyfield. I'm just telling you now, this is, this is tapping into something about them doing it, but I paid for it. And you know, but you know what, you know what it shows,

shows the state of box shows where boxing is right now that people are so starved to watch some boxing that they'll buy this stuff you know Chris Mannix wrote an excellent piece about that this week basically saying like this Jake Paul thing

this blood's on your hand boxing you're blowing this. You have these, you know, they, they're like MMA in a lot of ways. They're always going to have eight to 15 really, really, really high end boxers in their prime at whatever, at whatever point. And if none of them are fighting each other, why should I care? You know? And if it's so hard to get two people, this is something I think you really exploited. I think if you're looking like, why did UFC succeed? You exploiting that over everything else is why it feels like UFC has replaced

boxing in a lot of ways. Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, if you look back 20 years ago, you know, I, 15 years ago I had to go on fridays because boxing on saturday you know and the last thing i wanted to do is be on the same night as a as a boxing match and now we own saturday nights you know what i mean every saturday throughout the year so you know it's it's been a lot of hard work and put a lot of time into it. Um, and the other thing with, with the Jake Paul thing, like I was saying to you earlier, we built a business off the absolute best fighting the best. Yeah. And when that happens, you find out who the greatest guy in the world is in each weight class

or girl. And, um, you know, this thing's going to have a short lifespan. Can't build a real business off one guy like that. Listen, this one guy, he's going to make some money. This kid's going to make some money. Good for him. The other thing is, you can tell he's worked hard. This kid trains and takes it serious. You know, when he fights, he fights like he thinks

he's the best in the world. That's for sure. Do you think 23-year-old Dana White, if you time-machined him and put him in 2021, he would have been organizing these influencer fights and smelled the money? I don't know. I don't know. I've always been

more of a purist. I like, like I said, I want to know who the best in the world is. And I love to see the best compete against the best. That's my thing. That's why when we bought this, that's how this thing was built. This thing was built to make sure that the absolute best, you know, listen, I'm not going to say that I haven't done some, uh, some gimmicky things in my day too. You know, when you have something that, that, you know, uh, people want to see and sell. I mean, at the end of the day, that's my job. And this Jake Paul kid, people want to see it. So if people want to pay for it, you should absolutely do it.

Heading into decade three, how has your business changed and evolved? It would seem like incorporating the gambling pieces into this would, now that gambling has gone so mainstream and I don't even understand in boxing, they tap into it a little bit, not totally. I thought they did a really nice job with it with Tyson Jones, just constantly banging home the gambling element. Is that kind of the next step for, for, for you as more, as it becomes legal in more and more States, is that a second revenue stream? Yeah. Um, we just did a big deal with draft Kings and, uh, obviously I'm a big gambler too. I love gambling. So, um, when you can watch a football game, watch a fight, watch a baseball game and throw some money on it, it just makes it that much more fun. So I always thought that the gaming should be a

part of it. And, uh, it just makes live sports even that much better. Did you really lose $2 million to Snoop? I really did not. Why did he say that? Listen, I think he was deep into the good stuff by the time he started saying that. I want to just say something here. I have never made an illegal bet in my life. I did not bet illegally with Snoop.

If I was going to bet, here's the other thing. The odds in Vegas were two to one. Why would I bet two million when I could bet legally in Las Vegas at two to one? So you must have had, for the next 12 hours, everybody hitting you up being like, I can't believe you lost $2 million to Snoop Dogg. What are you doing? My phone fucking exploded.

My phone blew up. Everybody was going crazy that I had just lost 2 million bucks to Snoop. So you, if you're making a personal bet like that with somebody, it's not going to be for $2 million or it's not going to be for any dollars. Well, yeah. I mean, listen, I want to reiterate, I did not make an illegal bet to the internal revenue service. I did not make an illegal bet for any amount of money,

especially $2 million. So yes, that is, it is illegal to do that. I did not do it. And no, I know you're not allowed to bet on UFC, but have there been nights where you're like, man, if I could bet on UFC, I can't believe the odds for this. I can't believe this guy is plus 450. I can't believe this guy is a favorite,

et cetera, et cetera. Are you even conscious of the odds as you're going to these pay-per-views? No, you would think that I would, especially being, et cetera. Are you, are you even conscious of the odds as you're going to these pay-per-views? No, you, you would, you would think that I would, especially being a gambler. I've never, um, it's funny. I've never had the urge to, Oh God, I wish I could bet on this fight. I've never had that. Cause at the end of the day, I really am. I mean, how the fight plays out and what happens from who wins to how good the fight is or is not. I mean, all that stuff is, you know,

I'm sweating all that anyway. Last thing I need to do is be invested financially somehow in it, you know, because I already am in every other way you could possibly be invested. Makes sense. All right, I have some, my best friend is a huge MMA guy. You know, it's like owning a casino

and gambling at your own casino. You know what I mean? It makes no sense. Yeah, it only makes sense in movies. So, you did a uniform deal with Venom? Yes. You've been pretty adamant

about your fighters not basically becoming NASCAR drivers. How do you determine what's the right number for stuff like that? Like, why wouldn't you let them become NASCAR drivers. How do you determine what's the right number for stuff like that? Like, why wouldn't you let them become NASCAR drivers? What's the downside of that? We did.

When the sport first started, that's how it started. I mean, we had guys with Spanky's Triple X on the back of their shorts. We had Condom Depot. We had... Condom Depot? What is that?

Yeah. A place where you buy lots of condoms, I guess. I guess it didn't make it. Yeah. We had... What are some of the other beauties we had? I mean, we had some beauties. Dude wipes.

Dude wipes. Dude wipes. Yep. That's another I'm not sure. But you do have ads on the canvas though right yeah but but this way listen what happens is in the old days of what you would call nascar a lot of things that used to happen was guy a lot of the the the uh more unknown guys never got any sponsors you used to hear stories of sponsors saying they would pay a guy, then they didn't pay him. There were all different types of things. These guys make a ton of money off the old Reebok deal,

and now they actually get more money with the Venom deal. So everybody gets paid. It's absolutely fair, and it makes the sport look much cleaner and much more professional. Who do you have for a goat female? I truly believe we wouldn't have been on Fox or ESPN if we had the old model.

Okay. Who do you have for the goat for the goat for a female MMA right now? Amanda Nunes. Best ever. Yeah. 100%. You look at the list of people that she's beat, how she's beat them. She continues to dominate and yeah, she's the best ever. What's different about her? I remember I actually gambled before the odds shifted where she became a favorite in every fight. I saw her

beat somebody up when she wasn't really famous yet. The next fight, she was still... I want to say it was Holly Holm or somebody like that. When she still had the underdog odds, I was like, oh my god. That was probably the Holly Holm fight.

She beat Holly Holm with a head kick. Yeah, yeah. But when did you know that she had it? Once she started tearing through some of the big names there, she, yeah. Is there a trait? Is there something different? Like, what do you look for? Is there some sort of serenity, confidence?

What is it? She hits like a dude. She hits like a truck. They're telling me, you know, in her camp, they don't have a lot of women that she can train with. So she trains with men and she drops and rocks guys and sparring. Oh my God. Yeah.

She's legit. The Joe Rogan piece of all of this, he's obviously ascended in a crazy way, as have you. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. Who do you think has helped? If you had to say who's helped who more over the last 10 years,

who would you say? I would agree with what you said first, that it's been mutually beneficial to everybody involved. Obviously, Rogan having the platform and growing with us as a sport group, and having a guy like Rogan, I think Rogan's the best to ever do it.

And one of the things that Rogan is great at, especially when we were first starting out on television, when submissions start to happen, he walks you through it eloquently before the submission even starts. He tells you how it's going to happen and gets people who don't understand the submission game. Because my big thing was always people understand this stuff.

It's how quick are people going to understand the ground game and like it and appreciate really what's going on. And I think Rogan was a big part of helping educate people on that. Yeah, he's fantastic. It's him, Tony Romo, and I think Barkley are my three where, if they're not on the telecast, I'm disappointed. Yeah, I'm with you.

You know, it's like, oh, man. Why didn't we get him for this one? I'm with you. You know, it's like, oh, man. Ah, why didn't we get him for this one? I'm with you. I love Barkley, too. Yeah, yeah. They're just, there's... You know, it's interesting

because he's not a fighter, you know, and you think, like, there's this mentality with sports television where it's got to be an ex-athlete. It's got to be somebody who played. And the thing with Rogue is he's just fucking entertaining

and he's really informed and really knows his shit and he's really good. He's a black belt in jiu-jitsu and he's a black belt in, I want to say, karate or one of those. So he has a real solid martial arts background. So you have Jacksonville April 24th, but then you sold out 262 in May in like 10 seconds.

Yeah. So we sold out Jacksonville, Houston, and Vegas. 50,000 tickets. Wow. 20 million in revenue in less than five minutes, all three shows combined. People are ready. It's going to three shows combined. People are ready. It's going to be... Yes.

People are ready. It's going to be an unleashing. You have... The McGregor is July 10th? Yes. In Vegas. And he was... The second fight...

See, when I... I know nothing. I just... I really enjoy the product. But I don't really totally understand... There's strategy stuff going on that I understand after the fact I'm not like basketball. I can see stuff ahead of time. MMA.

I'm just watching when sometimes when people do the low kicks and I'm just like, this is the most unstoppable thing on the earth. Why doesn't everybody do this? And sometimes you watch, you're like, this is it. This we've now solved how to win at MMA. You just do this. But yet nobody really does it that much. That one was amazing watching him get destroyed

by this strategy. So you come out and you throw that calf kick. Every time I've seen anybody come out and consistently throw the calf kick, they win the fight and they win the fight easily. And I don't understand why more guys

don't do it. You are absolutely correct. How do you defend it? Is there a way to you basically just have to hop backwards? You see them coming, you turn your shit out and block it with your shin. I don't understand it. It seems like... Another question.

You and Tito Ortiz, it was maybe you were going to actually go in and fight him, but then it didn't happen. Was that ever real? Because I had friends that were legitimately excited about this. Let me clarify. I was going to box him. I was not going to fight him.

If Tito and I fought in an MMA fight... I meant the boxing. Yeah, he would kill me. We were going to box. And the reason that we didn't box is because Tito knew that it wasn't a good idea for him.

How do you convince Khabib to unretire? Let me tell you what I put in some work on that one. Um, what's the process? Is it dinner? Is it phone calls?

Are you FaceTiming them? Are you sending them gifts? A lot of texts and dinners. So, so you go to dinner, you shoot the shit for an hour and then the entrees come and that's when you go for the kill. What do you do? What's your, what's your strategy? No, normally we, you know, we for an hour, and then the entrees come, and that's when you go for the kill. What do you do?

What's your strategy? No, normally, you know, we haven't seen each other in a while, so you get all the bullshit out of the way, you know, in the beginning. You know, how's this? How's that? How's this? How's that? You know, catch up, and then you get into it

and start talking about why he should retire and why he's, you know, one of the greatest of all time. Got so much more to give. But I couldn't get it done. I tried. I worked him hard. What's holding him back? You know, his father just passed away.

And I think that has a lot to do with it. And he's saying that, you know, his mom, like when he goes away and has to prepare for a fight, takes a lot of time away from his family. And he says, I see my mother's face when I'm gone that long. And I come back and, you know what I mean? Imagine the time that Tim and the dad have put in to this sport you know the mom's probably been at home and you know now the dad's gone and you know i think there's a lot a lot let me tell you what habib is a is a good good man good human being his heart and his priorities are all in the right

place you know um and and i think I think that's a big reason. And he doesn't need the money. He doesn't need the money. He's a very, very wealthy guy. Two years from now, you always have five to seven major stars going at once. Give me two guys two years from now that you think will be in that circle well a guy that i'm that i'm high on right now uh is from italy his name is marvin vittori and uh it's looking like rob whittaker who just fought on saturday night isn't going to be ready to fight israel out of sonja at

the time that israel wants to fight so it'll probably be Marvin Vittori first. And much like Conor McGregor, it's like Conor ignited Europe. Everybody who didn't know UFC knows UFC now because of Conor McGregor throughout Europe. This is what this guy will do for Italy. You know what I mean?

I'm half Italian, so this sounds like the most exciting moment of the podcast for me. Yeah. Yeah. The Fertitta's too. My old partner. Yeah. They love this kid.

His name's Marvin Vittori. So there you go. Does he have a nickname or is he just Marvin Vittori? Huh? Does he have a nickname? What's his nickname? I think it's the Italian nightmare. The Italian nightmare.

The Italian nightmare. That sounds great. I think we got to work on that one. That's great. I think we got to work on that one. That's really, I think we got to work on that one. That's the Italian dream. Oh, the Italian dream.

Italian dream. I don't like that either. Yeah. I think, why don't you call him the godfather? Who is, give me one more. That's a good one.

That's a good one. One more up and coming kid? Yeah. Two, for two years from from now who might be top seven. I'll go with a woman. Her name is Mackenzie Dern. Mackenzie Dern was a super talent coming out of jiu-jitsu. And when she got in here, I don't want to say, I don't, I didn't feel like she was taking it serious, but you know, I didn't feel like she was given it, everything she had. She got pregnant

and had a baby since she's had this baby. She's like reborn. She's like a, she's like a completely different athlete, completely different fighter. And, uh And I'm excited to see what she does in the future. Wow. Interesting. How do you police some of this stuff, like the behavior of any fighter you have? You've had Israel lost the BMW sponsorship because he said he was going to rape Kevin Holland. You had Colby Covington said the Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group. Like as you're looking at this, especially in the world we live in now where everybody is so sensitive to so

many different things. Like, do you even think about stepping in being like the dad of the UFC or is it just a free for all for you? Yeah. Listen, there are, these guys are all grown men and women with their own, uh, you know, um, I, I, I try to keep all politics and all that stuff out of the notice. You don't ever hear us talking about COVID on the air. You don't hear us talking about, uh, anything political, you know, I, I, I supported Trump for the election. You don't ever see me posting things on my social media

or any of that stuff. We don't do any of that. But these kids can do whatever they want. If they're Black Lives Matter, if they're a Trump guy, if they're a, you know, I don't tell any of these people what to do. These, these are all grown men and women with their own, um, beliefs, religions, ideals, you know, all these things express who you are. I'll, I'll, I'm totally cool with it. Do the brothers regret selling? They miss it.

I know they miss it. They came to a fight a couple weeks ago, and they miss it. It's impossible not to miss this, especially when they're both fight fans. I mean, they made an incredible amount of money. Oh, yeah. That makes them probably feel a lot better when they miss it. But you could argue that if they had held out, they even could have made more money, but it's at the time, it seemed like they cashed out at the perfect time.

It was great for you too, obviously. What do they, what about the Rockets owner? Cause they're related to him. Have you ever dealt with that guy? Yeah, that's their cousin. What are your thoughts on him? Yeah, he's awesome. He's always been great to me. Actually, when we go to Houston, I'll be staying at his hotel and we're at his arena. Well, the city is his arena,

but where he's like. You got to get the James Harden story from him. See if he was ever possibly going to the Celtics. All right, I will. That would have been interesting. I'll talk to him. You still care about the Boston teams, right? That's all I care about.

Okay, good. Good. Oh, hell yeah. I'm a Celtics and Patriots guy to the end. What about time? I became a Bucs fan last year, but yeah. You know, everyone dealt with that in different ways, right? I ended up, I bet on the Bucs every round in the playoffs You know, everyone dealt with that in different ways, right?

I ended up, I bet on the Bucks every round in the playoffs and I had a great time and it was like rooting for Brady. I didn't feel like I was betraying the Patriots in any way, but we spent 20 years with the guy. It was as long as you were in the UFC. Listen to me. Listen to me, people from Boston. Look at what this guy did for us. The last 20 years of our life was amazing.

I mean, my kid's 20 years old. All they know is winning. That's all I know. Winning good times, great, you know, games that we went to on Sundays. You know, he was a part of all that. He was a big part of that. How do you not root for him? How do you not want to see him succeed? How do you not? Plus, he's a fucking incredible human being. So you raised Boston sports fans? 100%. It's funny because that generation you mentioned, the 20 and under,

they had all these dudes. They just think like they don't know the pain that we had, right? Exactly. Six Patriot Super Bowls, four World Series. And now all the guys from that generation are starting to fall by the wayside. It's basically Bergeron's probably the only one from, you know, the 2000s, early Edelman just retired. And it's just, uh, it's kind of the end of this era in a lot of ways, but yeah, it's so true. I can't believe what happened the last 20 years.

I feel guilty about being mad about anything. Exactly. You can't be mad about anything. We've had the greatest run you could ever have. I mean, there's fans out there that live a lifetime and don't get one of what we have had. You know what I mean? Yeah.

It was like every other fucking year for us it was it was incredible and to raise my kids during that era and and make them you know boston fans it's been unbelievable and there's nothing better man i love taking my boys to celtics games and and uh it's just so much fun, man. One of the great things in life is being a fan of something. Whether it's teams or bands or whatever it is,

it's one of the things that actually gives you joy in your life. It makes you look forward to something. Have fun with your friends and your family. It's one of the best things in life. Yeah, the Mookie trade, I just basically boycotted the Red Sox

last year, but I came back this year. It's like getting separated from your spouse, but you end up, you move back in and try to pretend it never happened. But I was so mad. I literally didn't watch them last year. I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it either. Made no sense whatsoever.

All right, so you got Saturday night. Give me one big fight to watch. I mean, I'm watching the whole thing, but give me the one that's not the main event that you're the most excited about. We have three title fights. Weili Zhang versus Rose Namajunas. Weili Zhang is our first ever Chinese world champion.

She is a savage. She hits like a truck, kicks like a truck, just moves forward, and she has taken on Rose Namajunas, the former world champion, who is slick and has great... Fan favorite. Has great knockout power.

I like Rose. And Weili Zhang versus Ioannou Jacek was fighting a year last year. I'll tell you about the Jessica Andrade fight. Jessica, Shevchenko. Shevchenko is... So when you asked me earlier who the GOAT is,

it's Amanda Nunes. Some people will argue that it's Shevchenko. Shevchenko has lost to Nunes at 135 but at 125 not only has she never been beat she's destroyed everybody okay so she's taking on Jessica Andrade the former 115 pound champion who is a a little fireplug man and and uh that is probably going to be the biggest test of Valentina Shevchenko's career. In my opinion, if it plays out that way, um,

we'll see. Let me think of another good fight here. That's good. I like those two. Cause it's a good card. I'm excited for it. Yeah. Um,

that's a great card. All right. The three title fights are ridiculous. Dana White, uh, congrats on 20 years. Best of luck with everything. And,

uh, way to keep it going when the odds were against you these last 14 months here. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. And continued success to you, my friend. All right. Thank you.

All right. As promised, here's a clip from the last recap podcast that Dave Jacoby and I did on ringer dish about double agents, the challenge show that we love so much. Um, here we go. So CT wins again,

his fourth title. Amazing. I'd like to apologize to John bananas because, um, I made the case last week that maybe CT should be the greatest ever and said, John bananas won six. He actually won seven. It's like a Tom Brady where you almost forgot about the Tampa Bay one to add to all the rings. So Johnny's the best ever.

I think CT has had the most fascinating career of anyone in this challenge. I actually went back and looked at all the ones that he could have won, not to mention the four that he actually won. Wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You went back and did intense internet research to put this in historical perspective. I'm shocked.

Bill, I'm shocked. I'm shocked. This is what I do. I'm shocked. Literally, I was like, should I go back and look at CT's championships? I was like, that's what Bill is for. It's redundant at that point. All right.

So just going backwards, Inferno's his first one. He loses in the finals. He's on the real world team. They lose to the road rules team. Inferno two, he makes the finals. He's on the badasses team, loses to the good guys team. So the two straight finals for him. The duel, he's going to win.

He beats Brad in a challenge, but pulls the flag off instead of unhooking it. That wasn't fair. Technicality. That wasn't fair. He loses and goes full CT muscle on Brad. You know I beat you.

You know the... He does that whole thing. It's like losing the NBA finals because you didn't have your uniform tucked in. It's like, what are we really doing here? What are we really doing? Yeah, Kyrie didn't have his shirt tucked in when he hit the final shot.

We're not going to penalize him for that. So this narrative starts developing of CT, the best person you would ever want in a challenge other than might flip out a little bit, but also is having bad luck. Gauntlet three, which is one of the worst seasons ever because it's so obvious who's going to win, except they make the fatal mistake

of keeping Big Easy on their big team. They run the team's finals. Big Easy passes out. No, he dies. He dies. He dies and comes back to life. He basically dies and comes back to life. And the rookie team, whatever they were called, ends up winning. So CT now has been robbed. These are four that he could have won. Rivals, he's with Adam, his arch nemesis who he got in the huge fight with, who ends up getting kicked out of Duel 2. They lose to Johnny Tyler on that awesome run up and down the mountain thing.

And it seems like Adam has it. I don't think it was creative editing either. All he has to do is go like three steps and hit the whatever and he falls. Tyler and Johnny win it. They end up winning all of Rivals. So now we're five. Battle of the X's finishes second with DM. They lose to Johnny and Camilla.

And then it finally flips around with rivals too wins with Wes free agents Johnny gets his revenge for the knapsack thing beats him in the

puzzles which is usually CT's thing Johnny flips it on him he wins invasion of the champions he finishes finals

but third place 30-30 wins war of the worlds and now wins double agents. So, Jacoby, I ask you, he's won four. What was the right number he should have won here? Because it's probably the over-under's five and a half, right? He should probably have at least two more, I'm guessing.

A couple things. Number one, thank you so much for doing the research. I appreciate it. You are the foremost challenge historian. However, I'm more of an emotional analyst. And when you talk about legacy and you compare him to Johnny Bananas, when I think about CT, think about the character arc of him and think about how he has changed. So the right number is about six, but I'm not going to quantify what CT is to me personally and to this show because CT was was the bad boy he was on the bad

boys team he was intimidating he was mean he was scary and he would punch you in the face extremely hard he threatened to eat one of his um contemporaries literally i'm not kidding mike tyson style like blacked out threatened to to eat somebody. And then, of course, the tragedy that was DM, his girlfriend, softens up a little bit, has a son, softens up a little bit. Old age helps a little. Stops, quote unquote, training so hard, literally softens up a little bit and becomes a completely different person, a nurturing mentor, sort of like all you kids are out here running the race. I'll be on the

sidelines playing the long con slow game CT. So while he probably deserves more actual championships than he has, if you're comparing him to bananas, I ask this question to you, Bill Simmons, who's more important to the franchise or what we should call the sport? Like who's had more impact on the sport? Who's a bigger character? Whose face do you associate with the challenge more, Bananas or CT? Well, CT has been a few years longer.

The Bananas run really doesn't start until the very end of the 2000s. Yeah, because he came in Key West. And then from that point on, he has the 12-year run where he's the biggest character on the show. To me, CT was like Shaq, where Shaq ends up having the three straight Lakers seasons,

but you look at the first eight years before he wins the title, where it's like, that's the most dominant player in the league, but somehow that doesn't translate to titles. He's either not in shape all the time. He should have stayed with Penny Hardaway, couldn't get along with him. Like CT got kicked out of two first episodes.

Yeah. Think about that. For good reason. Of a season. Yeah. Like literally they had to send him home both times to just get him away

from the other people. I also just love that they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we kicked him out in the first 30 minutes he was in the house, but let's bring him back

next season. Yeah, that would be fun. Maybe he's learned his lesson. Yeah. And then he also tragically loses with a battle of the X's too, where DM has to leave. Yeah. And it turns out she has had a bad remission and she ends up dying.

So it's, so he has three seasons there where he's just out. But to me, it's like if Shaq, when Shaq hit that Phoenix kind of Cleveland Celtics stage of his career, where he wasn't like the dominant, awesome guy anymore. But if Shaq had been able to figure out how to stay dominant somehow with it at a different point of athleticism, I think that's what's been so impressive with CT where it's like the veteran know-how, which is not, it's not the

sheer awesome physical force from the mid-2000s, where it's like just physically, fundamentally, he's the scariest person who's ever been in the challenge. But he's figured out how to kind of maneuver this different stage of his career that, I got to be honest, I would have just assumed he would have killed somebody in the challenge versus having this outcome, right?

Yeah, and becoming like a cool uncle mentor to the 40 people in the house. And like one thing that he has done is we know to win the final, you have to run a very long way, right? Like that's one of the key things. And you know to win daily challenges or eliminations, you have to sort of like be strong and physical

in like a football way. But he doesn't look the same with his shirt off as he used to, but he can still run a final. Yeah. He can still, he can still put 10 miles, but you know, over the course of two days,

which has been really impressive. I mean, I think that CT is underappreciated as a character on this show. It's him. It's him and Johnny are the two most important people of this 20 year run.

And, you know, it depends on what you value, but those guys, you know, between them, that's 11 titles just for two guys. I will say this though, he's still a piece of shit. Like we can't, I don't want to praise him too much. Like, like we can't forget the part where, you know, some of the stuff he did this year, he's always going to be in it for him. He's always going to go the most selfish way possible. And that's just who he is. But I have a confession.

We talked all year about how we're going to root for Leroy and Nani like they were a Boston team, all this stuff. I found myself rooting for CT to protect his lead. And I can't explain it. I was just so impressed by the season he had. And there was that Fessy piece of it too, where Fessy was trying to be the arrogant asshole to him and trash talk him. And I was kind of like,

this is so awesome that Fessy flamed out as CT is about to win this considering previous events. And now it's like Johnny versus CT. I don't know if bananas is coming back or not. We'll see. You will. From a legacy standpoint, CT doesn't seem like he's going to stop

doing this, especially because if you're going to make $450,000 to win, why not keep doing it? He could kind of add it up and it could become a discussion again. I thought Bananas wrapped it when he won his seventh, but now maybe he'll have to come back to defend the title. Unlike you, I don't look at these things quantitatively.

You know what I mean? I look at like impact and how I feel about them and what they've done for the challenge and other people and how well liked they are and who they are. And now I think it's kind of neck and neck. Wow. I really do.

Bananas listens to this pod. He's not going to like that. The peak Bananas, I would put peak CT up against peak bananas any day of the week. Bananas, much better, much better at the house game, though. Yeah, but what ended up happening

is he was so good at it. He was so good at it that he stopped being effective because everyone was so on guard with everything he tried to suggest or do. Towards the end, when people would watch

how good he was at it, that it became like trying to make a trade with Bill Belichick. Like, wait a second, what's he thinking? He wasn't going to do what? Like, why? There's got to Belichick. Like, wait a second, what's he thinking? Like, he wants me to do what?

Like, why? There's gotta be some reason that he's not, he's not helping me. There's an agenda here. That's how good he became. I think he was also really, really good at everything.

I think that was another reason why he was a, like different challenges. Like there was really no challenge unless it was like, I'm, I'm going to physically overpower this other person in a challenge. That might have been... Strength, agility, endurance, puzzles. A fessy CT kind of level of physicality

was going to be a little trouble for him, but he could do everything else. He had the crazy endurance. He really didn't have any holes. There's also a lot of climbing stuff and a lot of just like, you know, upper body strength pulling in body versus your body weight.

Bananas was a – his spider chart before the draft was really good. CT, his hole was obviously the mental – he was just kind of snapping. You mean when he tried to murder everybody? When he tried to murder people. That was probably his biggest thing. And also the fact that people just didn't trust him

because he would have turned on anybody if it meant winning a thing. So, Craig he, he would have, you know, turned on anybody if it meant winning a thing. So Craig, I don't know if you know this, but Jacoby, when I had my pod in the late two thousands, back when it was me and Mark Barron and like seven other people in the podcast, I used to have Jacoby on and we actually came up with an idea for a challenge season because we would break down the challenge. What did we cut? Did we come up with Battle of the Exes?

I think we did, didn't we? Was that the one we came up with? Yes. I am coming up right now with an idea for a challenge season. I don't know if they've decided on the next one yet, but here's my idea.

All right, I'm in. It's Bananas versus CT. They're the captains. It's their two teams. Like they do with that UFC show, Ultimate Fighter. It's Ultimate Fighter, but with those two, they're the captains it's their two teams like they do with that ufc show ultimate yeah it's it's ultimate fighter but with those two they're the captains they get to go pick their teams they get to pick their 10 to 12 to run with and it's basically they're in the fight we're putting

them in the finals there's eight people in the final they're grandfathered into the final they've made it they don't have to defend themselves in any of the daily challenges. They're in there. They advanced to the finals, almost like in the NFL, the one seed who gets the highest record there, you know, they don't have to play in round one. So we're putting them in the finals. Part of it is about them constructing their team. And then three people from each side, make it with them in the finals up. Jacoby's got a tweak. Here we go.

So what I don't want them to do is draft from a pool of people sort of like schoolyard style. I want to see them make their teams like college coaches recruiting. Yes. They have to fly to Kansas city to like pitch West and be in the living room. And they have to like come up with people like, Oh Alton, I bet bananas didn't think of Alton and to sort of like create their team,

like the forming of like a superhero group in these like big movies and then go to the location. Not everyone's at the location. Then they pick it's like free agency. You know what this leads to? Plus we're filming all this, right? This leads to the first three episodes.

We're not even at the location yet. This leads to Bananas flying to Houston to go see Leroy. Leroy. Yeah, Leroy's got a belly. He's coming there. And it's almost like the beginning of an action movie, where it's like the beginning of Commando, where it's like, no, no, I'm retired.

I'm done. No, no, time for one last job. And he gets Leroy and Cam. So Bananas would get Leroy. He'd get Cam. He'd get Nani. I don't know if Kenny and Evan are ever allowed on the show again, but yeah, probably not.

Who else? Oh, he would get Johnny Riley. He'd go on through. He'd get his whole team. I think he'd get Anissa just for the comedy of it just to have her in the mix again. But then CT would have to get his team. He'll get Jordan.

People are making a deal with the devil with CT, right? Kyle. Yeah, yeah. He gets a lot of people. It's like, do I want to? CT gives me a better chance to win the title, but now I'm aligned with CT. Do I want to do this? So anyway, and then it's four on four. Opportunity to switch teams

like a couple times throughout the season or like steal somebody from the other team. Trades. One thing I've always wanted, I've always felt like this is America's, at this point, maybe fourth major sport. I want the eliminations, like those crater eliminations in a post-COVID world

to have like a 4,000 person audience to be like a live event. It's like a Roman Coliseum. Yes, exactly. Oh, so you're saying a live challenge. I've always, I've pitched this at Grantland before. It was more of like a campus tour, but it was like a tour.

It was like, there was like kind of like a rock band going on a tour or sort of like a campus tour but it was like a tour it was like there was like kind of like a rock band going on a tour or sort of like monster jam going on tour where you go to small arena to small arena and that's where you do the eliminations and like and it becomes and there's huge crowds and all the pyro and you you know you make it like a real show so it's an hour an hour and a half and the and the like that live event feeling Imagine a really good hall brawl with just like 4,000 people cheering it on. Just think about how that would elevate the whole thing. Amazing.

So CT would take Wes, I think. Right? I think Wes would not. I think in his heart, Wes is truly a bananas guy, but I think for the show, he would go to CT's team. Would you have a televised draft where they draft their teams before the season? I feel like that's a must.

Like we get Adam Silver. Or what if, no, it's more like letters of intent. Like I like the idea that they go around pitching and then it's like they have two hats with like their parents and there's like a table. So it's like the college announcement day. Yeah, it's more like college than it is. To me, it's more like college than it is

than like NBA All-Star. Like you're thinking NBA All- were they? It's more like college than it is. To me, it's more like college than it is than like NBA All-Star. Like you're thinking NBA All-Star. I'm thinking more like college where it's like you go to homes, you make a pitch, they sign their letter of intent. You know. I'm telling you,

bananas versus CT. That alone. Forget all the tweaks. That alone is brilliant, Bill. It's the biggest show. Thank you. Team CT versus Team Bananas. I'm on board no matter how. Dear Bunamuri people, no matter how you format it, that is a, Bill. It's the biggest show. Thank you. Team CT versus Team Bananas. I'm on board. No matter how,

dear Bunamuri people, no matter how you format it, that is a winning idea. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Dana White. Thanks to Kyle Mann. Thanks to Dave Jacoby. Don't forget to check out

Jalen and Jacoby on ESPN. Remember, rewatchable Sunday night, Predator, and then this podcast returns on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday next week. See you then. Enjoy the weekend. On the wayside On the brussel of the river I'm saying I don't have to ever