The Sevan Podcast - #563 - Top 100 Male CrossFit Athletes

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Brian Friend gives his power rankings for the Top 100 Male Athletes.Welcome to this episode of the Sevan Podcast!Sign up for our email: https://thesevanpodcast.com/-------------------------Partners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK!Master of Coaching  - COACHING PUBLICATIONhttps://www.hybridathletics.com/produ... - THE BARBELL BRUSH Support the showPartners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK!https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning. It's funny when i see people now they just like they're yeah that too they like to say like no matter what we do they like to throw a bam in front of it like if i'm hanging out with some people they'll be like and we're about to go somewhere like bam we're leaving your wife do that? No, actually, I haven't ever heard Haley use the bam. Bam, you're being stupid. I would have been surprised if you said yes. Bam, shut your mouth.

Yeah. Bam, stop being a dick to the kids. Bam. Wow, 100, dude, with a fucking pile of crumbs at the end. Just crumbs. By the way, Caleb had an emergency. Someone, I probably shouldn't say this, but someone in the U.S. military got hurt, and Caleb. So it's just us?

In a 25, yeah, but I got, but the way you made your slides on your Instagram account is so fucking easy. Michael Brink. Michael Brink, Michael Brink. I could probably manage this. I think you can do it. What a crazy list. I decided to put it out there two hours early so that you didn't even have to think. You could just look at the comments and make fun of me based on those.

Yeah, I did. I woke up this morning, drank coffee, read the comments, went through the list, took a bunch of notes. It's crazy. There's two important questions we obviously always have to start these shows with. We have to define what the power rankings are. But then my next question is, why so many this time? Why go so deep? So let's start with that first one. What are the power rankings? And I'll give you the reason why it's so important. Not you, but the people at home, why it's so important to define this. Because, of course, in the comments, there's someone who says, hey, this doesn't line up with the way people finished in the games. Are you suggesting that the games didn't test for the fittest?

had that conversation with James Hobart and I made it pretty clear that I do not think that the 40 men in this case competing at the CrossFit Games are the 40 fittest on earth. But that's not a slight at the CrossFit Games. I don't think that they've ever claimed that those are the 40 fittest men. They've claimed that they're trying to find the fittest man and the fittest woman. And that in the process of doing so, they also want to recognize another super important aspect of CrossFit in totality, which is its reach and its importance around the world. So I have written some stuff in the past that suggests that the game spots could be allocated differently, but I would never be upset if they said that, no, no matter what, we're always going to reserve at least one spot for each

continent or region or section or whatever they want to call it i think that that's okay and it is in fact important the times that it becomes kind of unfortunate or sad is like when something like what happened to keelan henry happens this year i i actually think keelan henry might have done decently well at the games if he was able to compete but he injured his hamstring in training the weekend beforehand like their last kind of training session and he hurt his hamstring so we didn't get to see the one representative from africa compete this year and that to me is a bummer like it's obviously sports and wait wait i saw keelan um yeah he did a events, but he wasn't at his max capacity,

and he had to withdraw before the capital workout, which makes sense. I mean, when you have a, I don't know if it was a torn hamstring or what, but when it's in a bad shape and you had 20 pig flips at 500 pounds to start the workout, it's probably not the best situation. Okay, gotcha. So he was there, but he was a broken version. Yeah, so that's kind of like the big picture. I don't think those are the 40 fittest guys on earth. Obviously this list is a representation of that. Um, but that's not saying that this, that, that, that that's a problem. Like CrossFit has identified what they're

doing in their qualification process and why, and you know, if you choose to play or weigh in on it, then you just have to keep those things in mind. But to your question, what are the power rankings? So I think we have to just consider the CrossFit Games to be the end of the 2022 season and that now everything going forward from here is a preseason leading into the 2023 season. And there's some competitions that are somewhat relevant that will start soon. Butcher's Classic and the Madrid CrossFit Championships will probably be in the first ones. And then, of course, we'll get some of the bigger ones with Rogue and Dubai.

Filthy 150 is going to be back this year, the Down Under CrossFit Championships. Why not the Crucible that JR is putting? The Crash Crucible will have some athletes there. I don't know how many of the athletes on this list will be at that competition, but those competitions are important. Similarly to the Can West Games that happened right before the CrossFit games, you have to have these competitions that are available for the next tiers of athletes. So not every competition can be Rogue because the athletes that show up to Rogue are not going to compete 10 times a year,

but the athletes that are close and want to have the opportunity to compete at Rogue or in the elite division of Guadalupalooza or at the crossfit games they need to have places to cut their teeth to go and test their skills and the stuff that they've been working on and crash crucible is a great example of a competition like that um and and you know i and then of course those competitions obviously have the opportunity to grow over time as in um in jr's well most people on here know him you know he's very good programmer and he's forward thinking in that regard and the test is always pretty stout uh even the online qualifiers for that were pretty tough workouts um so power rankings in this case yes yes is a pre-seasons power ranking for the 2022-2023 season. Obviously, I'm factoring in the things

that these athletes have done recently, but also over their career. I'm factoring in their age, and I'm factoring in their future potential. So in some cases in the list, you'll see guys that are 10 or 15, you know, 10 years younger than guys that are close to them on the list. And even though the guy who's 10 years older has outperformed in this season, I will think that the potential of the 22 year old guy is greater this year than the 32 year old guy. And so I might put them ahead of him on the list. So it's forward thinking, but it's leaning on a lot from the past.

Um, going back to what you first said, and I'm still not sure I fully grasp what the power rankings are, but would you say that if the CrossFit Games aren't the 40 fittest men on the planet, would you say that within reason, whatever that means, it's the 20 fittest men on the planet? Yes. it's the 25th men on the planet yes yeah so uh for so for example there are two there are two athletes that i included in the these power rankings in the top 20 that that did not compete at the games this year and those are samuel corn why a who was competing on a team and scott panchik

who got injured and was unable to compete. Oh, wow. So the rest of the top 20 guys, so the other 18, all finished inside the top 20. Okay, okay. But not in the exact order. Not in the exact order, no. What about why is not Senior Froning? Someone just lost a bet, by the way. Did you read those comments?

I did. Why is not Senior Froning in the list, and yet people like Angelo, Samuel, Scott Panchik are? So I tried to include people on the i think have the that might compete as an individual this upcoming season i think cornway will i kind of i kind of think i don't know if angelo and luke parker will or won't i don't know i don't really know what's going to happen over at mayhem but i think angelo i would like to see angelo compete as an individual again obviously made the last chance qualifier the last time he tried um 2021 season that would be like to see Angelo compete as an individual again. Obviously, he made the last chance qualifier the last time he tried, 2021 season.

That would be cool to see him compete again. Someone asked about Luke Parker. I don't know. I don't know. If Luke Parker, if I knew for sure he was a competing individual, I would probably have him on the next 25 list. There's a couple of guys on that list that I think probably don't even need to be there. But I'll just say this as a disclaimer up front.

I can look at this list this morning, and I look at tomorrow morning and the next morning and I'm going to like, you're always going to second guess certain things. So I just kind of made this list last week. I looked at it a two or three times like fresh minded. And then I just put it away and I said, you know what, that's the list. And that's what I'm going to go with. And I could like, you could always, like I said, make another little change here or there or whatever. But I think this is a pretty good representation. I tried my best not to forget anyone. Some people scared me this morning. They're like, where's Griffin Raleigh or where's Matt Poulin? And I was like, oh shit, did I forget those guys? But I didn't. I don't think I forgot them.

No, you didn't. I saw both of them. I just looked through. I saw both of them. Someone said, what about James Newberry? I don't think James is competing as an individual anymore. I don't know that for sure. I didn't reach out to any of the athletes this is just me doing research around the world trying not to forget anyone um i'm about to ask a question and this is the reason you guys watch the show well outside of brian outside of brian this question i'm about to ask is the reason you watch the show. Is Rich Froning going to be on the list? You guys like that.

That one tickles your balls. But this is the one you really want to hear. Where's Tia go on the list? Where's Tia go on the men's list? Yeah. Does she make this 125? Does she make the top 100 plus these crumbs? These crumbs where you put Roy Gamboa and you'll probably burn in hell for that but these crumbs roy gamboa deserves to be in the top 100 a little

home cooking brian a little home cooking for your boy roy uh um i haven't checked this but he's probably he's probably the oldest guy on this list so kudos to him for that um uh um what does tia make the 125 fittest man in the world? It's just so tough. There's just obviously certain weightlifting tests that she would be unable to do in the men's field. I think that absent of that, her aerobic capacity and gymnastics prowess, and then anything that's weightlifting. Even if it was 50-pound dumbbells, I think she could move move 50 pound dumbbells with certain movements as well as some of these guys um well you know

wall balls 20 pound wall but i don't think it'd be an issue for her you know cycling like a 95 pound snatch or 135 clean and jerk i think she could do just as well as some of these guys but because there are going to be you know three to six tests and i get across the games competition that the weight's just going to stop her in her tracks i think uh no she be you know three to six tests in a get cross the games competition that the weight's just going to stop her in her tracks i think uh no she would you know those those scores of basically a dnf or a zero would preclude her from making the top 100 men even so if you if you put all of these guys in the crossfit games let's say you ran a game with these 100 dudes plus these crumbs, the Cam Crockett's.

They're not crumbs, dude. Just to get even on this list is pretty incredible. Hey, wasn't Zach Watts on the podcast? We had him on the podcast, yeah. Dude, Zach, how the fuck do you make it on the podcast and then you don't make the top 100? Disrespect anybody.

And Tyler Christopher. Oh, no, no. He made the top one. He's the only crumb that's been on the podcast and then you don't make the top 100 just for spitting you know and tyler christopher oh no no he made the top one he's just he's the only crumb that's been on the show and i i expect more from you if you're going to be on my show well he wasn't uh he wasn't a crumb when we had him on the show he was doing very well that year um so you don't think if tia is goes against these 100 plus the crumbs in the CrossFit games this year that I could call them dust particles. You don't think she beat some of these guys?

I mean, in the overall rankings at the end of the week? I don't know. I don't know how good she can do on some of the workouts. So you're saying there's some strength stuff where there could be like four strength events. Yeah.

She takes zero points. What was the one where they had to run through the town? They had to run and then carry the thing up the stairs. That was the Alpaca capital, the capital. So that one, all these, that 200 pound bag comes and she's,

I don't know if she's do 20 pig flips with 510 pounds. I don't know if she'd ever leave the okay north park or not i mean we've never seen it right we've never had a a woman compete in the men's field like that um god i wish i was friends with her shane so i could just call them and she'd be like fuck you she finishes top 50 and we were all like oh but there's also you know it's the uh question text him now and just try and ask him i think hillary may brian doesn't even think you're one of the top 50 best men in the world the hell i would i need to be careful how i word it i probably shouldn't word it like that don't fuck okay um the you you brought up a really good point

the oldest guy do you know who the oldest guy is in the top 100 now i mean i heard you just say you don't know but it's probably scott panchik okay which is crazy because he's still so good yeah i yeah i do think he's still very good obviously i mean what do we know this is really off subject what do we know about his knee and his healing like he he opted not to get the surgery right yeah i mean what he's put on instagram is as much as i know, which is probably as much as, you know, unless you've spoken to him, but yeah. So he, yeah, he did not get like the full reconstructive surgery is my understanding. And, um, I don't know. I think he's, I think he's going to make a run to try to compete again next year. You do. Yeah. That's why I put him on this list. If there's someone that I didn't think like rich,

for example, was going to do that, then I didn't include them on the list. So everyone here I'm thinking, and there's other guys too, like, like Taylor self's on this list. I'm not sure if he'll be able to or not. Cause he has to still have a second surgery. So it might be a wasted spot. I didn't see Taylor 46.

No shit. See, you think, okay. You think Taylor self in a one-on-one competition beats Roy Gamboa? I think Taylor Self is... Like we pulled 10 things out of the hopper? Yeah, minus the fact that he was obviously injured this year.

I think if we would have gotten to see him compete at the games last year or this year, there would be an argument to have him in the top 20 on this list. Wow. I think you liked what you saw at Waterpalooza. I've, I've basically always liked what I've seen from him, from a physical perspective, he needs to get, you know, he needs to have a better, I think a better mindset event to event in competitions when he does them so that he can show the full breadth of his fitness. And that's a really difficult skill to teach.

I've spoken about it before, but some of the athletes at the games this year, I was tremendously impressed. As I've gotten more of an opportunity to see what happens behind the scenes on both the competition side and the athlete side, be to see what happens behind the scenes on both the competition side and the athlete side it is so impressive how some of these guys can have something really unfortunate potentially unfair or unlucky or just bad workout happen and they just forget it and move on just like that i mean and i you know days would go by and i'm still it's still weighing on my mind like jesus these points that this guy lost because of something that was out of his control or something that was so silly that would probably never happen again. What effect? And they're just like, they're way beyond that.

They might come revisit it after the competition, but that ability to. Anything. When you say this, any examples just stick out in your mind right away? Like the single unders to you? Sure. But more specifically, you know, for me, it was Lazar Jukic that I talked about. Like, you know, to make the mistake on the bike workout, he could have, if he would have done the extra lap, people are like, oh, you got to give him a five minute penalty. Like, he got penalized badly enough. He finished 10th on that workout. He had no chance of finishing worse than fifth, none. And almost guaranteed would have been a fourth or better. So he, you know, he just, and, and then he hesitated in the workout where spencer yeah and it cost five points which is 15 five spotters there's 15 points so like i would just be like sitting there like jesus what i can't i can't believe i miscounted my laps i can't believe i

went in the stadium spencer ran to the finish i said they're being an idiot it cost me all these points and and i know that like to improve on what i did last year every point's gonna matter like the margins can be so small if you look at like like the eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 spots, that those 15 points could have cost him, you know, thousands of dollars, a spot in the top 10, something like that. And I would just be like sitting with it. He didn't care. He just moved right on the capital workout.

Same thing. It totally devastated. He literally couldn't move. People had to roll them out of the way. He couldn't get up for five minutes and he posted on Instagram as soon as he could a little picture of with a, you know, a little grin and said, I'm fine, ready for the next one. And that's the mentality that you have to have that I haven't always seen Taylor have that's I think, held him back from being on a platform where people could see the extent of his

fitness. I hope Taylor's watching this. I know he just fucking stood up out of his chair. He's like, fuck you, Brian. Hey, so this is this is a great example Brian just gave us, by the way. So we're looking at the top 10 right here. And in the CrossFit Games, Lazar finished eighth and Jason Hopper finished seventh. And yet when you look at Brian's list, Lazar is higher than Jason. And you might say, why don't you trust the games? And then Brian just explained it to you. No, we have, when you take in other events, situations that happened like the bike event and Lazar's behavior and get up and go at the capital event, he puts them higher. So these are, these are pretty damn good.

Yeah. But yeah, but there's, but there are other, you know, there are other factors for sure. Like I look at their, you know, overall competition history and what they've done in all of the competitions that we've had a chance or relevant competitions that they've had a chance to compete in that I'm aware of. And then I look at, um, yeah, I look at their, their age, which in this case for both of them, I don't think the age is a hindrance or really a bonus or both 24, 26, something like that, where I think at their age, which in this case for both of them, I don't think the age is a hindrance or really a bonus. They're both 24, 26, something like that, where I think that this year, I mean, this is for this year, right?

So I think that this year. Doesn't Lazar seem so much more mature than Jason Hopper? I would say yes, but Jason, I think, is coming along a big way in that regard. Lazar seems more mature than me. You know, he's, he's a fun, he's a fun guy. I don't know. Yeah. He's got a good maturity, good head on his shoulders, but I think that he kind of always has, I mean, you can think even back to 2019,

he had the chance to compete at the CrossFit games that year and he chose not to go because he said, I don't, I don't think that I'm ready to compete at that level yet. And, I mean, he maybe had the, you know, a lot of people would have probably taken the opportunity. It might be the only chance you get to go, but that wasn't how he was thinking about it. He was thinking, no, when I go there, it's something I want to go to compete.

And when he finally did show up, he has been competing, and that's backed up by two top 10 finishes. Why, what inspired the hundred? What, what the deepest we'd gone before was 40, right? I think, uh, yeah. So that was for the, you know, the, the games rankings. I think I had done 30 and then 20, like earlier in the season last year. Um, and so the hundred, I think is just the sport. I feel like the sport's getting to be

a little bit more exposure. The media in general is like diving deeper and having more scrutiny and analysis. And so even though I probably could have done a hundred the last couple of years, I don't think it would have as much meaning for the people that were receiving the information. Now, I think that even with the 125, there are people on Instagram and, uh, and around the world that will see some of the names on that list and have, you know, strong opinions one way or the other about them, because there's just more recognition of the second, third, fourth, fifth tier of athletes. And I thought that, you know, I did do one of these for the women also. We can do that one, I think pretty soon, but I thought that it

might be harder on the women's side to come up with a hundred or 125, but it wasn't when I put down all the lists of women that I thought might be considered for the top 100. I had over 125 names there. Awesome. Wow. Okay. Um, uh, these are the, how many are here? Are these 25 names here? How many are here? Yeah, 25. Okay. So the bottom 25 are not ranked, just to be clear. The top 100 are ranked. Okay, alphabetical.

Even better. Okay. Did you consult anyone else? Like were you ever like call someone, feel anyone out? No. You'd probably hate yourself if you did. It's like asking a room full of 30 people. What kind of pizza do you want?

It's like, it's a huge mistake. Yeah. I, there was one person who I thought about calling to ask their opinion on this topic. And I actually did talk to him, but it was after I publicized the list this morning. Um, and he hasn't had a real chance to even decipher it or look into it, but no, it was kind of that thing. Like I almost felt like I was already consulting like five different people just by talking to myself, you know? Wow. Cause I should get, you should get help for that. Uh, yeah, it's just, I know I just, for whatever reason, I know a lot about a lot of these guys

and it's like, it is really tough. And so I even considered after 50, just ranking them by 10 alphabetically so that to not have like, you know, because the kind of the deeper you go, the harder it is, the less information you have on some of them, um, to necessarily say like, no, this person is better or has a better potential than this guy or this, you know, who on this list are you certain of the most certain who of these hundred names in the 25 mouth of medical order at the end who are you like yep that that guy really found his home on the list who is the fairy who's the first guy who's who gets sure. I think, for me, the one and two was very easy. And I know some people

are curious about the three compared to the four, but the one and two was really easy. I mean, Justin, I said it after Rogue last year. I'm going to have him first on my list until someone proves to me that they can beat him in an elite-level competition, which basically means the games, Rogue,

Wadapalooza if he shows up, or Dubai if he shows up. Outside of that, I don't think anyone can overtake him for the one spot until they beat him, probably at Rogue or the games. I don't think he's going to do a lot of off-season competitions again. You don't? No, I mean, maybe. Or maybe he'll choose to have some fun

and do a team of three at Guadalupalooza with some buddies., but still that also doesn't strike me as his persona. I think that he, you know, I haven't, you know, I don't spend a lot of time talking to him, but he's always been super gracious when I have. And I spoke to him after he won this year, not like very shortly after he won. And I think that it's pretty obvious, just the mindset that him and Adam have is that they're like their intention is to win the crossfit games um i think rogue is a good it's a good place for the highest level competitors competitors on a uh can't like in terms of the yearly calendar because of where it falls where you can you know you can leverage a little bit of the fitness from the games as he'll show up they're pretty good you can take a couple months off if you want to or back off a little bit but i think justin is extremely aware of the level of competitor that he has to beat to win again um and i think that that will most likely will be their focus is to after rogue get back into a training with that singular mindset you're honestly gonna tell me you don't see any fucking – look at this. Any similarity between the bearded Haran baboon and Justin Madera.

You see that, right? I mean with this picture of him, yes, I see that. Yeah. I think everyone can see. I mean this is a fucking primal man. It is. And you know, it's actually something that I noticed.

Look at even his ears or my ears don't sit on my head like that. Look how his ears are like, it looks like someone photo took Photoshop and rotated his ear on his head. He actually, I think he has a pretty big head, like square. It's big. And all these dudes

have fucking heads velner's head looks like a fucking watermelon well maybe not all of them but i know he has fikowski's got a giant head he's a big guy i bet you colton mertens has to like use the last fucking snap on the on a on a oh roy gamboa's got a fuck two watermelon head suitcase head they're all fucking i wonder if it means these guys are all smart too i seriously i mean look at justin's ear on his head there it doesn't look like it was rotated in photoshop you see what i'm saying is it maybe a product of just wrestling i don't know fuck okay okay my last last baboon we got a hundred guys on this list you want to talk about madaris's ear uh yeah uh good point um uh this is just way off and and this is why you wish it sucks because

i asked such great questions like to you to me and then i'm gonna go here and i know most of you guys are gonna tune out here, but this really caught me. Where is it? Ben Smith. Okay. I'm just going to go. I want to look at Ben Smith where he puts Ben Smith here really quick. Okay.

And I'm, and I, oh, full disclaimer. I've started like Ben Smith was never really on my radar ever, even when he won the games and he's skyrocketed onto my radar. The last two interactions I've had with him have been like so pleasant um we're cruising down to uh 41st through 50th if you guys want to you guys can either watch the show or you can open up your phones this is on brian friend instagram uh let me see where ben sm is here. He's pretty low on here.

He's in 72. How did you know that so quickly? I made the list, and I have it open on my computer right here. Okay. Okay. Oh, interesting. Okay. I made a mistake already.

I thought you had Kristoff higher than Ben Smith. You don't. No. But look at ben smith is 72 you're telling me ben smith can't beat jack farlow i like jack farlow but not but in a hopper but in a hopper you're telling me ben smith can't beat con porter in a hopper uh like we just pulled to buy a hopper i mean you just pull random 10 events out of the um ben smith can't beat uh tutor magda colton mertens oh well morad ben smith can't beat will morad no i'm talking about will morad i mean will will if you're a fan of will morad you should be upset at how low he is on this list.

All right. Okay, so you like that. So Ben Smith's career is waning is what you're saying, even though he said he's the fittest he's ever been. Yeah, but he's basically said the same. You know, it's like I feel like I'm the fittest I've ever been, and I'm finishing 12th in the semifinals or something like that. He's the best dude who's lowest on the list, whatever that means. I don't even know what i'm trying to say there but i don't know joshua chamba is right behind him who you ever talked to joshua chamba no joshua who is he would like him what country is he from the uk he was on the crossfit invictus team that took third at the games this year that's a hell of a last name he's

the only guy on the list with a hyphen in his last name. There are a lot of good guys on here, man. Okay. You don't think Kristoff's a good guy? I do think Kristoff's a good guy. I think Kristoff's a great guy. Awesome guy. Manages a lot. Competing and having your chick compete is crazy,

especially because there's this vibe that he manages her, but then he also has to deal with his own shit. Yep, they make it work pretty well. Yeah. I wonder how she would feel if he also had a girl another girlfriend who managed him so he managed her but then there was another girl who managed him okay uh the only guy on this list that i really know the only people on this so here are some names i've heard of lu Fowler, Zach Watts, Roy Gamboa. Those are the only guys I know. Oh, Alexander Illin.

Okay. Was it hard? Have you heard of Bronislaw Alankovic? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You haven't heard of Drew Wayman? No, not Drew Wayman. Okay. But Bronislaw, I remember because last year we had fun with his name. That's what I remember cause last year we had fun with his name. That's is there.

Is this hard putting this list together? Yeah. The last, the last, this last 25, are there like 50 dudes or a hundred guys where you're like, well, shit. Yeah. There's, I mean, like I said, there's guys in this group of 25 that are not like looking at it today. I'm like, I shouldn't have included them on this list.

And there's other guys that maybe would it be better to, to put there? But like I, you know, like I said, once I put it out there to the public, then people message me or DM me or add a comment or other stuff. And then I think about things differently. And it's, you know, it's not that difficult for someone to say a name and for me to justify it. Like I could make an argument for most of these guys and for a lot of other guys. So at some point I just had to say like, okay, enough's enough.

That's the list. And if I missed one, then I missed one, but I'm, you know, I'm trying to do my best to, you know, accurately represent the entire, you know,

globe, the world of, of men who are trying to compete in the CrossFit games. So the, the, and this makes sense sense so the guys you're most certain of obviously are the top two you said that already and the guys you're least certain of are when you start getting to the bottom the margins are just so narrow and the data points are so few possibly yeah so like on this uh here, for example, the guy in 96, Yuri Maranchenko, like he's done fairly well in online workouts. He did okay at the semifinals in Europe the last two years, but I've only ever seen him compete in one But in a similar fashion, going into semifinals this year, I had him and Enrico Zanoni, two guys from Italy that I knew hardly anything about because I haven't had a chance to see them in a live competition at all.

They both did really well in the quarterfinals. They're both coming into the semifinals, and I think I ranked them 19th and 20th in their semifinals because I was only doing top 20 for each semi or each European semi. And I wanted to include them on the list just on the off chance that they were actually really good. And Enrico obviously was, and he, you know, he ended up taking fifth and beating Luka Djokic and Adrian Mundweiler to get that spot and to go to the games. He might've been fourth, even I can't remember if him or

Feebik finished fourth or fifth, but, and then Yuri didn't do as well. He was just, I think, outside the top 10. So he's like, he's so my inclusion of Yuri on this list is that I'm aware of him. I'm aware that he's done well in online competitions and he did okay. And, uh, and it's the first live competition I ever saw him do. So I want to give him some credit for that. And he's a guy that I think could have a potential to improve in Europe next year, but by how much I'm not sure. What are these asterisk marks mean by their name? but by how much, I'm not sure. What are these asterisk marks mean by their name? Yeah. Some of the people were asking about this in the top 50, the asterisk means that they were not at the CrossFit games this year. After 50, the asterisk means that they were at the CrossFit

games this year. So you see Keenan Henry and Augustine Raquelme. The reason I did that is because- Or Arthur Seminoff. Arthur Seminoff. Yeah. So if I put asterisks for the entire 100 of people who didn't make the games, then the bottom 50 would be almost all asterisks. So at 50, I just changed it over. Oh, that's cool. Your graphics guy couldn't make it a different color asterisk mark or something? I think it says in the bottom what the asterisk means anyway.

Tetlo was the guy at semifinals. Him and another guy had a little exchange, right? Remember? Oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah, that was fun. And we had both those guys on the show. Like he crossed the finish line and someone tried to congratulate someone and the other dude told the other dude to fuck off.

That was good. Yeah. I enjoyed that. Do you have a spreadsheet with all these guys' names on them? What's the most names you have on a single spreadsheet? This. Probably this. So before then, there wasn't a spreadsheet you had with 800 guys on it?

No. And when you organize them, what is some of your favorite ways to categorize them, like when you're clicking those top categories? Like you could push a button on a spreadsheet and it'll put them by age, right? I didn't put all of these guys on a spreadsheet and put their age and put their one-ramp max back squat and put their quarterfinal finish or anything like that. put their one round max back squat and put their quarterfinal finish or anything like that i uh you know i'm i know some of the you know critical stats about some of these guys and then um i was mostly i would kind of do it as groupings so i would say like okay i think these are the top 20 guys and i would just kind of zone in on those 20 and then when it gets like i won't uh i would like if if anyone really knows who these athletes

are like if you go to 7345 these are three guys from the uk joshua alchama elliot simmons and zach george and uh i'm honestly not and actually if you stay on this page and you look at 77 78 and 79 pd savage sam stewart and michael smith are three guys from ireland i'm not really sure which of those guys is the best guy from Ireland. I feel like on any given competition weekend, a semifinal weekend, any of the three of them could beat the other ones. So I just kind of grouped in there. If you look at Reece, Michelle, and Ben Fowler, those guys are both from Oceania.

So there's some groups of people further on down the list that are from a similar region or country that have had kind of a up and down performances relative to each other. Um, and so they're just kind of grouped together in that regard. It would be nice to, for someone to put together some master sheet like that. I mean, I don't know how accurate it would be. They would be like 800 dudes on it. They exist. Um, there are, you know, they, they, I don't think they used to exist. I think in the last six to 12 months, some people have created things like that and

they are nice, but they're all, it's also, it's an incredible amount of work to create that. It's a, it's a less work, I think, to do the upkeep once it's created, but it's also like, I've tried to do stuff like that in the past. And the biggest problem I think that people run into with this sport is there's so much information. And really, I think that talent is can you take this excessive amount of information and hone in on the most critical stuff for whether it's a single event, a single competition, a year. a year. And so depending on what you're trying to do it for, to be able to like block out all the noise and focus in on the things that are most critical when assessing these athletes or their potential performance. I think that's, that's, what's hard to do. I love the top 100. Matt Burns is asking, do you really need a top 100? I love the top 100. I think it, I think it's actually really cool. And he also brings up another good question here. I don't know if it's another good question.

What's the chance of the bottom 25 making to the games more than once? Which leads to the question, in the bottom 50, who are the most promising? There's got to be some youngsters up there where you're like, yeah, this could be a future games champ. Some of that depends on how games spots end up being allocated in the upcoming season. And I think that there, that, um, the CrossFit games team is having some pretty serious conversations and

considerations about amending that process. Uh, there are, you know, there are guys, there are a lot of guys, I would say like 51 through 75, that have, I think do have a chance to make the games next year uh depending on how that system goes and honestly in some cases what some of the other athletes choose to do in terms of competing you know if every male in oceania competes uh to try to make the games there's no spots available and that means that guys like luke fiso who's a, um, he's like a mid twenties guy from New Zealand. Who's been, he was closer last year than this year. Uh, Luke DeJong, who I have 40th on this list.

Who's a young guy out of Oceana. Oh yeah. Yeah. We had him on the, he's the dude with the fro, right? Tall dude. Yeah. Fro is not an eternal trait. I don't know if he still has it or not, but he did have it.

Um, you know, even Bailey Martin, I have one spot below him. They're like all these guys. Anthony Davis, 82, Anthony Davis, 82. Yeah. All he has to do is go to the Atlas games and he's in.

Maybe, maybe he, he had a funny comment actually about feeling like a rookie on the Madden rankings or something, which goes to the point of that guy you were talking about. Like a lot of other sports do stuff like this. You know, they have the top 100 basketball players,

football players, or they have the top, you know, they have the way too early power rankings for the next year's football season or whatever. It's fun to talk about, you know, people take an interest in it.

People obviously have a vested interest and it's motivating for some people. I mean, I've, you know, some of the athletes on this list have already commented on there this morning and said, thanks for the motivation or they've privately messaged me and said, I'm going to, you know, I want to prove you wrong about this.

And I'm sure some of them will. I mean, that's, that's, that's the nature of it, but it's also cool to see from a more macro level when you do something like this. I think that of the top 100, I ended up with 51 North American men, 30 European men, 12 from Oceania, four from Asia, two South America, and one Africa. And so, you know, when you ask about a guy like Anthony Davis, even though he's in 82nd there on the list, the path for him to make the games is way, way harder than a Reese Michelle, who's, you know, two spots ahead of him from Oceania. Because for Anthony to make the list, there's 40 guys for 20 spots that have ranked ahead of him Anthony to make the list, there's 40 guys for 20 spots that

have ranked ahead of him. Whereas for Reese Michelle, there's three spots and there's only seven guys ahead of him. So only has to beat four, five guys to get a spot. Whereas Anthony would have to overcome 20 guys to get a spot. Right. Okay. Uh, this is kind of the question I was leading to also Michael Birch, uh, field, Brian, who do you think are the guys who could jump the most spots in one season? And are those the guys down here at the bottom? Are there some people who just need to pull one or two things together and it's showtime? Like for instance, if Anthony Smith could, Anthony Smith's one of those guys that he just has, sorry,

Anthony Davis is one of those guys that just has some, a couple of holes that. Yeah. Anthony Davis, you know, so, you know, like if you think about Anthony Davis relative to some other athletes that

are high up on this list, you might say like, you know, he's a, he's a bigger dude. He's fairly strong. He's got some, you know,

his gymnastics is decent. Yeah. His gymnastics is, didn't he? He had some, he had some like blowout performance that no one thought he was going to do well in, right? Like a pull-up workout or something.

There was some event he did at the semifinals where everyone was like, whoa, what was that? Yeah, it might have been the thruster handstand walking. I think he's improved his handstand walking and obviously going to move the barbell well. But he did better on the running workouts than I thought this year. It's just – it's really, really difficult to make it in North America. So if he made the games, that would be an incredible accomplishment. And then if he did something like, um, you know, who knows if he had a performance like a Royce done or something and ended up finishing 16th

at the games, you know, in a games that might've been heavy towards some of the things that he's good at. Uh, yeah, he can make a huge jump up this list for sure. Uh, Logan Collins, 59. Yeah. That's the kid out of Texas, right? Who was like, he had to like battle to not go to Atlas games. Yeah. Probably to his detriment. If he would have gone to Atlas games, he would have, like you said, probably had a better chance to make it, but this might just be a guy, you know, he was a 10th or 11th one year at the CrossFit Games. He's had a couple of good performances there. He used to win or be second in the South Regional a couple of years, along with guys like Sean Sweeney and Roy Gamboa.

And now, you know, I think that the field's just passing him by a little bit. He's still incredibly fit. I mean, everyone on this list is incredibly fit. But i don't think that it's a good chance he'll ever make the games again uh logan congratulations uh you've made it to the crossfit games through the atlas games unfortunately you will have myocarditis in two years but you know everyone has to pay their price uh you 46 we talked about taylor self i think that's a bold uh prediction for a guy i do smell some home cooking there just because you know he's part of your um kind of one of your your your circles of friends is uh people over at the crucible jr taylor no no no no no home cooking

this is what i think is but you know this is what I think his potential is this year if he's able to compete. Like I said, if he hadn't been injured this year, then I would have him probably even significantly higher. Colton Mertens at 50. When I see Colton Mertens at 50, could I say you don't think he's going to the games again? You think that's a kind of a – you want to say it's a one and done, but unfortunately he's made it two years in a row. So it's really fucking with you, but, but you don't think he's deserves to go to the games. No,

I'm not saying I don't think he deserves to go to the games. I do think that things fell very favorably for him this year with what happened to Chandler Smith, basically being irrelevant in that, in that competition that opened up a spot. I think that with a, pull-up bar situation, Matt DeLugos probably would have taken the spot from Mertens this year. And you see I have him a few spots higher than him on this list anyway.

But Mertens, like I've said before, you can't take anything away from him. All you can do as an athlete is show up and compete, and he does that very well. He doesn't make excuses. He gets hard, but he goes to work. He works as hard as anybody on improving things that are very challenging for him to improve on relative to a lot of the athletes in this, at this, you know, tier of competition. He's made the games twice. He's done, um, you know, okay. They're not great. Um, but yeah, I think if I was saying right now, the 40 guys, the 20, if there were 20 guys in North America that I think would make the games next year, he would not be on that list.

I apologize for using the word deserves. It's not only intellectually lazy, but it was me being nasty towards you. But you do find it. You do find it. He is, in your mind, you're shocked that he made it two years in a row. You're confused a little bit. You're like, the Spock in you is like, this does not make sense. How did Colton Mertens make to? No, no, no, no.

No, Colton's, he does have something in his favor um which is the scoring format where he can he can have some workouts that are extremely favorable for for him where he can make up some you know a lot of points um i think that what he's by scoring what do you mean by scoring you don't i'm guessing that you don't actually mean by scoring, you mean the fact that CrossFit tests over broad time and modal domains. No, I mean by the scoring system that they choose to use, where event wins and top three finishes are weighed very heavily. Okay, okay. And then, but then the other things that do favor him, why he is good at CrossFit, the two things that you said, one thing you said for sure already is that he doesn't make excuses,

which is awesome. And then the other thing being that it is, it is, it is a test that's goes everywhere. Yeah. No, I think that when we were talking earlier about mindset, I think there are a few athletes on this list that have as,

as strong of an, an impressive of a mindset as colton mertens i don't think that anyone with his physique could do what he's done absent of of that type of mindset um i forget who asked it but someone asked um who do you think could jump the highest on this list it could delugos be that guy is just a piece or two away um could he be the next fikowski the next fikowski i don't know but you know i i think that you know having him at you think delugos is better than james sprague no sorry you think james sprague is better than delugos who that would be another fun one to see wouldn't it just like take him out

on a weekend and have him go seven events against each other, straight out of the hopper, Sprague and DeLugos. That would be fucking awesome to watch. Yeah, that would be. That in particular, of the matchups that you've suggested over the years with that scenario, that's one that I would actually love to watch. Thank you. Hey, even a clock that stopped working is right twice a day. Is that how that goes?

Let me see. J.R. Howell has sent us a text. Let me see what kind of a few. He's talking shit to us. Shit froze. My phone froze. And you like that because of because of their physiques, right? It's two big guys. They're two. They're two. Oh, shoot. I can't have my text up like that. What am I doing? big guys they're too they're too oh shoot i can't have my text up like that what am i doing what the fuck is going on here checking my yeah and and they're both the other thing that i like about that kind of matchup is that they're both guys that are on the fringe of making the games and and i think definitely have the potential to they both have great personalities they're very like outgoing people both in their lifestyle and competition. So I think it just would be fun from a, you know,

personality to competition to even relevance perspective. From JR and sorry, JR, if I'm not supposed to read this, I, I'm normally, I would never do this, but I'm going to take the liberty to guess that this one is okay to read all friendships aside, Taylor, when healthy, is absolute savage. And then he gives some data points. Uh-huh. Okay.

I can't believe I just showed my text message. All my text messages. Hopefully. Who's seven on texting screen grab god damn it son of a bitch i think i think i think i'm in the clear whatever uh we could talk about bill leahy there someone's asking about him okay yeah i don't even know who that is bill ley. Tell us once again what the asterisk means.

He was not at the games this year. Okay. These guys that are in the top 50, they were not at the games. So on this screen here, Bill, Jake, James, Tyler Christoffel, and Luke DeJong were not at the games. The other men were. Bill Leahy, he competed at the MAC this year. William Leahy IV is what it says on the leaderboard. He goes by Bill. I think he's from Louisiana. He's very young Mac this year. He is William Lee. He, the fourth is what it says on a leaderboard.

He goes by Bill. He's from, I think he's from Louisiana. He's very young and very raw. He's got like, I think two years of, of CrossFit experience period, like not competitive CrossFit, just like period two years experience. And I think he took 10th at the Mac. He had the world record in the legless rope climb shuttle run workout of anyone across the entire world.

He also, I think one that they win or get second in a workout after that, which is the Mac mile, which was like a 25 minute workout. His athleticism is almost unparalleled on this list. It is. It was crazy watching some of the things this guy could do. And if you pull up the Mac,

I can't remember what he lifted for the complex, but I was blown away. He's a tall green bean, skinny guy that looks like he needs two or three years to put on the muscle required to compete at the CrossFit games. And I'm pretty sure he'd lifted 315 or 320 for that complex barbell complex at semifinals. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, whoa, that's not what I was expecting from this dude. And when he backed it up with a world record by like 12 seconds in a two and a half minute workout, and then also did great on a long endurance grinding strength test with some

sandbag cleans. And I was like, okay, this guy's got a really, really diverse and impressive skillset. I also knew that he was relatively run and experienced. And Adrian Bosman is very well aware of him. He actually had him test some of the stuff for the games this year and use those data points and trying to, you know, making some of the decisions about what he ended up settling on with rep schemes, time domains, et cetera, for some of the workouts.

I would, I think that this guy, I have, what? Someone just texted me and said, Hey, I just want to make sure my name's in your text. That's the next time you fuck up and your texts pop up. That's good. You called him a Tulsa string bean guy that now you're talking. That's my kind of talk sports talk with seven ones language. Yeah. You know, I mean, his physique is very similar to Delugo, Sir Sprague. But is that, but his athleticism is, is beyond that. Uh, I just don't, you know, so I have him really high on this list based on the potential, not on his performance

last year, obviously 10th in a semifinal in North America would put you about 40th. Uh, and I have 51 men on this list. I put them down on around 80th or something overall, but I don't, but I don't see, I think this guy is going guy is gonna you know turn some heads next year at semifinals on the trajectory that he's on uh i think he has got a good chance to make the games next year already and only his third year doing crossfit in the most competitive continent in the world um and so we'll see but yeah i'm very high on this guy is this him right here am i looking at the guy he's very like nondescript he just looks like an english dude just a regular just dude yeah he looks young too i don't think that's him no is that not saxon

i can't yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. Dang, you're good. So is this him over here? Athlete William? I think that's him. Yeah. It's crazy that you type in Bill Leahy CrossFit in the second pictures to you. I guess it's not crazy. You got Brooke Wells popping up and then just a bunch of other dudes. Okay.

Yeah, because he's relative i mean he's he's relatively unknown he hasn't really done anything notable from the like the normal perspective but you know this is um sometimes i watch a competition i mean luke de young is another example of this and we didn't get to see him compete this year at all because of injury but two years ago at the at the torian pro semi final when i watched him compete i was like there's something different about this guy then he got injured or sick in the competition and it didn't matter but i think if he if he and luke told me he wasn't going to try to compete this year because he needed to take the year to to get things back on track but he was going to make a run at it the following year so that's

what i'm taking his word for here by placing him 40th. And these are young guys with a ton of potential, crazy amount of athleticism that aren't, aren't afraid to hurt that have home run potential and workouts. And we talked about how important that is in the scoring system already. And therefore they get a much higher spot on this list than most people would probably agree with. The guy from bone media. I take photos of bill all the time.

Dude is beast. Listen, just so you guys know the only two people who've said a fucking nice thing about taylor is jr his fucking daddy and brian his fucking butt buddy so don't get all fucking crazy on me and just because like it's still the the verdict's out i mean jr has texted me personally that means that he's in the home cooking crowd too taylor fucking unproven. He really belongs in the bottom 20. It's probably one of Brian's worst picks. The guy fucking can barely fucking walk from the couch to the back. Mike saw shouldn't CrossFit have MVP, someone that wins the open when semis and have the most top finishes at the games.

I feel like MVP is usually reserved for team sports. But what about something the equivalent? Like the fittest on earth? Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Mike, you are always so generous. I want to let you know that that doesn't go unseen. Mike, the sauce.

J. J. Crouch. So. So you said guys who. Um, J J, uh, crouch. Oh, so, so you said guys who, the reason why, uh, rich phoning is not on the list for those of you who missed the beginning of the show is because Brian doesn't believe he's going to compete ever as an individual. I don't think he's going to compete this year as an individual. This year as an individual.

Um, but what about, um, what about, uh, Will Morad? Isn't he retired? Is he retired? I don't know. I don't know either. And there's, I mean, it looks like he's minutes away from using a Walker. I mean, the guy is seniors. Well, I mean, that's, that's what you say, but how did he do at the games the last two years?

I mean, the fact that he's made the fact that he's made it the last two years and how well he's done there especially at you know this year against a really good field i um he's just continuing to do the stuff that he's always done which is exceed the expectations of what's seemingly possible for him there was no reason on paper that he should have qualified for the games in 2014 and he did and that's basically the story of his entire career in crossfit is he keeps defying the odds and uh and showing up and proving how how good he is and that's where it's one of it's you know it's one of those things where like what you see on paper is not necessarily what you get

on the competition floor and that is why i would potentially agree with you about taylor self's ranking being too high is because what's what's on paper he should be 25 but what we've seen on in the output maybe it should be 65 so i kind of split the difference uh is luck it on the list i think luck it's out i sometimes dm i think oh god i think i dm might be coaching bill leahy in fact he's coaching someone um he's the one he's's the, he's like a doctor or something, or like a, uh, uh, into x-ray machine. He's, he does something with his dad. His dad has a business that I think he's going to, or a dentist or some shit.

Yeah. But no, I don't, I think he's done competing. Sean Sweeney is done competing. What is, um, what, but both these guys right here, I, I don't mean to fall into the weeds, but let's do it. Jake, what does Jake Berman need to do to, um, uh, make it to the games? He's such a cool dude. It'd be fun to take.

So if Jake's listening, I hope that Jake Berman watched Nick Matthew this year because Nick Matthew is the, he's like the exact kind of prototype of, uh, of Jake Berman in the regard that when you're on the verge of making the games in the in north america as a male which nick matthew was last year twice this year twice and he just uh he finally got an opportunity and he went to the games and he was very good like that's what i think could happen for jake berman um you know jake has always had uh kind of a unique potential in certain regards. He's obviously improved on other things that has made him very relevant in these competitions. I

mean, he missed, he barely missed making the games twice this year, one spot out, one spot out. What do you mean the last chance call the semis and last chance qualifier? Third at last chance qualifier. Nick Matthew was sixth at semis, fourth at last chance qualifier. Now Nick got the backfill because Phil Toon failed his drug test. And so he gets to go to the games, and we all saw what happened with Nick Matthew. That's the hope. That's the thing that I would be holding on to if I was Jake was like, this guy was so close last year, and he just kept fighting and grinding,

and he ended up getting his chance this year. And that's what I see for Jake going forward is like he's right now. He's right on the verge this is the time in his career that he can take advantage of that and if he's able to put together a consistent training uh year this year as he was last year that he should be showing up to semifinals next year believing that one of those spots is his um so i'm going to go out on a limb and say this. Jake Berman is a guy who's 34 because of the tools he has. James Sprague is 35 because of the potential you see in him. I know that's a little harsh, but I feel like I'm on to something.

Yeah, I think Jake is 26 years old and James is 20 years old. So there's definitely a gap in maturity there. I mean, a male body just continues to mature between 20 and 25, six years old. And that's the case for most. Some people mature a little earlier, later, whatever. that really they're in a similar spot where both of them are like, they're good enough to make it. It's just a matter of kind of like with the Colton Burns of things falling their way in the, in the men's field in North America right now with the current allotment of game spots, you know, like I said,

I think James Riggs is two years away from being a coach, a coach. He's already coach. Yes. It's a coaching business. I think he's two years away from being a full-time coach. Okay, mark that down. Let's see what happens.

But I think he's two years away from being a perennial CrossFit Games athlete. Jay Crouch, love the guy. I want him to – the only reason why I wouldn't want him to win the CrossFit Games is because I don't want to take it away from Medeiros. But fuck, I'm so high on jay crouch did he he he underwhelmed me a little bit this at the games i don't think it's his fault i think it's just because i like him so much i just want him to do well what are your thoughts on him is he going to go up next year when we're doing this power rankings will be he be higher than 31 or lower hard to say i think he also would be disappointed with his performance at the games

this year he regressed on in terms of leaderboard from the year before um despite probably being a little fitter now i you know i did say that that would happen to some people that they would come in fitter and finish worse um that or the the if oceania men's gets three spots again next year out of the games if it's similar to the game so there there's a similar format, you got Ricky Royce, Jay Baden, Luke DeJong, Bailey Martin, if Con Porter competes, Luke Fiso, like there's, it's really, you know, it's really, really difficult. Jay has proven to be really good in that format, taking first and second the last two years,

which makes me confident that he can get back to the games. I think that, you know, that he can do that despite how difficult it is there. But he needs to have a different performance from a mindset and aggressive perspective at the games if he wants to move inside the top 20. And it's kind of like until I see him do that at the games, this is about where I feel like he's going to stay. But he's young. He's young.

There's plenty of opportunity for it. He is young. Okay, good. Good. Yeah. Oh, let me, before I go, do you like his coach, Rob Forte? I don't mean as a person. I mean, he's been with Rob a long time.

Yeah. I think that, I mean, we talked about this the last time I was on, I think that Rob, I think that this year's CrossFit games was, was actually more important for Rob as a coach than for Jay as an athlete. And I think that Rob's takeaways and the perspective he was watching the games from this year is even different than he ever did when he was competing. And I think that he will, I think Jay really trusts him. I think they have a great relationship. And I think that he will, I think Jay really trusts him. I think they have a great relationship. And I think that what Rob learned this year, um, will, he'll channel that into the way that they train and prepare. And that's like, if they're able to do that, if Jay's able to respond to the stimulus that Rob is going to try to create in the training this year to get to that next level of, of aggressiveness of laying it on the line of attacking workouts when it, when you don't

want to, when your body's saying no, that that could be the difference for Jay to make a move up this leaderboard. So I think they're a good fit, and I think that this was a needed experience, particularly for Rob to leverage into the upcoming season to make the improvement that they both want. make the improvement that they both want. How about Rob Forte as the Adam Neiffer of Australia? Decent comparison.

I mean, Rob had a more successful career individually. Adam obviously had a lot of experience on the team domain. Kind of second to none. Neiffer's a legend. I mean, if there's a Hall of fame for crossfit he goes in there on the team side i would say as a you know affiliate athlete coach of that team yeah and of course what he's done i mean he's got 10 10 years at the crossfit games right he he would be on a top 100 list of of something no yeah special yeah and you know and rob would probably also be in the top 100 you know he's right the experience that he's had and the accomplishments he's he's done in the sport do you think do you think jay's girlfriend is a plus or a hindrance to his plus i think they

have a great mat maddiedie. Maddie Sturt. Maddie Sturt. Because. Almost made it to the game. One of the most impressive semifinal performances from a woman this year. Yeah. And everything that I've ever seen from them competition wise, when I've had a chance to hang out with them in person, when we've had them on the show, it seems like a very, like it's just a good fit. You know, in some ways it reminds me of a young Frederica Gideas and Annie Thor's daughter.

And they were together. They have been together for 10 or 12 years throughout this entire process. And they've made it work where they could both compete. They could still have a great relationship. And I think that, you know, as a lot of people have identified in the last year or two, having a training partner, it's of the opposite sex. That's, you know, fairly comparable to you in terms of athletic potential. There it is.

Oh, there it is. You asshole. You fucking bitch. Okay. It was two or three minutes before the show started. And I said, hey, I think I'm going to be late. I'm dropping off a last minute deuce.

Fuck you. Who. Lee. In. Oh, my goodness. Apologies to Maddie Sturt and Jay Crouch. Here's the thing also. This is why the other sports,

this is why the NBA and the NFL are so fucking stupid. None of your other sports have a show like this. None of them. They would never be talking about Joe Montana's wife. I wanted to say, did Maddie make your top 100 for women? Oh, yeah, easily. That's awesome. All right, cool.

I'm excited for that show. We don't have that scheduled yet, do we? No, but there's plenty of time time i'll text you after the show i'll fucking cc julian julian garcia oh yeah i'm looking at the women's list now yeah it'll be this would be a good one okay uh jay crouch uh jake burman uh james sprague we talked about them there's probably some meat on the bone with Tyler Christofal, but let's move up. We have a lot to get through.

One of the more controversial people on the list, controversy is a little strong, but the people that I think they want to hear you talk about is Chandler Smith. He's at 21. Before we talk about him, I want to read some names that are on either side of him. Right below him at 22 is Nick Matthews, 23, Royce Dunn. Royce Dunn was asked to be on the demo team this year but couldn't make it because he didn't want to take the forced injection.

24 is Spencer Panchik, who did go to the CrossFit Games. 25 is Alex Mignot, which, interestingly enough, had the 25th most number of Instagram followers out of the 40 male athletes who went there. He also took 25th at the Games, and here he is on Brian's list at 25th. Did you know all of that? Or is this just coincidence? Not the Instagram one.

And Alex Vigneault is tough here. I mean, he did a lot worse at the CrossFit games than I thought he would this year. And, um, and I, you know, he's,

he's in his thirties now. He's been competing for a long time. He's got a family. People have said, had said that I had overranked him going into the games. They also, you know, he was eighth year before.

It's a pretty, and a lot of people are talking about the drop off of, you know, Fikowski from last year to this year. And Vino is, is in the same boat where, you know, he did significantly worse this year than the year before.

And that's something that is when you're doing a list like this is difficult to reconcile and, you know, to try to figure out what, what happened there with these guys. And is this kind of the beginning of the end for them or not? I will I will I will never you'll never be Julian. I would never give you the courtesy of letting you have the word Jew in your name. I hold that of highest reverence. You're a fucking Julian.

You're a you're a hooligan. You're a h're a hooligan you're a hooligan you're now hooligan the hooligan garcia uh andre who day 26 and then i want to look on who's on top of chandler smith um it's a it's a crazy impressive group of names scott panchik no olsen cole sager dallin pepper oh i don't know how dallin got in there sorry down but you're gonna take a beat down on the show i think in a second uh travis mayor willie george georges um what what's what do you when chandler smith's name pop up do you just get a hammer and just start hitting yourself in the head like you don't know what the fuck to do with them not so much i mean how do you even know he's going to compete next year? I, I, you know, I, I, I guess I, the answer is, I don't know any of these guys are going to compete for sure next year. I'm just assuming that they will based on the fact that they haven't, that

they haven't said they won't. I know he's going to go to Wadapalooza with, uh, Travis and Noah and compete again there and try to defend their teams of three title that they won last year. Um, I think he's probably very discouraged by what happened this year. I mean, he went to semifinals feeling like he was the fittest he's ever been, probably thinking I'm one of the favorites for this competition. I think almost everyone felt that way. You know, I think it's public now that there were some things that happened that were kind of outside of his control in terms of asthma and allergies

that made it very, you know, he was experienced things in competition, the way he was feeling and unable to breathe. That was foreign and new to him. And it was pretty obvious that he was, you know, a shell of himself in some of those workouts.

And as a rogue, did he go to rogue last year? So you go to rogue last year. And the reason why I asked that, so, because it was a top 20 and I think he finished 21st at the games last oh no he did it he was at rogue so they might have done a backfill he finished eighth at rogue right behind jason hopp didn't we hear that there were some that there was some allergy shit going around at rogue that there were a handful of athletes that were got had

allergy attacks out on the field out there yeah and he also you know and and in austin texas i know for a fact from personal experience that that is a that can be a problem for some people when i moved down there to play soccer in college i was totally fucked by allergies and like i had to end up getting a pretty aggressive steroid shot in my ass to be able to play even um but yeah he competed at granite games outdoors last year he competed at the crossfit Games outdoors last year. He competed at Rogue outdoors last year. So I don't think he was expecting that to be an issue at all. And so that maybe even caught him and his team that much more off guard. I think it was obviously unfortunate for him, but basically I'm not holding his semifinal performance from this year against him.

Instead, I'm choosing to look at everything else that he's ever done and the fact that I don't think he's too old to still do this well in this sport. He'll definitely compete. He mentioned in Buttery Bro's video that competing is his main source of providing. What does that mean? Like income? Yeah. For an athlete in CrossFit, I don't think you want your competition money to be your main source of income right now you know you can leverage your performance in those competitions

into other opportunities with sponsors and appearance of design you know partnerships and whatever I think that's the right now that's a more like if you're able to do that that's where you can really take off financially but yeah you know for some of these guys for sure if you're able to do that, that's where you can really take off financially. But yeah, you know, for some of these guys, for sure. If you're able to win $5,000 here, $10,000 there, $20,000 at some competitions along the way, that's a big deal. I wonder what's better for you financially to have a doc like that come out or to have a video come out more like connor mcgregor style like basically just just instead have the same filmmakers and resources put into making a highlight highlight reels and just you just going off about what your your belief in yourself like if you're a brand who you want to hit your wagon to i guess maybe if he could get an asthma medicine sponsor,

I think a lot of those asthma medicines too, that I don't think those inhalers that you use would be even be allowed at the games. Well, I know that was, I know that was part of the process for them was reaching out to the appropriate people and trying to find out what they could and could not take. And the analogy that I was given was that what they were allowed to take was

kind of like throwing a cup of water on a burning house. Like wasn't going to have much of an effect okay uh Nick Nick Matthew has to be mentioned um another one maybe for the opposite reason of Chandler Smith is you you're not sure what's going to happen to him uh because where he could the wheels could come off the bus and Nick Matthew maybe you don't know how good he is because of his insane performance at the games, right? Yeah, so Nick Matthew and Spencer Panchik on this list here, I've ranked them lower than they finished at the CrossFit Games. And this is not a knock on their fitness. I was very impressed with both of them throughout the year.

And I thought they did both great at the games in a very challenging games field, but they compete in North America and it's really hard to make it back. And both of them barely made it in. Nick had to, was relying on a drug failure to get in. And Spencer basically got in because Tyler Christoffel just completely collapsed in the last part of the last workout of that weekend. Um, and absent that we don't get to see them compete at the games, and they're probably both 10 to 40 spots lower on this list.

I wonder, what was the difference between Spencer and Scott? Spencer and Scott where? Sorry, Spencer and Saxon. Okay, Saxon took 11th. Yeah, Spencer was 20on. Okay, Saxon took 11th. Yeah, Spencer was 20th. Okay, yeah. Yeah, but Saxon's got his resume is much more stout than Spencer's anyway. Right. That was Spencer's first games, right? Yeah, and I would say this is potentially a lenient ranking for Spencer.

I think that every guy on the rest of this page, except for maybe Vigneault, who maybe we've seen the best from him already, has the chance to beat Spencer Panchik next year if they all make the games. Do you think Spencer's hit a wall? That's it? No, not necessarily. You think Adrian Munweiler and Alexander Caron could beat? That's it. No, not necessarily. I mean, if I think that Luca Jukic, you think Adrian Munn, Munn,

Viler and Alexander Corona could be, are going to be Spencer Pancheck. I think they could. Yeah. I mean, Adrian totally, totally screwed himself at semifinals this year. He just didn't,

he had a really, really unimpressive competition from a execution perspective. And that was this weekend. I went into that weekend talking to the other people I was working with there and saying, man, this is a tough field of men where the guys that end up getting outside of Lazar and BKG, like the next seven guys, it was going to come down to just who made the least mistakes. And Adrian self-admittedly, you know, right after the competition, he's like, I made too many mistakes this weekend. Maybe Spencer will want to come to the um uh california hormone games when is that going on sometime in 2023 oh excellent

savon don't you love the dog barking? You guys can hear that dog barking? That sucks. I'm sorry. If someone called in on the phone and talked to Brian for a minute, I could go. Maybe I should let the dog. I would let him in this room. He'll start barking. He's howling because his mom left.

Can you hear it, Brian? Yeah. Sorry. It's not bothering me. You're just saying that because you ate in one of the shows, so you're cutting me some slack. I'm sorry about that. I had to eat.

I don't care. Fuck those people. It's our show. Andre Houdet, is he serious? Is Andre Houdet serious? I think Andre Houdet would have had. He seems so chill to me. He's got too much love. He likes coaching.

I feel like he's just doing this just because. I don't think so at all. I think he is very serious about trying to compete at the highest level. And I think that. He doesn't seem serious compared to Colton Mertens. I don't think that's fair to say. Okay, good. Andre Houdet is extremely methodical.

He's probably his entire year is already planned out and detailed. Oh, he's Europe's fucking Fikowski. Yeah, and I think that he takes his – it's a different kind of intensity than Colton Roons. I would say that Houdet is extremely dialed in in terms of all of the lifestyle things that allow him to train the way that he wants to train. But he has to navigate who days a nerd like fukowski uh mertens has asperger's but who day has to navigate a new era of life now he has a kid that's you know he was late getting to the games because his wife was in was late delivering the baby basically he stayed for that as he should have and then he you know he the trip over, but I don't think he had enough time to really acclimate. And so we saw maybe an 80% version of Houdet at the games this year, relative to what I think

we would have seen under a little bit different circumstances. And now the question for him is, can he manage its new lifestyle as a dad while still getting all the sleep, all the nutrition, all the body work that he likes to do to set himself up to train the way that he wants to train so that he can make a run at improving in the games. I think if he's able to do that, that he's a top 20 potential again next year at the games. Kenneth DeLapp, what's wrong with Asperger's and Nerds? No, nothing. I'm just trying to, I like both of them, Asperger's and nerds no nothing i'm just trying to i like both of them asperger's and nerds um they're just uh colton merton's focus comes from

a different place than uh who days and fikowskis i appreciate the uh question so i'm a hooligan you son of a bitch hooligan the hooligan do you have to say? Seven graduated from a baggy to full plant in the background. I don't even think that's a real plan. Okay. We are going to make it through this list. This is getting good though. Show's getting good. So number 12 to 20,

we have Willie George's, George's, George's, Travis mayor down pepper. So I'm not, I'm not impressed by any of these guys right here uh this year uh sorry um i'm not impressed wasn't impressed by noah cole dallin travis or willie georges how do they make the top 20 and and maybe it's not fair to not be impressed maybe the reason why i'm not impressed by like dallin i get it he's new to he's new but it's kind of unfair to expect Noah always to be at the top, right?

It's like, fuck man. And Travis and Cole, I've been too hard on them. No, I mean, their careers waning. Are they done? Are we watching our heroes? Just fucking because yes, I would say that they're that, you know, relative to the arc of a career, their careers are waning. They've been doing this for 10 years.

All of them finished in the top 20 this year. I think Noah finished 12th. Cole Sager finished 13th. And I don't think anyone really had much to say about him the entire games. He never had anything super flashy, super good, super bad. He was just steady across the board. Ends up 13th. You're referring to Cole Sager.

Yeah. And it's just, you know, you look on there and you'll see he was, you know, he actually kind of limped into the finish minus the last event. His three worst finishes, I think, were like the ones right before that. Yeah. Oh, okay. But that's just that, you know, those were ended up basically being three strength tests in a row.

And he didn't do great on them relative to the men that were left in the field at that time, taking almost last in all three of them and still ended up 13th on this list. So maybe that's how we'll get to you. What had done to how old is Nick Matthew? Right, right. I was click on his name.

I like it. 28. Yeah. So, so Nick Matthews kind of a one and done too. That was a freak. That was a freak episode. We're not going to see him at the games again.

What I was telling you is the last two spots at most of the North American semifinals for men could like, there's going to be five to seven guys in those semifinals that could all take those spots. And they just need things to go their way that weekend. They need, you know, like we said about Mertens,

they need Chandler Smith to get fucked up by some allergies. They need a Matt to Lugos to have an inconvenient circumstance that he can overcome. You need a Phil tune to fail a drug test. You need to, you know, there's like Tyler Christoffel. This just loses composure in the end of that workout. Like that's how small the margins are. Same thing in Europe with the guys like we were talking about with the modern violet. I mean,

it came down to the last workout at the lowlands throw down and the way these competitions are programmed and the way that the scoring is and how tight it is, you know, it's just about execution. More, it's Phoebe was off the radar and he won the workout to get into the CrossFit games.

Will Morehead was off the radar and he won the workout to get into the CrossFit games, the final workout of each of their competitions. So you can't, you know, it's a, and then what you see is once you get to the Games, like getting there is one thing. And then once you get there, you have the potential to do something like Nick Matthew did,

you know, did this year, which is win a couple events. And I think almost everyone would have ranked Nick in the bottom 10 at the, going into the CrossFit Games. And he finished a couple points behind Cole Sager. That's pretty impressive. Let me ask you this. Let me post this to you and just tell me if it's because I'm just dumb and don't know a lot about CrossFit

or you think that there's a lot of people who have this sentiment. If I were to look back at the programming at the CrossFit Games this year, I would be like, yeah, it was a little weird. It was gymnastic-y. It wasn't normal. And I'm very curious if it's going to be like that next year and if it's going to change the course of finding the fittest. That was that would have been my sentiment two days after the games happened, if you would ask me. But when I look at this list these are not gymnastics we're not looking at gymnastics see guys we're looking at fucking strong savages pat velner bjorgen carl

goodman's and gui maeros roman krennikoff jeffrey adler when i look at the names and don't think about the the programming i'm like oh this was a strongman event no wait no no so the problem with the programming this year was that it was there was so much new skill and gymnastic stuff in the front half that some people were not able to ever separate that from their mind they had that's kind of what i'm doing i'm stuck in those first events they had the first impression she showed up to the date and when her lipstick was smeared and you thought something and you were never able to forget it okay even though that was good i'd like a dating metaphor is what i need that's good yes um you

know well whatever the first impression weighs heavily and that's true of human nature in general and so with especially because the shuttle to overhead workout was moved to the second day, when you just had those first three workouts on the first day, a lot of people were like, Whoa, this is not what we're used to. You have this, you know, and so then they weren't able to get past that. And even some of the athletes that I spoke to after two, three days of competition, they would say like, yeah, you could just tell on their face. Yeah. It's a lot of new stuff. And they were like using that as a justification for the poor performance. Whereas I saw someone like Jason Hopper, who obviously we know is going to, is not going to be thrilled by a ton of

high-skilled gymnastics stuff early in the competition. But after two days, he was like, you know, his mindset was like, that was a lot of gymnastics, but there's still three days to go. And I'm just pushing forward. Like, that's what you have to do if you're the gains athlete. And I would encourage everyone not to make drastic assumptions about the programming when you've only seen four or five out of, you know, 15, 14 scored events. And once you look back at it, we saw that the second half of the competition was much more heavily weight strength based than the first half of the competition was. And what you end up with in totality is a fairly balanced test. There are new, there are elements of the programming this year that were different than what we've seen in the past. But at the end

of the day, it was balanced enough that like, that's why, you know, people make this big deal about Laura Horvath climbing and rocking up the podium. But pretty much everyone picked her to be second or third. And when everything was done, she was third. So we shouldn't be surprised about that. It's just that the workouts that she happened to be great at showed up later in the week. And so you have this storytelling of this incredible surge of Laura Horvath. But it's like, well, you flip the workouts and you're saying the same thing about emma lawson coming from 25th and finishing six okay yeah um there's a guy i want to look at here uh number

nine and we'll go back down a second because i want to talk about don pepper but i want to make sure i get to brent fikowski as we approach the 90 minute mark you have brent fikowski at number nine on the power rankings he finished um uh 16th at the games yep of those of the top 10 here who finished at the games the only name i really seem a missing is fikowski that's the one where you're like okay that is a little weird like if if to be honest if i would have seen fikowski at fourth the one where you're like okay that is a little weird like if if to be honest if i would have seen fikowski at fourth and quant at 16th that would have made more sense to me yep but but instead we have fikowski down here at um 16th did we did we do we know why he took 16th like is there is there an excuse like someone in his family passed or no i don't think there's

an excuse and i think uh he did an interview with Lauren Khalil on the, on the morning chalk up that talks that he talked about like a lot about this and that he would have bet on himself too. And that this was an unusual and unexpected performance. I think that the, when I was talking about like the nuances or differences in this programming, and we've, we've talked about this a little bit before the last time I came on,

is that Adrian wrote, you know, some workouts in ways that really took away from the athlete's ability to game or pace the workout and instead forced you into a different kind of a mentality where you had to attack, you know, workouts. And Brent did do okay on some of those. I think he did great on the wall wall ball dumbbell snatch workout which was a high level of execution needed and it was you know really much forcing the pace but that workout was mostly about wall balls and i think he's come up with a way to do wall balls that are very efficient relative to the field where he's basically catching the ball on the bottom of the squat and then going up from there i don't know if he does that as much anymore but he's descending with the ball and then coming back up out of it pretty aggressively or quickly.

And that workout was like you saw with Ellie Turner, the rebounding speed out of the bottom of the wall ball. And the fact that she didn't miss any dumbbell snatches is a reason she won the workout. You know, mostly same with Guy and Brent did very well. But on a lot of the other workouts, and we talked about this too, where he had an implement or, um, like a swimming or an echo bike. That was something that he would usually do very well on in isolation. It just happened to be in a, in a style of a workout or a row where there were, you couldn't just be good at that thing and do great on the workout. And so these workouts generally masked those, um, those like home runs. And I think that, think that Guy was a little bit

victim to that this year. Fikowski was a little bit victim to that this year. Maybe Vigneault also. Is that true? Fikowski had a brand new kid this year? Yeah. I guess you couldn't have an old kid. But you don't mention that as one of the possible reasons. Well, you were asking about excuses. I don't mention that as as one of the possible reasons that well you were asking

about like you know excuses i don't think that he want he's not not a guy to make any excuses i mean from all all that we know it seems like he could have made an excuse about his leg last year and that he potentially could have won it if not for that leg injury but he's never he's never been the one to bring attention to that that's other outside people that are doing so. And same thing this year. If that's an excuse or something that hindered him in every way, he never has once given off the impression that that's the case. In fact, if you've just followed him on Instagram, it seems like he's been pretty focused and dialed in and getting all the

training in and taking care of his body. I think he came into this year's games healthy. But, you know, the programming, I think, was clever in that that regard and the field is very good same thing with bkg he actually i think came in physically healthier and fitter this year than the year before but he finished worse that speaks to two things that you know the the test a little bit and also the strength of the field uh i think you had dylan pepper in your top 10 i know and that was no that was a miss miss ranking and i understand it was it was very aggressive and now you have him uh 18th in the um in the rankings just so i'm guessing what you're seeing is youth. For Pepper?

For Pepper. But you have him higher than Chandler Smith. You have him higher than Tyler Christofal. You have him higher than Jay Crouch. You have him higher than Matt DeLugos, Tudor Magda, Colton Mertens. Do you want to switch him? I'll give you timeens. Is any part – do you want to switch him? I'll give you time to switch him right now. Do you want to switch him lower? No.

I think that's a great spot for him, and I actually think that next year at the games he'll do better than 18th. You have him higher than James Sprague. Yeah. You don't think James Sprague is going to pass him up this year? No. Okay. you don't think James Bragg is going to pass him up this year no okay and then my same thing is for Jason Hopper you haven't met number 10th

is he really a top 10 guy or are you just are you projecting because you've seen him incrementally get better you think he's that's someone was asking about Jason this morning on the, on Instagram and said that's like a Homer pick to put them in the top 10.

Oh, what? Like some home cooking. Cause he's your homeboy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But that's, you know, I, I would try hard not to let that be the case when I'm making these.

I mean, he took seventh at the games. How come me and this other person can't accept that? I mean, that's fucking good. He took seventh at the games, and he still has some holes. Behind Pat Vellner. I mean, he's in good company. He's having a threesome with Vellner and Lazar Djokic. Yeah, I don't think that –

I think that because of how last year went for him, which was so good, such high expectations, and then really embarrassing execution and performance at the games, that that's like that first impression thing that's kind of weighing heavily on people's minds. So you have to understand that Hopper was embarrassed by that in 2021. And so he took the initiative this year, this past year to change things. He changed his coaching environment. He changed his, uh, he moved, he changed the way that he was training and preparing and, and attacking his weaknesses. Um, thinking about workouts. I think that's one of the things that Fraser is best at and best at teaching is how to approach

a workout and how to navigate a workout mentally in the middle of a workout, which I think was something that was necessary in the way that Osman detailed or created some of these tests. And at the end of the day, yeah, exactly what you said. There's a big gap after Adler points-wise, but five points behind Vellner, that's pretty impressive. Beating Lazar Djokic and BKG, the best guys in Europe, that's notable. And he had some bad workouts. And in those workouts, the things that he struggled with are things that I personally think he can continue to improve upon in the years to come. You know, if you look at some of his worst workouts, the swimming workout.

Oh, my God. I thought he was going to do so well on this workout. I was watching it. And then in the seventh of eight rounds, which is the first round that really mattered, he dives into this water and his goggles came off. And it's like, what event number was that? Uh, rinse and repeat. Oh, okay. Okay. He ended up taking 22nd. And now this is a workout where people basically identified that workout was won or lost on the skier is what a lot of people think the swimming still is relevant, but if you're a professional swimmer or a competitive swimmer, you should be practicing swimming without your goggles on. That happens sometimes I've, I used to compete in swimming and I would dive in the water and the goggles would fill up. And it's like, what, what

are you going to do in that situation? Because you're training for however long for this one race and you get one opportunity. And if something malfunctions with the equipment, what are you going to do to handle it? And a good coach would have you practice that in CrossFit. You might do one or two swimming events the whole year. And that's, if you're good enough to qualify for the games, otherwise you might do none ever. You could go through an entire career as a CrossFitter and never swim. So to prepare for the nuance of your goggles coming off at the most important round in this workout, like I'm not blaming him for, for saying that or for not being prepared for that. Anyway, that was one of his bad finishes. If you look at another one of his bad finishes,

it was up and over. This is a workout that for him was probably limited by the ring muscle up. It was right after the capital workout that he did well on. It's hard to say how much of an effect that had on people. And then the elevated Elizabeth, those were those three really, I would say bad workouts this year. So, you know, high volume upper body pulling is something that he's going to only improve on. I don't think that the elevated Elizabeth, it was something that he was prepared for as with a lot of the people were not prepared for that. And it's, uh, you know, that gymnastics was obviously, um, difficult, more difficult for him than most of the field. And then the swimming miss mishap outside of that. Pretty good. I'm not even worried about the skills medley. I know he did bad in that,

but I kind of, you know, I'm not, I'm not criticizing anyone for doing poorly in that workout um that was the outlier that was the one that introduced all the new stuff right that was the one with the crossover yeah and it literally could just come down to a one miss single under and you're out like spencer panchik or a tia clare to me and i i tutor magda and i can't you i don't you know i wasn't even i'm not even sure of all the people who missed a single under and therefore finishing the bottom half of that workout i'm sure there were others. I think another reason, Jason Hoppers, he was probably outside the top 10 the whole week.

I'm guessing. I mean, look at his finishes until the very end, 18th, eighth, fourth, 28th, 29th,

fifth, 30th, second, 22nd, 11th, fourth, sixth, eighth,

and 11th. I mean, he, he really just stayed in the game. Yeah, and that's the difference between him this year and him last year, is that he was one of these guys that I noticed that no matter how good or bad something went, he just moved on to the next one. And I think that that's a product of putting himself in an environment with Fraser for the entire year and that crew that's saying, like, it's a long test. It's a product of putting himself in an environment with Fraser for the entire year. And that,

that crew that's saying like, it's a long test. It's a long weekend. There's a lot of events. Some things are going to go well. Some things are not going to go well. And how you manage that is just as important as how you do on the test. He did that really well.

So I think that you've talked about it earlier with the maturity he's taken in the next step up late, late, late to the show. I can't answer that yet. Michael, see, I can answer it for you. Yes, he's going to win again. We'll see.

We'll go to Rogue. He'll be my pick to win at Rogue, assuming he competes there. But if Roman beats him at Rogue, or Ricky beats him at Rogue, or Pat beats him at Rogue, then that opens up a whole different conversation going into next season.

If he wins at Rogue, then I think he's a hands-down favorite, yes. I think Roman's career peaked this year. How old is Roman? 27 or 8? Yeah, I think... So Justin Medeiros, 23, still getting better. Roman Krennikoff, 27. The only wild card now in justin madaris's

a career is he still getting better madaris yeah yeah oh the only the only the only wild card in justin madaris's uh um station wagon whatever his box is he if he is training with his girlfriend, um, there is a lot of potential for disaster. A lot people, a fucking lot. Maybe, but we've seen, like we've talked about earlier, we've seen people thrive in that environment.

Sure. I know. I'm just saying it's potential. Sure. I'm just saying potential, potential for like, I mean, I would have like,

if you told me in 2015 that Tia's tia claire toomey was going to come on the scene and that her her boyfriend would become her husband would was also her coach and she was going to win six six times in a row in that scenario i would have said i'll believe it when i see it right it's like this if justin madaris took up a whittling whittling's like you have a knife and you and you and you do like wood shavings. I'd say, hey, that might be really good for him and help his mindset, but there's a chance he's going to fucking cut his hand off. It's just like I don't know. I don't know what's going to.

Relationships can require a lot of emotional energy. Definitely true. require a can require a lot of emotional energy definitely true and then and it's a new relationship and it goes badly and the fallout from that is something that i might even be more concerned about but in the middle shut your pie hole joiner you shut your pie hole okay sorry go ahead and have outburst but i'm not gonna you know i'm not gonna um i can't like we can't factor in the what ifs about his relationship what we know is that he's, he's been incredibly consistent. He's been the best performer. He doesn't make mistakes.

He's got a great coach. They, you know, they've proven to be the best over the last 18 months. And yeah, I do think Roman is a big threat. I agree with some of the people in the comments. Well, that would really help. Hey, wouldn't that be crazy if Justin took third next year in L.E. One? That'd be fucking crazy. That would, I would be fucking nuts and hey i think it's way here's

the thing more likely that justin loses and ellie wins say that again i think it's way more likely that justin loses than ellie wins across the games right right but right uh also i'm just saying um the obvious people like like relationships with coaches can go sideways too so don't anyone get all fucking twisted it's just uh savannah so pissy since hillary left town like you think i'm going through like heartbreak don't forget hunter was here too it was an intense uh it was a three-way uh this is and then there's people who just say crazy shit like michael birchfield quant can beat justin too like i mean this this guy like worked worked out once at the same gym as quant right i mean what it's just like on what based on what are you saying

that he's competed against him in a field of five and he was unable to beat him. Oh, you did. Did he beat him that year? He did beat him that year. Oh, that's what he's going on. He's going on 2020 season.

He did beat him that year. Quant was second. Uh, Justin was third. So that's it. Yeah. Quant can beat him. Okay.

Okay. Fine. Michael, I bow down to you. I mean, he was, uh, there's so many,

he was 209 points behind him this year, though. So I would probably consider that more relevant. There's three Birchfields. Okay. I'm sure there's a lot more than that. Savon, please keep using the new setup so much better than the previous one. This is just the one on my laptop. I'm just. He just likes the close-up of you better than the previous one. This is just the one on my laptop.

He just likes the close-up of you better than the far away. He likes your face. I'm not going to sell shirts with this shot. I'm only going to sell shirts with this shot. Did you ever get any more shirts, Brian? What do you mean? I need to get you a sweatshirt. You live in Chicago. There's a CEO sweatshirt. That's dope. I really actually like, I like that purple color there. I don't even know who made this. I need to find out who made this. I thought

it was Travis from vindicate, but, uh, okay. Oh, is there anyone else, um, that, that we, uh, we're approaching two hours or we're past the 90 minute mark is there anyone else do we want to talk about adler lazar jukic um i'll say you're i'll say this carl goodman saying yeah a very difficult placement here on the top 10 was velner um and i think oh yes yes yes i think that's home cooking too that's crazy that is fucking crazy dude what's i think way more crazy than the ranking of Vellner third and Ricky fourth is the fact that it's an hour and 37 minutes and you still didn't ask it. Yeah. It's on my notes.

I apologize. It's on my notes. This is crazy. So this was tough. The best for last. Because it was pretty obvious watching this year's CrossFit games that there were three guys ahead of the field. And when you look at the points there and you see Quants nearly 100 points

behind Ricky, that that's you know and and and don't forget that ricky struggled on that last workout he only made 37 points and quant made 84 so that they were 100 points clear of the field for like the back half of the competition these three guys and so i think that anyone who wants to say no these are the top three guys going into next year i wouldn't have an issue with so i think that anyone who wants to say no these are the top three guys going into next year i wouldn't have an issue with that i think pat severely i still think pat has the potential to podium at any competition that he goes to i think that his body of work has uh proven that and i think that we'll see him um my feeling is that pat's going to make one more run at the podium next year and then that'll probably be it for him in terms of podium runs.

And, and, you know, certainly I could be wrong about it. And maybe that, you know, and maybe I'm wrong about Fikowski too. Maybe they, this was like, like I said earlier, the beginning of the end and the sixth and 16th are just a reflection of worse and worse finishes to come. But I don't think so. I think they'll get, they're both going to bounce back from that this year. finishes to come but i don't think so i think they'll get they're both going to bounce back from that this year and maybe uh you know i think um i'm not sure if what up what off-season competitions they'll do but if they show up to any i think that they'll be in the in the mix for at the worst the top five in those competitions he's 300 points behind uh Medeiros.

I'm not comparing him to Medeiros. He's 60 points behind Adler. He took six of the game's 300 points out of first place, and you have placed him as the third best guy, fittest man on the planet right now. And probably it's Adler who should be taking more of an exception to that than Ricky. Cause it's Jeff's beaten him at the Atlas games.

And then also at, uh, at the games. And it's, you know, a huge component of, uh, you know,

at this level is, is execution. And I think Pat had a really bad season in terms of execution at both the semifinal and the games level. but he, but he dominated water Palooza, right? He, he did. He didadapalooza, right?

He did. He did win Wadapalooza. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. Dominated maybe. And Adler was there, right? Did Adler do Wadapalooza?

I don't think so because I think he did Dubai. And Ricky went, but he pooped his pants and had to pull out. Yeah. So, I mean, Adler being fifth on this list is like, I, you know, I know he was a fifth at the games and he beat, uh, Belner and, you know, I have Belner ahead of him here,

but Adler's performances at rogue last year, Dubai semifinals, and the games, the totality of that work. Is why he's in the top five on this leaderboard. I don't think anyone's taken any exception to that. And I've said it before, and I would say it again, like the progression of fitness that Jeff Adler has displayed to me is the epitome of what this sport is about. He is the guy that laid the foundation and then continued to build upon it. And you can't really mention this without the trust that he's had in his coach, Carolyn Lambre and that they've continually gotten better since they started

pursuing this in 2015 or 16. And it's, and it's reflected in just literally every competition that he goes to. And so I successful, another, that's another successful example of two people that are boning that have, that do well to cross the games as a team as a duo instead of it causing chaos like and i think and i mean they've they've um clearly stated that their

goal is to win the games they're on the you know they're on the upward trajectory and are continuing to improve you know the next step would be obviously to podium and then to win and and i you know i don't know if that will happen or not i think it's unlikely but he's a guy that's literally you know every single competition that he's ever gone to has met or exceeded my expectations that and i've you know i've told them this privately but i'm like exceedingly impressed with the way that they've gone about building this athlete in this career you need to know how old these people are look look at look at i mean it's a fucking cast of senior citizens no it's roman crannicroft 27 ricky gerard 28 samuel quant 26 uh jeffrey

adler 41 no uh 28 um uh pat velner 52 32 and you don't get a young kid in here until you get to jason hopper madera's same age as hopper i think right right and that's but the point is all these guys 64 nope 29 um lazar lazar jukic is also uh he's he's so mature you know a majority of those guys are between 26 and 28 which is like you know that know, that's kind of the, I think the peak of, of performance in this sport. We've seen that people can push beyond that. And we have kind of a little bit of a balance there where we have the PKGs and, and Valners that are a little older and the geese, Jason Hoppers and, and Madaris that are a little younger. Ages. And when I'm doing a power ranking like this,

projecting forward for the next season, age is definitely something that I'm factoring in, but it's not the only thing. I would also like to say, oh, wow. Wow. Wow. You have, you have Guy at 12. Hey, you think – wow.

I was going to say, you think Guy's only going to slip down this list? You know what else is crazy? I know that we're not talking about the women, but just to once again put it in perspective, people. Guy is 22. Hayley Adams is 21. It's nuts. It's nuts. You think he's going to keep slipping down this list of yours? I'm not sure. I mean, the, the big, you know, he obviously has an incredible skill set that he has the potential to, to win workouts. Anytime he shows up to work out, regardless of who's a competition, regardless of who's in the field. the big question this year was how would he do on the long tests um and he you know he ended up

doing worse this year at the games than last year just remember like i said that this would happen there would be guys that would come in fitter and place worse at the games the field is getting better more deep and you have less opportunities for error or poor performances. He may end up getting better and still continue doing worse. What is this? This guy's just telling you how great you are.

Well, I think... Thank you, Nick. Okay. I think he has top 10 potential for sure. I think that on this list, there was, for me, there was a little bit of a line after 12. It was probably a line after like five and then six through 12, which is seven guys. That was kind of like the next grouping for me in doing this, where I was trying to pull them apart. And then, you know, another group after

that. So I had Guy at the back of that group. but if you look at the guys that are ahead of him they're like people had saxon panchik finishing on the podium he had a you know a relatively poor performance compared to what we're used to so i don't think it's like that crazy to put saxon ahead of gee jason hopper we talked about for a while brent frikowski yes he did worse than him this year but you look at the total body of work and everything he's ever done and he's the type of guy where if he wants to come back and compete he'll probably learn more from this uh competition than any other guy and and go about trying to make sure that saxon you're referencing saxon no number 11 oh brent okay i'm just looking at the guys ahead of him so it's like yeah he's in 12th there we're fully aware of the fact that he could finish in the top 10 of the games again next year

as he has done the last two years. But when you look at the people that are ahead of him, you know, some guys suggesting that Sam quant is better than Madaris or could be Madaris. He had obviously an incredible performance finishing fourth. And I have him ranked eighth. He's probably feeling a little slighted by that.

So someone wants me to put Guy ahead of quant. Like, who do you want me to put him ahead on this list? Fikowski. Maybe. Pipsax and Patrick. Maybe. want like who do you want me to put him ahead on this list fikowski maybe pip saxon patrick maybe so like 10th is the highest i could really see him possibly being ranked sorry it's it's it's a great list it's a great list fuck this dog's losing and it's tough

you know it's tough these guys are all good the margins for air are small as you know some changing in the semi-final format could have an impact on the way that the season shakes out next year. Who knows? I think it's an appropriate spot for him. I think that Guy still needs to prove to me that he can make the necessary improvements like Hopper did from last year to this year. It's a big deal to go from 19th to 7th and to go from 7th to 10th is not you know obviously is a lot less impressive uh nick vizay zay zay nick

vizay vazios vazios nick nick the greek vazios really enjoy the podcast particularly any discussions that brian is involved you mean like the parts where i was just talking to myself he didn't like those parts the fuck you're talking about keep doing what you do okay i think i think he he's meaning like just all the podcasts you come on he really likes a great list i think it's a fantastic list i think what you did was really really uh difficult fun i think it uh invigorates the sport and i think these i think that every to be honest i think everyone is placed uh pretty pretty damn uh well i didn't see anything that i actually thought was crazy so i mean there's some things in there that like i said i think you know i could

certainly see an argument for guys being moved up or down um but yeah it's really difficult to do and obviously everyone who looks at this is going to have some kind of a bias based on where they're from, who they've seen, had exposure to trained with who they like, whatever. I try my best to be non-partial and, uh, and just look at their potential. Um, and just like in anything else, when you're doing this, like some things I'll be probably right on the money with, and people will look back and be impressed by and other things you could look back six, nine, 12 months from now and say, wow, Brian, wow, that was really terrible. Bill Leahy, 33rd, you know, whatever it is.

Jamal Smith, welcome to the morning chalk ups, the bottom line, please. What is your bottom line, Jamal? I was going to actually send a message to Brian a day or two ago saying that I was going to ask him a question about this. But what did he think about possibly trying to do a ranking on which background is best for the CrossFit athlete? So, like, of course, you know, a lot of the women have gymnastics or even Velner and then Justin Medeiros being a wrestler. I think that would be a pretty cool show for y'all to possibly do. Hey, we don't need your suggestions.

Brian, have you ever thought about looking into the backgrounds of CrossFit and see which the athletes, which background sports transfer best to CrossFitters? Yeah, I have thought about it. It's difficult because you might have a guy like Lazar Jukic who has a water polo background, and he's the only person that I know of that has a water polo background. So can I say that water polo is a good, if you're good at water polo or have a competitive water polo background, that you're going to become a good CrossFitter? I have no idea. that there have been frequently guys who used to wrestle that have translated into good CrossFitters or guys that are girls that used to do gymnastics for

10 years. And that's translated over. Well, we've seen in a few instances where people that were, you know, very good or competitive weightlifters can make the transition. Sorry. And then of course,

track also have had some, especially on the women's side, like Brookwell's and Tia that have translated over. I love it too. Like when you say water polo, I just hear about something that just gives you insane metabolic capacity and grit because those dudes are basically scratching and kicking each other fucking under the water. I mean, it's basically, it's awesome. Same with wrestling, right? It's the grit component.

It's a great idea, Jamal. Thank you, Jamal. What do you think is the best by the way? What sport, what sports do you think? I mean, it used to be think, I mean, back in the day it was gymnastics, but maybe, maybe it's changed. Maybe it's evolved. Uh, listening to Chase and Ingram, I mean, Chase and Bill Brunler, hearing about how wrestlers can consistently go to that dark place and allow themselves to hurt, I think that plays a big part

on the male side. Also, you see, I guess you would say women like Tia, Daniel Brandon that do have, and I think Brooke Wells as well, they have that track background which can also correlate to stuff like the longer runs.

But they also have the leg endurance to do workouts that might be more leg heavy with, like that last event with heavy thrusters. I mean, not heavy thrusters, but a decent volume of thrusters. So that would be my pick for women track and for men wrestlers um it's good yeah it certainly is a good pick the other thing is like um chad schroeder actually he prepares and tries to find background information for all the games athletes every year and we'll share it with the broadcast and other relevant people uh and it's also interesting when you see someone that's listed as having like a background in swimming and gymnastics and track and you're like oh but i you know and i'm not exactly sure which one of those things was

maybe the the focus for that athlete i just know that they have some experience with each so in a case like that i wouldn't necessarily know where to categorize them right and then we have emma lawson the dancer very bizarre bizarre but but started crossfit early all right uh thank you, Mr. Jamal. Brilliant contribution. Thank you for keeping me on speed dial. Tell your wife I said hi. Clive McLaughlin, five

Sterlings. Would you see value in super teams allowing older much-loved athletes a soft exit before retiring? Would it also improve the attention teams get? I fuck super teams. Brian, your opinion? I don't i i'm not really sure what he's asking but you know i think that would you like to see so you didn't have to play the um you belong to an affiliate game for six months and just like open the doors like it used to be and just be like yeah have who you want on your team it depends what you know this is at crossfit has to decide and

there have been a lot of people who mentioned to me over the last year or two that there should just be two different divisions there should be an affiliate cup and there should be the fittest team competition and that you know you don't if you have the affiliate cup you can have more strict regulations about what that means to be a part of the affiliate because it's not going to be an issue everyone knows whether you're really a part of the affiliate or not. And if you're just manipulating the things or moving and whatever for a period of time to do that, everyone knows that too. And if you want to have the best level of team competition, then you make an elite division, which is no rules. You just get four people, you show up, you do the competitions,

the best people qualify and throw it, down and then on the other hand you have the affiliate division which is for true homegrown affiliates with you or maybe you have a prerequisite of having actually lived and trained at that place for a year or two years or something like that and you know that would be a better representation of what the affiliate cup used to be you know when it first started which is who's got the fittest affiliate. This guy, Julian, really knows his shit. Sevan knows how much pickleball helps because they were saying, he knows his shit or he's just stalking you. Well, he, both. I mean, I just can't believe, I mean,

pickleball is just for my goofballs. It's just, I can't even believe pickleball is a real thing. It says everything about our society. I mean, I'm glad people play pickleball, but the fact that. Do you think it's more or less ridiculous than disc golf it's in the same category i mean i'm happy i'm happy it's okay disc golf's better i mean this golf's better than real golf real golf is just absurd sorry blaine blaine barber on the other day okay uh If you want to see this list of the top, the official list,

power rankings list going to the 2023 season. This is the list, the only list, the most important list. This is where we start off. This is our baseline. This will change. You go to Brian friends,

Instagram account, and you can see the list. It's a, it's a nice list of Brent who did the graphics. Michael Brink, Michael Brink. Michael Brink. Brian, when what will happen? When will we see this list change? What is our next date? It is

August 23rd. If we do it again, I'd probably do it before the Open. I'll let all the off-season, pre-season competitions have a chance to run their course because we'll see some people compete in Rogue and nothing else. We might not see certain athletes compete until Guadalupalooza and we may have an extra data point on them at that point that could be significant, especially for the guys that are like 50 through 100. There's some athletes in that list that I'm really hopeful

will get a chance to compete in either Dubai or Guadalupalooza. You know, guys like Hamza Terafi, compete in either Dubai or Guadalupalooza. You know, guys like Hamza Terafi, Thiago Lusis, Lionel Franco. These are Benoit Boulanger, Ludwig Hansen. Guys that got on my radar this year, but I need to see a little bit more from them to see if I think they can actually make a push to qualify for the games next year. And hopefully after the preseason or offseason runs, of course, we'll have a little bit more information. And I think at that time it'd be appropriate to do it again.

Darren Lyle. No, not salty. I'm having fun. I think it just means you've spent a lot of time by the ocean. It's like salt. Maybe there is a lot of salt in my hair, but I'm just having a lot of fun. I'm excited to do this. I always get excited when Brian and I do shows. I do watch the schedule brian and i will be scheduling um another uh show soon with the woman rankings uh kayla beaver i think we should i think we'll read i think we'll also revisit the all-time rankings okay fantastic and what will that go down to what

is that all the all-time i'm not sure i might go down to 30 for all time because i have a minimum criteria for that and it's and a couple of significant athletes like justin maderos um have now brid you know exceeded that and so the you know we'll have to find a place for them on the list and and then that people like uh rich froning pop up on the list because it's the all-time. Matt Fraser, Rich Froning, people that aren't competing. Yeah, and the most fun part about that is really – no, not him. But the most fun part about that is seeing where the people right now that are competing start to make their appearance relative to the names from the past like Matt Matt Chance and Graham Holmbrooks and Jason Kleep. I want to see – do you even know who Taylor Sykes is? I want to see Taylor Sykes in the top 100.

No, I don't think so. The women's list is done. Julian, the hooligan, Garcia, list is done. Julian, the hooligan, Garcia. It is done. There's one person named Taylor in the top 100. It's not her. I wonder if Julian and Jeremy are related. Well, I saw this comment, Jeremy.

That's why I wanted to mention about the all-time rankings. We'll try to get those in, too. Caleb, I'm sorry you couldn't make the show we missed you brother i know you're doing important stuff uh for uh to save lives and uh we appreciate you and you're in our thoughts uh matt susan the executive producer of the show thanks for getting everything scheduled uh will branstetter thank you for all the graphics jen mcdonald everyone that helps and of course california hormones uh gabe at paper street coffee uh vindicate all the sponsors uh please subscribe to the newsletter and how you really really want to

subscribe to this podcast but you want to click that bell because we do so many because we do so many podcasts. You want to be notified and it'll just pop up on your phone and tell you when we're going. And do you want to do anything you want to say, Mr. Friend? No,

I appreciate all the comments on Instagram. Apologize if there's someone that I forgot. I know there are a couple of people that could have been on this list, but trying to, trying to do justice to all the men all over the world here that are throwing their names in the ring and trying to become one of the fittest on earth. And hopefully something like this brings more recognition and credibility to all of their efforts and pursuits. And if you're not on it and want to be on it, give us a reason to add you to the list.