The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #179 with Josh Thompson & "Big" John McCarthy

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Joe sits down with Josh Thompson, a retired champion mixed martial artist and fight analyst, and Big John McCarthy, a veteran mixed martial arts referee, Professional Fighters League commentator, and founder of Big John McCarthy’s C.O.M.M.A.N.D., an internationally recognized training school for referees and judges in mixed martial arts. Josh and John host the “Weighing In” podcast.www.youtube.com/@WeighingInhttps://linktr.ee/weighinginpodcastwww.mmareferee.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. 50% off your first box at https://thefarmersdog.com/rogan! Use code ROGAN at https://BlueChew.com to get 10% OFF + Free Overnight Shipping on your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Gentlemen, live. What's happening? Good to see you. What is up? I enjoy your show.

Your show's excellent. You guys have a really good M.M.A. show. It's really solid. Thank you. I kind of blew that. How'd you both? We can talk about that. You guys are not doing it anymore?

I stepped back away when I started refereeing again. God damn. You got to go back to doing it. You guys are great. You guys are a great combination. So what we did is we started doing McCarthy Mondays. Because when he went back to refereeing, he's not a lot of talk about promotions, not a lot of talk about fighters and what's wrong. And the things that possibly can make some changes in.

So we just started McCarthy Monday where we just talk about like the Joe Schilling situation. That's something we could talk about. Right. So I just created a show for him to just only do on Mondays. He created. Nice. Well, it's his. Obviously it was.

created it. It's his input. I was just trying to find ways to keep him involved. I love that you're refereeing again. We need great referees, but I wish you were out there doing both. It doesn't make sense to me that you can't do both. It's not like you're not going to be a great referee while also still being able to comment objectively about

promotions. It's important. It is important. It's important. Transparency, where's ever the problem with that? Exactly. But you get these people that, oh no, because you might say something that is going to create a problem. And it's like, it's not a problem. if it's a truth.

It's ridiculous. I mean, if that was the case, why, how come I can do it as a commentator? How come all these guys can do it? Because you're the best. Yeah, but I mean, everybody should be able to have a voice, especially referees. You should, like, if something happens and you're a referee, and you could say, here's my perspective, this is why I did what I did. And you have it on a podcast on a regular basis.

That's a benefit to everybody. So that is what I'm trying to create with him. I believe you're right. But what you run into is you. run into some issues where the referee says too much and then people come back at them and then the commissions have to answer for it and the and the fight and then the fighters dig on them and then good people are talking yeah that's how shit gets solved that's how you don't have like two one hand down does not in a downed opponent anymore why because we fucking complain forever

12 to six elbows they're legit again except in new jersey you see the problem yeah the goddamn problem well we're in new jersey i was like you got to be kidding me how the fuck do you guys not have 12 to 6? You can't make it any more complicated for the referees and the fighters. It's so dumb. It's the dumbest fucking thing. It's so unfair to the fighters themselves.

Because when we, when, like I was part, I wrote those things out and they were passed by the ABC, but we gave six months, six months, because you got to give the fighters time to train to make sure that they get it right. Okay. And so it's put it in. It works great.

And now you expect them to go back to one location. And remember. middle of a fight. Exactly. One location and now they're going to automatically go back to the old rules. It's like, do you realize what you're doing to them? It doesn't make any sense either. The old rules are fucking stupid. We all

agreed. Everybody, no one was like, no, no, no, 12 to six elbows are too dangerous. Oh, yes, there was. Was there people? Oh, yeah, you're your broadcast partner. Shut the fuck up. Which one? Dan Cormier. No. I swear to God. He says some crazy shit. He does say some crazy shit. DC, I love you and he says some crazy shit. I love it. Why? Is that

Why did he say the 12 to 6 elbows in the group? He goes, I think that rule should absolutely. That's dangerous. I swear. If we're going to ban anything, and I don't think we should ban anything. But if we're going to ban anything, side kicks to the knees. See, that right there. Right?

I don't think we should. No, you shouldn't. I don't think we should. But I'm saying, if we should, there's an argument that you're going to blow out a guy's knee. His career and he'll be the same thing. Then we should absolutely ban kicks to the head and knees to the head. Yes, because what's worse? The blown-out knee or the blown-out brain.

I'm agreeing with you. I don't think we should have banned anything. There you go. There's one thing that does bother me, like the Cleo Roundtree, Modestis, Piccas's fight. Remember well? His knee went sideways. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, he's fucked for a year, at least. At least. If not forever. Okay, but what's the difference between that and we'll say, you know, Edson Barbosa. Terry. Terry Adam.

And that kicked to the head. You don't think that that was more than a year? Terry Adam, you know it was. Really was never the same again. Exactly. That's my point. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was like, getting hit by him.

meteor. Oh, that was just crazy. I mean, it was absolutely perfectly executed, beautiful technique that it absolutely altered. And then we talked all the time. By the way, that was first wheel kick KO in the USA. Absolutely it was. I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh yeah. Crazy. Yeah. But you look and you go there are those fights and we say it all the time and you know, you as a referee, as a fighter, you know, with him. Here it is right here. We go and watch this thing. Oh, I mean just that one was just insane. But you, the fighters themselves. They get paid to get damaged. I hate to say that, but it's the truth.

That's part of their pay, is they go in and they're going to accept some damage. But you don't want them to have unnecessary damage. Right. No, I agree with you. So do you think we go rise in rules? Because there's something to be said for that. I do. Look at it. I've advocated for knees on the ground for a long time.

It's never going to happen. My position is it's better in a ring because you can avoid them a little bit if you're mobile, right? If you're still conscious and you have defensive capability, you can, move around knees and kicks. When the cage happens and you're butted up and someone stomps you, that's a totally different aspect. First off, the stop I don't ever agree with. And the reason why is this.

Name me the fight that you saw that a stomp was an effective technique when the fighter was not already seriously hurt. Doesn't happen. Sakaraba. Sakarabu used to do it all the time after he hurt people. Every time he tried to do it when they weren't hurt, they just moved and he was Mongolian stomping on nothing. Go ahead.

Take a look at him. Yeah, I'd have to go back and watch it. Yeah, there was Minowa and Phil Barone. He did that a couple times with him when Minowah couldn't get the takedown because that was their cornering him for that fight. There was that fight. Then there was, and then Shogun and Ninja, remember when they used to like do the stalk through? They would stomp through and Shogun the brothers together.

Those guys were phenomenal at him. Oh, and people that only saw Shogun in Pride missed it. Oh, yeah. You missed it. Excuse me. In the UFC. His fight against. Quentin Rampage Jackson was I mean because a lot of people didn't you know going into that fight

you know that's rampage you know this this guy's young he absolutely just annihilated rampage in that fight and it was like oh my god he's way better than I ever gave him credit for before that fight that fight was a coming out party for for Shogun yeah he was a lethal striker lethal and all those Kiratiba guys were so hyper aggressive Yeah, his brother was just as nasty until he, you know, he started got a little chinny after a couple of shots, big times. He started fighting big guys. Yeah, that was the problem. Didn't he fight Alexander?

Didn't he, who did he fight? He fought some heavyweight, right? Yeah, and he got, he fought quite a few. Yeah. But he fought one guy where it was like, what is this? Why is he fighting this guy? Yeah, I can't remember who it was. Was it a million-eco brother?

I was Alexander a million-euvre. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think it was. I think it was. And it was like one of those fights like, no, no, no, no, no. This is a real fucking. heavyweight, a big one with nasty striking. Yeah.

You know, I mean, he was fucking nasty. He was good. Yeah, he had some smooth striking. People don't give the Milan Ecos as a whole. Alexander was a little bit off, a little bit crazy. Oh, a lot. Okay. How about the dead baby on his back?

Like the fucking death holding a baby tattooed on his back? Like, that's a choice. That's a fucking... See if you find Alexander Emilienenko's back tattoo. You look at that and you're like, what is going on in your mind? That you're like, this should be on my back permanently. But that's the brother. And then you have Fador as the guy who is even better.

Yeah. And look it, Fadour is, you know, he was such a good guy. Look at that fucking tattoo. What does it say in Russian, Jamie? That's a little, oh, man. That is the craziest thing. The baby's got a fucking sword and a crown. Oh, yeah.

And then death is like, yes, let's kill everyone. It's not even a good drawing. It's like, that's some Russian prison shit for sure. That's some Russian prison. 100%. He's 100% committed. He's a ballpoint pen and a fucking sewing needle. Yep.

Yeah, they did that in a Russian prison 100%. You're in a Nash. Oh, bro. That's a lot of time. God is with us. Are you sure? Are you sure based on that? And then you got his brother's brother.

His brother has no tattoos. No tattoos. See, you can find that. A small little wooden cross on his chest. I know, right? He's so stoic. Oh, he's awesome. Alexander, Millionenko, James Thompson fight.

James Thompson was an animal, built like a fucking Greek god, jake. Comes out, rah! They're like, terrifying, fucking huge mass. The best is the look on Alexander's face throughout all of the thing. I'm going to fall asleep on that. Just completely stoic. Look at Thompson so worked up. He starts pounding his chest.

He's like, it's shaking. Look at him. He's ready to fucking his guy. He's getting out. He's just dumped out of a bar. He's fucking, no flexing at all this. Doesn't even let's just hand up all the way. He's like, hey, everybody.

Got the belly hanging out a little bit. It's awesome. Look how chilly looks. Yeah, I'm gonna get in a fight right now. Look how Joe Fador looks too, like no worries at all. None. Look at James. He's so fucking hyped up. Alexander's like, it's like he's wanting a sandwich.

I need some chastick. It's like I'll have Swiss cheese and mustard. Yep. He's ordering a sandwich. He's vicious. And then he rocks him too right off the back. James comes charging at him. He puts him down, but he wasn't hurt.

He's like he fell down. That hurt. That hurt James. Once he starts connecting. They had that Soviet-style fluid boxing that just whip punches. Look, I'll tell you what. I worked out with Fador. And it was a great moment in my life if you're going to sit there

and say, well, if you're gonna get your ass kicked, it's a great moment. But the one thing I always thought, you know, before watching him, roughing him, I go, he's got to have some kind of, you know, like just tard strength, you know. Right, right. No, he's fast.

And I mean, super fat. When he explodes, and his hands are down, kind of so it's hard to see when the shots are coming, and everything he does, he just explodes into. And you go, oh, I get it. because you got to work really hard to try to stay up with his speed when he all of a sudden is exploding. And then it's like, oh, he doesn't get tired and you're starting to get tired because you're having to match that RPM that he's at. Right.

And he's not a big heavyweight. No, he's not. Which I think is a real benefit. I think it is. Until you're frightened a guy like Ngano. Yeah. And I'm like, there's a problem there. Oh, yeah.

Because that guy can be patient, 265 naturally, nuclear power. Engano hits you anywhere in the head. It's a problem. You're in trouble. Yeah, it's a real problem. He hit Philip, you know, Linz, hit him on basic almost. We didn't even say the temple. He hit him almost to the top of the head.

And look, he was out. I mean, he's not being able to control his body. That guy's got the ability to hurt, you know, when he fought Kane. Yeah. You know, take a look. Yeah. It wasn't a great shot. Right.

But it hurt him. Yeah. He's got crazy power. Yeah, just nuts. But Fador was a different thing because Fador had that, like, that Russian style of movement that you see, like, Dmitri Beval has. with a real relaxing, and then they explode. Exactly.

And the footwork and movement. That little bit of a bounce. He's got that little bit of a bounce, it out, just sitting there and wait. And he waits for your motion to come where he wants it to be, and then he changes that distance and just cracks. Fador did a really good job of coming around your guard as well. So it wasn't just a big straight right all the time. Rich Franklin used to do that as well.

He'd come around your guard and he'd put your hands up. And Fador had a, he did a great job with that coming around and landed the big overhand right, and then he'd come up upper cut, then he'd take you down or hip toss, you, body lock you. And if you took him to you, the ground off his back he's got one of the quickest fucking arm bars in the game which is nuts hungman choy oh yeah he's like a little kid he looks like a little kid he's all stretched out he looks like in this he go he's off the ground completely he was great everywhere and in you you know you think about him as being this overall picture of like one of the greatest if not the greatest

mma fighter of all time but people forget like his stand up was so good that the crow cop fight was mostly stand-up. He wrote the blueprint on how to beat Kroko. Exactly. You got to be him to do it though. The thing, I mean, he, first of all, his stand-up has always been real dangerous, but also it's like the way he was able to check that left

kick. He was doing a lot of, like, lifting the knee up and catching it, like up high. But how many people had you seen that would back Kro-Kop onto his back foot and march forward? No, but. Exactly. Not in his prime. That was the difference is when you looked

at it, he told himself, nope, I'm going to make you go backwards. And it took a lot of what Crow Cop did. And it just nullified a lot of it. Well, it was a lot of it was the threat of the grappling. Oh, yeah. That was a big part of it. Well, not with that, because then Fadoor didn't have to worry about if he did slip and fall. If he threw a big shot and he got cut from underneath, if he did fall on the ground,

the crow cop was going to fall into the ground. He could just hop back up. Yeah. So there was that. And then on top of it, too, when you fought him in a phone booth. You're not worried as much for that head kick to get there if I'm within, you know, That left kick was... There's this picture of Heath Herring

where the shin is like halfway into Heath's ribs. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. You know that picture? Yes, I do. You see ProCop's shin is just so deep. You just feel your own liver. I've seen the Vanderley ones because Van der Leyen-Rae has his ribs were just tore up from their fight.

Look at that picture. Look at that picture. Bro, that's crazy. Do you know how much that hurts? I mean, that is... Actually, I do. Yeah, no. That's the part where you look with people and you go,

You know, do you realize what you know, yeah, that would hurt a little? No, no, no. Your entire body is going, I quit. Especially by that guy. He had such explosive power. And he, to me, he was like the first guy to figure out how to transition from kickboxing to MMA. Yeah. Because he did it with explosiveness.

But Maurice Smith, come on, you got to give him. That's true. That's true. Maurice was the first. But Crowe Cop was in that same era. Absolutely. He was doing it in pride. Yeah.

And all those other guys like Ernesto, who. It didn't really work out for them when they like he only fought Bob Sapp in a kickboxing fight But even when they were fighting like bigger like Crocop fucked up Bob Sapp Oh like same era Yeah same time not yeah exactly same time period same same same same same It was that explosiveness whereas like guys like Peter Ertz that wouldn't translate as well in MMA Elite strikers but they wanted to get into a rhythm they wanted to like get into situations and exchanges and with Crocop it was this one shots were coming at you like nuclear missiles and it was a different threat.

It was a completely different threat than a lot of other guys because he was so explosive. Yeah. Yeah, he's, Crocop was, what a great guy. Oh, he's awesome guy. As far as, you know,

but his left kick has to be the best left kick there's ever been in the sport of MMA. Yeah, I don't think you could even think of a second place. Like, who's got a better left kick than Crocob? Maybe Edson Barbosa's a switch kick.

Yeah. That switch kick was preposterous. So accurate, too. In his prime, And he would kick and I'd be like, is there something wrong with my eyes? So fast. It was just like a 120-pound guy. Yeah.

It was so fast. Yeah, Dana called me a couple times to fight him and I was like rank number three. He was like just, I think he hit number 15. I'm like, no. Give me a higher rank out. Sorry, dude. It's not that I didn't. It's not that I wouldn't find.

Give me a higher rank. Make it make sense. Help me out. Help me help you. Help me to help you. At this time in my life, it's not. it makes sense. When he came in, though, you got to look at Barbosa.

He's been there a long time now when you think about it. Still going out of it. But when he came in, it was like, dude, this is a next level of stand-up ability with what this guy can do. Yeah. And it was like... And oddly mostly kicks. Yeah. Like his boxing wasn't threatening like his kicks were.

It was not equal. It was mostly kicks. You're right. No. If he could have developed something along the whole... was a Aldo level of boxing where he ripped the body came back at the top of the head. And take down defense. I mean,

Aldo's take down defense was nuts. Probably the best. I think probably the best in the sport that we've seen. I mean, honestly. Other than BJ and his prime. Yeah, right, with the one leg hop. That guy. And his prime was ridiculous.

His balance was fucking insane. Yeah. But I think he's the only guy that didn't get taken down by Marab. When Marab and him fought three crazy rounds, I think Marab went for like 90 fucking taked out or something. And I don't think he took Mara... I don't think Marob took him down. I think Marab mostly won that fight up against the cage, hitting him with punches, working for takedowns, cage damage.

Extremely underestimated, Jose Aldo's take down defense. Crazy. It's the fun, you take a look and Aldo doesn't now, all of a sudden, it's kind of like the Anderson Silva thing. All of a sudden it's like, you know, well, let's talk about the very best of the 145 pound. And look at Alexander Volcanovsky's right there. He's phenomenal. I'm not saying, don't forget what Jose Aldo did. Absolutely.

I mean, through the WEC, into being the UFC champ and all those fights, man, I'll tell you what, that guy was absolutely nuts as far as how good he was at one time. Well, I think it was also because he was an elite soccer player and the ability to, like, if you're watching a live soccer game, a professional soccer match, you're like, oh, Jesus. Like, these guys, they don't get to slow down. They don't have a, like, there's no halftime. There's no, like, big break for commercials. There's no bullshit. They just go. There's no timeout.

Giant fucking leg. They all have insane leg power because they're just sprinting all day long. And you go, oh, well, that would translate perfectly to MMA for kicking, for moving, for footwork. Think about all, it's not just that, right? It's the stop and go, stop and go, like in a real fight, right? I get a takedown, I get to a take down. I get to his take down. I got to go again and sprits again, get the takedown.

In soccer, same thing. You run hard down the line. Oh, the ball gets turned back. Now you kind of jog back a little bit. Now the ball gets played to you. It's a stop and go of sprinting, just like a real fight. This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's, dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to

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It puts you in a big advantage in different sports. Yeah, soccer and wrestling, those two things. The grinding of the wrestling and just the wrestling. and just the cardio fatigue and understanding that I can push through when I get tired because there's nothing more satisfying, you know, in terms of when you run down the line, the guy plays the ball in the corner and you got to beat that defender there and you cross it across and you're, it's that sprinting down there to beat him, but then also too in wrestling, knowing that you can break another human being.

Like, I need to break you mentally, grind on you and hang on you. Those two sports, I think, are huge for the sport of the men. And getting used to suffering dehydrated, right? Yes. There's a big factor in you. Yeah, the wing cuts. Getting used to suffering. Yeah.

But the weight cuts and having to compete on the same day as weight cuts is a big difference. And for people that have never done that before and don't know, it's fucking hard. Even 24 hours is hard. Weight cutting is the grossest thing in MMA. It is. They should figure out a way to stop it. I totally. I don't know what the way is.

There is no way. You're going to talk about one of the most dangerous things that you do with it. Think about this, Joe. Every sport, soccer, football, baseball, basketball, they all have. have team chefs. They all have all these things as far as we want our athletes to be as physically ready and have the right nutrition and all these things. What's the sports that we go and we starve our athletes and dehydrate them? 24 hours before it's the dumbest thing ever. 24 hours before the most demanding, most dangerous sport in the world. Yep. But Joe, even if we did it the same day,

fighters would still cut weight to try and make that weight. They would still do that to themselves. The question is, I wonder if there's a way to prevent that. Like the way to prevent that. Well, that I would say is everybody, here's your mandate. No one's getting out of shape anymore because we're going to have random weigh-ins. So we're going to just show up at your fucking gym. You can't do it. But could you? Like, let's say you fight at 170.

You cannot weigh more than 180. See, here's the, you could do it. I'll show up at your fucking house at 7 in the morning. Josh, get on the scale. 175. This is not good. You could do it as a promotion. You can't do it as an industry within the sport.

And the reason why I'm saying that is, first off, you have all these fighters, we'll say. They're all everywhere, okay, all over the world. And for an athletic commission, we'll say the state of California, the state of Texas, they have to have that particular fighter licensed for them to say, we want to weigh you. If they're not licensed in that state on that year, they can sit there and go, no. But if it got adopted by the U.S. I bet most of the organizations would adopt it as well. But again, that's the UFC as a promotion.

The UFC has talked about. And the UFC has the money to actually do that, but it's going to cost them a lot of money. And, you know, look it. I understand why the promotion doesn't want to lose money. I think the fight to me better. I think the guys are being way better condition. They absolutely would. And it's exactly what you're talking about.

They stop cutting as much weight. You could sit there and, you know, the only way an athletic commission could kind of do it. But this is bad on promotions. Is an athletic commission can sit there and say, you're a, allowed to weigh no more than five pounds more than that weigh in weight. Okay? But here's your problems with it. First off, the promotion can lose fights.

The promotion doesn't want to lose fights. True. Okay. And the second part is what's saying that the fighter themselves is not keeping themselves dehydrated to make that five pound and now they're going in even more dehydrated into the fight, which could cause them more problems. Well, they couldn't be dehydrated through their entire camp. And that's where you institute randoms.

That's why your randoms would work. if the promotion was doing it. Yeah, but to do it sport-wide, it'd be almost impossible. It would have to take a long time to figure out how to do it properly and not lose fights. Because there's too many guys that fuck around. Oh. You know, right? There's too many guys that, like, how many times is John Jones not really trained?

Oh, yeah. You know, like the Gustafson fight, the first one, they said he didn't really train. Ten days. Showed up a little bit here and there. Didn't really train. So if there's a guy like that, what are you going to not let him fight? Like, what are you going to do? He weighs 226

And you're like, no, that's too much You also have guys like Michael Morales right now 170 pounds, he's walking around like 220, guys like 210, 212, 205 I mean, there's a few of those guys where I'm standing next to him like Gregory Rodriguez. I'm like, how? Yeah.

How are you ever 185 pounds? How was Alex 185 pounds? I stand next to him and go, you've got to be shitting me. Nuts, nuts, nuts. It's unbelievable. And at 185 pounds, nuclear power, but I don't think he took a shot as well. It didn't.

There's no doubt about it. You can go back and look at his fights. He got hurt by shots that were not as hard as the ones he's taken at 205. Based upon, it's that weight cut. It's the point of diminishing returns, right? It's like there's a place where you're just doing it too much. And, you know, you kind of love to see freaks. You love to see a guy like Alex weighing at 185.

You're like, good luck with that. Good luck with his 226-pound fucking Amazon. on Warrior that pretended to be 185 for five minutes. For five minutes. But you take a look at, I'm so surprised how he can make the weight. When you pass by him and you see how tall he is, how big he is?

And you see him with the face off with Cyril Gahn right now. You're like, how would this guy ever make 185? He's insane. He's 250 now. Oh, yeah. Which is crazy. I saw him last week, and it's like, geez. Dude, 250 means that's almost 70 pounds different from his UFC debut.

The only case makes me believe that we're going to a better Alex is because he doesn't have to cut his kill himself. Yeah, but he also put on muscle. Yeah. And there's an issue with that. Exactly. Again, diminishing returns. How much is that muscle going to do? This is where you try to tell

all fighters and you know, it's Joe, when you were fighting in Taekwondo, did you care about the strong guy or did you care about the fast guy? The difference is MMA with grappling. The difference is with weight like if you get a big, heavy guy and he gets on top of you, you're all

your speed is gone. Absolutely. You're right. It's gone within the first three or four minutes. But the problem with being the bigger, stronger guy in the lighter weight class is you're never the faster guy. And so you've got to be able to mall that person to be effective. And it only lasts for a certain amount of time if you had to dehydrate yourself to that

point where speed is always there when someone has it to a point unless they get tired. and that speed is hard for you to handle. But there's guys that were big for the weight class and had ridiculous speed. Like Connor McGregor's a perfect example now. Connor at 145 was fast as fuck. Connor was absolutely dehydrated to the point of being a concentration camp victim.

Oh yeah, he looked like death. I mean, it was unbelievable. However, once you got in there, he was fast as fuck. He used to lose so much. At 145, he was... He looked like death. He was killing himself. I remember the weigh-ins, like interviewing him at weigh-ins, like, this is crazy.

Oh, my God. But then you see him the next day, all full. I know. He looked good. Look at fucking hands him. Good. He was also, what was his age back then? 26, 27.

Right, right. You can't do that now. No, you can't do that now. No, it gets to a certain point in time when you have to realize you're cutting too much weight and it's actually ruining your career. But I think the evidence has been pretty clear. When you see guys go up and wait after killing themselves for so long, they've had success. A lot of guys had. Look at Max.

Would Matt say, I was just about to bring him up. I just had Dustin Porry on the podcast. yesterday and we were just talking about how he's like look max the first time he came up to 55 didn't put the weight on properly second time put it on properly he's like significant difference in power mobility movement

the BMF fight with gauging yeah come on man that's that guy should have never went down to 45 again to fight to a poor year it's too much loss what what you're pointing in that because we had that argument about that exact thing of

he would Josh was saying look he should never it was a championship fight. He was getting a world title fight at 1.45. Right? And I said, look, it's a world title fight. I understand why he's going back down. He's going, he's making a huge mistake. It should never take it. He should stay at 155.

You know, work yourself into a title fight. And I go, I understand why he's taking it. That made him the number one contender. He beat Justin Gagee. He could have fought Islam. I understand why he took the fight at 45. Maybe he would have favored that fight with Ilya, because Ilya is a smaller guy than Islam.

Because if you think about it, Islam, he fucking smothers everybody. Yeah, he does. And his striking is dangerous as far. Of course you know. Oh, 100,000 times. But it's like that guy's, he's so fucking terrifying once he gets a hold of you. Like, he submits everybody. He's a whole lot better in the stand-up than people give him credit for.

Oh, he is? His stand-up is actually really good now. He head-kick Volcanovokinovsky. Oh, yeah. I don't care if Volcanowski took it on 11 days notice. He's still head-kick Volkanowski. He's got a sneaky left head kick, high-kick. It's nasty.

He fucks people up standing up, and that's part of the problem. Is it like you get accustomed to thinking about this guy's a guy's, The taker down, exactly. And then all of a sudden, bing. Yeah. My point was, though, was that there was no – he put the weight on properly. He looked fantastic against Justin Gagee. And then to go back down there to fight I was like, it doesn't make sense.

You're the number one guy or number two guy. It is. You kill yourself to give it back down, and then he gets knocked out, which we had never seen before. Well, that's Roy Jones, too, right? Remember when Roy Jones Jr. went up and fought Ruiz, and then he went all the way down to 75 and got knocked out by Tarver. It's like, I don't think your body wants to go back down again. You put on all that weight over like a year, you're lifting weights.

And Max had a ridiculous strength and conditioning program. He put real weight on. He looked very good at 55. When Max fought Aldo the first time for the title, he weighed, you know, obviously weighed in a championship weight 145. The night of the fight, Joe. Now he was in street clothes, but they put him on a scale. 178. What?

That's the same. That's the same. Now he was still clothed. That's crazy. I don't know. What is he wearing rocks in his pocket? pockets? That's crazy. Frank Shamrock with quarters in his pockets.

Let's, right, when he fought Tito. Let's just be real charitable and say his clothes weight 10 pounds. Exactly. That's crazy. You're looking at more than 20 pounds. But that's crazy. Happens all the time. The show that just happened in California at the Inuit doing with the MVP. The one guy,

I can't, you know, 27 pound difference in weight at 170 pounds came in 27, 197. Who was it? I want to say his name. Was it the guys right before Saladin, Parnas? Fremma? Fremont. It starts with a Z, I want to say.

I can't think of it. But 27 pounds. Well, obviously, the biggest one was Rumble Johnson. Absolutely. Rumble Johnson was the craziest. He would weigh 2.30 and make it all the way. 170? But basically what Morales is doing right now.

MVP event on Netflix. Fazil. Phazil. Namo Fazil. Recorded the highest weight gain. 27.2 pounds. That's insane. Can you believe that?

That's insane. That's so much. He got into the cage at 198 for a 170-pound fight. I would love to get Morales on the scales. Like right before he fought Sean Brady. Oh, yeah. Excuse me, sir.

Sean Brady is a thick. Sean Brady is a thick. He's not super tall, but he's thick. Oh, yeah. He has put together. And Morales made him look like a lightweight. Like he was in the wrong division. Exactly.

Yeah. He looked like a light heavy way. I was trying to make sense of it, watching it on TV. I thought maybe it was the camera angle. shifted? I was like, no, he's still bigger than him when he's further away. He's further away, still bigger. He's way bigger than him. Yeah. It was that's a crazy situation where a guy can do that. And it's like the Pereira

situation, 885, too. When a guy can do that, first of all, how long can you do it? That's the question. You know, because you're basically killing your kidneys every time you do it. You're just taking a little bit out of them. That was the problem with AJ, you know? Yeah, like I used to coach in Corner AJ early in his career when he first came to the UFC

and that was his problem. He'd make weight. Sometimes he'd make it. Sometimes he would. He miss weight a lot To the point where- You think that affected whatever it happened? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

That's fucking horrible. Yeah. That's fucking horrible. Again, you're leaving small bits and pieces of yourself. Of course. In that damn cage every time. When I heard, he died. I was like, no.

There was a true science to cutting weight and he just, he didn't have it down. He wrestled, you know, NC2A, or he wrestled Division II. Like he was a really good wrestler. He knew how to make weight, but then trying to kill himself to get to 70 every single time. Which he never had to be at. Which, yeah, he never had to be out of me, and he had massive power. Oh, my God. He did great at heavyweight.

And he's fast. He beat Orlovsky at heavyweight. In the World Series of fighting. A long time ago. Broke's job. Broke his job. Broke's job. Not that Rolovsky's not super legit.

Now, fucking guy wins bare-knuckle heavyweight championship at like 100 years old. Dude, you still sling it. And fought it smart. Yeah. Look at there's a, you take a look at Andre Arlowski, and people would say whatever they want about his career is amazing. Since UFC 28. was his first show.

Nuts. It's nuts. It went all the way into today's day, basically. But he changed his style. You know, Arlowski was a big power puncher for a long time, and then was getting hit with big shots and said, you know what? I'm going to be a volume guy. And he was successful with it. Yeah.

And didn't take near as much damage. Yeah, he fought a lot more technical, lots liquor. Yep. Didn't take big chances. Beating a lot of good guys, too. Yeah. Beep Travis Brown and Travis was in his prime. Yep. Oh, that fight with Travis Brown.

Amazing. Was a freaking awesome fight. Awesome fight. Awesome fight. Look at here. He beat Rothwell? He tore Rothwell up. Which is a lot of people were super surprised by that. Oh, yeah. A lot of people thought, you know, Rothwell's a tank of a man.

Yeah. And he's a fucking scary big puncher and he just looks hairy like a fucking bear. He's scary. Rothwell's close to 400 pounds. That's crazy. Is that real? Yeah. He's real.

He's really that big. He's that big. He's unbelievable big. But meanwhile, I, I'm close. He's the one getting busted up in this fight. And it was because, you know, Arlowski was just fighting very clever. Just so tough after all these years, man. You watch this fight right now.

They think that this fight gets stopped for that cut on his forehead. That is not why. He has a cut on his eye running up into his tear duct. And that's why it wasn't that big of a cut. But any time it goes to the tear duct, there's the doctor saying, oh, no, it's over. Yeah, to touch on what John was saying, though, is it really just comes down to how he changed. His style of fighting he either fought you all the way in or all the way out He fought you in that phone booth so you couldn't get off big power shots to avoid being knocked out because he went through a phase where he was getting clipped a lot and getting knocked out of it

Yeah so he made that adjustment. That's good on him and all those years in the game never lost his enthusiasm No, you know he's a character never got out of shape Who are you talking he's fighting influencers at shows have you I saw that In the little kid that was crazy Mad you those fucking dumb kids all right little midgetts running around trying to fucking get him. I was like, what are you guys doing? Are you crazy? Do you know who that is?

The best part was, and the Finflorister kid goes, hey, you can fight my bodyguard. Bodyguards in the background going, uh-uh. Sure. Yeah, I'll do it. It's like, yeah, I'll find him. That's a good idea. If your bodyguard doesn't know who Orlovsky is, you need to get a new bodyguard. He's telling him that my bodyguard will fight him. I was like,

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Look forward in your change. Did you guys watch the Rico Verhoeven Ussick fight? Oh yes. I watched the ending, yeah. I thought it was a... I don't say robbery because I guess apparently Usoc was up on the scorecards two to That's robbery. That's the robbery.

That's the robbery. If that's the case, that's a robbery. He was up, I guess. I thought, first off, Rico Verhoeven, you know, we know what he's been in kickboxing, and he's been fantastic. Greatest of all the time. Unbelievable. Greatest of all time. Yeah, and you can look back on certain people, Ernesto Hust, how great he was.

Badaari was a badass. All of them were awesome, but Rico's accomplished more than anybody. Absolutely. He's been undefeated for, like, more than 10 years. In kickboxing, that's nuts. It is. That's nuts. That's nuts.

Especially with the amount of rounds. comparatively and stuff because you can have a bad round and it can really affect your fight just like MMA but this fight I really thought going in I go look Rico will do okay for the first couple rounds and then it's going to start to get to him I was shocked by it he he fought very clever and he didn't fight he didn't fight big he actually

created the problems of closing that distance every time you look how close he kept on getting into the phone with and he would do work and it was causing Ussick nothing but problems also Rico is known for his discipline and his fitness. Yes. Like he's a guy who always has tremendous conditioning. And I think there's a lot of heavyweights that would be surprised at the work that this guy does and the pace that he could put on.

So a lot of people are like, oh, he's going to get tired. He only fights three minutes rounds and five rounds. Honestly, what I was thinking it gets past five rounds. I'm wondering how he's going to be able to hold that pace. The guy's such a cardio fiend and he's always shredded. And he's just, he's so used to combat too that like getting in there, just fighting Usoc. It's not a big deal. That right hand right there was, I mean, beautiful.

Bro, he was winning 8 to 2 in my eyes. I thought he was winning 8 to 2 going into the 11th round when the fight was stopped. Now, the fight shouldn't have been stopped the way it was stopped, but also that was in eight seconds after the knockdown. So after he gets knocked down, he doesn't have his mouthpiece. So then they have to go over the corner. They rinse off his mouthpiece. That's a mistake. Yeah, the whole thing's a mistake.

It takes like 30 seconds. And then the referee stops it when he. He's still standing, moving around. Look, if there's one of the things that changed in boxing since I, like, I referee boxing now. So here it is right here. This is the end. We could watch it real quick. So this is the end.

Look at all this time. So he's up and he goes over. This is a mistake right here. Lumbering over to his corner. Hey, come on over. Watch the first thing that happens. And this is what we'll talk about. Oh, oh, it dropped.

That's on purpose. Of course. I'm doing that on purpose. Of course. I would. Any second counts. But then look at this. So he swarms him with some punches.

but Rico's moving, he's covering up, he's moving, and what is he supposed to do? What is he supposed to do? That's a bad stoppage. I agree with you. So if you're going to stop it because you felt like the first knockdown was too much, why would you let him rinse a glove off? And he didn't take significant damage after that. It's a bad stoppage.

No, well, and it's also the end of the round. It's the end of the round. It's literally the end of the round. I think he actually stops it when the round's over. Look, as the referee, Joe, you know all of this. And if you don't, you're not doing your job. First off, you know he's got a full minute. If I let this go one second, he's got a full minute to recover here.

Exactly. Even if I did think he was a little bit hurt. Now, I think that if that was a legitimate eight count and they went right back to fighting, he would have stopped him there. Maybe. I think he was really rocked. When you see him go back to his corner, maybe is the key word. See, one of the things that used to be, though, in boxing, it was always that you would, if a mouthpiece hit the ground, you had to take it to the corner, have it rinsed with water and have it placed back in the fighter's mouth. Right.

Okay. that's not the way it is anymore. Because of MMA and the fact that we take a mouthpiece off of the ground and stuff it right back in the fighter's mouth, they have now changed to the point of they do the same thing. And the difference is, many times we'll hand the mouthpiece to the MMA fighter because they have, you know, gloveless fingers. Right.

Right. And they put it back in. Sometimes we'll put it back in depending upon situations. But in boxing now, you take it. I'll put it back in his mouth. I'll say, is that good? Boom, fight. And you don't...

Is that universal? Is that in Egypt as well? Do you think that's possible? You're talking about, you know, with under the unified rules of boxing now, which is North America. Okay. Okay. That's, you know, most of the time you go to Egypt, they're still fighting under the unified rules. But the refereeing is always going to be different when you get a referee from England or somewhere.

It's a little bit different. But I wonder if the referee rules are different over there, if you're supposed to rinse off the mouthpiece before you put it back? No, what it means is you have not advanced as a referee to understand what we do now. Right, but what I'm saying is do they have different rules over there? No, this is what I'm saying. You have not advanced as a referee to understand what we do now. Mouthpiece goes down, you pick it up, you're right back in the field. Can you?

Yes. So it's like when the UFC goes to a country that doesn't have a commission, they sometimes, they'll bring Herb Dean, they'll bring referees with them. So they know the rules to make sure that something like this doesn't happen. That referee hasn't followed up with the rules in a big-time fight. So he's not gone and advanced his, you know, training to understand. This is what we do now. And this is why. Because we don't want, I don't want to take that time from Usik.

Because Usik did his job. Right. He hit him with an uppercut that absolutely blasted him, puts him on the mat. You go and he gets up. You give him no mandatory. Now his mouthpiece comes out. Am I going to walk it over to a corner and have that mouthpiece washed out with water, which does what for it? Right.

Does it disinfect it? Exactly, okay? And that's the real thing. You know, so it doesn't do anything. And obviously if there's something in the mouthpiece, we remove the thing from the mouthpiece. But normally it's just spitting blood if that's what's there. Put it back in, boom, bring him back in as abruptly as you can to make it fair for Usik, who gained an advantage in the fight. You don't want to give the advantage to Verhoeven.

Also, his mouthpiece came out earlier in the fight as well. It's like, that's a bad mouthpiece for a guy who's a world-class kick. Boxer. World champion kickboxer. That thing should be so hard for you to pull out. Yeah. Yeah. It's odd that it kept falling out of his mouth. RICO with a boiling bite is nuts. Yeah. Right. In the heavyweight division? Oh, nuts. Do you remember Carl Peresian? Sure. He would wear a boiling bite that wasn't boiled. Oh, dude. Straight out of the packaging. That's the way people are, though. That's wild to me. Boiling bites are nuts. Well, it's also nuts. Here's a, we talk about this on the USC broadcast all the but I think it's nuts that you're still allowed to wear a tie steel cup.

I think it's fucking crazy. I think it's crazy. I would, too. That's all I ever wore. I can't believe, I can't wrap my head around how fighters don't wear them. 100%. I agree with you 100%. However, it should be illegal.

It's fucking crazy. You have a piece of metal over your dick. You have actual iron over your cock. And if a guy kicks it with his toe, it's going to shatter. I've always wondered the north-south position. You just start humping their head, right? Oh, dude. Just giving them the business.

There was one that did that. Do you remember to be a Renovardi? Do you remember that guy, Boss Routen student? I trained with him at Legends, and he mounted me once, and he almost made me tap by just digging his dick into my sternum. This is so rude. In Grapevine, man, I'm like, bro, you're fucking killing me with this. It was horrible. Shoddy Carter.

Oh, Shoney Carter used to wear an oversized cup. Also, awesome for Arm Bar too. That's how Frank Meir broke Tim Sylvia's arm. Oh, yeah. It was off of that. That completely makes sense. Yeah. But I think he would have broken it if it was just as nuts.

Well, as as strong as Frank could be as strong as he was, as how good his Armour was in that position. That was a crazy situation. Oh, yes, it was. That was crazy. Because I don't think the people in the audience had any idea of what had happened. If you go back to that, you know, because Herb Dean was a referee, and Herb did a great job.

But it was, I was actually in the corner of Tim Sylvia, you know, where I was sitting and I had Jeremy Horn and Matt Hughes and Pat Milititch are in his corner, right? And I had the same view that they had. And what you saw was Tim Sylvia, but you saw his elbow out from that arm bar, away from the hip. And all of a sudden, Herb's stopping it. And they are going crazy. They're going, what are you doing? And they're calling him every name of the book.

And I go right inside the octagon, and I go, Herb, what did you have? And he goes, John, his arm broke. I go, his arm broke? And he goes, I heard it and I saw it. Yeah, you can see the vibration. And he goes, his arm broke, right? And so at the time, the person who was in charge of the medical staff for the Nevada State Athletic Commission since it was in Nevada, they're looking at Tim, and Tim is like going, you know.

But you saw Tim slowly stop using that one arm and started going down to the side as reality started setting in and the pain started coming. But they basically said, there's nothing wrong with his arm. Right? I swear to you, Herb's greatest response I've ever heard. He goes, X-ray that motherfucker, right? Because Herb never cusses, right? He goes, x-ray that motherfucker.

It's broken, right? And sure enough, straight across both bones. Well, we could see it in the replay. Oh, yes. And you called it out. Yeah. Because everybody was booing. I'm like, you got to watch this.

Watch this. What's that? What's that right there? That's a broken arm. When I saw it the first time on TV, I thought it just shifted off of the cup. Because sometimes you'll see that. The bone will shift off. but then it you can tell us.

They had two distinct pops. It had like that highlight where something vends, like a piece of plastic. It looks horrible, man. Oh, my God. He's broken more arms. Like, he broke Nogara's arm, that spiral fracture. Spiral fracture with a Camura, yeah. He's nasty, man.

No, that's, you know, it's funny because if you're around, you know, Frank and you're talking, he'll always say. Oh, here it is. Oh, God, I don't want to watch it again. Oh, watch it. Boom, boom. There it comes. Right. Right here.

Pop. Oh, God. And it's the forearm, too, which is, like, super unusual. And everyone's wondering, why'd you stop it? Why'd you stop it? Oh, dude. Herb was getting booed out of the arena there. I remember this.

And Tim was complaining. Oh, yeah. Like, come on, bro. Like, you know what you say. He has to know what just happened. Oh, he knows. He's just such an animal. He wanted to fight with a broken arm, which is...

Which, you know, literally, you might have to get it amputated if you did that. Oh, like, who knows what kind of damage you would have after that. You could lose your arm. Yeah, you literally could lose your arm. But you'll get people all the time. I mean, some of the commentators on some of the shows, you know, oh, if he wants to fight, let him fight. It's like, shut up. Shut up.

You got to protect a fighter from themselves sometimes. Exactly. This is not life and death. If you lose a fight, I know it sucks. But it just sucks and it's not life and death. It's okay. Crazy situations like Carlos Oldberg, who knocks out your prohoster. with a clearly blown out knee.

You're like, if that went to the round at the end of the round, they would probably stop to fight. Well, think about what, Santos, right? He didn't fight in John Jones with two torn out ACLs or PCL, right? That's John Jones. Yeah. I mean... And gave him a good fight.

He gave him a great fight. I think that was a split decision. Oh, it was. Which is nuts. It's nuts. He could have won. We had like one more incompetent judge. Now we're going to incompetent judges.

Now we're going to have problems. Well, whoever was judging the Ussick fight was incompetent. Those people were ridiculous. The fact that they didn't have RICO ahead, it's crazy. I think when you got a guy like Ucic who's arguably the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, he's definitely in the conversation. And then you have so much money involved in him being undefeated. And whether the referees corrupt or not, they know. Whether the judges are corrupt or not, they know.

And if they fuck things up for everybody, you know, there's some weird shunuch. shenanigans that go on in boxing. Remember that lady that scored it was a Pacquiao fight against Tim Bradley? She was one of the ones that she scored a bunch of fights. I thought you were going to talk Canello

against Triple G. There was a Canello one that she scored bad? Yeah. She scored a bunch of fights where you're like, what the fuck is this? And then you have to realize about betting props. Yeah. Adelaide. No, no. It's not Adelaide Bird, though. No.

Adelaide Bird was was the Canello versus Criple-G. Very nice lady. She's a, look, I'm going to give her props in this. First of all, she doesn't do a whole lot of boxing. But she does do a lot of, MMA does a lot of the UFC still. That woman watches more fights, goes to more trainings. She puts in all the time that you could imagine to always try to get better.

She is asking questions all the time. Now, if you're going to sit there and say, well, has she, you know, can she roll? No, she can. But she knows what you know if you if you say okay. What's this? She'll tell you. Yeah. What's this? She knows it. I'm sure. She puts in that time, but you know, you're always going to have the there's certain fights no matter what they're always going to be there you know as the judge you always you're trying to do your best

yeah but there's this one lady where she was involved in quite a few like ridiculous ones and the Tim Bradley Mani Pachia one was a big one and then they looked at some other ones and then she stepped away from it the problem is and I'm not accusing this lady or anybody of this but I'm saying that some people have done this

in the past is that all you have to do is make it a split decision all you have to do is be one shitty judge that even though it was clearly for this guy, you say it's for that guy, and someone's making a ton of loop. Yeah.

Especially in this day and age with betting. 100%, man. The UFC has a real problem. Oh, yeah? There's a real problem with quite a few fights. The FBI has looked into quite a few fights. That's wild. There's one that they focused on in the beginning

because they knew that there was some improper betting, but now they're focused on a bunch of other ones as well. Yeah. I'm going to say this about the judgment. To think that you can get away with it, John, to think that you're going to be able to get away with it, you're an idiot. It's just fucking stupid.

You're an idiot. As the fighter, you're a fool. But if you, if you were around the judging, especially in the UFC, because it's mainly a lot of the same guys, you know, they, these guys are on text links. They are consistently. Joe, every UFC fight, my phone blows up. It blows up with fighters. It blows up from other officials asking, what about that?

What did you see? What do you think? And it's because, look, there is at times, we get media and we get, you know, people talking about our fights that call robberies when there's no robbery. It's a close fight. Right. And if you... And your guy, you wanted your guy to win. Hello, did not win.

Yeah. Fucking robbery. You know, I pointed it out to him. I had him sit one time. Hey, sit where the judge sits. Because you get one view. You, as the commentator, you get that beautiful monitor that's in front of you. There's times when you're watching the fight live, and there's times when you're watching the monitor.

Yes. Because the angles change. As the judge, now they put the monitor there for the judges, and the UFC puts a great monitor there for them. But we didn't always have that. Right. And you didn't always, many times you had the worst seat in the house to be able to judge a fight. Especially if there's a post in front of you. Yeah.

And it's so different than what people think. And it's when you are the one that's putting your name on that scorecard, your son. You're signing it. And you know this counts. It's everything. It is everything to you to be right. You want to be right. But many times what you're seeing, and that's why they're at the three different points.

And that's why people get into this. Well, it was a split decision. Split decision is not always bad. Do you think there be a benefit in having five judges instead of three? No. No? I've worked with it. I've done it too many times.

It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything. I'm just being honest. If it did, I would say, yeah, we should do it. But if you have two bad judges and three good ones, the right guy wins. Why do you have two bad judges? That's the question. That is a question.

But when you're on the road, let's be honest. When we're on the road, we do it. Let's not even name a state. But we show up and we have to use these regular local guys. There have been issues. I'm not saying there have it. Right? I'm not saying there have.

There are bad judges. Yes, absolutely. I love cops. There's bad cops. There are. I love dentists. There's some bad dentists. There's some fucking people that do surgeries that don't have to do them.

You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It's like it doesn't, it's not saying that the people that do it and do a great job shouldn't be supported and praise, and they definitely should. But it's also, it's like, it would benefit, I think, everybody to have a few more opinions. Like, I like verdict. Have you seen verdict MMAs? No, no, verdict. I've bumped them up a bunch of times.

I think they're accurate, like, 99% of the time. I look at the verdict score. I'm like, most of the time, out of 100 fights, most of the time I agree with the verdict score. There's many times, though, you can take a look. When I started teaching the command course and everything, people, oh, you got to teach yourself. I'm teaching people to take my job. Right. But in the end, I don't.

They need a lot of referees, luckily. They need a lot of judges. But they also need a lot of referees for the big ones where you can't fuck this up. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that's where. It is.

It's important. But it's not the job that people think it is. It is not as easy as people think it is. Oh, it's definitely not easy. It's definitely. It's the hardest job. next to being a fighter. Yeah.

I think it's fighters number one, referee's number two. Yes and no. And you're right. Fighting is much more difficult as far as, you know, what it does to your body

and what you have to put out into it and all that. Way more difficult. Also, the consequences of fucking it up. Boom. I don't have the consequences. If I make a bad call

as a commentator, it's like, oh, Joe's an idiot. Okay. That doesn't mean anything. Like, nobody loses money. Like, somebody could lose half their fucking purse,

which I hate, by the way. Yeah. I don't like the whole win bonus. Everyone's trying to win. I hate it. Can't stand it. You should get paid. You're a price fighter. You should get paid to compete. This is the number. Whether it's 200,000 or two, it shouldn't be dependent upon judges' decisions. It should be dependent upon you showed up. You fought your fucking ass off. You're trying to win. If you win, you're going to make more money. No one's trying to lose, right? So it's like, what are we doing? This episode is brought to you by

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So give me, like, let's just, I'm using a round number of a hundred thousand. 80, 80, 20, right? And then you give me another bonus for a finishing bonus. If I give a knockout, you give me another 20 or 50. Well, they're doing that now. You know what I mean? is doing finishing bonuses. But I just don't like win bonuses. I think you, you know, the fact that there have been bad decisions and guys have lost half their fucking purse when they need it.

And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's when you really got robbed. This. Not just a decision, absolutely. You got robbed financially, which is fucking crazy to me. Yeah. I think fighters should get, I don't think they fight harder. I don't think anybody fights harder. They want to win. That's it. No one's fighting harder. No one's fighting harder because it's just something sitting out there. And if they are, they probably shouldn't be fighting in the UFC. Anyway, because they're not at elite, like, world-class level if they're fighting harder for a bonus. If you're in the top 15, you're not going to fight harder because you're getting paid more. You've worked your way there to get there.

Your pride is too involved. Your ego's involved. You want to be going to be going. Yeah. You want to show everyone you're the best. I've always said, look, if you ask a fighter before the fight, hey, how much are you going to win for this? If they're going to get a 40, 40, they're going to get a 50, 50, they're going to say 100,000. They've already mentally spent that money.

And trust me, it's always they've got that win bonus. I'm sitting there. Kind of impulsive. Fighters aren't the best at saving cab. I know. So, yeah. It's, but you take a look, you know, when you sit there and sit there and say it's good at saving money, though, is Strickland. You would think he'd be the most reckless guy?

No. Very smart. Very smart with his money. Yeah. Most of these guys are buying jeans and shirts and glasses. No, no. They're buying ringlers. He wears the same thing every day.

White beater tape, top. He doesn't have anything expensive. Doesn't care. But he saves his money, man. He's got a lot of money saved up. Good for him. Learning how to be frugal is very important, especially if you're an athlete. Any type of athlete.

Especially if you're an athlete, like Strickland and still rides a motorcycle. That's a psychopath. I still ride a motorcycle. He still? Oh, yeah. You didn't learn anything from Frank Meir when he broke his femur? I'm surprised fighters. Frank Meir breaking his femurs would kept me from getting a motorcycle license.

That was the last one. Really? Yeah, two friends crashed. One friend wiped out and fucked up his shoulder and then Frank Mear got teaboned. And I was like, I'm out. It all comes down. There's the old saying. There's two types of motorcycle riders.

ones that have been down and ones that are going down. Yeah. And that's just the truth. That's the problem. I felt like I'm hurting myself so many days a week just doing jujitsu. Doing that on top of that, it's like I don't want to risk. No. Yeah.

Especially if you haven't been doing it because there's ways to ride and you don't ride. I can watch people on the road and I go, that dude doesn't know how to ride. Scary. And it's like they're the ones. That's what's scary. You get a license, figure out how to ride it. Buy a bike and you fucking wha. You know, it's like you could go to a car dealership right now and pick up a Corvette ZR1.

You got a 1,000 horsepower car. Right. And like, who knows if you know how to really drive that thing? Who says that you're prepared to drive that thing? That's a fighter jet on wheels. This is fucking insane. And you just give it to some kids. But it's awesome.

Yeah. Your parents are rich, so you have a fucking fighter jet on wheels? Like, this is nuts. But you know, what you're talking about, Sean Strickland with, how many cars do you need? You know, I tell fighters all that, how many cars do you need? You know, I've had, I've had. arguments with rampage, because rampage's got 8 million cars. And I go,

dude, how many cars can you put your ass in at one time? Right? And it's like, you're blowing through money that you can't get back. You can't get back. You know, and it's like... One of the things about cars, depending on what kind of cars you have. Some cars are... Oh, if you're going to do an investment, that's fine.

Muscle cars, shit like that. They're always worth money. I think if you're a fighter, you need to take a page out of Forrest Griffin's book, right? With the Sion that he won for the Ultimate Fighter won. He drove that thing into the ground. Door handles were... off. He had to roll the window down to open the door from the outside. He's such a character. You know, but I mean, that's how you have to live. If you're going to be a professional athlete, a professional fighter, that's how you have to live, especially

early in your career. You don't know how long it's going to last. Yeah, also, there's something to be said for the comforts of nice things and luxuries, kind of slowing you down a little bit. Not everybody. Doesn't seem to do it to Armin Sarukian. No. That's fucking dude. He breaks the whole rule book. Yeah. The rich kid fights like a demon. Like a Greek God. He is such a stud, man. Constantly competing in wrestling, doing everything. He's wrestling this weekend.

Here at Roth, wrestling in Arlington. Animal. When I saw last, I said, just keep doing what you're doing, dude. He's killing it. Just keep doing what you're doing. I think the best thing that could have happened to him is not getting a title fight. That guy's built a...

No. I mean, he's capitalized on the bad situation that he put himself in, but it was also the headbutt with Dan Hook. Absolutely. That was fucking crazy. Well, because you're as a promoter, right, you could have cost me all this money if you get... What if he gets cut?

Yeah. He gets cut. They pull the fight. That's right. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Like, come on knucklehead. Yeah, stop.

But I love watching him fight. What he's been doing with R.A.F. What he's been doing with his Nina drama stuff and all that stuff. Hey, keep going. Keep going, man. People are talking about you. Very smart. And he is the most interesting contender for Iliot-Torrio.

Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. Other than Justin, which is going to be wild. But I think him, the skills that he has, the wrestling that he has, and the size, he's a lot bigger than Ilya? You know, I asked DC and Dustin both yesterday on my show. Why do you think people were overlooking Justin?

That's a good question. I mean, when I look at Gates, I'm like, he's got all the tools and the weapons. Ilya is heavy on the lead leg. Justin Gates, he's got a heavy leg kick. He's got a great uppercut. He's fighting the shorter fighter in Iliate Teporia. He's a way bigger guy. He's not making $145 ever.

He's a much bigger guy. He's a really good wrestler, and he's a nasty striker. And he's also a kind of a fucking savage. No, he's not kind of. Yeah, I mean, like a real savage, not like pretending. Like when he fought Michael Johnson in his UFC debut, he just threw himself at Michael Johnson. And he did the same thing with Patty Pimbley. Yeah.

The Pembley fight, he could have fought that fight a lot cleaner. And he just said, fuck you. I'm just going to walk you down and just blast you every chance I get and break you up. And that's what he did. And he's a fucking scary dude, man. Justin's a scary dude. When he's on, and this is the last dance, right? So you know that he's going to be hyper-focused for this fight.

I just can't see why people are overlooking him. Like, they just look at him. They're like, oh, he doesn't have a chance, can he get knocked out. I think they're taking away from life. It's just because Elya has done it to everybody. All these guys that are also really good. Got three all-time greats. Yes, in a row.

In a row. Three in a row. Max Holloway, Alexander Volcanowski, And fucking do Bronx, fucking Charles Olivera. That's crazy. Crazy. Three KOs. Yes.

I don't hold it against him. And how fast? Is it kind of somewhere, is there an asterix next to it a little bit? Because Volcanowski coming off the head kick knockout loss. Max Holloway cutting from 55 to 45 after putting all the weight on, then getting knocked out. The only one I would say no is Charles because he goes up, fights Charles. Charles, you know. Charles, no.

Max Holloway, yes, because he cut the weight butt. That was his decision. That's right. And no one should have let Volcanowski take. that fight. You got head kick four months ago into a coma. There's no fucking chance you should be taking a fight with the scariest puncher in the division. Is that a coach's

corner family decision? It's him. He's an animal. He's an animal. He's a fucking animal. He thinks he could do it. Yeah, but see, that's when you have to have the people. Yes. Maybe in your corner, in your family, you're saying, hey. I think it's honestly in your family. I think you need like someone who loves you.

Someone who is just absolutely totally honest saying you can't do this this fast. I'm not saying you can't do it. But you have to do these things to be able to make it to where you have a ability to take a shot like you used to because it's diminished at this moment.

Not just that. You have to take into consideration that he gets knocked out and then he goes right into camp. Okay, so you're not going to rest your brain. No. You're just not. Even if you're just wrestling, you're not resting your brain. You can't. Anytime your body temperature rises You're damaging your brain, especially if you haven't let it recover yet.

And there's no way he let it recover. I mean, he got shinned. Shinned to the dome by one of the biggest guys that ever fought at 55. Islam's huge for 55. Six foot tall. And he fucking takes the fight on 11 days notice with no camp and he's eating barbecue and fucking drinking fosters. See that. But like you, that's the sense.

He goes to his mentality. He's a fucking, he's a fucking all-time great. Oh. No doubt about it. He's an all-time great. And, you know, when you go back and look at his fights with Max, like, he was the first guy to figure out Max. Yeah.

You know, and then you look at what he did cleaning out the division. I mean, my God, I would have loved to seen a fair shake. I would have loved to see, I would have never advised him to take that fight with Islam on 11 days notice. I don't care what the fucking UFC says. No. Go John Jones. What does John Jones do? John Jones had an opportunity to fight Chale Sutton with very little notice.

That's right. He was already in shape. Dan Henderson fight. Nope. won't fight him. Not gonna fight him unless I have a full camp preparing just for him. I'm not giving anybody any fucking chances period. See ya. Bye. I'm the champ and if Volkinovsky had that mindset he would have never fought in Islam unless he went through a full camp again because he almost beat him the first time. It was a really close fight the first time. The second fight he comes in he's a little soft. He's not in shape. His mind's not right. It's also the difference in the weight cut for Islam. Yes. Islam was on 30 some hours compared to right. He's on Australia time the first time, the second time he's like fully rehydrated, much more time to recover. Much more dangerous.

I think it was more of the expectation that Volk thought that I'll just do the same thing I did in the first fight. Of course, because he's an animal. That's where you need your brother. You need someone to go, dude, I love you. You're an animal. You're one of the greatest of all time. But the brain is the brain. Like there's just certain, you don't want to fight with broken hand, right?

Okay. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean your head's not damaged. Your head's damaged. That's the difference though is exactly what you're saying is the brain doesn't hurt right you know it doesn't have nerve endings and so you can't sit there and say oh man I've got this problem until you end up concussed Right until that now all of a sudden the headaches are occurring and the bright lights start to bother you and all these things start to add up and you're starting to get mad about things that you can't understand why am I getting mad right now Those are the tell tell signs of hey I need to step away for a while do you remember when Travis Luder thought Oh, God. Oh, God.

Yeah. Who was it? Eastman. Eastman. Marvin Eastman. And he caught Marvin Eastman with a punch. It was just a regular punch. Just nothing.

Eastman went down. And then we found out later, oh, he got C-Oed really bad. I think by Tito in training. Yep. And it's like, that's it. He'd been teaked twice. Twice in training. Oh, God.

These guys are crazy. You look and you go, and that's why he went out the way he did. 100%. Because it was a week. off of something he never would have been hurt by. It was weird. It was weird. It was like a straight left.

The conned him at the end of the punch. Yeah, and it was like, thing, out cold, hardly moved him. Just fell back. Yeah, because his brain was damaged. You gotta give your time full, a full time of recover. 45 days, 100%. Up to six months, eating more fats, more avocados, things like that,

to help your brain recover. When Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out Paco, Freddie Roach said, you're not doing anything for a year. That's it. One year. And he got his chin back. He took that year off and he came back, actually recovered. But Freddie

being a long-time boxer himself and being around the game and seeing guys getting knocked out and seeing guys jumping back in too quick, he knew. Freddie being one himself. Yes. Look, Fred, you know, people don't realize Freddie was actually a good boxer. He had a good amateur

record. He was doing well the pros. Do you remember who his trainer was? His trainer was Eddie Futch. Eddie Futch, who was the second trainer for Joe Frazier after Yance Durham died and Joe Frazier, he was there for the thrill in Manila with Ali and stuff like that. And Eddie Futch told Freddie Roach, son, you're taking too many shots, you're getting hit with too many good ones, you're not responding the same way, you're done.

You've got to stop. And Freddie Roach got rid of Eddie Futch and continued to fight as a professional and just kept getting knocked out. And that was the end of his career. And then he became the trainer. And, you know, you can take a look at a lot of the issues that he has. But as much as you're looking at, you know, you're looking at that with Freddie, take a look at his brother, Pepper, who took a lot less is worse than Freddie. I mean, Pepper's gone now, but I mean, headshots and trauma to the brain, especially when you don't give it the opportunity to rest and heal, it will absolutely take and burn your career. No doubt.

No doubt. And there's no way to really tell. there's so many guys that are damaged and we don't know because you meet them backstage like hey how you doing everything's great but meanwhile it's not great these guys are struggling they don't remember what you just said exactly and then they're talking to people they repeat things over and over and over again and you can watch you know I hate to say it there was a fighter fought in the UFC fought in bare-knuckle

boxing now he's now a training guys and it's Joey Beltran okay I know had a decent career heavy puncher took a lot of damage And I'm just watching Joey Beltran walk off of stairs and having to go one step at a time with each foot and you look and you go damn, you know, and you know, hey, he's been altered. You know, he's a great guy. But it's like that's what all of this does in the end. No doubt. You've got to understand that you know, you, I always, I try to tell fighters a lot of time, look, you're a Ferrari, you know, you want to be a Lamborghini, you're a Lamborghini. But first off, it's like, you know, the whole John Jones thing is, you know, be careful of what you put in its gas tank.

Okay. Same with, you know, other guys. You know, I don't mean to pick out on John, but, you know, he's told the story of what he was doing. And so be careful what you put in the gas tank and realize you can only crash that car so many times before it's a piece of junk. Right. And it's hard to get that through that this is not going to last forever and I'm not going to be the same forever. Yeah. They just don't see it until all of a sudden it's there.

Well, that's why it's a real bummer when you see coaches that you know love the fighters and they haven't stepped in. They haven't done anything. And they're keeping training these guys. Because they'll lose them. Yeah, exactly. And that's what's horrible. It's horrible that you have to be the kind of relationship where you get to a fork in the road and you go, this is what this is. Yeah.

Like it doesn't mean that your life is over. No, it's the start of your next life. Yeah. It just you can't identify yourself. Well, Josh, you can speak to this because you. You know, you fought at the highest level for a long fucking time, and you stepped away healthy. Yeah, and I had this conversation with Dustin yesterday. I just said, hey, like, I feel like you could still do it.

You're right there. Like, you're one fight away from fighting for another title again. And he's like, it was just the time. And I completely respect that. Yeah. I said, because he's having time now with his two kids, his wife, he's enjoying his moment. He just got done lifting. He was looking swole.

And I was like, it was good to see you. He came on. The show was all sweaty a little bit. Like, you know, he's enjoying this next chapter of his life. I like when guys go out like Khabibibh. Oh, they just say we, they offer him a bunch of money. He's like, no, yep, good, did it, done, bye. And I hate when people try to rag him on it.

It drives me crazy. They sit there and go, oh, yeah, but you know, you could have done this. You could have done that. Fools. He gives zero fuck. It doesn't matter. He doesn't care. He doesn't look at it.

Look at what he did. That's all you need to know. He dominated people that nobody dominated. Oh. Yeah. And he did it. a crazy way. Speaking of Barbosa,

I remember that fight where Barboza had that thousand yards stare in the first round. He was like, he was like, oh my God, this is never going to go my way.

It's not. It wasn't going to. Hey. I actually looked something up the other day. Habib is the only guy is never blood inside the UFC octagon.

That's crazy. He's the only fighter to never bleed inside the office. That's crazy. What have I told you? That's wild. He's the most dominant fighter inside. John Jones being, you know,

considered the greatest. John Jones is the greatest as far as you're going to say, who's done it better as far as all the championship fights and all of that stuff? John Jones is the guy. Right. The most dominant fighter I ever stepped into that cage

with was Habib. Look at this. Kabib never visibly bled, was severely bruised, or was knocked down during his professional M.M.A. who's the only person you ever saw heard him? Connor. Nope. No. No. Well, Glacin'Teebao heard him a little bit. You could say Michael Johnson. Michael Johnson. Michael Johnson had one

where he gave a little bit of us. That's right. doing that fight. That's right. And he had, I was like, oh. Yeah, that's right. Michael Johnson caught him. He sucked it right back up. I said, I go, I go, will you hurt? He's like, brother, come on. You know, it doesn't hurt. It was it. Holy. It was the same. You talked about, you know, Michael Johnson against Gaichi. You know, and after that fight, because I did that fight, and I told Justin, hey, congratulations. That was a great performance. You got hurt. You went through and he goes, I never got hurt. I go, go watch the video. I never got hurt. I was like, I never got hurt. Oh, yeah, you got hurt. Those guys,

went to war. Oh, man. The crazy thing was when Khabib was on top of Michael Johnson and he was saying, come on, brother, you know I deserve title shot. He was saying, like, I don't want to do this to you. I don't want to, and then when he almost, when he got him in the Kamoire, I was like, please tap. Oh, dude. You're saying, please tap?

Yeah. What do you think I'm saying? I think the only reason why I didn't break is Khab is probably being kind. Yeah. Like he's talking to. The whole time. The entire fight. You have to give up. He's saying, you have to give up. Come on, bro. You know I need to fight for title. It's my destiny.

I have to fight for the title. Yeah, I need to fight for the title. You know this. I deserve this. You agree? He's like, you agree? He's saying this why he's beating his ass. You agree?

He's like, huh? I mean, he was just a motherfucker, dude. Oh, yeah. So everybody agrees. Everybody agrees. Yeah. As he's beating his ass, he's saying, everybody agrees. Well, how about when he was on top of Connor?

And he'd say, let's talk now. Yes. He's punching me with the faces. Come on. Let's talk now. Let's talk now. I loved it. He was a monster, dude.

Kibb was, he was just so relentless. But it's everything, it's everything to do with his lifestyle. And this is where you get into, you know, you've seen it too many times, champions. And there's been great champions. But when you become the champion, everything in your life changes. The things that come your way change. You know, you get offered things that you didn't get offered in the same way before. You get all these opportunities.

And all of a sudden, instead of going to the gym, you're spending the day on a plane, going to a location to do something. Sometimes it's for the promotion that you're working for. Sometimes it's for the UFC or whatever promotion there is. And because they're asking you. So you're missing that day of training. And then you're getting back on the plane. You're coming back the next day.

And that's another day that you're missing. He never missed training. He never changed his lifestyle. He did everything the same. Yeah. And that's why he had the results he got. Well, for a super successful guy, he's still so humble. He's so, like, normal to talk to.

He's so balanced. and it's that discipline that he has. He's, exactly. His religious beliefs, like he's just so, so rock solid. The thing about him is that he tries to make sure he puts the guys that had helped get him there, tries to help them get elevated as well. You know, and that's, it kind of what I'm trying to say is that how you've done with your guys,

with your group of comics and friends, you guys all lift each other up. He does the same thing with the group of friends that he has. So not just like myself and D.C. and, you know, Islam and those guys. I mean, like, when they go to travel for events, he put, you know, he takes care of the house, he makes sure that it's all organized, make sure that there's enough room for everyone, there's food. You know, obviously all the guys, other guys chip in, but it's like he's the one that's kind of organized and everything. He's the leader of that team, and I'd love seeing somebody that puts that much effort into guys that helped get him there as well. Yeah, no, he's a real leader. He's a real leader.

And now that he's coaching, I mean, you imagine you're a kid and you need motivation. You're literally being coached by one of the greatest combat sports athletes to ever walk on God's earth. and one that did it right the entire time. The entire time. And it is all about discipline and hard work. Like you couldn't pick a better camp, especially if you're a grappling-based guy. You know, like send him to Dagestan two, three years ago.

That's the greatest meme of all time. I think what separates, you know, Islam and Habib and that whole group is that there's never a moment where they're not training. Like I was in Chicago at one of the events for Bellator. And we were there and I was headed down to the bar after. after the event, they were headed to the gym, passing me in the elevator. It said, come up and talk to me. So I was up there for an hour, just chat with them while they're riding bikes, you know,

lifting weights, getting their workout in, and everyone else is down with the bar drinking. Wow. You know, and so it's, it doesn't matter. They don't even look at it. They don't think about it. They just go right to the gym. They get their sweat on. They're up there for two hours.

It's not like this intensity for 25 minutes. Right. They're just working. Yeah. They're never letting themselves get out of shit. No. And then you see them in the morning, right? When they were living in, when they were training out of AK in the mornings, you'd see

them at the track in the mornings. They would just jog, but then there was little stations where you do sit-ups and push-ups. They would do those. And they would do it for two, three miles. And they'd come to the gym at noon and they'd do their workout sometimes hard, sometimes not. But they were always training, always working.

And that's what separates them. They're not out of the club until two, three in the morning, then trying to recover the next day. They're not drinking. They're not smoking. They're not doing. The no drinking is huge. Huge.

Huge. If there's one thing that fucks fighters up more than anything, it's partying. Oh, yeah. Drinking especially, I guess Coke, but I don't have a. a lot of experience with guys that I know that were doing coke, but I have a lot of experience with guys that were drinkers. And you would see them in the morning on, like, they would go out Saturday night, Sunday they'd be fucked up.

They'd show up Monday to train, and they just looked like shit. Yeah. Because they had been partying too hard just two days ago. And you don't think that that's going to make a big difference. But if you're getting drunk on Saturday night, that's days before you're back to baseline. Days. That's right. You know, and you can get away with it when you're 23.

Yeah. A little bit, kind of. But are you? Because you're probably not as good. good as you would have been, and then maybe you're going to get hit with some shots that you wouldn't have got hit with, or you're going to get tapped when you wouldn't have got tapped. Yeah. See, and you take a look, that's the big difference.

You go back and look at Habib's career. Go back and look at his first fight in the UFC and look at how bad. And I'm serious, how bad his stand-up was. Oh, yeah, it wasn't the best. Oh, no. It was probably the worst. Okay, it was. I don't think it was the worst.

It was bad. He did a lot of crazy shit. Yeah. But take a look at it. Those were his set-ups. When he was it at the end. Oh, yeah. It was.

It was tight. He always was improving. Oh, he was dangerous. Remember he dropped Connor. Mm-hmm. He cracked Connor. You know, with a big right hand, which was like, everybody was like, holy shit. Yeah.

That was a shocker. I had several conversations with Schaub about that because I went down and did his show a couple times in L.A. before that fight. And I said, look, stylistically, Connor's the better striker. I go, but the intimidation of the takedown and the threat of the takedown for Connor is going to make him hesitant. I said, don't be surprised if Habib ends up landing some good, some good hard shots on the feet. That's a giant factor.

The fear of the takedown. It's about about Kevin Randem when he fought Crocop when he knocked him out. That was what it was. The fear of the takedown. The thinking. The thought process of, I can't let him. Well, you get it. If Kevin Randamman and Croweck fought a straight kickboxing match with no takedowns, Jesus Christ.

It's a walking. You don't want to watch it. It'd be terrible to watch. But that threat of the takedown is this factor that keeps you from being comfortable. It keeps you from finding your flow state. That little hesitation opens up so many opportunities to catch him. Yeah, it's big. big. You see it in fights all the time when a guy just has this extra element of the 10.

So that's why it's so impressive when you see a guy like Pereira where there's no thread to take down. No. It's no thread. It's not happening. He's not even thinking about taking down. He's just going to fuck you up. And now it's up to you to deal with that. We just don't have the level of wrestlers these days in the 205 in the heavyweight division to compete with him in the wrestling area. That's where you have someone like Stephson coming in. Gable will come in the heavyweight division.

Okay, Curtis Blades can wrestle. Now Josh Hokit. Look, Josh Hokit's the real deal. He was a... He's a good athlete. Yeah. He's a good all-around athlete. He's a character.

You can go with a schick. Oh, hey, hey, he's got his stick. It's great. Exactly. But also, he put up. He put up. Absolutely. He put up in that Curtis Blades fight.

Hello, that fight as a heavyweight fight was awesome. Awesome to watch. You know? Terrible for your dome, though. Oh, yes. And that's the crazy thing that he's going to fight Derek Lewis, who's the biggest knockout puncher in the history of the fucking heavyweight division.

More knockouts than anyone, and he's going to fight him what? How many weeks? Seven weeks? Yeah, seven weeks. Seven weeks? Seven weeks? After a war with Kurtzzii's fists?

They're like this. They're like that big. They're gigantic. He's a giant man. And he hit him a bunch of times. Big shots. And what, look, I got to give it up for Curtis Blaze. What a fight he put on because he took some damage?

He delivered some big shots. Mad heart. Mad heart. Crazy. Crazy heart. Because he just did not want to lose that shit talking, dude. That's funny thing. That's a funny thing.

It's like, Hokeet, we'll drop the act when you talk to him in real life. Yeah. And in the ring, you know, in the cage after the fight, I said, dude, that was a fucking amazing funny. He goes, he goes, I talked so much shit. How many? He goes, I had it. I talk so much shit. And then he went and did it again.

Fuck it. A little Ilyette Taboria is. They're trying to pick fights with him too. Great. Well, he just talked shit about so many people. He's just trying to get people upset and talk about it. He's just pushing buttons. Listen, that's the Connor McGregor game plan.

Like, I mean, Connor did it the best. Chale did it. Chale was the first, really, to do it in MMA. Chale did it. And then Connor took it to another level. But they kind of stayed in their lane. Like, this is my weight class. This dude doesn't care if you're 135, 145.

He don't give a shit. He just wants controversy. He's basically like one of them kick streamers. He's just trying to talk shit as much as possible. He's, look what he's done, though, man. He has put himself, he can fight in the UFC for a division that the UFC has. Man, they need these people. I think Gable's the man.

That's what I think. That's your nightmare. That's Mike Tyson when he was 20. He's still great. He's got some work to do, but I'm glad they signed them early, you know, try to develop them hopefully a little bit. Give them two or three more fights inside the UFC. The problem is the heavyweight division in the UFC is so shallow that you could see Gable fighting for a title within a year or two. Three fights.

Could be. Yeah. Could be. He's going to have to learn a lot, though, in that process. 100%. He's got John in his corner. Yeah. You got to give him credit, though.

He has shown that, you know, first off, he's super fast. Oh, yeah. But he's also got a chin. He got kicked up into the head, neck area. He ate that sucker. Mm-hmm. You know, and continued on, and you go. Well, he's a tank.

Don't let that happen again. Right. But, man, you've shown, hey, he didn't let it affect him. He didn't back off. Well, he's an Olympic goldmast. I mean, he's a winner. He is a small heavyweight, though, like that hybrid-style heavyweight. Yeah, but that's the best.

It is. Well, he's $2.50. He's just not tall, but he's wide as far. His legs and his arms are huge. How about when he had that dirty boxing fight and then leapt over the top rope? Literally. That's the whole thing. Like, it was a box of tissues on the ground.

The best one was when he had the front of him. first one and he hits the guy and the guy's out going down and he's taking him down. He shoots a double while the guy's out cold. That's how fast he is. Yeah, he's the most impressive of the prospects. But, you know, hopefully this is going to excite the, like when you have a, like, every division goes through these peaks and valleys. And when you have a lull, hopefully that's when people come in and they fill that void. And with Francis out of the UFC and it looks like forever. Which is a shame. It's a shame. I don't, I tried to negotiate. I tried to bring the two of them back together.

I tried to have a sit down. Dana was not interested. He doesn't have any to do with them. It's about interpersonal relationships, interpersonal exchanges that they had, that I'm not, I don't know what happened exactly. I just know what Dana told me and I believe him. So it's like you have the best heavy weight in the world and he can't fight in the UFC, which is to me crazy.

I mean, let's do Molly together. Let's work this out. Let's fucking work this out, bro. We could do anything, right? I mean, this is why I'm not a promoter, and it's why I'm not a businessman. But if I was, I would go to dinner with him. Come on, man. I'm sure we could let our differences be aside.

Like, he's not a bad guy. It's just, you know, sometimes people get upset. They say things. Like, smooth it out. Yeah. My experiences with Francis have always been super positive. A lot of people. I enjoy talking to him.

Francis has been nothing but kind to me and everybody I've introduced him to and stuff. He's always great. He's the best. The scariest fucking heavyweight on planet Earth. Dude, he's huge. He's huge. People are, I was at an awards thing, and when Misha Tate and Rashad Evans and I and my wife were taking a picture, and all of a sudden, there's shadow comes over the top of us,

and it's Francis with his arms out like, hey, right? It's like, what the hell? When you get a natural 265, a guy's net and shredded, cutting weight to make 265, that's, I mean, he's, he, there's many fights where he was like 270, 275. Oh, yeah. He would drop a little bit of weight to make. make the 260, which is also stupid. Why is there a 265 pound weight limit

for the heavyweight division? That's nuts. Isn't that nuts? Yeah, I know why. Because you eat those really big guys. Lorenzo. Lorenzo was looking at it saying, I don't want fat guys. Really? That's what, you know, because you had... What about Roy? Big country. Everybody loved big country

and you were in. But it was, at the time, in MMA, you had no weight limits. Roy was lovable. To a point. Love Roy. Yeah, no weight limits and that whole thing was he looked and said, I don't want, you know, a bunch of fat guys. We got to cut it off at a certain point because I'm not going to have super heavy weight. You know, and he didn't, they never did.

Well, not having super heavyweight is fine, but merge it. Yeah. It's ridiculous. If a guy is like value-ev, remember value of it? Oh, yeah. The Russian guy was seven feet tall and fought Holyfield. Let him fight! David Hay beat him.

Remember that one? Oh, that's right. David Hay. And David Hay is a small heavyweight in comparison. Oh, yeah. Holyfield beat him too, right? Didn't Holyfield beat him? No, I don't think they.

Holyfield didn't fight, Value it. I think they did. Look that one up. I think they did. I might be wrong. I don't think, I'm not sure Vander fought him. David Hay beat him. I know that.

Might be wrong. Oh, there they are. Yeah. Oh, that's him. 2008. Crazy. And Navander Holyville was a cruiserweight. Remember when he fought Dwight Muhammad Kawi, who was 5-7?

Oh, yeah. Kawi was a 5-7 cruiserweight. He would get underneath you. He was like, moving, he was like, he was a nightmare to deal with. He was, he was a mini Joe Frazier. Bro, he's a tank. That guy was, and he would pull his trunks way up to here. Oh, he did.

Dude, right under his nipples. It was crazy. Oh, Val you have one. Yeah. Highly disputed. That's what it is. Majority decision. That's where you get a fucking referee in your corner.

That's when, look at the age of Evander. Yes. 46. Which is crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. It's crazy when you see these guys that were, you know, like, oh, wow. Yoel Romero can do it. Okay, listen.

No. He is a distinct. This is where this whole UFO thing comes in. Yeah, right. Here is the proof of yes, there are aliens and Yuel Romero is one of them. Yeah. It's wild. He is built differently than every other human being on the face of this planet.

I told this story before. I don't know if you guys heard it, but this actually happened. One of his fights, he had broken into his orbital. The UFC brings him to a doctor. The doctor says to him to the UFC, where did you get this guy? And they go, he's pretty awesome, right? He goes, no, no, no. I've never seen a human built like this before.

They said his tendon in his eye were three times larger than a normal person. They said the orbital bone is already healing. Like, this is crazy. I need no medicine. So then there's some questions. It's like, you know, listen, the Cubans are very connected to the Russians who are very connected to science. It's wild. I mean, you've got to think, if you had a kid and you knew this kid was going to be wrestling,

you're like, bang, bang. bang bang when he's coming up you could make a totally different kind of kid oh i remember i read a story about this guy and his son started showing uh like uh androgenic effects very early on they were freaked out like the kid was getting like his dick was growing he's getting hair they're like what the fuck is happening to this baby and they realized that the dad had testosterone cream so the dad was taking testosterone cream and he's hugging the baby and you know bare chest to bear It's transferring. He's literally juicing up as fucking kid.

Have you seen Andre Smya? Yes. Holy Jesus Christ. Jamie, pull up that guy. Who's this? Andre Smyov is a, he's a, he's kind of a hybrid. He's a bodybuilder, powerlifter, strong man, arm wrestler. Yeah.

He's 350 pounds. I mean, 27 inch arm or something like that. His hands are so big. They look like catchers' mitts. Yeah. And that's, have you heard, you know what he's taking? 2016 to 2026. Look at the difference.

2016, look like a normal... Look at his hands. Yeah, look at his hands difference. His hands are huge because... Growth hormone? Oh, yeah. Everything. He takes a thousand units of growth hormone a day.

That's 10 vials. What? He does? Yes. He's going to die. Whoa. You cannot take that much for me. That's insane.

Yeah. A thousand... Oh my God. Look at the size of him. That's so crazy. That dude does one-arm pull-ups at... 350 pounds. That's not.

I mean, he is absolutely. And he has a regular job. He's 27 years old. Look at him. He looks like he's 50. Yeah, he looks at least 50. Doesn't he have a factory job? I think he has a regular job.

So it's not even, he's not even doing it for money. Oh, no. But it's crazy when you see him when he was young. Like, look at that. That's him. That's the same guy. I mean, that looks like a regular athlete. He is a regular athlete there.

And then all of a sudden he becomes this fucking immense freak. He is. He must have a lot of testosterone to those. His hair like that, yeah. He did everything. He's done everything there is. Whatever you got, give me it. There's a lot of those dudes.

Do you know about that guy, Tom Haviland? Oh, yeah, in Australia? That, that's six foot eight, four hundred pounds. You take a look at him. He is, he's unique in the fact he doesn't do the normal workouts and stuff. Right. He does basic farm stuff. He picks up, you know, things, farmer walks with stuff that's ridiculously heavy.

He does like a lot of, picks up axles and weird shit. Dude, but he's six foot. eight, let's say 330 pounds. More. Not an ounce of fat on him. He was trying to get to four. He was trying to get to four, so he was in the three 90s. He was like, this is building up to 400 pounds, but shredded.

Yeah. And preposterously strong. Yeah. Like farmers. That's always, he's always working out when you can't see him. Yeah, you see his back and he's always wearing clothes, which is very odd. But there's photos of him without the clothes. Yeah.

And it's almost like he's building a masterpiece and he wants to reveal it once he's done painting. See if you can find some pictures of what he actually looks like Because there is occasionally they show his body He'll show his body He always takes all the stuff from behind Yeah fucking bro Wow Look at that's him right there

Look at that's fucking insane He looks young I don't think he's that old Okay he looks young I think he's like maybe 30 or something Damn it's nuts Yeah he is Gigantic dude 6 8 385

What the fuck What the fuck now imagine if he wanted to fight MMA And they're like well sorry you've got to lose 110 pounds Fuck off. That's crazy. Fuck you. Hold on.

Hold on. Think about this. Look at that. You're the heavy weight that they want to put them against. Yes, there's a weight in class. Listen, I think this should be a 225 and then should be chaos.

225 and then chaos. I agree. And let the freaks in. Let them Iceland dudes in. I mean, some of the most entertaining fights and pride, right, were the freak fights. Yeah. Well, here's the thing, no.

That guy's going to melt your piss. Oh, yeah. 100%. So just like you pride. Just like it pride. If you put that fucking guy like one of them tester machines, it would ding like one of those cartoon things

where you fucking. You hit the mallet and it hits the bell. There would be fireworks going off. Streamers coming down. A chance that guy's on the match. Come on. But that's just like pride. You know?

Yeah, exactly like pride. God, pride. Everybody was juicy. They just had the enhanced games. I know. But it didn't do that well. Only one world record was broken in the 50 yard. Yeah, really that was a 50 meter swim.

But they were wearing a suit. He's wearing a suit that's illegal. Yeah, because it makes you slippery. Yeah. And it was the guy that had already beaten the world record like, I don't know, a couple years back. Somebody's beaten him since. It's no one really, it wasn't that successful. And I talked to a friend of mine about it and he was like, I think, first of all,

they're not like monitoring everything everyone's doing. They're not optimizing them. If you really want to juice these people up, you can't let them do it themselves. Yeah. You've got to have like a whole program where you put them on this stuff. But also like, what are we doing? Did you hear what? Did you hear the reason why they're doing it?

Why? The whole thing is kind of like Red Bull. You know how Red Bull does all the crazy, you know, different stunt stuff and everything? Their whole thing is they are a, they're a company that gives out or, you know, puts out these monthly things of TRT and all these different, you know, things with testosterone and stuff. So they did this whole thing as an advertisement. basically for people to see that being enhanced is better and that you'll come and now sign up for it. I think it's $399 a month for your whole thing to be able to be able to.

The enhanced program. There you go. It's the enhanced program. Okay. So when did they... Thank you, Jamie. When we had them on, Jamie, did they bring this up? I don't think they did.

Maybe they adopted this later because we had them on like about a year before they were going to do the games. And I was like, let's go. Juice them up. Juice everybody up. Yeah. What about an enhanced fight games? Very interesting.

The Vitor Belford days. The whole question is this when you truly look at it. Because I look and say, look, if you open it up to everyone, then it's someone's choice. You're going to hear all that thing. Well, you can do it if you want. You don't have to do it. But it's different when you're lifting a weight or you're swimming in a pool or doing those things or you're beating on another human being. It's just a difference

You're creating damage in the sport of fighting 100% do you want to enhance someone In being able to do that You're also enhancing your ability to take damage You could take that in consideration You're going to get hit with less shots Because you're going to have more endurance Because you're going to be on EPO

You're going to have That's always good for you too Super good The strokes that you get on EPO are the best Yeah Yeah. But I mean, like, I got to think there's a way to do all those things if you're monitoring your blood work and you're being very careful where you don't go crazy like the Russian cat. You know people.

That's human nature. Yep. You're right. One step, take another. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And if that guy has skills, imagine that guy.

Oh, my God. Imagine if you got Fedor, you go, bro. Oh, yeah. You want to keep fighting. I got some of 49. But listen. That's only biological. I can make you 32 again.

We get you in a hyperbaric chamber every day for two hours, and this is what we're going to do. Testoster in the morning, testosterone at lunch, testosterone at night. And a little growth after. Oh, growth is all day long. You're taking growth from the moment you wake up. We're going to get you up to about 2.90 shredded. We're going to peptide you.

I think part of the attraction to Fador, though, is his belly. 100%. You lose that, and I'm like, ah, it's not a peter. I mean, imagine Lorenzo saying, I don't want facts. guys to fight and you see Fador. He did everything he could to get Fador. Yeah, well they did. They really did. I remember those days.

It was kind of crazy. He was negotiating with some dangerous characters. And Dana was like, we got to up our security. This is getting getting heavy with these guys. They wanted a piece of the promotion. That was the whole everyone talks about that and stuff. Look, and it wasn't

Fador. Fadre would have fought for anyone and it wasn't the price of what he wanted for money. It was M1 was associated, Vadim Finklstein was Fadour's manager, he had M1, and he wanted a co-promotion with the UFC, and the UFC, no, we can't do that. That's the one thing we can't do. And that was the end all right there. Yeah, which is unfortunate, right?

Oh, totally. We missed out on the greatest matchup of all time between Prime Kane and Prime Fedor. Prime Kane and Prime Fedor would have been fucking nuts. Yeah, I agree. I mean, absolutely nuts. Nobody had a gas tank by tank, Kane. Nobody. I just talked to him yesterday, Kane, and I was just talking about it.

I said, if there's one fight you could come back for and he's like, ah, you know, I'm really, like, he's not, he's just, he's completely checked out of the fight thing. But I was like, you know, he's not. He's doing a great job of training guys. To me. He's back doing it. He's not. No, he's not. No, he's not.

He was just, I was just talking about the fights. No, he's just like, no, I'm kind of like just disconnected. Like, it's just trying to get his life back. Well, understandable. You know? Unustainable. That's the one fight. I said, if there was one fight I could pick for you, it'd be Fador.

That'd be the one fight I'd want to see out of him. We missed that. It's funny because everyone talks, I agree with you completely. Everyone talks about, you know, the fight that they would have put together would have been Brock against Fador. Yeah. And I look and I go, yeah, it's probably not that good of a fight. Yeah, it's like Brock would have had such a hard time standing up with that guy. Yeah.

Fado, well, a good example. But the Brock fight to me that was kind of the craziest fight was Alistar when he was juicy. Uberie. Uberie. Yeah. The most juicy he ever is. That wasn't juice. That was horse meat. That was horse meat.

That was everything. That was horse meat. He definitely ate some horse meat. Oh, yeah. He was. No doubt about it. He was also eating pills. Oh, that guy.

There was a lot going on. But he was a monster. He was huge. World-class kickboxer. You see him now? Yeah. He doesn't look anything like it. He looks like he did.

He's back to his pride days. Slum down, looking good. Yeah. Yeah. Back to his supermodel days. Good for health. Yeah. By the way, that guy's been chaotic a ton of times seems fine.

Like he did the commentary during the Ussick fight, the RICO fight, and it was like, the guy is fucking talking great. He's like smooth and articulate. It's not everyone gets affected the same way. Right. And it is, you know, there's little factors and you can see the difference. There are guys, you know, that have been boxers with 70 professional fights. Do they talk fine? Everything's good.

There's also a gene. I think it's called APOE4. And if you have that, like what is it, how does it work? If you have it, you're protected or if you have it, you have the problem. So there's one, there's one gene expression that makes you more likely to get CT for whatever easy. Yeah. Yeah.

What is it? Put that into perplexity and see what it says about. There's a gene that you have in your body that. Yeah, some people haven't, some people don't. And if you have the, whatever it is where this is gene expression, I'm a moron. I'm not the guy to talk about this. But Dr. Rhonda Patrick talked about this. And she was saying essentially that if you have this, here it is, APOA4 appears to increase the risk of severity of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in people of significant repetitive head impacts, but is a modifier of risk not a cause by itself.

So meaning, obviously. If you have it and you're not taking head shots, you're okay, it doesn't do anything. Right. But if you have it. So go back up again, please? A large post-mortem study of 364 people with R.H.1. 21, 294 was CTE 70 without, carrying APOE4 was associated with more advanced CTE stage and higher tau protein burden in the frontal lobe. But mainly in those older than 65.

But that's just because they haven't been testing all the MMA fighters or all the boxers. You know, because like if you really, you just test in regular folks or football players, probably, it's like football players is probably in the country the most people that have had trauma. Absolutely. Because you think about high school kids, even junior high kids. Before that. Yeah. I mean, they did a study of, I forget how many different people, but they found that everyone, it was like nine out of ten had it in every group, whether it was high school kids, college kids,

some level of CTE, which is nuts. Yeah. Not just NFL, not just college, high school kids. Everything that we've learned and we know today comparatively. From here, I'm going to Florida for the Association of Ringside Physicians. They have their annual conference. And they put on all these different things. And we put together programs for downfighter things and all this stuff.

But we know so much more now. Joe, it used to be, you know, I would go and do a presentation for him. And it was, you know, one of the first things, you know, when I first did it, I asked him a question. The real simple question was, let me ask you this. If a guy gets hit with a shot, boom, and he's out. going down and he hits the ground and the fighter comes in and hits him with a shot is it possible for him to hit him with shot and actually wake him back up everyone from back then no that's impossible all it will do is intensify the effects of the

first shot all this stuff and I took a DVD I said let's watch what fight did you use an example I had a bunch you know and it was a matter of it was trying to show him hey all these things that we think are just not true. Okay, when we have to, we have to branch out and start to figure this stuff out a little bit more because, you know, in boxing, it's different because boxing establishes time for me to make decisions. MMA takes that time away because I have a fighter that is now, instead of walking towards or, you know, trotting towards a neutral corner or something like that, they're trotting towards that person to do more damage to them. And so you're making that quicker decision. And,

you know, we've had too many fights where we have someone that, you know, they're out, going down and then hit the ground and you have to actually wait you know i just had you know one in last week with jason jackson is fighting uh his opponent jeffatin craten and craton and crating he gets hit and he's going down and i'm going in to stop it and i see he starts sitting up and i got i got to wait and it's like i don't want to wait don't sit up and he comes back boom hits him goes out i stop it but it's like those are the ones that you look at and you go man to understand the way the human body, everyone responds differently in certain situations.

But we've learned more as far as the human body will do weird things in traumatic situations. And it is the ability to hit someone and to take those synapses that are connected and to separate them, there is no difference in being able to hit them and putting them back. They can get snapped the same way.

That would be crazy. It's nuts. In the Hermes-Frank fight in UFC 47, I think 46 Jesus Christ, don't go back too far. Yeah, too far. We're in the third round. I catch his leg, and he throws a little loopy shot and drops me. I have the leg in my hand, and I'm just going, I can see my face headed towards the canvas. My eyes are wide open, but I can't put my hands in front of my face.

My face bounces off the canvas. It wakes me up, and then I start fishing for legs. Wow. It was just, I can see everything, I can hear everything. I just couldn't put my hands in front of my face. And my face hits the canvas. I wake back up, and he starts jumping on me. I start trying to fish for legs and trying to get to guard, and that's how that goes.

Wow. The first thought to go through his head was, oh, I hope I didn't damage my face because I'm so good-looking, right? Jealous. It's a problem. It's jealous. This guy's jealous over here. But actually, you violated the stereotype that good-looking guys can't fight. There was a little bit of a stereotype that are good-looking guys.

When push comes to shove, they're going to fall apart because they're too good-looking. They don't want to get fucked up. I don't think so. Not true. I've seen too many good-looking guys. Look at Rico. Verhoven's a fucking model. Yeah, he's a beautiful man.

That guy came to A.K. And train with Kane and DC for a couple weeks. That guy's a fucking murderer. Oh, yeah. He's a murderer. And, like, when we were talking about earlier about the fight and him, his boxing is really good. His cardio, like you guys were talking about is fantastic. But, man, he has no fear of being taken down.

He has no fear of any of these guys. Kane and DC didn't care. He would fight them to the death on defending takedowns. They were like, man, DC was the... As soon as they got, they touched gloves, he would just right to the legs. You know,

he almost fought the UFC. Yeah. They offered him Derek Lewis. But then the Ussick fight came up and it was like,

listen, this is 15 million dollars. Oh, yeah. 15 million dollars. And look what happened. I mean, amazing choice because in most people's eyes

he won most of the rounds of that fight. Go back and look at some of the fights. That one right there, okay? You know, it's the most recent. Look at Francis Ingano

against Tyson Fury. Yep. And look at the scoring on that one. Go back. to Connor McGregor versus Mayweather because no matter what you want to say Connor won the first couple rounds

because Mayweather didn't throw any punches you don't, this whole thing about oh, your general ringmanship bullshit. You're not throwing punches, you're not winning a fight. Okay, it's a fight. It's not a dance. It's not how pretty you look. And so you can go back and I can tell you like I've talked

with some of the judges off of the Mayweather McGregor, they go, I made a mistake. I gave credit where I shouldn't have given credit. It was like, how Interesting, you know. I think it's easier for the heavier weights, though, to go up to boxing and have a little bit more success than it would be for the smaller guys. Like, Iliott's a parade to fight Bud Crawford. Oh, no, no, stop.

That's crazy. You know what I mean? That's my point. The level of boxing talent there with Bud and it's not even close. It's not even close. Bud's one of the greatest to ever do. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But the heavyweight division's a bit if he just went into boxing. Yeah. I mean, the fucking guys' hands are insane. Bud Crawford could go to MMA. That dude can wrestle. Right. Okay? So I would love, I mean, obviously not going to happen just because of the money you can make boxing is not the same.

And also he's another guy that's like, I'm done. You don't have to do this anymore. Oh, dude. I did all the how to want to do. Multiple division weight champion, undefeated, bye. Yeah. Made a ton of money. See you.

Yeah. Beat Canello and box the brakes off of him. Exactly. When he was pity pat punched him and then hitting him with big. shots like that's what you do to someone when you're playing he had canello so absolutely frustrated yeah during that fight but i i remember you watch i was in new york gleason's gym terence crawford is there and he is boxing all these guys and and just playing just absolutely you know come on next one boom running and touch touch he never tried to hurt any of them never

tried to throw a big punch you just look and you go how good is this guy yeah he is that You know, he's that guy. And one of the best switch hitters to ever do it. Oh, yeah. In my opinion, it's like him and Hagler. They're like right there together. It's wild. Greatest switch hitters.

Yeah. Does he get boxed you, Southpaw? And all of a sudden, he's Orthodox. Oh, no. And the funny part about him is, you know, you see it at M.M.A. Guys will switch when they take a step and throw a punch and they'll switch to a different. He does the same thing. And he does it and then takes a lateral movement that had Canello like, where the hell is he?

And he's going, hi, bap, you know? And you go, oh my God, he's so goddamn good. He hit Canello with a straight left, and then Canello went to counter, and he had the hand still out there, and he threw it, turned it into a left hook. And I was like, good Lord. It was so pretty. You could see Cannell's like, here I come back, bang. He gets dinged with the left hook. I'm like, that is crazy speed and precision and technique.

I've said this before. I've sparred with Robert the Ghost Carrero, because he lived in Gilroy, and we would train together all the time. He would use me for the, I'd be in fight shape, ready for my. UFC fights. He just judge his son's fight. Yeah. Literally I'd show up. I was the first four rounds of a 12 round session. He knew a new training partner every four rounds.

This guy would just piece me up. He would just toy with me. And it was embarrassing. I'm like, I'm in the best shape of my life. But by round four, I was exhausted. And he was barely touching me. Just touch, touch, touch, move. Slip on the side. Slip out the side. So good. And he wasn't at Mayweather's level. He's fought Mayweather,

but he wasn't that level of slickness, but he made it look like it when I was in there with it. It's all in comparison. So good. I mean, there's guys that look, look at Jack Delamadena when he fought Carlos Protest. You're like, Jack Delamadena is one of the scariest

strikers in the sport. And then he fights protest. You're like, oh, levels. Oh, there is a difference. Levels. That's it. That's what you try to, and everyone has this idea. We talk about it all the time.

And I go, you don't understand the difference this much makes in the difference of how you compare in a fight with somebody. Levels. Oh, my God. Levels. Especially when you get a guy like, Protas that had so many high-level Muay fights.

That's the big difference. These guys that with only striking, they develop an understanding of positions and technique that's just not available if you're training the other stuff too. And so then they get to this, like Pereira, they get to this super high level at this one thing, and then they incorporate the other stuff. But that other left, you're not going to catch them.

You're not going to catch Prattas when it comes to Muay. That step-in fucking Tomahawk elbow that he does? Holy shit, dude. And he's playing. And he smokes Marlboros and he drinks. He smokes Marlboros in the back. Bro, it's crazy. He's getting ready for the fight and he's smoking blunt.

What was the guy that fought Delaware that would come out and smoking cigarettes? Oh, yeah. Majorga. Mojorga. Yeah. But, I mean, Mayorga was never at the level of Prattas. No. Prattas, like, is so fucking slick, man.

Some of the shit that he was doing to JDM, like, J.D.M is a fucking killer. And he had no success. No, he was drowning. He was drowning. And it was, it's also like, what is going on with his limbs? Why are they so big? It's like crazy. Like, he says he's six foot one.

The fuck out of here, bro. I want to measure your height and your length. Because I think there's some bullshit. Yeah, he's just all legs and arm. I think he did this for his reach. His reach is nuts. When you see him in there, he's like all arms and limbs. And the technique is so beautiful.

It's so beautiful. The setups, when you think he's punching, he's kicking the fuck out of your calf and he's like slowly breaking you down slowly breaking and the knee that fucking knee that comes out like a jab his knee is nuts man you go back to his fight with Gary

you know and you look at you know Gary was doing great that last round yeah you know he came back on it and you look and you go if this was five rounds it'd be a real problem hello but it also shows you how fucking good Ian Gary is oh absolutely that's the whole point that shows how good he is because he has gone

against guys that are a real problem as far as stylistically. You know, his fight against MVP. Yeah, Gary did, you know, fought as smart as you could fight and did a wonderful job in showing, hey, I'm multifaceted. I'm not just, you know, this one style fighter. With Prattas, when he knocked out Leon Edwards, I was like, oh, I knew he was really elite, but I'm like, Leon's so technical and he's so slick. Like if it's just, and Prata's not going to try to take him down.

I'm like, this is going to be a very interesting fight. Yeah. But it wasn't. It was Kyle's Prattez's show. He put on a fucking show. The relaxation, the comfortness of being out there. Also, too, Leon understanding like I was the champion, I'm not the champion, it's hard to get back there. The mindset has changed a lot.

It's been hard for Leon ever since when he lost that title fight against Muhammad. And you look in everything that's happened to him since, it's just, you know, confidence is everything. Yeah. Well, the Sean Brady fight might have been even more brutal than that because Sean, just mauled him. Malled him. When Sean gets on top of people, like, what he did? The Joaquin Buckley was bananas. No, it wasn't. I look at that, and this is why. Sean Brady won against Craig Jones. Okay, now it was an advantage as far as winning, but he grappled against the real Craig Jones and showed that he can stay with him. Poor Joaquin is not at that level. Craig was not allowed to use leg locks. You know that, right? That's crazy. That's a big, that's like fighting Ernesto. Hoost and you only can kick above the waist. You know what I'm saying? Well, that's just as if you're Rick Rufus, that's a smart idea.

Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? It's like Craig Jones, like you've got to give him his goal game. You can't have him thinking, oh, I can't do this. You're saying he's 50% of his attacks. But it shows you how good he is. Elite. Really good. Elite.

But it was just the ability to hold him down was just shocking. I mean, it was like, God, and then when he was mounting him and just like he was doing drills. Yeah. It was just like staying calm and just. bang, bang, bang. It was like he was doing conditioning drills on a heavy bag. Like, he was just sitting on a heavy bag, pounding on the bag.

Time. He was. Bro, it was nuts. I said this, maybe I caught some flack for it a little bit, but I said, like, look, I think the Ian Gary fight and the protest fight for Islam, both those fights, I'm not saying they're easy fights because they're not. But you put someone like a Sean Brady against Islam and that becomes a little bit of a problem, a little bit more difficult. But that's a match-ups. Big difference. You know, styles make matchups.

Styles make matchups. When you look at someone. style comparatively. One person is easy for someone, they're very difficult for someone else. If you're going to put someone against Islam as far as it's going to be on the ground with him and give him difficult times.

There's not a big enough sample size for me with Michael Morales. I think Michael Morales could be a big threat on the feet, the wrestling. People are going to say, well, he beat Sean Brady, so obviously. Stopped him. Yeah, yeah. But the size, I think, Michael Morales will give Islam some problems as well. And Michael Morales can fucking wrestle. Yeah. Right? It's not like he's just a box.

and national champ, I think is what he was, and then he's obviously got power. But he's a huge. Islam doesn't do the normal wrestling. Nope. His takedowns are different. Yep. A lot of foot sweeps, a lot of judo,

a lot of difference in the way he does things. And world championship experience. Yes. And also the years of training with Khabibb. Yeah. Years. What he does so well is he does it off a transition. As soon as you punch and you guys anywhere inside the clinch,

he's already hitting the foot sweep into the inside trip. Can't get it? Okay, I'll drop on a single or a double. You know I'm excited about it. One-70s, Amosov. Oh, dude. That Ukrainian cat? Oh, we know.

We know. We know. Of course you know. Look, he's good. He is absolutely the real deal. Yeah. He is good everywhere. Everywhere.

And his wrestling and his grappling ability, his submission ability is at the top of the field. It's right there with Sean Brady. I'm lying. No, no, it is. It is. I just, there's one guy out there, though, and he was just talking about him. the one guy that he lost to who's not signed by the UFC and that's Jason Jackson. He's the one guy

to beat him. I'd love to see Jason Jackson in the UFC. Where's Jason now? He just fought an MVP. Just fought an MVP. Won him like 10 seconds? 22 seconds. 22 seconds. I had a hard night. I had 22 seconds and 17. It was very difficult. I was exhausted. But he's the only one, he's the only

guy to beat. Yarlslaw Slaffama Sal. He is. He's fantastic on the feet. He has a wrestling background, but he chooses to stand. He's got like 30 jobs, a coconut stand. He's got all kinds of business. He works. He works all the time. He's a working man.

He's a working man. But he's very talented. I love watching that guy fight. I think him, you add him against a protest or against Ian Gary. Oh, it would be great. These guys would duke it out. It would be a great fight. It's interesting when there's guys that are at that level that aren't known.

Yeah. And he's a former champion. Jason's been there. You've got to figure he was in the UFC as far as the ultimate fighter when they did that whole Black Zillions versus ATT. Oh, that's right. He was part of that. That's right. You know, and he's just always been on the cusp of being brought back in and then not.

You're looking and you go, he's got all the talent in the world. And he's tough as hell. He'll fight. He is tough. Who is that cat, that heavyweight that just knocked out Henan Ferrer? Oh, that's Sergei. Billistino. And he's one of Fador's boys, right?

He is a Bordejeet. He is now, yeah. That dude. Yeah. That dude's scared. The other one. He's, dude, that dude, is yoked. Yoked and moves fast.

He's fast and he's got power. But then you also got Nemtok. Nemcoff's at heavyweight now. Vadim Nemcoff. He's another guy that's at the top of the heap that's not in the UFC. Vadim Nemcoff is good. And, man, he is. Extremely athletic.

He's not going to, he's not a big heavyweight. He's got great lateral movement. He's really good with his hands. He's a 240. He's a 240. And he can wrestle. Yeah. And he can wrestle.

He can do everything. He chooses. He chooses to stand, but he'll mix up the wrestling and kind of get you guessing. And he's another Fador guy. He's another Fador guy. Yeah. Yeah, that's another one. Like, training under Khabib, I mean, if you're a Russian guy, training under Fador, like, good Lord.

What a crazy opportunity. Yeah, but you got to live in Stario School. Do you really? That's where they live? That's where they live, man. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. No parties there.

Nope. You better have snow tires, too. Oh, yes, you better. Thick clothing. Thick clothing, snow tires, and hate comfort. Oh, my God. You're sleeping on a futon, bitch. Yeah, there's a lot of talented guys that will come out of other promotions.

but I'd love to see Jason Jackson in there mixing it up with those guys stylistically the matchups are there with Prattis and Gary and the 170s right now and putting Yarras lot when the UFC finally signed him I said thank God thank God yeah me too

he deserves to be there and they need you know that kind of and look he's gone in and proven you know his fight against Joel Alvarez and Joel Alvarez is a good fighter I mean he made him look absolutely like the guy didn't know Yeah, I watched it yesterday. I watched it again yesterday. I mean you just watch the last take down, you know, when he when he airborneed them. Oh my God And you look at the ease that he did it with. Yep, yeah, that's the thing. It's like-

spectacular technique. Oh my God, his technique. And the tightness of his grappling? See, and his his training partner is Johnny Ebblin. Ah, same guy that's the training partner now for Sean Strickland. Yeah, no, and Johnny, those guys go after each other day, day. And Johnny will tell you he's the one that gives him the most fits inside of the gym. The one that I spar with the most, the one that just gives me all the fits on the grappling, the wrestling, all those things. Go back to his fights too in the past when he fought Ed Ruth. He hip-tossed Ed. Oh, my God. He took Ed Ruth down three-time national champ out of Penn State.

I mean, he was having success against him. It was a very close fight, you know, and he ended up winning the fight, but it was one of those fights. You're like, damn, you walked away going, this guy can wrestle. This guy can stand. He's chasing submissions. He's trying to get finishes. I mean, he had takedowns against Logan Story. six-time state champ out of

South... Four-time All-American, Minnesota. And four-time All-American out of South Minnesota. Just phenomenal. Fonomenal wrestler, but he's able to have exchanges with these guys chasing

anacondas, darses, knee bars, everything. Extremely talented. There's a lot of guys that I would love to see to kind of mix in. Because every time, because when you look at the history

of the sport, you got like Strike Force. When it came into the UFC, those were the best fights. And you start pulling plucking. I'm not saying that a lot of these guys need to come in right now, but if you can pluck one or two guys,

That's for each division. It starts sprucing this whole thing up. Because for a little bit before the Paramount deal happened, you know, because I cover it, I cover it every fight every week, right? And we talk about it on the pod. It just simply put,

everyone's like, man, these fights are trash, they're garbage, this and now. Like, guys are being complainers. Like, this, the cards are great. You guys are just, they're used to that,

the next level of like the Conners and the Alces. Yeah. On every card. When it comes to just technique and just fighting ability, there's amazing fights out there. Amazing fights.

When you, you add in someone like when Michael Chandler came in there was a lot of hype around it when Patricio came in and Aaron Pico when they came in there's a lot of hype around it. It kind of puts a little shot in the arm into the weight class and gets everyone amped up. The fighters that are there at the UFC

they're like, this guy ain't fucking beating me. I'm not letting this bum from this that's good. That's good. And then the fighters that are coming in there are like, no, I'm here to shoot, I'm here to prove that I deserve to be here. So it kind of, it gets the fans amped up, it gets the promotion amped up and the divisions kind of, it's a little

a little bit of a spark, so I'd love to see that happen a little bit more. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, the pico thing is really interesting. It's like his last fight, he looks so tight against pit bull. He looks so good. Everything looks so smooth. Like, his boxing was flowing. His transitions to grappling was flowing.

He fought intelligently. Like, that's the pico that we needed to see. Yeah, but you take a look at his first fight against Laron. And I always say that was a pico that was pressing. He was pressing that fight and making, you know, taking chances. Absolutely.

That he's coming. And you're looking and you go, this is the difference between, you know, that first fight in the UFC and wanting to do so well and wanting to prove how good you are and stuff. And then finally relaxing and just, hey, let the fight come to me.

Let me show what I can do and taking those moments when you get him, that's what he did in his fight against Patricio. And look, Patricio is good. And Pico, Pico could be, so good. He just has to relax. He's still young. He's fighting. Oh yeah. He's had a bunch of pretty bad chaos. Yes, he has.

The Borax won. And that's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Boritz, you had the one against freaking Corales. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He hurt Corales, and then he got starched. He's had a couple of them. And both those fights he was winning. And that's the thing is he was winning. He's

beaten Borich and he was beating Corrales. The fight said he lost, I mean, so hyper-aggressive. Yeah. And that's part of the problem. But it's also because he's so fucking good. But he's got the best left hook to the body. since Paul Daly. Oh, it's so smooth. Oh, my God, it's beautiful.

I mean, just his left hook period. It's like such a whip. Yeah. The technique is so smooth. It's so nice. So I got to ask you about the Joe Schilling fight because it was such a weird stoppage where Joe just decided that's it, I'm quitting. So his opponent head butts him.

Yeah. And then Mike Beltron, his great referee, takes a point away? He did take a point. And then puts him right back in the same position. Okay, stop. That's not exactly what happened. It's not? No, well, it is what happened.

Yes, you're right. But when you have a situation like that and you have the headbutt. Mike Beltran calls a stop, calls timeout, right? Gets them up off of their feet and tries to put Joe, Joe's pissed. And I understand why Joe's pissed. You know, he's saying, hey, first off, Joe's 42 years of age. He doesn't come there to be fouled. He's trying to, you know, he's going to fight, okay.

You know, and the whole thing is look at the, look where his hands are. They're overhooked right now. Right, right. Okay, the other guy's got his hands on the ground. Right. Okay. So, you know, you don't want your hands on the ground. Okay, so Joe's in a decent part to at least if he wants to defend himself.

So when he gets up, he's pissed off and everything. And then Beltran takes a point from the opponent and ask Joe, do you want to be, you want to stand up or do you want it back on the ground? And Joe picked, I want to be back on the ground. Okay. Why do you give your, why do you, why are you allowed to make a decision? You're allowed to make the decision because you were the one that was fouled in a normal situation. He said, I want to be back on the ground? He said, I want to be back on the ground.

That seems crazy. I agree with you. It's not what you would expect out of Joe Schilling. World class, world champion kickbox. Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, with that, you got to, you know, he's the one's foul. If the person on top is the one fouling, normally we're going to say they're going to lose their position.

But there are many grapplers and people that have a hard. time getting that person down. And so we went back to saying, all right, we're going to give the person who was fouled the opportunity to make a decision. Normally we're going to put it back on the feet. But if you want to put it back on the ground, I'll put it back there, but you're going to be in the same position as you were when the foul occurred. Right. And that's what Mike Beltran went to do. And so he starts to put him back. You have, Abena is the opponent, and he starts to put his hands on Joe's biceps. If you watch when they start to...

When they put him back on the ground. Joe tries to do the overhook. You saw the overhook, and Abinich starts to put his hand on the biceps. He did it on the left bicep, right? Yeah. And so it's not a matter of, you know, Beltran wasn't there to start the fight yet.

He's got to put him in that position. But Joe, once that bicep thing started happening, he got mad. And he said, I'm done. Stop the fight. You can't make somebody fight. If someone says, I want out of the fight, they're out of the fight. So Beltran was in a position where he says he wants out of the fight.

He's started he foul me, and that's what he's saying. And now he feels like he's not going to be put back in that same position, but he hadn't been, it's not like Beltran started it. He's trying to put him back in the same position when Joe's kind of just losing his steam and getting pissed off. And so, you know, I look at it, look, if you're going to be that pissed off, it's a good thing you're not fighting because you don't fight smart and you're going to end up getting hurt but he's the one that decided that

so he clearly has two overhooks at the end of the fight at this time of the foul he's got an overhook both sides yeah well sort of the right one's not totally but he's holding the back of the triceps so you're going to say okay so that's where he's at look where the opponent's hands are at

opponent's hands are under his shoulders yeah okay so that's where you should start that's where it should be started but he never gave Beltran the actual ability in time to say, no, no, put your hand here. And you can see Beltran starts to, you know, as Abana starts to try to put his hands on the biceps, Beltrans starting to put him underneath. So it's not Beltrane. So it's not Belcher.

To go back to the ground. You know, that's the real question. And, you know, all I know is at 42 years of age, you know, you're looking and saying, you know, Joe Schilling can fight. You know, Joe Schilling, he was a gangster. No doubt about it. And he at this point is, you know, is he looking to, you know, become a champion? No, he's not looking to be a champion. So I'm taking the fight for what reason, for money.

And so I think he just looked at it and based upon, well, this is not what I expected. I expected a fair fight. I expected us to, you know, fight like professionals. And this dip shit is now headbutting me. He just got pissed and he lost his cool with it. And when he wasn't being put back right away into that same position where he thought the guy is now trying to up again. take another advantage. It just sent him off the end and he said, I'm done.

Right. You just got too emotional. You got too emotional with it. That's a bummer. Yeah, it is because Joe's a great guy. When you fought at the level he's fought at, you expect a certain level of professionalism. And when you have these young guys that come in, there's no, it feels a little disrespectful. Like, you knew where you were at. Why are you trying to game the system right now? You just head butted him. Yeah. Which is crazy.

Oh, and there's a lot of people saying, well, you know, I don't think it really hit him. It hit him in the jaw. Okay, it didn't hit him head to head. And you're not allowed to use your head as a striking instrument. It's a foul. And it's pretty clear that he was trying to do that. Yes. It wasn't as simple as like positioning his head.

No. Try to get a better. Look, we say you can use your head as a steering instrument, as a third arm, you can press with it. You can do a lot of uncomfortable things with it. You cannot pick it up and bring it back to strike. And it was clear that that's what he was doing. That's exactly what he did. I think it's just very awkward for a lot of people that see Joe Schilling in his past fights.

He's been through it all. And then for him to get super frustrated this way, it was a lot of people question. I'm like, I don't question it all because, you expect, like I said, a certain level of professionalism. Like, we know that we're both going out there to fight and knock each other out. Why do you got to cheat? Yeah. There's a certain set of rules that we're doing this under, right?

And now you're taking those rules and just tossing them to the side like, you know, this doesn't mean something. No, it means something to me. You know, I'm 42 years of age, and I don't expect someone to be fouling me just on purpose. And look, the whole, no matter what, that was, you know, right now we use intent. Okay. That was intentional. Right. He did something.

I call it malicious. It's a malicious attack on him. You're maliciously trying to inflict an injury on someone through a foul. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Did you watch the MVP fights? Yes. What was your takeaway on that?

The overall card as well as the Gina and Rhonda fight. I mean, look, when you're coming in as your first time putting on a promotion, there's no way it's all going to be smooth. It's not possible. You know, there's no way. You're also you're not dealing with the same caliber of names other than Gina and Rhonda and Francis. You know, the Mike Perry, Nate Diaz fight was, when was the last time Nate fought MMA? It's been a while. Probably six years.

Been a while. Yeah, six years. Which is kind of crazy, right? And Mike has been fighting bare knuckle and fucking people up for quite a while. Dude. He's an animal, dude. Yeah. He's found his sport, though.

2022, so four years ago. Four years ago, he beat Tony Ferguson. But he's found his way. This is stylistically his, the best thing he can do for his career is fight bare knuckle, fight, fight boxing. This is the best thing for him. And Mike is, like, uniquely talented at bare knuckle. Oh, like uniquely.

Look, I'm being honest, I used him as my demonstrator for, you know, Andy Foster is the executive officer in California. and he didn't like bare knuckle. I wrote the rules for bare knuckle long ago. Dave Feldman came to me and said, hey, I need rules written for me. I'm trying to legalize this. Someone that I knew hooked him up with me,

and I said, look, I'll write your rules. And I go, and I gave him two prices. And I said, I'm not doing it for free. It's too much of a pain in the ass. So here's my two prices. My one price is you don't say who wrote them, and you just use them. And the other price is you say who wrote.

And it was because I knew I was going to, get in trouble for doing this and you know oh what is John McCarthy think he's doing now he's writing rules for that did you write the rules for slap fights no I don't like some fights I hate I hate those but so you can't defend yourself that's it that's the only fucking rule it's the dumbest thing ever so crazy you know have you seen the other where they just run at each other oh that's even worse they're like oh my beer yeah you think slap fight is retarded to hold my beer we're just exactly right that's what it's called run it right right those are These things are crazy.

It's crazy. But the whole thing with, you know, the Mike Perry thing is, you know, trying to get athletic commissions to start to understand. Because they're all into this thing. Joe, it's like you take a look at M.M.A. I'm allowed to hit you with a shin to the dome like you talked about. You know, I'm allowed to take my knee and hit it to your dome. I'm allowed to take my elbow and smash you, you know, even when your head's against the ground. I'm allowed to do all these things.

But my bare fist is the big problem. It's kind of funny. Oh, it's ridiculous. but it's perception and perception is a real problem because people believe what they're saying. Oh, it's horrible. So, you know, Andy Foster was one of the ones that he didn't like it. And I said, Andy, I tried saying, go through those whole things with the shin, the knee, the elbow. And he goes, yeah, I know.

He says, I just don't like it. I said, Andy, I need you to look at it this way then. I go, there are people out there that are made for boxing. Floyd Mayweather, Terence Crawford, Canelo Alvarez, they're made to be a boxer. They have all this technical skill. You know what? They're just unbelievable. I said there's these guys, same thing in MMA.

There's the George St. Pierre's. You know, you got the Alexander Volcanowski's. You got the, all these people, you know, Islam Makhachev was the last one I used. I said, they're made for MMA. I go, Mike Perry was an MMA fighter. I said, he's not made for MMA. He's a tough guy.

I go, but bare knuckle he was made for. I said, and this is a guy. who can make a living fighting for bare knuckle he can pay his bills he can support his family fighting bare knuckle and become a stalwart yeah i said and possibly get you know sponsors and everything that are going to make it so you can live the rest of his life i said and you're going to say that you want to take that away because of a bare fist i go it just doesn't make sense to me he looks at me he goes you're right the best thing that could have happened to him was him leaving but him being released from the UFC.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You got an old-timey ring. Andy Foster's calling you. That's funny. Put him on speakerphone. You want to put Andy under a spot like that.

And Andy's done such a great job. He's great. He does things that people don't realize. You know, he's now got a license plate that's out for retired fighters to try to get them a retirement. He's got a retirement for boxers already that was set. He's been doing things to try to get a retirement fund for, you know, a Josh Thompson who fought 15 times in California. 19, I looked it up.

Is it 19, okay? I'm wrong. 19 times in California, he can get an actual retirement. Now, it's not going to be a retirement that he gets paid every month. They'll give him a large sum of money that he can then go, he can go to a trade school. He can go to, he could buy a house. He can do these things as a down payment. Andy just put in a thing.

It just got turned down because of a staffer. It was Assembly Bill 2130 in California. And that assembly bill was no money out of the taxpayers' money, zero taxpayer money. It's about sponsorship. A dumbass like me as a referee has to wear a sponsor's thing on my shirt. That will then, 75% of it went to retired fighters. 25% of it went to training for upcoming and insertion. officials, both judges and referees.

What's the negative? There is no negative, but you get these people in politics that sit there and go, oh, I don't like this. You want to know what their negative was? This is in California, by the way. Yeah, this is in California. California is the best state for decisions. But their whole thing was...

As we both live in Texas now. Think about this. We all. We all left there. But their whole thing was, well, that would allow the sponsor to say that they're basically part of California and they're running they're doing things for California it's like they are doing things for California they're helping the people that fucking put on fucking entertaining fights and things for people here it's ridiculous

there was nothing good there's some great people in California there are sure you know and there's some great assembly people I you know I just did a whole thing for you know Heath Flora who's an assemblyman there and he's putting up a bill about you being able to if you protect somebody other than yourself and from somebody that's trying to do something he's trying to make it to where they can't civilly go after you. Makes sense. You're doing the right thing.

But no, there's people fighting against it. Why? It's just, oh, politics. Politics suck. They suck in California. My dad always used to say, think about the word politics. Polly, meaning many, ticks blood-sucking little insect. It's a bummer.

It's a bummer. It's crazy. And then did you see that cocker's return into MMA? I did. Give me your take. I like Scott a lot, but good luck. You only have $60 million. When I saw it was only $60 million, I was like, that sounds like a lot of money.

Until you think about putting on an MMA promotion. It's hard. And then getting television production and then, you know, paying fighters and then securing venues and then having staff full time for like. Maybe. You know, you got Tony Hawk with you? Maybe. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm rooting for him.

I think he did great when he was running Glory as well as when he was running Bellator back in the day. He's a really nice guy. Yeah. I think it's great for everybody if there's more competition. I think this whole MVP thing and the Netflix thing is great. It stirred a bunch of cash into the organization. A bunch of people got more money than they would ever gotten anywhere else. Awesome.

More options, the better. Yeah, I think. Just, you know, I hope he could do it. Yeah, I think a lot of us, I think a lot of people do. Because I think as they do grow promotions, right, the fighters get more experience on a high-level competition. You need to fight fighters from all around the world. I'm just excited for more promotions to be involved.

Yeah, more promotions is good. More options is good. More money is what we really want. The fighters need to get more money. It's always going to be the UFC here, you know? And ultimately it just comes down like you need more people to build up to get to that level. Name a good XFL game that you watched. You know what I'm saying?

It's true. Nothing wrong. I'm sure it's great athletes. But it's the whole thing. And you know, you're part of it. You know, what you did with the UFC and how you made it exciting for people when you were calling fights. You know, it's a people now, a lot of them, they don't even know the fighters that are on the card. But they'll turn it on when it says UFC because they believe in the product.

Yep. Right. And that's what you're supposed to do as the company and for marketing. But the one problem I do think that they have right now is they're unambats. able to market people like they did when, you know, you and I were early in it and stuff. You know, they now are in a position every week. And so it's tough to market, you know, those, the guys who are not well known. If you're not.

Fight nights, a lot of times, the casuals have no idea there's even a fight night out. Exactly. And some of them are fucking insane. Oh, some of the best. We talk about all the time. It's like, you know, the card itself rates, if you're looking at it, honestly, it rates a five. On paper.

It rates of five. On paper. And then you'll, you'll, you'll, look, you're looking at it. watch it and it's a 9.5. Yeah. They're working to get to the top. Yeah. Those are the hundred ones. They got something to prove. Yeah. And for hardcore fans, it's like giving them constant food.

It is. Or drugs. But it's giving them that dopamine. It's over. It is the thing. When you look at it, it's the hardcore fan that the UFC has. But the casual ones, the one that puts it over. Yep. And it's hard to get people to understand. You need to get the casuals, the ones that don't watch fights all the time. And that's the one thing I'll give, I'll give Rhonda Rousey, man.

thought she did an amazing job of talking. 100% and putting, you know, things out there the way she did. She made, she got people's attention. She did what was her job. Yeah, and they, 17 million people were watching that. That's right. That's huge. Yeah, it is huge.

It's all good for everybody. It's good for the sport. It's great for the sport. It's like, that's what we need. We need more competition, more, more eyeballs on it. And unfortunately for the, you know, the people that are casuals, it has to be a name. You know, it has to, like this Connor McGregor fight in July is going to be fucking bananas. It's going to be

bananas. People are going to go crazy for the return of Connor McGregor. Because he's a giant personality. But don't expect the same thing. How could it be? He just can't. He hasn't fought in five years, right? It's exactly it. But that's the problem. It might be more. Because they're going to all I think it is a little over five. It's almost six, I think.

It might be six at the time of the fight. It might be six. I think it was July. I think it's five right now. Are we expecting to see a Connor that look like Nate this last fight? Are we expecting to see a better Connor than some of that look like Because Nate did not look good. No, Mike Perry did.

Mike Perry looked like a fucking murderer. You know what I mean? Like Mike Perry is a murderer. He's a murderer. Such a savage. You take a look at that and you know, when you're taking an older fighter, which Nate is now. 21. Five fucking years ago, July.

So it literally will be six years. Yeah. But when you're taking. Oh, no, it'll be five years. Five years. When you're taking a younger fighter and putting them against the old dog, it normally doesn't end well for the old dog. Well, the thing is about Max Holloways, like Max Holloway isn't that much younger than Connor.

He's not. But the thing is Max has been in constant high-level competition the entire time. Won the BMF fight, you know, beat Dustin, like constant high-level competition. That's right. It's a different thing. And I honestly believe him at 155 is the best thing for him. But he's not 155 in this fight. This is 170.

But honestly, he may be better. No way cutting at all. Just no weight cut, just kind of walk around. And also knowing this is such a high-profile. He's going to, Max is always in insane shape, but in particularly in this fight he's going to be in fucking insane shape. And his last fight, he took almost no damage.

He got taken down, controlled, back taken. And there was not a lot of damage taken to that fight. Yeah, frustration. Bro, Charles looked like a motherfucker in that fight. He's so good. He's so good. Good everywhere, too. And on the ground, he's just so goddamn, dangerous. And it just makes

you think, how good is Islam? His Islam just smushed him. I can tell you, he's really good. I mean, it's kind of crazy, though, when you think about how strong Charles's grappling is and how Islam just... Yeah. Dude, he called it. He called it.

He said, he goes, he goes, Islam is going to submit Charles. And he goes, and he's going to submit him with a head and armchook. And I said Kimora or hit an arm. I said either one for sure. I go, shut up. Yeah. Okay, just shut up. He's not going to do that.

I said he would do it before three rounds. He did it, you know, obviously very quick. But it was... His grappling is just otherworldly. And the way he secures that dars by grabbing the forearm. I've seen a lot of guys try that now. A lot of guys are going to that now. Because you don't have to get as deep.

So you just go through and just right at the top and cover the head with your chest and just suck it in. You see people doing things all, you know, we always talk about, you know, back a long time ago, figure four in the body. We go, don't do that. They step the foot inside. It's going to crank you. It's bad. How about that crazy? They just had the girl do it.

Geotene that A.J. McKee does. Oh, the McKeotene. Yeah. How about that fucking thing? Like, how come no one's doing that? But that's the whole thing. Okay, look at what... Body styles.

When he did that, I was like, wait. Yeah, his body style. He's so long, he's able to reach him. He's crazy. He's a 145. He's a big boy. But Grant Dawson just did the genie choke. Okay.

How many times have you seen that done in competition? But I've seen it in the... The grappling room all the time. Right. Guys doing it, right? And all of a sudden, people are like, never seen that. It's like, dude.

It's been around forever. Well, it's like when we talked about Edson Barbosa knocking out Terry Edom. How did he get to that fight before that was the first wheel kick, Kio? Well, we've seen a ton of them since then. But that was the first one? Like, that doesn't even make sense. When Anderson Silva front kick Vitor in the face, we were like, wait, hold on. You could do that?

Like, I remember Eddie and I having a conversation about kicks. And he goes, what do you think about front kicks in the face? I'm like, eh, it doesn't really land that often. Incorrect. And then Machita does it to Randy, and then Machita does it to Vitor. Oh, my God. So Vitor's been on the receiving them twice on that kick. Yeah, man.

I mean, there's been a bunch of them now. Now you see a lot of front kicks to the face. Because it's such an unexpected thing, especially if you guys, you know, you're getting hit to the body with it a bunch and you're getting used to doing this. And then donk, it hits you right on the chin. It's just such an unexpected technique. Every time we think that we're not going to see something new, something new pops up.

But the crazy thing about front kicks is it's literally a first thing you ever get taught. When you learn how to kick, that's the first thing you ever get taught. The idea of there being a new use for the first thing you ever learned is kind of crazy. A little snap kick. Yeah. It's nuts. I mean, karate, like, that's day one. That's it.

Just like that. Exactly. And that's what it looks like, too. All goofy and shit. The fact that that's the kick that, and then calf kicks, of course. Like, that's number one. You know, it's interesting because Cubbs Swanson is actually saying that he was the first guy to throw calf kicks. He was saying like, no, no, no, go back to like 2011.

I was landing calf kicks. I forget who he fought. They said he fucked somebody up with a calf kick. Well, then I'll tell you before that, though, was... Benson was one of the early ones for sure. George Mosvidal. Really? Yes, he was doing it in Strike Force in 2007, 2008.

Really? Well, I believe... Around that time. If you look at ATT as a team, they do calf kicks all the time. That is a huge weapon that they use. You go back and watch Mosvidal when he fought. KJ Noons and how he just destroyed KJ Noons and he was kept kicking the calf to the head kick to the body shots to the boxing he just pieced him up.

People forgot how good Mazvah was his boy. When he knocked out Eve Edwards, the head kick, like people really sleep on Mosvado. Mosvado was slick. He was so good. When he knocked out Cowboy, people like, oh. When he knocked out Darren Till, how about that one? There you go. That one was bananas, that step in hook. Yeah, because that was a weight class above what he normally fought up. Yep.

You know, he was one of those But he was better when he went up, just like most guys are. But he never got the credit you deserved. Everywhere he went, whether it was strike force into the UFC, he never got credit until he started doing things that people didn't think he could do. You know, when he knocked out, like you said, Darren Till, the running across the cage with Ben Asker, like those kind of things. He had no love up until those moments.

That guy was always nasty. Always, yeah. Dude, all the way back to his street fighting days with Kimbo. Right. He had some good ones. Yeah. I had this. I wanted to ask you this, because I look at these guys now,

what is it with the younger fighters that can't get past the old dogs? Like, Dustin doesn't have to retire. Justin Gacy doesn't have to retire. They're still ranked in number two and number three. What are you seen on your side that makes you think, like, man, these young guys, these old guys, they're not going softly into the night. They're not letting these guys come by. Why can't the younger guys get past them?

Well, it depends on who. Patty not being past Justin. Patty was not at Justin's level with stand up. No. Justin's level was, like, quite a bit. First of all, Justin is an elite grappler. So, like, what is Patty going to do? He's going to take him down?

That's not it. That's no picnic. And standing up with Justin, Justin has, like, some of the nastiest fucking leg kicks in the sport. I wish he'd use them more. I know, right? Remember when he used to throw him from the clinch? Oh, yeah.

Like, he's in tight with you, and he's kicking down on your legs. And you're like, how are you moving your hips like that? He was an animal. He still is an animal. It's like he's not, he hasn't faded. You know, Justin's not faded. that Fiziv fight, Fiziv is an elite world-class striker, and he beat him upstanding.

Yep. Twice. Yeah, he hasn't faded. Justin hasn't faded. He's just 36 or whatever he is, 37. I think he's losing, but you got to have a passion for the sport. And I think Dana says,

look, if you're not 100% in, don't do this. And he's right. And I think there comes that point where it just gets to that, you know what, there's other things out in the world I want to start doing things. Do you think Justin's at that spot right now?

I'm not too sure he's at that spot, but I think he's thought about it based upon some of the performances and the tight fights he's had. I think the fight with Max Holloway made him kind of think about. That was a tough fight for him all the way through. All the way through. All the way through. He lives a comfortable life.

He does. He lives a good life. He enjoys playing golf with the boys. You know, he's another guy. I know he's like, oh, I've spent money. I need to make more money and this and that. but he also, to me, every time I take a look and when people talk about him, I think that he's done pretty, he's done really well for himself. I think he's doing well for himself.

I don't think he's in any danger where he's losing the passion of it. Well, I did the naked gun or whatever, the second edition of the naked gun with Liam Neeson. And we had Kamaro Usman and Justin Gajee were two of the fighters in it, right? And he was hysterical throughout the whole thing, right? And he's such a button pusher with Kamaro. You know, Kamarman would say, okay, let's go easy. And all of a sudden, you know, Justin's doing something crazy. And Kamar was like, what the hell is wrong with you?

And he loves life. He enjoys life. And I think that, you know, there comes a point where he always had that attitude, you know, when he was undefeated. He goes, someone's going to knock me out. He's honest about things. And I love that about him. That he doesn't sit there and he doesn't play the, you know, oh, well, we'll see. And so he's honest.

And he tells you, you know what, this may be my last one. And he's thought about it. And if he's thought about it, it's telling you. it's a thought process is there how far will it go? If he has a great performance against I think he'll stick around. Unfortunately, I kind of think I'd rather see him go away.

I know that's saying, because I love watching him. I would love to see him win and go away. That would be nuts. That's the whole point. That's what I said. That would be nuts. It would be awesome. That's how he wins the title at the fucking White House. And that says that's it. I've hit my bucket list. The White House thing is odd.

I don't like it. I don't like the idea of fighting outside. at all. There's problems with it. And then it's June and it's D.C. And we looked it up the last time, like last year, same day, it was 100 degrees.

Yeah. Oh yeah. That's hot as fuck. Then you add the lights. Oh, yeah. You add the lights. That attracts bugs. How about dehydration?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, the bugs are a big one. Go back to UFC. Yeah, with all those lights. Yeah. Go back to UFC 3. See how hot it was. How are they going to fucking do anything about the bugs?

Because I know that Dana was talking about that recently. They were talking about maybe using fans. Is that enough? No, it's not enough. You have bug strips everywhere? What are you going to do? Like, how are you going to stop the bugs? There's a lot of bugs.

Spray, that's pretty much all you can do. Pesticide the shit out of the fucking land. Pesticide, that's good for the fighters. That'll help with their breathing. I just don't think that you should compete in a world championship fight in a non-controlled environment. I think it should be inside an air-conditioned arena. It should be a controlled environment.

Just like every, like you don't ask someone to do any of that. You wouldn't have. ask them to play a World Championship basketball game outside in the sun. That would be crazy. Yeah. Right? You play in a fucking air-conditioned arena, and that's how it should be. Yeah, I agree with you.

But I understand the whole thing, and it's special. Listen, but it's going to be a pain in the butt. A fucking roof. Yeah. Build a roof. Like, you've got all the money in the world, right? You're doing this, you want to do this for fucking America? I don't know.

It's not my money. You build a 4,000 seat arena. How big is that? Get a fucking barn dominium. Put it in there. You know, like, we did UFC's, the troops. Yeah. We did them in the troops.

We did them in the hangers. Yeah, we did. But they want that White House in the background. Put it in the background on TV. Who gives a fuck? It's just like when world-class fighters are competing, I don't think they should have to compete outside. Look it. They're already putting it in there.

Imagine if someone loses a fight because it's too hot out. Oh, yeah. Imagine if that becomes a factor. Imagine the dehydrated fighters. Like the dehydrated fighters that are now being forced 24 hours later, to fight in 100 degree heat outside under the spotlights go back i swear to god ufc3 was in north carolina and it was the hottest thing i've ever been in in my life was outside ufc3 no it wasn't it was inside with no air conditioning really inside they put there was it was a 3 500

seed arena they put 6 000 people into it it was under the lights had to be 150 degrees okay it was you saw everyone falling out hoist had the problem after chemo and stuff You know, Ken Shamrock fell out. They all pulled out and stuff. It was, Joe, it was the hottest thing I've ever been in in my life. It was brutal. You have to ask yourself as a fighter, though, is the spectacle worth my career? Right.

Like, is it worth me going out there and fighting in these circumstances that I'm not used to? Well, we did one outside at Abu Dhabi. That was when BJ Penn and Frank Edgar fought and then Damien May. And Anderson, Silver against Damien Maya. And that one, bro, they were bugs flying around. It looked like birds. They were so big. I was like, that's a bug?

What kind of bug is that? Can that kill me? Like, this is crazy. You're in the fucking desert, man. There's some giant ass butt. And you can hear it. Yeah. Make sure your microphone's not picking it up.

Sounds like a helicopter coming by. You're outside. It's hot. You're in the desert. This is crazy. Like, why are we fighting outside? No, because I think I had read somewhere where Habib had said, no, I prefer Islam not take a fight there at the White House.

There's too many distractions. You got all the media, you got that whole week. Plus it's outside. These are all things that your fighter is not used to doing. Why would I jeopardize his win streak, his second title? Why would I jeopardize all of that? Yeah, it's legacy everything so we could fight at the White House. I know it seems great.

Yeah, I fought there, but at the end of the day... You got to look at it. I work so hard to get here. I don't want to lose it over this one thing. I just feel like you could put a roof over it. I mean, you got all this money. You're making a ballroom? Make a fucking, make a little...

Do it just on a regular basis. I mean, are they making the, are they finishing the ballroom? Are we going to get that? Make your own, I don't know. Make your own apex center. Boom. That's true. Make a fucking barn dominium.

How hard is that? You know what I'm saying? Hard. Trust me, I just finished one. Did you? Oh, my God. Yeah, but you're one guy. Oh, exactly.

Get a fucking team of the United States civil engineers. Get the fucking the army to do it. Yeah. So you're going to be at that one? Yeah, I'm going to be there. Allegedly. Allegedly? If there's not a bomb that goes off between now and then.

We'll fucking know. This world is crazy. I love what you did with the Ibegain with it, man. Thank you. Way to go. What was the process on that? How long does that take? I don't care what the process was.

Way to go. Thank you. The process was me texting Trump. Literally. I'm not bullshitting. There was a long process. I'm not bullshed him on Friday. He showed up to the UFC on Saturday, shook my hand and said it's done.

You're kidding. Oh, no. I'm not kidding at all. No. I texted him. He texted me back. Are you looking for FDA approval? Sounds good to me.

I tell him how effective it is at helping all the these veterans with PTSD, people with traumatic brain injuries, all these different things. People, I mean, we have a problem with fentanyl in this country. This is one of the best things that we've ever demonstrated. I'm like, listen, there's so many people that risk their life for this country, they come back and there's no help, and this is the only thing that they've found help it. Yeah. And it's illegal, and that doesn't make any sense.

You shouldn't have to go to Mexico to get treatment for something that you got because you were defending your country. That's nuts. And so he, right away, he was like, look, it makes sense to me. Like he cut through all the bullshit Common sense And there was a bunch of people That were trying to get in the way of it

Of course A bunch of people I mean inside the White House people That were trying to get And he's like fuck you Fuck you Do it And he like was telling them

Just do it make it happen And he made it happen And that's amazing for everybody Yeah no It was amazing that you know what You stepped up Because you are going to be helping So many people

I don't think People don't have an idea Of how bad it is and what that can do for him. So I think way to God. I was like, see, I always say, you always talk about your dummy, I'm a dummy. I always tell people,

and he's super intelligent. And you are, because you got that done. It just proves it. I never asked him for anything else. I've never asked him for anything. Never. Maybe a signing pin or something. He gave me those.

I didn't even ask. I've got a bunch of stuff. I got a pen. I got a bunch of things. But I was like, if there's anything that I would really ask him for, that is, it's bipartisan.

and support it. Like, Democrats support it, Republican support it. 85% of the country supports it. Yeah. Especially when it comes to things like Ibegain, which is not even remotely recreational. No. I haven't done it. Everybody's done it. It says horrible. You get diarrhea, but it's 24 hours of misery. But when it's over, you're a new person. Good. And look, and Rick Perry, God bless him, because if it wasn't for him getting behind it, that changed everybody's opinion. Here you have this Republican, former governor of Texas who's talking about it and then talking about his own personal experience is doing it. You know, so him and Brian Hubbard, I mean, they, they really went all out.

And when I had them on my podcast, not once but twice, to talk about this and the state of it where it's being passed in Texas, they got $100 million from Ken Paxton. So which is, yeah, no. Was it Ken Paxton? No. No. Who is it? Dan Patrick.

Sorry. Dan Patrick. So Dan Patrick, who approved this $100 million for this Ibogaine initiative. like these people all deserve praise. This is like, there's a lot of people that for the longest time they thought of psychedelics as being something that losers do. And then they realize like, no, there's a lot of people that need help. And this could help everybody.

It could be a good side with it. I was just, I was just in San Diego last Monday, and then I was in L.A. on Tuesday. And it's unrecognizable. It's crazy, right? It's sad. Like, and when you take a look at San Diego, it's always been beautiful beaches in the background,

but it was worse than L.A. I was in the Burbank area, and actually it was a lot nicer. than San Diego was. And the gas light district was just disgusting. It's crazy. What is it? Gas lamp.

Gas lamp. Yeah. It just, I couldn't believe it. I walked into a couple restaurants. You got homeless people stumbling in, trying to order, not trying to take food off of people's plates while they're there. I'm just like, what is going on? No law enforcement.

That's what's going on. It's the first time that I went back. And I've been back, you know, in the last three years, I've been back two or three times a year easily. It's the first time I went back. I was like, man, this is not what it used to be. It just felt like it felt like for the first time I didn't feel safe there. God.

And it's weird to me. And how do you get that? How do you bring it back? Oh, that's simple. You bring it back by doing the right things, common sense things. Taking it. Oh, I understand this. But I mean, who do you get to do it?

Do you think Chad Bianco does it? Do you think Steve Hilton does it? Like, who do you get to turn the state around? You know, it's a girl, Katie Porter? She'd get it done? Oh, Jesus Christ. She'll scold everybody. into compliance.

But I'm sitting outside, I'm sitting outside having dinner last night and I'm watching a bunch of homeless guys talking to themselves. And this is the problem. I was a police officer for 23 years, okay? I've been out there with them and you have people that, you know, they have serious problems. You know, and I understand, you know, the ACLU and stuff, they, they, oh, it's not right to put them. No, it's better for them.

And it's better for the people that are out on the street. just trying to live their lives, to have that person be put into a place where they can receive some medication, receive some help, and try to get them back than it is to let these people just rot on the street and self-destruct. And I'm watching it. And it's like, how is that so hard to figure out that it's better to do something with them than it is to just let them be? It's crazy.

Yeah, we've lost our way, you know, as a society. And I think a great reflection of that is. how many homeless people you have camped out on your streets. Those are the places where they've lost their way the most. That's it. And this is unfortunately, a lot of these Democrats run cities. I owned a couple of gyms in San Jose and just, it was tent city. And along the highway, like leading up to my, along the road that led up to my gym, all of those things.

But you would see they were stealing solar panels from people's houses and they would put them up on the side wall so they could charge their cell phones. Like they're smart enough to do these things, right? It's not as if like they're not, they're just drug addicts. It's a lot of it. That's it. And then in areas like San Jose. That can help with that.

A hundred percent. But things like in San Jose or San Francisco, they're giving them needles. They're giving them drugs. They're giving them phones. It's like, why are we doing this? Well, the other problem is the amount of money that's involved in the homeless industry now. That's right. When you find out that California spent $24 billion in homelessness only got worse.

And what had they done? Nothing. Not only that, but the fucking, they tried to do an audit on it and the governor vetoed it. It's like, no, nothing to me. Why waste time on that? It's only 24 billion guys. Well, how much did they spend on that bridge that had the... For the mountain lions?

Oh, my God. What are we doing? Hey, hey, hey, that's okay. The mountain lions need a fucking bitch. They need hugs. They need hugs. It's a... They need to wake up.

And the problem is that they're in this bizarre mindset, this liberal leftist mindset that's just not tenable. It's not... You can't defend it. It's not. That's because it's crazy. Yeah. I always look at this. People talk about left and right.

And most people are, I'm in the center. I think a lot of people are. It's not where. But you get labeled as being on the right if you're not all the way to the left. Absolutely. If you're not all crazy, you're to the far right. Yeah. It's nuts.

It's absolutely just psycho. Yeah. Well, I just saw something that I can't remember who it was, but they continue to talk about, you know, let's keep taxing the. billionaires, keep taxing the billionaires. And do what? With the money. And that's the point, though. That's the thing. So why don't we just not... They're going to go away. Why don't we just not tax the people that make under 200,000?

That's actually something Jeff Bezos brought up. He said you should the bottom 50%, the people that make the least amount of money, don't tax them at all. He goes, because they're not contributing that much to the tax base anyway, and they would contribute more to the economy if they had more money to spend. Absolutely. It would help everybody. That's right. I think he's right. I always said 150,000 down. You don't pay taxes. That's a great number. I also thought about it, too, is if you were to take, if you got rid of the, you know,

because they're talking about this housing shortage and all of the other things, why don't we get rid of the low interest rates, you know, because I have like a couple of interest rates on some houses that I have that are at 2%. How do you get rid of those? Well, why don't you just raise my capital games tax, so I don't got to, my wife and I, or whatever, we can pay less on that versus that 500,000 threshold. Why don't you make it a million? So then I'll cash out on those and just take my money out.

and then I'll start putting it back into the economy again. Like there's all... Yeah, but you're talking like a sensible businessman. Like, you can't be doing that in California. I don't put you in jail. You could do it. You could do the death tax that he did in New York. I mean, look what Mom Donnie's trying to do.

Oh, that's nuts. Oh, my God. People are just going to bail out of that city. It's crazy. It's these fucking people that think, like, taxing the rich is the solution. And do what with the money? If you were doing a great job with the money and everything was accounted for and there was no fraud and waste, I'd be like, well, maybe you just need more money.

But that's clearly not the case. You've got so much fraud and you're ignoring it. And then this Nick Shirley kid, when he exposes it, everybody's like, yes. They go after him. You should be praising. Hello, give that kid an award. Give him a fucking award. Here, I want journalists of the year and he's not a journalist.

How much fraud do you think is in this country? Billions and billions and billions. I mean, Elon had said when he first came in, he goes, hey, I think it's close to a trillion dollars, maybe a little bit over. He said it was so bad that he didn't want to talk about it. it too much he's worried they'd kill him you know he really said that don't don't it that's wild Joe he's not lying he ain't stupid no he's not no he's not he's anything but he's not stupid he's anything but but I mean to think though I think how much in California they've discovered or let's just say what 200 billion at least you know somewhere on that that's on the low end New York's probably in

Chicago is and then I mean but they've got to do it in all states you can't just do it in the ones where it's L.A. and in Chicago and New York. We've got to do it in all states. It's got to be in Texas, too. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. There's fraud and these people are profiting off of the fraud. They were funneling it right back into the parties and it's dirty business. Well, you didn't really think

that that shovel the government pays for was really fucking $900. Well, there's a lot of that is they get a budget and they have to pay, they have to spend all the money. Every bit of it. Yeah. Otherwise, they won't get the same budget next year. Which is wild to me because the schools, the schools operate the same way. If the teachers don't spend a certain amount of money on these things, then they don't get the

same budget for next year. No, no. Why don't we reward the people that actually save the money? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What is wrong with you? I want to know when, when are you coming to my class? Your refereeing class? When is it? When is it? July 17th and the 19th, he's gone. Oh, I'm not even going to be in the country. Oh, okay. But when are you doing one? Where are you doing them? Usually I do them in Vegas at like stream couture or something like that because I need the gym to put people in cages with fighters. If I can, I definitely will. I would love to see it.

I'd love to see it. Is there a location we could do one here? Because that way I don't have, that way, you know, at any time, you know, you have my number. Text me if you have a question. During the fights, it's the text. It's like when you say the waiter. I get them all the time. So it's wrap it up.

I get them all the time. So it's nice when you know exactly. what the referee can do, where they're going to go. And when you're looking like with, you know, a Mark Goddard or a HerbD, when you know, if you go to the class, you'll know exactly,

hey, this is what he can do, and this is why he'll do it. I'll definitely ask you. I promise. At the very least, I'll ask you next time when this shit comes up. No problem. I'll have you on speed down.

There you go. Maybe I'll put you on speakerphone at the UFC. Hey, everybody, Big John's right here. Don't do that. It's the one thing that I'm always watching, and it's like, you know, And you guys are like, I don't know. I don't know.

I'm like, this is the answer. Well, I'll reach out. I promise. Love you. Thank you, brother. Love you too. Thank you very, brother. This is fun.

Let's do it again. Oh, absolutely. There's always going to be fights to talk about. Fricking A. I live up the street, so let me know any time. All right. Fuck, yeah. All right.

Bye. I do later. Bye, everybody.