The Sevan Podcast - #636 - Rogue Invitational Prediction Show

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Brian Friend and John Young join the show to predict where they think all the men and women will place at the 2022 Rogue Invitational. The Rogue Invitational is the most prestigious off-season event in recent years, attracting the majority of the top 15 placers at the CrossFit Games. 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

do you bam we're live do you know how hard it was brian to sit here and not say one thing make one elephant boy comment the entire time i've been back here for three minutes talking to john what the fuck happened to you did you get stung by a bee no i didn't get stung by a bee a barbell fell on you a plate you're something over me and brian had a disagreement and um yeah he's much tougher than he looks brian only hits kids what what so i uh i i woke up yesterday morning and um started scratching my neck really hard like woke up real fast i told my wife something was wrong and she was like, it was probably just a mosquito. I was like, it's not, no, this is not what a mosquito feels like. And then I went to the

bathroom. So my face was a little bit messed up and, uh, went back to my bed a little bit to, uh, to look at, and nothing was in my bed. Then I lifted up my pillow and there was a whole bunch of fire ants underneath my pillow oh shit and uh i was just getting ate up by fire ants by the back of my neck got really uh but john is such a good dude you know what he said thank god it was my side and not yours honey yeah that's exactly what i said she didn't give it once i don't know how it does how that happens but what state is that texas i don't even think we have. What state is that? Texas. I don't even think we have those in California.

Well, maybe up in Northern California or closer to the border. Not where I'm at. It was quite traumatizing. All right. We'll see. So one bit you on your eyelid. Yeah, this is what I looked like in the morning. Yesterday morning.

That doesn't even look like you. Don't anyone who took that picture fire them excuse me that's his photographer his personal photographer he asked him to be the first thing in the morning when he wakes up just in case oh my goodness uh this morning i woke up to, fuckhead Chase Ingram sending me this picture. He said, this is what Bill, uh, Bill Grundler looks like. And this is what I look like. I'll let you figure out which one I am. I love Nick Nolte. Uh, one of my favorite roles he ever played in his movie called Peaceful Warrior.

Just Warrior. He's great. Also Warrior, yes. He's very great in that. You're right. I must have, like, body dysmorphia or something. I just look at myself and I look just like a little older version of a 17-year-old me. I'm not even that old.

Really? Do I look that old? Look at it. My neck's still tight and shit. What the fuck are you guys looking at? My hair is still thick. I'm still like... What are you guys looking at?

You look great, Simon. You look great. Thank you. The swelling... You just want me to stop talking about myself. The swelling comes from being scarred. Scared. Scared.

Scary. Scarred. The swelling comes from being scared of Brian. Must be what it is he saw my swelling could come from my attraction to brian i'll tell you that thank you magnus wow magazine you don't even say nice shit that's awesome wow i had a i had a guy convinced at my gym totally convinced that uh i had taken up ufc i told him this is my first fight for ufc and he he's a he's a little bit and i there's a girl at my gym who's a black belt in jujitsu and uh i told him i've been working with her and then i had a fight over the weekend and i made like three thousand dollars and he started telling people this and i was like i'm just kidding i'm just kidding i am not fighting convinced

oh i got some bad badusi like that kate that could be kate whoa that could oh not no uh john young's i got some bad badusi maybe i don't know what that means i did you don't want to know you're a good dude you're a good dude keep keep let's keep this show doesn't sound good uh before we start i would like to know some thoughts on three people if you guys may you guys okay with that before we go into the rogue predictions is it nick nolte no we're not we're past that okay no uh what's the deal with hayaley Adams? Has she made any announcements yet? Is she still? I just talked to her yesterday. Oh, tell me. Tell me what's going on. We just talked about Post Malone, though. Oh, in your DMs or you were texting or you called her. Yeah, I had an opportunity to go to see Post Malone. Thanks to Patrick Clark a couple of weeks ago. She was, I think, went a couple of nights ago. loan thanks to patrick clark a couple weeks ago she was uh i think went a couple nights ago um so i just sent her a message about that and it was pretty good i would encourage people to go if they can uh find a way and did you ask is she still training at mayhem i think she's i think

she is still training at mayhem i don't know what programming she's doing. And I did not ask her. John, any, any thoughts on, uh, I thought about asking her because I knew you would ask me, but I decided that I had asked her another time. Okay. I'm going to send a Sousa. Let's get Haley Adams on. Okay. Um, and, uh, Gabriela Magawa. I knew you were going to ask about these people, so I did do some research. The things that I had thought were happening with Gabby in the offseason are not happening with Gabby

in the offseason, but I don't know what is happening with her. Is she still on that island off the coast of Spain? No, I think they've been, her and Christoph have been up in Iceland. They were doing some training with a strong man yesterday. All the athletes are trying to learn how to do that clean and press with the log.

It's actually amazing how accessible it seems to be. Similarly, everyone's able to find one. Is there is not is, I mean, I mean, not everyone, but I've seen,

you know, at least half a dozen, maybe upwards of 10 athletes on Instagram who are posting that they're working on this log thing after Rogue put up the video of Christy doing it. Christy Aramo, by the way, also had a really impressive endurance feat the other day in some kind of – I'm not sure what it was. A marathon pace.

Was it a marathon? It was a marathon? Yeah. Yeah, 7.03 pace for a full marathon. Seven-minute pace to sub three three hours and that's where she uh so she runs good yeah still i mean we knew she's a good runner but it's very impressive um yeah so i thought i had thought that gabby was going to make a change this off season. Now it's, it sounds like she's still indecisive. So holding pattern for both of those athletes still, uh,

meaning, um, you, uh, she could still be with, uh, John Singleton. No,

I don't think so. And I don't think so for that, but what I had thought she was going to do, it sounds like she's reconsidered or seeking other opportunities. Oh, okay. Which makes me feel good about not succumbing to your pressure every time and talking about it out of turn. Well, I'm sure it was to go to Ben Smith. I'm sure.

I'm sure it was to go to Ben Smith. You didn't need to say. I just know. Everyone wants to live in West Virginia. He's in just regular old Virginia. Oh, thank you. I think of all the misinformation that would come out of this show.

If it wasn't for you, Brian, uh, is this guy showing up to the rogue invitational? Oh yeah, he is. Actually, I put out my rankings last night, and someone messaged me,

and it caught me totally off guard. I mean, surely I expect people to have opinions based on what we put, but someone said they wanted to make me a bet that Jeff Adler would beat Roman Krennikoff at the Rogue Invitational this year. God, Adler moves really good, huh? Adler has got to be amongst the, you know, he reminds me of Ben Smith and Scott Pantrick. He's just like such a good mover,

very little wasted movement, extremely efficient. And that's why those guys have been so successful. You know, they've built up those movement patterns that are so effective over time, and they're able to do it at a fast pace. I was going to say Hobart. He's a little different than Hobart. Great mover as well, of course.

I think that's how Hobart does double. Hobart doesn't have multiple top five finishes at the games like those other three guys. Correct. In the individual division. But he's probably accidentally drank out of the same shaker as Rich Froning more times than uh any other human being accidentally right you're right you're right that was you're right i should just report the facts

and not put my opinion you're right has has uh okay the only thing in the shaker bottles that rich drinks is whole milk i think whole milk oh how the fuck does mayhem not have does mayhem have a supplement uh i don't know you know i was uh i don't think so maybe it's just uh there needs to be a there needs to be a froning creatine advocare do they sell creatine hey whatever happened to progenix remember that was like the most dominant supplement for 2000. I know it was because of strong man. They sponsored strong man. Progenix did.

And then they stopped sponsoring them. They just went away. Progenix. Do you know where the owner got a really bad accident? Say that again. Do you know we're covering both the men and the women today? I didn't. Are you telling me that we need to get on it?

Who is the third person on your hit list? Oh, Guy Malheros. You know anything, John? He's not doing Rogue. He's not doing Rogue. Yeah, that's what we know. Do we know why?

Because... He would place too high in rogue and everybody would have unreal expectations for the games no no no that's why in the comments there barbell spin says it has to do with visa issues um he has been that that guy has been pretty uh in tune with athletes and trying to find that stuff out he was the one who reported ellie turner having a visa issues that were and trying to find that stuff out. He was the one who reported Ellie Turner having a visa issues that were, and he also reported that those were resolved. So I would take his word for that. I'm guessing he went back to Brazil after the games. Dude, listen to Brian is not, Brian, how are you like, yeah,

I guess they say it's visa issues. You got to believe him. I guess. I mean, you don't sound like you believe it, but you want us to believe it. It's I don't know. I mean, it's weird. It's weird that he went. He hasn't said anything about it, you know, but he's been pretty, pretty quiet in general. Wow. Look at this.

Here we go. And speaking with my heroes, maybe you're gonna have to replace uh john or brian on the show mr spin and speaking with maheros he told the barbell spin god i'm such a look at him talking about himself in the third person i love it he currently is unable to travel to the united states of america the bastion of freedom and rock and roll as he works through his visa process. From what I know about visa issues in general and CrossFit, if you're a legitimate professional athlete in the sport, you can resolve the visa issues. We've seen it with Sam Briggs, even up to the last minute at the games. We've seen it with Allie Turner just in this past couple

months or weeks or so. And same with, you know, gee, I feel like if that was an issue, it's a resolvable issue, most likely if you wanted to pursue it. But who knows, maybe,

you know, maybe it's a roadblock and he's got other things that he wants to do, or he's not feeling a hundred percent. And so he doesn't want to pursue that aggressively right now. I think if he wanted to get there, he could find a way to get there. Is 200,000 a lot in Brazil? Is $100 a lot of money in Rio?

Depending on... I mean, it's a lot. 200,000, it'd be like 2 million pesos. Hey, I will say this. I did ask Matt Fraser. I said, hey, I just can't believe that Mal wouldn't just, since Tia's not there, just go get

the money. What did he say? You asked him that? Yeah. And he said, and i paraphrase you'd be surprised how much money some of the athletes are making yep some small small few yes i think the drop off is quite huge once you get past the top five that that yeah i mean as it should be. The rest of the people, fuck them. Yes. Yes.

I said it. So, men or women first? Oh, yes. Sorry, I thought we were done. Let's do the women. Okay. Let's do the women. Let's do the women.

Where's Caleb today? Caleb should be doing this, keeping the show on track. Oh, don't post this one. You're the one we're assigned. Go to your own, to the Real Savant podcast. Yeah, Instagram. Why? What's wrong with this one?

It's less informative than the uh the next one we're gonna see you saved the good one for uh the oh wow oh wow the blue one on the right wow wow oh did you know i had the ceo on who are you asking either of you you brian did you know i was on that episode after he got off no shit about. When we talked about it. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. Yeah, it's cool. Okay. Oh, my goodness.

Look right at the top. Is this the first time you're seeing these? Yeah. Is that Ariel Lowen commenting to John Young? It is. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Made my day.

I thought she was going to follow me, but she didn't. Okay. Let me just tell you some of the hype hitters that are commenting on this prediction. Ariel Loewen, Chase Ingram, Patrick Clark, Susie Tell. She has the largest collection of CEO shirts in the world. The Barbell Spin. It's good. This is a good posse. Great crew.

I'm going to flip through these cards real quick. Oh, this is good. This is good. Wow. Okay. Can we start at the bottom? Yeah, let's start at the bottom. Okay.

I don't even know who – do I know who these bottom – I know the name is Matilda Garns. I know Ann these bottom – I know the name is Matilda Garns. I know Annika Greer. I don't recognize these six in the 18th through 20th spot. I don't recognize their names. Anything you can say to me where like, oh, this person did this at the games. This person did this at a semifinal. Do any of these ladies have any notable accomplishments so far? You probably would not know too much about Bailey

Rogers or Andrea Solberg. Um, and, but I did do, I put an article out yesterday for the women. I think the men's will go out today that has, uh, you know, two to five sentences about each athlete along with a little bit of biographical information. So if you're someone who doesn't know who those athletes are, uh, just that was the idea where you could just key in on a little bit of biographical information. So if you're someone who doesn't know who those athletes are, that was the idea where you could just key in on a little bit of what they've done and maybe one or two things that they might excel at. Where is that? Where is that posted? At Barbell Bend? Barbell Bend. Did I say it wrong? Barbell Bend?

No, no. You may have said it wrong. You may have said it right, too. It's on Barbell Bend. Bailey Rogers is from Oceana. She did the semifinal there she uh got sixth i believe she's been she was six this year seventh year before uh and she had a pretty cool uh stat actually this year she was placed between fifth and ninth in all of the workouts so she didn't really exhibit any excellence, but keep in mind who's competing in that competition. You have, you know, you had Tia, Cara, Jamie, Maddie Sturt, and Ellie Turner, five athletes who we believe all have top 20 games potential if they were all able to compete there.

And she's placing fifth through ninth. So she's regularly either in that mix, if she's taking fifth or just behind, and she's not showing any weakness relative to the rest of the field she's consistently almost made it to the games and arguably the hardest women's field to make it to the games though the thing she doesn't have going for her is her age you know she's over 30 already and she still hasn't had this breakthrough by the way i just let i want you know i just let barbend Bend send me notifications to my computer. Normally, I would have clicked no way. I just went to their website. Fuck off.

But since you worked there, Brian, I clicked it, of course. What a good guy. Touched me inappropriately. J.R. Howell, it's almost like they need more spots. They needed more spots, but we'll see. You agree with J.R. The field is deep. There's people who need to spots. They needed more spots. You agree with JR. The field is deep. There's people who need to be there who didn't go.

Is that what you're saying? I'm going to be somewhat arrogant here maybe and say anyone who's thinking that is agreeing with me. I've been saying and writing about this for two years at least in public platforms. But it might change. And this is the thing that people have to recognize because a lot of people have been messaging following CrossFit's announcement about the season. Thank you, Tyler. And, you know, if Tia doesn't compete and or doesn't compete in Oceania,

and if this, if Kara retires, which some people are speculating could happen, we haven't heard anything from her. So we don't know. And if Jamie also petitions to compete in Europe instead of Australia, where she's been living for a while, you know, and suddenly those, and Ellie Turner, who's living in the United States, but it doesn't compete there. If those four women aren't there, they do not need more than three spots at all. Did you say Tia as well yeah for us yeah all of their people don't live there except car now if they're all forced to compete there then yeah and they all are still competing then yes definitely the same things i've been saying

for the last three years is that look at their finishes at the games i mean between the ones who made it this year tia cara and ellie all finished inside the top 20 handily, did very well. And they're all in this field. Well, Tia's not in this field, but she would be if she wanted to be. And we have these other women that are competing over there that are very good. And in the cases when they have had the chance to make the games, the Jamie Simmons and Maddie Sturtz, they've also done well. But never have they been rewarded as a continent or a region or a semi-final whatever

you want to call it for those high placing finishes at the games instead they've been penalized they used to have five spots and now it's been reduced to three and their athletes are still regularly finishing in the top third at the games brian do you know how hard or how strict they will be on that rule do you think they'll be lenient or strict about it? I mean, it's one of the biggest, you know, I wouldn't say... I'm glad the rule is there. What rule? What rule?

Basically, they have... Jason CF Media did a video about this that outlines it pretty well. Several others, including Barbell Spin, put out a tweet kind of drawing attention to the inconsistency with the rule there or at least the perceived inconsistency it says that you have to compete where you're a citizen

but they also have come out and clarified that there is a petition process that will be made available to athletes and that they can submit a request to compete elsewhere before the season begins and all those requests will be considered and responded to and known before the season starts before the open starts. And I will be allowed to compete wherever the fuck he wants. I specifically referenced Roman when talking about this, they're not going to send anyone back to a country that's a fucking war. You don't even, if you're from the Ukraine or Russia,

you can compete in your mom's backyard in the United States. It's fine. Well, we don't look, the problem is we don. It's fine. Well, we don't. The problem is we don't know what the criteria is and we don't have any real guarantee that it will be applied consistently because we don't know what it is. By the way, I don't think you should unsubscribe to the Morning Chalk Up because Andrew Weinstein is still submitting some amazing fiction over there. And you should go over there and read it. Amazing fiction.

Classics. Instant classics. over there and you should uh you should go over there and read it amazing fiction classics instant classics uh go back to to the question at hand um do you think that there should be more people i mean you got to cut it off somewhere it just it depends it depends on the rule it depends how that is implemented if no i mean at. Are you saying there should be more than 20 people at Rogue? Oh, no. Oh, okay. Then I misunderstood. It's just strictly talking about spots for the games. I think a better question about the field at Rogue is, do you

like the field better when it was the top 20 from the games, or do you like having five available spots through the qualifier? We've talked about this before, but if you look at the men's field alone, John, who are the five qualifiers that made it through the online qualifier? Chandler, Chandler Smith, Jorge Fernandez, Scott Tetlow, Tim Paulson, and there is one more. What about those guys? Those are the ones who made it through the qualifier? Jack Farlow. Did you say that? Jack Farlow. Jack Farlow.

So you got Farlow, Paulson, Tetlow,ler smith and jorge fernandez if you'd invited spots 16 through 20 from the games you would have fukowski willie george travis mayor dylan pepper and spencer panchik you tell me which five guys are stronger competitors uh okay i i hear you and i'd like to see all those guys compete but But how about Kerstetter at number 11? We would have never gotten Olivia Kerstetter if we didn't have a... Well, maybe. I mean, it depends. And it's pretty cool that she's having her pro debut at Rogue. It's pretty cool.

Sorry, Brian. Go ahead. But the women's field ended up being a different situation because so many athletes declined. So, yes. And if there were no spots available, you want to get the special invite of Annie Thor's daughter, for example. But of the 16 through 20 women's spots, they did extend an offer to Lucy Campbell.

She was unable to make it. They invited Dani Spiegel. She is coming. They invited Matilda Garns through the qualifier because she was sixth, but she would have been 18th and got the invite anyway. So, spots 16, 17, 16 17 18 19 the women's ended up getting an invite as well um just by the way that things shook out so and last year they invited the top 20 from the games that's the only reason why i bring it up i think 20 is a great number for an invitation like this and you can see the pros and cons of having the qualifier versus

inviting those those uh 16 through 20 from the games. Would you be opposed to the top 18 and then there just be two spots for the qualifier? Because if you take the top two, it would be Chandler and Jorge, correct? Let's not swerve too far into the men. Well, I mean, we're just talking about qualifying. Who would be the top? Who would be the two women, Brian, in the qualifying?

It would have been Manon Agoniz and Olivia Cursiter. There you go. You see what I'm saying? Like, if it's top 18, I feel like that's the best of both worlds. I agree with you. I think it's a better competition if it's the top 20 you invite from the games and you just keep going down the list. But, I mean.

I think you have to have a qualified... I like that there's an opportunity. They didn't last year. But I don't think it's a problem. I'm just, you know... I like that there's an opportunity outside of what you place at the games to get there.

Sure. I mean, especially in the case of both Manu Nangonese and Anika Greer, whose seasons ended for, you know, even in the case of Chandler Smith or a guy like Jorge Fernandez, Andy Thorzad, all of their seasons didn't, they never led them to the opportunity to qualify through the games. Two of them competed on teams.

One of them had an unfortunate medical something at semifinals, and the other two screwed up the quarterfinal submission windows. And yet they were all able to have this opportunity. So that's the reason why the qualifier is nice so people who have just got here i got attacked by fire ants that's why my eye looks like this i wish that was a joke it is not i slept in a pile of fire ants yeah he has pink eye after i sat on his face that's i like that it's disgusting uh why not invite olivia she is a rogue branding as it gets you're shooting yourself no no but but you have to have some

criteria for inviting plus olivia is going yeah i don't understand i don't think there's anything wrong with her proving that she's fit enough to be there there's nothing wrong with that okay so when you look at number uh 15 through 20 you guys have the same people you think that the same uh shit birds uh you guys agree on that the bottom half i mean the women's field is uh it's it's how is man on anganese getting here i don't think she's vaccinated how is she getting here that's outside of our area of expertise okay fair uh oh and even 50 so so annika grier uh anna manganese carolyn privo andrea solberg matilda garns bailey rogers you guys all have 15 through 20 where it just starts

to get weird is you have two really high profile games athletes at number 14 and john young has danny spiegel at 13 going to basically what is the strongman version of the crossfit games is john lost his mind john did you see what she did to the sandbag i saw that and she'll be really good in one event wow do we know what the events are no uh brian uh tell me how how bad he is putting danny spiegel and emma mcquade who both prove themselves to be strong as shit um at the grassy games i think are you talking about jack and dalstrom who who the last two standing in the sandbag where danny Jacqueline Dahlstrom. Right, right.

Sorry. Yes. Thank you, her. Yes. Thank you. Well, you see that I have Jacqueline Dahlstrom only one spot different from John. Jacqueline was last place at Rogue Invitational last year, and she had a pretty poor overall performance. Her best event finish was 10th, and she had 3 18ths and a 17th out of 20.

So it wasn't very good, but there's a huge amount of women that were competing at Rogue last year. Tia Toomey, Haley Adams, Kristen Holta, Carrie Pierce, Mel O'Brien, all of those are in the top eight. They're not in the field this year. Emma Carey, Chrissy Aramo, Katrin Davidsutter, Emily Rolfe, Sam Briggs, all were in the bottom 10, but also not in the field this year. So the women's field overall is not as strong as it was last year at Rogue. And therefore, I think Jacqueline will move up quite a few spots relative to some of the athletes who made it through the online qualifier. Dani Spiegel, interesting case, Dani Spiegel, where she only competed in Rogue one other time.

It was in 2019, which was the first version. It was the live version. And she's had her ups and downs since then. But she, in that competition, specifically had ups and downs. And it wasn't what John was saying, where she only had one good event finish. She had three top fives, but she also had a 20th and a 16th. And then she had a couple in the middle. So she's got a little bit of everything. But a little bit of everything is better than not having those top five finishes. And I think that against this field, she will have the opportunity to have at least two top five finishes, which will keep her in contention for a top ten spot. And I don't disagree with that.

I probably do have her a little bit low. But I know Guy is so good because he's athletic it's not just the strength events it's anything being athletic he is going to be in the top three at least i don't see who yeah but i and like like he's i kind of i'm saying that because he's the strongest guy danny spiegel is the strongest girl. I don't see her in the same athletic realm as far as getting three finishes as a top three. She will have a couple events where she's great. She'll have one event where she wins easily. And then the rest of the rest of the events, she's going to be bottom tier. And she is so reliable.

Whatever the events are, they're going to affect her the most. Because the events could stack up really good for her or they could stack up really bad for her. She's so event reliant on where she places in rope. And when the events come out, I can almost guarantee you where she's going to be on the list. Regardless if it's 13th or if it's 9th, when the events come out, you can basically tell where she's going to be just by what the events are. Would you disagree, Brian? No. I mean, if you just look at her finishes from a much more relevant competition, which is this last year's CrossFit Games, obviously she had a first.

She also had a second, seventh, eighth, fifth. She's got this potential to be very good against the best woman in the world in several events, but she also had a 29th, 29th, 30th, 33rd, 22nd. So she's going to have just as many good as bad, but I would say that you want the athlete that's going to have just as many good as bad over the athlete that's just having everything nine through 14. Give me one second here. Let's go through these really quick. Brian, do you think that Sevan thought he was in a job interview yesterday? Maybe. I mean, he put on his best or his worst, best or worst shirt.

I'm not sure how to classify that. Alex, person, real question. Is John Young qualified for the fittest experience sitting in 40th place right now? right now is that an event the fittest person yeah i gotta be tops i gotta be top 60 to uh make it to the make it to the show so it's looking good um i don't know we'll see this is the last day to submit your scores and then we have a whole another week of events but um i'm i've redone a couple and my score is much higher than it is in the scoreboard so i just haven't submitted it yet but uh i'm happy with week one uh she won't be at her best she's been on uh she won't be at her best she's been on vacation and then uh for the win jason

miller danny's also been gallivanting wow j. Jason. That, that, that has a poor, poor, not porn, a pornographic component to it. I think, uh, Danny's also been gallivanting through Europe as well. Uh,

any truth to that, that she's, she's not taking it serious. She's not on an a game. Well, I mean, you know, the athletes do take trips.

A lot of the athletes like to take trips after the games for a variety of different reasons. I think that's a healthy thing to do. The body needs a chance to recover. I can say the same with Haley and Mal. Yeah, but they're not competing in this competition. And I think that she's still training. She's still working out a majority of days over there.

And when you have the level of fitness that these athletes have, you can, you can take some time off. You can do a little bit of maintenance work and then you can spend, you know, four to six weeks building up for this thing. Felner's doing the same. Basically, he just didn't take a trip to Europe. He just went home and spent some time with his family and his job. Uh, it's not a concern to me. I mean, clearly we're not seeing the photos that Felner posts do not look like gallivanting. What do you mean? He's gallivanting through the woods with his son and his dog. There's no gallivanting.

What days are the competition? Is it a Friday, Saturday, Sunday event? October 28th through 30th. Okay. JR has an interesting post here. I think the Thursday event will beg to differ. There's a rumor that there might be an event on Thursday. Rogue has announced nothing about it, so I'm not going to speculate until they do.

All right. Do we know when the athletes get there? Usually they get there a couple days beforehand. I know last year they had some ceremonious things with athletes getting hats and cowboy boots and whatever. Oh, right. I would guess Tuesday or Wednesday, the majority of the athletes will arrive. Right. I need a stair master i really want a stair master have you guys ever been into any any gym where there's a stair master any crossfit gym not a cross not a crossfit gym they're the real deal though i really want one go 40 minutes on level 10 uh fraser has one that's why i want it i'm a sucker

for that shit okay let's talk about why uh brian has ariel low and solo yeah let's talk about that and uh i mean i gotta go peek at the next page i gotta see brian why why do you hate Ariel Loewen? Oh, good question. Hold on. I want to see where you have her. Okay. Hey, here's the thing, man. Well, go ahead, Brian. I think that some of us are kind of scarred by Ariel Loewen two years ago when she said that she's just going to the semifinals to get that plaque. And so it's always like that always kind of you hear that in the back of your mind

that she might not be taken serious, though since then she's she's proven herself she certainly has and there's uh if anything i would that would make me think the opposite because she wasn't even thinking she was good and then she won now she's training because you think she can win you know her you know, plays better. There are, I mean, there are definitely a few athletes on this list where just based on the stats that I, you know, that I looked into the research and whatever that, you know, you, I can make the argument that they're out of place. And Ariel is one of those. entire resume uh over the last two years a more appropriate position for her not considering anything else would be ninth or tenth instead of 14th where i have her um but this is like a conversation that i think actually chad schrader schroeder wrote a quote i quoted him in this in our article leading into the games is that sometimes coming into competition you can see

all the stats all the stuff on the paper and you just have to go with a gut instinct. And that's what I'm doing with Ariel. And then when we get to the men, there's basically one other person like that, where all the stats support a higher finishing place. And I just have a feeling they're going to do worse. And sometimes that's how you make a decision. And there's not a great, there's no, the stats that I could pull up for Ariel would support the position that John has her in, not the one that I have her in. He called her Ariel.

Are you okay with that, John? You should ask her if she's okay with it. I think it's her name. Don't tell me what to do, John. 33 minutes and you have to pee. No, I'm squirmy-wormy because last night before I went to bed, I ate like a pound of maybe two pounds of macadamia nuts. Oh, my God. And I probably have to take a massive shit at some point.

I mean, it's just not ready. So now you know. Two pounds? I don't know. I'm exaggerating. But like this much, however much this much is, like five huge handfuls just like pushing in. No, it's not. A bicycle's not nice no no it's stupid but i got off the podcast last night and i was just i just i was so excited and i ate uh ellie turner

and olivia kerstetter and emma lawson three i i think three of my um my favorites going into the 2023 season. Favorites in what regard? What's fascinating about all three of these girls, I think that every time we see these three ladies for the next three years, they will be significantly better. I think normally when you see athletes, they've hit glass ceilings or they're very close to the top. I think these three, I think you never know where they're going to finish.

They're so untested. Please speak. As far as improving their place, I mean, Emma Lawson has a really tough way to go if she's going to improve a ton because nobody saw her coming in uh fifth and then she come in fifth or fourth sixth six no nobody saw her being that high on the leaderboard and i don't i think that's going to be really really hard to top uh and if she does if she does top it next year in 2023, she will be in that tier of podium athletes with Laura, Gabby, Haley, Mal, and then Emma. And I think that'll be the tier. Not counting Tia.

Like she will be in that tier of will this person podium probably every single year she competes if she does repeat what she did in 2022 uh what is daniel brandon in that tier no uh brian i i really like the way john worded that do you like that grouping those are that those are those kind of those horses run together in the field? I think there might be some separation that's created over the next two years from a couple of them pulling ahead of the others. But we'll get to some of those in the top 10. But in case of Emma Lawson, I have her significantly higher than John.

And I understand his ranking here because if you look at her game's performance, it was kind of the inverse of the Laura Horvath and similar to Ricky Garrard, which started off really well, did very well on some of the gymnastics and endurance tests and tapered off towards the end when the strength was more of the deciding factor in workouts. We saw that the alpaca, the back nine, the sandbag, that those are some of her worst finishes. However, her debut in the individual division feels a lot to me like Hayley Adams' debut. And even though Hayley did it in a different structure of a year, I think the question was after that, how would she do in another competition like Rogue?

And then when we started to see a pattern of Rogue over time, being this kind of strength dominant event we saw well that might hurt hayley's performance relative to the other women but it didn't it didn't really hurt her that much she was still able to finish fifth and eighth in uh in the last two years the two years she competed at rogue if anything it cemented her she's always going to be top five in whatever competition she's in. And I feel the same way with Emma. It's almost like when Medeiros won the first year in the CrossFit Games,

I didn't think he was the biggest guy in the world. Once he won Rogue, I did. I was like, he's above everybody. And I would feel the same way with Emma. If she gets, you know, top eight at Rogue, then she will forever be top 10 material in my eyes. But I have to see it at a competition that is not going to be geared towards her strengths. Right. And what I'm saying is that Rogue was not geared towards Haley's strengths last year. Right.

And she did have a second to last place finish on the lifting event. She had two other finishes outside the top 10 she still finished fifth last year at rogue and i think we're going to see something very similar from emma lawson where her overall fitness and capacity execution and composure and these kind of intangible traits will still allow her to have enough good finishes where she'll be right in that five seven eight range at worst come the end of the weekend even if she does have a couple finishes in the bottom you know five or so and i don't put that out of the realm of possibility at all but i just do your place your 11th well i couldn't rank her well said betting on that if that happens i don't see that it is a possibility that happens but until it happens i can't rank her that high

uh jr how i have a Stairmaster at home. It's an amazing workout. Phrase notes. Please send me a picture of it, J.R., dear Bill and Katie. Dear Bill. Lowen is a stat breaker every single time from the numbers guy, Jason T. Watkins. I call him Tyler. I don't know what he's suggesting there.

Thank you. I need to go back. Per her stats, she should be probably ninth or tenth on this list what do you have her John like eighth or ninth and uh I'm choosing to ignore the stats in this regard just on a basically on a feeling that some of these other women are going to get her this time around Ariel Owen drinks paper street coffee I cannot confirm or deny that but if she is stand back oh I did not factor that in I maybe i should reconsider uh emma lawson is going to come into this with extra confidence i mean how much more confidence

can she have brian real quick what about her makes you think she won't be top 10 uh mostly other than other than a feeling what what there has to be a reason like why who who are you talking about no it's mostly that I think that... Ariel Loewen. Okay, where are my actual... Who do I have in 8th and 9th and 10th? I'll show you. Hold on. Here we go. These women, Barnhart, McQuaid, Spiegel,

Kersetter, Turner, and Dahlstrom, I just think they're going to do better than they've done or than they did at the games. Where is Dahlstrom going to be better than her? We'll see. I'm not sure. Dahl she has not like dalstrom has not been able to beat ariel lowen yet that's what i'm saying like i understand why you have low and ahead of dalstrom i don't have great stats to back up that ranking it's just what

what i feel like might happen but i feel that these other women barnhart spiegel for example who um low and beat at the games this year, will outperform her at Rogue. Obviously, we both think that Olivia Kerstetter is a bit of an unknown. I think she has a chance to beat her as well. I think Ellie Turner is improving. So maybe, you know, probably the least confident of all those ahead of her is Dahlstrom, which I have one spot ahead.

50 bucks Will Branstetter has a crush on Emma Lawson. Yeah, hard crush. Hard crush. Hard crush. She's with Jack Farlow, man. strom which i have one spot ahead 50 bucks will branstetter has a crush on emma lawson yeah hard crush hard crush hard crush she's with jack farlow man you uh need to pick somebody else she's taking yeah what about hayley adams what about hayley adams will okay uh can we talk about um ellie turner and olivia kerstetter what a slap in the face, gentlemen. Or Brian. To Ellie Turner to put the kid, the kid who clowns around with Jacob Heppner and the Corky, to put the kid, Olivia Kerstetter, ahead of the fucking savage,

the up-and-coming great out of Oceana, Ellie Turner. Well, I think. I agree. A lot of people seem to think that i have cursed that are too low here john has her i think one spot higher right he has her intent yeah and i think yeah she's for my in my opinion she is the biggest unknown in the field kind of like emma lawson was going into the games this year is you know we're not we're not really sure uh she has on paper a lot of the skills that you would think could translate really well to a performance at Rook.

There are a couple things that will probably slow her down relative to the best women in the world that she hasn't competed against in a competition like this yet. So we'll see how she holds up, if there's a long-distance ruck run, which they usually have, if there's a big set of strict handstand push-ups in the middle of a workout, how she manages that, if it's paired with ring muscle-ups, it's a lot of gymnastics in one set. You know who will crush a ruck run is Ellie Turner will crush

a ruck run. Crush. And we're likely to see one. No, they crush my ruck run. Oh. That's why Ellie Turner, man, she's she's What's Ellie's weakness? what's ellie's weakness what's

her what's her what's her achilles she's got to have something so what did she shit the bed on at the games she got like some 30 bye john don't come back what happened to him i don't know i don't know he got nervous he probably hit a button. Will's comment hurt his feelings. John, why are you winking at me? The thing is, when you look at Ellie Turner's finishes at the CrossFit Games, there are a couple good performances. She obviously had a win this year in the hat trick event, and she's got an incredibly fast cycle rate on wall balls the dumbbell snatch

wasn't heavy enough to really slow down any of the top women there and it just came down to cycle speed on wall balls she was able to get that event win i don't know that there's going to be a lot of competitions where your cycle rate or rebounding out of the bottom of a wall ball is going to be the deciding factor in a workout she also did well on the alpaca event dude what i think that's a little she snatched those dumbbells like it was her most of the women did that she was pulling ahead of them on the wall balls if you watch that workout back her and she's she posted a video maybe a month ago about she was doing two for one wall balls where you squat twice into a wall ball that's like i've

tried it before i have slow twitch muscle fibers it's very hard for me she makes it look almost effortless i mean it is so fast her get her and Guy both getting out of the bottom of the squat. And I know that they manhandle the dumbbell. I'm telling you, others also manhandle the dumbbell. Others could not squat as fast as them in the wall ball. But she got the event win. I mean, an event win is an event win. She had to do a clean run and good, great execution on that workout three rounds in order to earn the win. I'm not saying it's's bad i'm just saying that that's a specific skill set that i don't know is going to win you an event at many competitions where wall ball speed will be a deciding factor she did great on the alpaca event if it had legos rope comes in it we don't know but what it tells us is that this grunt work

pushing sleds moving kettlebells odd objects she's good at that. She had a lot of event finishes, 20th to 35th in that range at the games, and not as many up towards the top. So I think she's improving. Her overall performance at the games in 2022 was better than 2021. She moved up, I think, eight spots over those two years, which is a nice achievement, of course. I think she's going to continue to improve next year at the games more than likely. And I think she'll do okay at Roke, but it's

going to be, you know, it's not that easy to crack the top 10 here. Where she struggles is on her hands, which is not a bad place to struggle because it's only going to affect one event. She's not the best handstand walker, any handstand walking event she tends to struggle with. And then handstand push-ups, I think that was her worst event, was the handstand push-up one at the Games. But that's only going to be one event. And the people who are going to struggle on that as well is Olivia Kerstetter and Laura Horvath and Danny Spiegel. All people who are kind of her similar body build, they all struggle with that too.

Has there ever been a handstand walk at Rogue? I don't think so. I don't think so. It's always strict handstand push-ups, yeah. And if you look, I mean, I put an article out, I don't know, a week or two ago about predicting the Rogue programming. Through three seasons, It's very predictable, more predictable than almost any other competition. Will they deviate from that in year four?

Maybe. Will there be more events? Possibly. Will there be different implements like a handstand walking that we haven't seen in three years? Could certainly be, but based on the history that they've programmed there, it is pretty helpful when trying to assess these athletes,

potential performance, because like John said, they've had strict handstand pushups three years in a row in big chunks the last two years in the middle of a chipper. They've had ring muscle-ups regularly. They've had burpee pull-ups regularly. They have not had chest-to-bar pull-ups. They have had rope climbs when they've been able to do a live competition. You know, they're always using an echo bike in a power output, not an endurance style.

They're always using the rower and the skier skier in more of those, uh, in a chipper format or in a rounds for time format. So there's very like specific things. They love the 21, 15, nine. They like to run with the weight. They like to carry objects that are odd objects horizontally. So we, you know, we've seen this pattern over three years with all of these things. Uh, I'm curious if, you know, they'll stick to those things or if they'll deviate from them in some way. I think we'll probably get a lot of similar and maybe one or two things new or different than they've had in the past. John, do you see anything on his list that's just absolutely ridiculous that you're like, wow, Brian really fucked up here? Other than Ariel Owen, and we've already talked about, we already talked about her. ridiculous that you're like wow brian really fucked up here um other than ariel lowen and

we've already talked about oh we already talked about her uh olivia i agree is the biggest unknown it's impossible to know where she's going to place this it's really a shot in the dark i'm rooting for her so i have her higher than brian does brian doesn't like her very much so that's why he has her at 11. Man. And yeah, other than that, Ariel Lohan is where we disagree the hardest on. He has fire amp venom coursing through his brains, Brian. Cut him some slack. He's in a dark place.

Yeah, I mean, Lohan and Lawson, those are the two biggest. Yeah, Lawson for me and Lohan for him. And if I was objectively betting, I would bet, I would bet on John's placement of loan and my placement of loss. Do you see anything, um, uh, hair, hair, brain, uh, placements from John, Brian, when you look at this 11 through 20, is there anything you would just are like, wow, like, I'm so disappointed in you. I thought more, I think he's, I think he's low on Lawson and Spiegel.

Obviously. We talked about both of those already. Okay. Moving into the top 10. Interesting. I guess I wasn't paying attention. I didn't even know car Saunders was going. Yeah.

She's a pretty under the radar at this point in the women's field. You know, she had a, even in competition, she's kind of under the radar at this point in the women's field you know she had even in competition she's kind of under the radar now dude it's a haul for her to come out here it is a haul yeah but she's got i think she's in a good place with sponsors for other businesses um and obviously rogue also provides a travel stipend for the athletes. They do? Yeah. So she's probably not spending any money to get there. She's probably able to use some of those things to make that happen. Wait, Rogue will give them like $1,000 or something to like, hey, here, put this towards your ticket or do what you want with this money?

Does Guy have to give his stipend back? I don't know when the stipend is delivered. Guy, give your stipend back. Yeah, Guy just hustled, bro. It's what he did there. Brian, how much do they get? Does it depend on their rankings? No, it's uniform across the board.

I think, oh yeah, it's dependent on our rankings, yeah. Dude, that would be awesome. Yeah, if we both rank them awesome. Yeah. If they, if they, if we rank both rank them in the bottom five, they actually don't even give them the stipend at all. Bruce, I don't know.

You got invited. I can't remember what the travel stipend is. Something in my mind wants to say 2000, but don't, I can't guarantee that. I'm sure it's out. Someone probably knows. God.

They really, they really, they really do kill it's out. Someone probably knows. God. They really do kill it. Okay. John has Libby Kerst at her 10th, which is basically just one higher than where Brian. Then we see Danny Spiegel comes in. Alexis Raptus, you guys both have her at 7th. Let's stop there and talk about Miss Raptus.

John, you take it away. All right. Yeah, she was super consistent at the game she did much better than i thought she was going to do at the games i thought the games would um really not go well for her but like all the new kids emma lawson alexa alexis raptus um they all did a lot better than i thought they were going to do and alexis has one strength that not very many people have and she is the best in the crossfit world right now since carrie pierce is no longer in the crossfit world arguably better than her actually i don't know what she beat her at she beat her at the west coast classic in that workout in 2021 yeah that's fair what's the movement it's strict handstand push-ups really any any version of handstand push-ups she is otherworldly better than everybody else

even the dudes even the dudes i mean if carrie pierce won mary alexis raptus beat carrie pierce you could assume that she would be Her and Mary but If there's Handstand pushups in the workout Alexis Raptors is probably Going to win the workout And if there's a critical component of it yeah Yeah I mean if it's like It's buried sometimes

In the last two years they've been buried in the middle Of a chip rate it is still a huge Separator especially for the women Winning it good chance but yeah upside down she's insanely good yeah uh jay hartle uh i'm bored i'm going to go watch garage gym uh reviews news video uh jay i'm also bored and i'm gonna go fuck your mom asshole anything inverted jr howell saying well what what else is there handstand walks handstand push-ups what is this guy i mean handstand walking handstand push-ups but it like

handstand push-ups go a lot of different ways like laura horvath is fine unless it's strict deficit and then she is gone it's done she's gonna be last place and alexis raptus will is better than everybody at every version of handstand push-ups there is um there were no how are pistols how are pistols she good at those two i would imagine so you guys like her hey is she going to be a podium is she ever going to make the podium at the games alexis raptus so the struggle for for alexis raptus is that you have a handful of women that are younger than her that are already beating her and then you and others that are upcoming that we don't know about like olivia kerstetter but the ones i'm talking about are mal o'brien hayley adams emma lawson possibly emma carrie and then you also have women like Ellie Turner, Laura Horvath, Gabby Magawa,

who are basically the same age as her. So it's like that range from 16 to 25 right now on the women's side, like you have 10 women in that range alone that are, you know, threats in any competition and especially at the games. So in order to get on the podium, you know, the, the, the spots disappear very quickly. And yeah, I know. And she's only 23, but the people beating her are younger. Emma Lawson is 17, right? Mal is 18. Alexis has to get better than them when they're only going to get better. That's why it's matters that she's 23. Well, that's actually, this is something that we don't, we don't actually know yet. You know, has like Haley Adams got so good, so fast relative to the women's field. And then she puts out, you know, yeah.

And is that plateau going to be permanent? Mal O'Brien has gotten so good, so fast, you know, obviously there's not a lot of room to go up from there, but I'm talking about relative to her own fitness. How much better can she still get? Or is she just going to, you know, it might be a plateau of, of first place or second place, but you know, at 20 years old, she's just sustaining for 14 years. Not getting, or will she, or will these women who are getting so good, so young, like her setter loss and carry O'Brien Adams, et cetera, continue to push that bar forward.

And, and where's the, like, where's the ceiling for them? If that's the case where they're continuing to get better, then that makes it really difficult for electus Raptus. Who's already trying to chase. How old is she? How old is Alexis? She's 23. Gabby's 23.

I think Laura's 24, maybe 25. Now Danielle's 25. Like, if you look at the list and here in the top 10, you take out Annie Barn uh barnhart danielle's like a mother hen compared to these girls she's like a year older than laura two years older than gabby it's ridiculous and what's what's hard what's also hard for alexis is that her weakest

thing is is just strength in general all of her worst finishes were strength oriented the sandbag ladder the snap or um the uh back nine with all the strength implements and the capital is somewhat heavy at the end but um that's all of her worst events and the women that we have ahead of her even if she were to get stronger she's not going to beat those women you know she's never going to beat amanda barnhart or gabby magawa or laura in strength events she could beat other people of the field but it makes it hard for her to jump them in placement john didn't someone send you a free mic necessarily have to beat those people but she can't be taking 29th on the

strength event or 20th out of 30 on the back nine event like those those finishes need to be closer to 10th even if she's not threatening to be in the top 10. John, did someone send you a mic, like a free mic back in the day? Yeah, I have a mic. It's somewhere. You would sound so much. Well, no, not now.

Not now. But maybe. Take a break between the women and the men and I'll find it and hook it up. No, no, no, no. I just want to tell you you're a douche for not using it. Daniel Brandon, number five. How could she possibly do worse than she did at the games?

How do you not have her in the top three? This field is easier than the games, right? And both of you made the same mistake. It's disgusting. So where's Gabby? Who are we talking about, Danielle? What happens to someone? What's the distinction between Rogue and the games, I guess, is the thing.

Is it fewer events and heavier? Does that sum it up? Well, here, I mean, Danielle Brandon is a, yeah. What will happen to her at Rogue is a great question. She has competed in Rogue the last two years, and she's placed 15th in 2020 and 11th last year. The 11th place last year was just as good as she did at the CrossFit Games, basically. So I think that like she made an improvement last year at the Games, she'll also make an improvement this year at Rogue. The reason to answer your question, I feel that, first of all, Annie being inserted into the field,

reason to answer your question. I feel that, first of all, Annie being inserted into the field, we can just kind of call that, in this case, at least a swap for Tia, where it's someone who Danielle has not proven to have the capacity to beat last, obviously last year, Annie beater at both the games and Rogue Invitational and was, you know, in a very impressive in both those competitions. I'm sure we'll talk about her later on. Then you're, you know, you're looking at competitions i'm sure we'll talk about her later on then you're all you know you're looking at uh cara saunders and gabby magawa who basically are athletes that i think will excel at rogue relative to the games where there will be a little bit more emphasis on the things that they're better at strength and a little bit less emphasis on the things that sometimes hold them back uh like skills like skills and and especially for gabby the gymnastics uh is daniel's back is daniel brandon injured i don't know i haven't heard anything about that

uh any uh thor's daughter and laura horvat one and two um are both you okay flip-flopping those are you pretty are you john are you pretty like certain about laura horvath are you pretty firm on that um no this is what uh the year before last was but it was uh uh second and third because tia was there um and yeah no no i have no problem with this annie i think it'll be a really tight race between Annie and Laura the whole entire way. Laura should win depending on the handstand pushup workout. So when we see the handstand pushup workout, if it's something that Laura is going to be last place at, if it's strict deficits, then Annie's going to win.

And I can almost guarantee that. And if it's not strict deficits, I think Laura is going to win. I almost guarantee that. No. Okay. First of all, someone had mentioned here, there were no handstand pushups last year at Rogue. There were handstand pushups last year at Rogue.

There were a set of 30 strict handstand pushups. There were 60 total. Oh, there were, there were 60 total. And there were also 30 ring muscle-ups in that workout. Yeah. It was a big component of the workout. Actually, Laura took 19th out of 20th in that workout. Yeah. It was a big component of the workout. Actually, Laura took 19th out of 20th in that event. Yeah.

You know, very specifically going into the final event last year, Annie had not finished worse than sixth on any event at all. And Laura had finishes of 19th, 12th and 11th. I mean, it's not even comparable on the last event. Laura took second,

which obviously helped her case overall on the weekend. And Annie took 13th. It was her worst event of the weekend. But Annie's coming into that event knowing that she's guaranteed second. And the only way she can win is if she beats Tia. I think she had to beat her by two or three spots in a workout that is about execution. So Annie had to take risks. It's very similar to Pat Vellner event 15, 2021 CrossFit games. He was not going to get any worse than second. His only hope was to beat Madaris. And when you look at the workout and you see how bad Vellner's finishing place is on there,

you just have to keep in mind the context of the situation, which is that the only chance he had to win was beat Justin and have several other people also placed in between him. And Justin was too good on the chest for pull-ups and he knew it was out of sight. So Pat just throttled back and accepted the second place. And he went for it and risked it on a limited nation style workout and took a hit for it.

It looks like with a 13th, more than twice as bad as any other workout she had last year at rogue, but it was contextual. If you don't understand the context of that workout, then that, then you have a question about that. So, based on what I see, I don't think that there's any chance

for Laura to beat Annie at this competition. She's too well-rounded, has no holes in her games, and Laura, despite the handstand push-ups, has already shown that she's not as good at Annie on at least two other things last year as well. Wow. I'll make you a bet that Laura wins. We can make a bet right now

you don't want to do that he says she has no chance john well then i good he should have no problem let's make a strict handstand push-up bet then if uh he uh is that confident meaning what what's the strict handstand push-up bet meaning i can't do those very well so he's just making me feel bad publicly. Oh, that's not nice, John. We can make a bet. What do you want to bet? You can say something about his eye now.

You have carte blanche to say something about his eye. Go ahead, Brian. I have tremendous respect for you coming on the show with your eye looking like that, John. Yes. Hey, that was a drop mic moment for a lot of reasons because Brian is very close with the Horvat family. Very close.

I should have worn their shirt on my show, on the show today. Very close. I mean, he was close before that fucking outburst towards Miss Laura. Laura, when are you coming on the show, girl? Just five minutes. That was not directed at Laura. That was directed specifically at John. I understand.

I'm surprised you were that confident in that pick. I'd like to see – Laura, people would like to see you come on the show. They want to see the spark, the fireworks between us. There's a little tension there. Do we want to do the men now? Are you sure you want to do the men now? You don't want to make this for tonight's show? I can't do it tonight.

Okay, fine. I've got all day. I have no night. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. At the very bottom, the dude who carries Emma Lawson's bags. God. Brutal. Man, you know, it's the truth, though.

I know it's brutal, but it's... John, it's funny when I say it. It hurts when you say it. You actually mean something. Jeez Louise. Well, let's say this about Jack Farlow. Young kid. Very strong. Has some experience at the games.

Incredibly strong. I think he's cleaned 400 pounds. Incredibly nice. How about that? Does he get points about that? Does he get points for that? Phenomenally nice person. Uh, very driven has obviously a very, very, very good training partner. That's not in the same division as him, which is an advantage. Not everyone gets in their training and, and no matter what happens to him here at rogue, this is an

incredible opportunity for him. Like we talked about, it's really difficult to get into this field, whether you have to make the top 20 at the games like you did last year, or you have to go through the qualification process, which there were a lot of men that you would consider to be fitter than him, or maybe have a better chance in this competition than him that he beat in the qualifier for whatever reason. So he did, he took the opportunity was there and did well enough to make it. And this is a chance for him to go, you know, unlike someone like James Sprague, who a lot of people would think is better than Farlo, has not had an opportunity to be in an elite level competition like this. And Jack's getting that opportunity at 20 years old. So there's nothing negative that comes out of this weekend for Jack. It's a great opportunity to be in a prestigious event. Yeah, you might take last place. It's still a win in terms of his career trajectory.

Honestly, then by the way, OK, go ahead. Go ahead, John. Go ahead. Depending on the events, he is one of the strongest guys in this field with particular lifts. So, I mean, he could get lucky and get a top three or even a win. And that I mean, that alone would put him not in last place if that were to happen.

So I agree. It's nothing but positive for him. If he gets last place, that's kind of what was expected. If he doesn't, then he outdid himself. Hey, I'm going to go to the bathroom really quick, okay? Fine. Brian, do you think there's any truth to this from Clive McLaughlin? It's an interesting point that maybe some of Annie's skills have eroded

in terms of the speed transitions, just the small nuances that separate an individual athlete from a team athlete. No, I think Annie is totally fine. She was able to come back from giving birth and being pregnant and all of the things that surrounded that for her and immediately get back into the conversation at the CrossFit games. I don't think that having a year of, honestly, what I think was mostly fun training with her with a lot of other competitive athletes. From what I know about that crew in Iceland is that they were all improving this year and they were having a good time doing it.

It was a really good environment for everyone. I don't think that Annie's fitness will have taken a backseat at all. I think if anything, that it's maybe even a refreshing thing for her body to have not had to go through that individual season. And she'll be excited to get out there on the competition floor. You know, she loves environments like this.

She thrives in them. She'll build up, you know, the fans will be going cheering for her, obviously. And I think that this is, look, I do think that Laura might be the fittest woman on earth outside of Tia Claire to me, if you were to test everything all at once, but in these competitions, when there's only seven or eight tests, even at the games, when there's 14 or 15, if you have the weakness or the holes that Laura has, it can be

difficult to overcome them. And he doesn't have those weaknesses. She's pretty steady across the board with the potential to have first and second place on certain workouts. That's a recipe for winning a competition. I tell you what, I tell you what, Brian, as I was peeing, I thought of what we could do. Um, if, uh, if annie if annie wins i will run five miles and if laura wins you have to do 100 handstand push-ups for time kippy 75 just come on just do 100 no but i don't want to do that to myself 10 miles i'll run 10 miles oh my goodness uh i'm i'm shocked here i am just shocked to see uh nick matthew saxon panchick noah olsen y Janikowski all on the shit bird side

well I think only one of us has Noah Olsen on the shit bird side yeah you but he has Nick Matthew Cole Sager and Janikowski I mean I have Nick in 11th so three spots higher than him he's got are Rich and Matt doing individual

who is so good over there that Saxon can't make it. These guys. Wow. Holy shit. Wow. It's a bit, this is a, so when I put the men's rankings out last night and I had the article,

hopefully we'll be dropping today. Similarly to give you a profile of some of the athletes. If you don't know a lot about them um justin kotler and ricky gerard and keifer lomani who's his uh number two coach over there no way jorge fernandez finishes that low i don't know i think he's got to be talking about he's talking about me he's got to talk about me we'll talk about jorge in a minute anyway they were getting into the comments a little bit and what keifer said is that this is just a tough field. This is a tough field. I mean, yes, we're talking about the bottom half of this competition and you have guys with multiple

top 10 finishes, some of them with multiple top five finishes in Sager, Saxon, Noel, Noah, and Yonikoski who are all showing up here. Obviously he has Noah a little bit higher, but that's what it is. There's so many good men in the individual field this year. The only one of the top 15 that's missing is Guy. We were praising with Hapalainen. And it's like I talked about going into the games for the men's field. You could be getting fitter and still be doing worse in competitions

in the men's division right now. The top 14 of the top 15 from the games are at the rogue invitational this year yeah it's legitimately like we're going to watch the games like the parts that we like to watch it's a mini games for the men it's going to be amazing wow wow okay and it's and that goes back to jack farlow what a stud he is to be with this crew is this jack farlow's coming out party it's the biggest state i mean, he has competed. I think he took sixth in 2019 in the teenage division, 16, 17 men or boys. So, yeah, in terms of individual competition, this is without a doubt the biggest stage he'll have competed.

So he's freaking out. He was ninth at Atlas. What did you say he should be? Is that what you said? He was ninth at the Atlas Games, the semifinal. No, he should not be. He should be excited. It's a great opportunity. There's no expectations for him there's no expectations it can only be good

uh nick matthew uh proved himself to be extraordinarily strong uh crazy grit at the crossfit games and john young has him at 14th and you have him at 11th uh really i mean isn't isn't rogue supposed to be the strong man um well you're you are choosing to have basically a myopic memory of of nick matthew and just thinking about one thing he also did uh had a second event win on the skills medley so he he showed at the games that he has somewhat of a diverse array of things that he can excel at win two event wins um but he's very he has multiple specialties like for for him it's just fitness that holds him back just as a whole yeah then his total and if we're being uh super honest his total performance at

the games was not that great relative to what people perceive from him because of those two you know shining moments that he had because they're so different events too they're so different and he won two and they were featured events right yeah skills medley had so, so many new implements. The press to handstand was something people were looking for. The double under crossovers that he was able to do better than anyone else caught people's eye, especially if the women failed to do it. And obviously the sandbag event was the premier lifting event on Saturday night. So the timing of when you excel in these workouts matters in terms of the attention that you receive by doing great in them. Those two things stood out and kind of masked a little bit his other performances

that weren't necessarily as stellar. He's very, he's just not phased by a lot. Like whatever happens in a workout before or after that doesn't really affect the next workout for him. He's very much a matter of fact, get business done. He's been close to making the games for several years before this. He has a lot of competitive experiences kind of on the fringe of being a games level athlete. Now he's had a great performance at the games. I think that he'll come here. I think, you know, mid pack is a, is what I expect from him 10 to 12, something in that range. He might have one standout moment, but more, more likely he won't you know because you think he's going to the games next year brian

have to have to learn more about the format um based on stuff that adrian has been saying uh he'll be one of the borderline guys yeah and the way and the number of spots that are allocated to semifinals in north america will matter a lot for someone like that was he a last chance qualifier guy no he was uh somebody popped and then he got in guy wow okay okay excuse me i hope that's not contagious jorge fernandez i i have to tell you i'm biased as shit because i saw this guy in person a couple weeks ago a a month ago at the ranch. This dude is gnarly. Actually, I got to touch him. He's a rock.

It's like hugging a fucking stack of two-by-fours. He is something else. And I'll go ahead and say, like, the stuff he's put up in, like, qualifiers and stuff, I might have him too low, but we've never seen him in a major competition like this so yeah where did he come from how come i'd never heard of him before next thing i know he's at the ranch who is he jorge fernandez oh yeah i mean he was on crossfit

invictus's team this year uh he's incredibly strong i think he front squatted 445 pounds at the games this year. What, John? For team? Yeah. Yeah. They had an event called Strong where I think each athlete had to do a different lift. Were you just trying to read John's face? Dude, you can't read his face, Brian. He looks fucking like elephant.

Do not read his face anymore. Do you want me just to drop him so we only hear his audio? I'm going to drop his video. Sorry. Go ahead, Brian. Do not try to read john's face yeah super super strong he's done well in lifting complexes uh he snatched 290 pounds in the semifinals 445 front squad at the games and we know that rogue favors uh strength athlete so there's going to be some things he does well if we're if all things were even here, I think that the most appropriate spot for him in a rankings like this is probably 15th.

I'm betting on him a little bit here by putting him 12th. I think John is undervaluing him a little bit here at 18th. And so it looks like more disparity. I think somewhere around 15th would be an acceptable place to expect him to be with the opportunity to do a little better than that. I think that's fair. I 100% agree.

Who's better? Who is better, Chandler Smith or Cole Sager? And the follow-up question is, who's going to retire first? Over the course of their career, it's not even close. Cole Sager's had a way, way better career for this competition. I mean, I just mean like right now if you we pull them out of their bed at eight in the morning and drag them out to the track uh who who's better wow look who showed up holy shit what's up caleb you guys can't see him he's in the back uh look

cole sager has nine consecutive qualifications for the CrossFit games, multiple top 10 finishes at the CrossFit games. He's won semi-final style competitions. He's, you know, he's got some of that wins at the game. His resume is much better than Chandler Smith's. His career has been longer, better, more accomplished. Chandler Smith has a pretty good resume at Rogue. He's competed there all three

times. I think that the only other person in this field to do that, I think there are two others, Cole Sager being one of them and Patrick Vellner being the other. And Chandler's placed fifth, fourth, and eighth in those competitions. That's pretty good. Chandler had something seemingly unfortunate happen to him during semifinals that really precluded him from giving his best effort there. Was it heat stroke? Some sort of heat stuff? It was the asthma and allergy combination that was documented in the arena documentary that Buttery Bros worked with some other company and put out a couple months after that competition

took place. But since then, he did go to compete at Canwest. He won that competition. He did this online qualifier. He won that competition. And he this online qualifier. He won that competition and he'll be at rogue where he has nothing but top 10 finishes to his credit. Now I have said, this is a stronger men's field than he's used to competing at. I still think that his skillset lines up really well for a good performance here. Um, is, is, is the rogue invitational at the same venue it was last year? Yeah. Same week, same, same time same same time of year yeah yeah so i do not know what was going on last year at the rogue invitational but there were either someone had spiked the food there with xlax or maybe the story but there was a story coming out of there

that the pollen in the air was insane oh i thought they had uh what is it called i thought they had taken the water from lake monona and given it to the athletes in the hotel just to put some games authenticity but there were people there who someone supposedly dropped out because they're allergies yeah and i think that um i think i think that i had text shane orr and he had said yeah there's something going on with allergies there and that shit could be oh the wheel it was the fields like the wheat fields were blowing in because velner talked about that then he um because he was sniffly after the first day so chandler could be fucked over there maybe i mean we had he competed there last year and it didn't seem to be a problem he also competed at granite Games last year or the previous year outdoors and didn't have the problem. Allergies are, and from my opinion and experience, are somewhat random.

I lived in Austin for several years. The first year I was there, it was debilitating to the point that I had to get a steroid shot in my ass to be able to play for my collegiate soccer team. I literally could not function otherwise. The next year that I went there, I was fine. Oh, Jay, welcome back. Nice to see you. You jerk off. I don't think he ever went anywhere. Good.

I was at his mom's house. Okay. I'd like to switch over to the first page, even though we could talk about this shit forever. I'm surprised Yonakoski's coming. I think they love Yonakoski. I think Yonakoski and the Hennigers might have a good relationship. Well, it's cool for you. The only time he's competed at Rogue was in the online year.

He missed it the other two years. And Yonakoski has this history throughout his career of having these injuries. He'll have these big ups and downs because of that. So this is a good chance for him to finally compete live at the Rogue Invitation. It's his first time? Is that what you said? First time live. The only year he did it was 2020 when they did it online. Okay.

Caleb, could we go over to page one? Oh, my God, John. Justin Medeiros cannot be beat, dude. Do you understand that? It's a fucking dynasty, dude. And I'm going to tell you something else too. Ellie Turner is going to show up too. You guys have it all.

Hey, Brian, you want to make a bet on this one instead of the girls i'm i'm really trying not to make bets on athletes uh and you're putting me in a tough spot here john he's a professional john he's not a weekend warrior like me and you he's a professional he works for like barbell bend and the crossfit games and shit he can't be bet over under on uh january 1st by the time that Sevan gets barbend correct. I think he forever says it wrong. Barbend. Over, over, over. Oh, shit.

Oh, shit. We got private dating girls. Jay, Hartle, Hartle, here's your thing. Run away, buddy. Private dating chat girls. This is for you. Do you want to talk about Roman and Justin now or wait for a minute? Yeah, let's do it now i this is i just love that we'll put bkg instead of b org everyone knows who it is uh this must have been hard for brian because brian does have some roman

krennikoff love he's really stepped up his game. He took a shot at the Horvaths earlier in the show and now he's got his lover Roman Krennikoff in second. See, I think he's being politically correct here. I'm sticking to my word, which I said after Rogue last

year. Until someone beats Justin Medeiros in a live competition, I will pick him to win every competition he shows up to. And i i will do the same that i did last year granted i was wrong and madaris won but uh he uh wasn't convincing i hate that he wins and it's not convincing because it leaves me feeling like he could be beat and i feel like Roman is going to beat him in this competition. It's a, it's more like Ryan said, it's a feeling,

uh, rogue suits Roman, as long as a heavy snatch is not in there. And, uh, I, uh, I think Roman's going to do it.

I think he's going to beat him and it's going to make 2023 really, really fun because then we'll have Roman and, and Justin head to head. I think Clive's, I think Clive's comment here. The first sentence is, is very fair. The second sentence, I can't give any merit to seven. You're tripping. Look at Justin's event placing at the games.

He's not dominant. Let's do that. Let's do that. Okay. But he wins by Caleb event placings at the games for Justin, please. But he wins by, Caleb, event placings at the games for Justin, please. He wins by default due to competitors having holes.

I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's fair. I do think he needs credit for how he executes because he's probably the single greatest executor at being as good as you can be. executor at seven. Caleb, Caleb, you need to search a Brian friend bar bend and pull up the article. That's called a consistency. Not dominance is Justin Medeiros. The secret to success.

Look at this. I fight with Jay Hartle and he throws the kryptonite at me. The Armenian flag, you asshole. Fine. I love you. Okay. The Brian said something I didn't hear.

What did you want? You want, what did you want? Oh, it looks like he's got it. He's on it. There are two tables on this, in this article. They're actually both interesting to look at. The first one is going to show relative to other, these are all

the people who've won back-to-back championships at the CrossFit Games, and their event wins. So in Rich Froning's first two years, he won six total events. In Fraser's and Annie's, they won five each. The others each won four each, Tia and Katrin, and Medeiros has only won one. So this is what Clive is talking about. He doesn't have the dominant gene of winning events relative to these others.

But if you scroll down further to the next table, this is what I was curious about. It took me a long time to find this information. So this is basically in the first third, the second third, and then the final of his heat, not the specific event, the event finishes in the overall. And if you look at these things, he's almost never giving away positions relative to the field. I don't understand this chart. Sorry. I understood the first chart. What do we tell me? Help me. So for example, overall finish is probably the easiest way to go here. No, what I'm talking about is what john just said is his execution in almost every event at the crossfit games is such that he starts somewhere

and he only gets better there are small examples like event two there from 2021 where he went from fourth to second to sixth and he gave away a little bit that um but if you look at the other ones you're saying he improves as the week goes. No, as the, each individual event goes, this is from the first third of an event. So if it was a three round workout, event number three, for example, he was an eighth after round one, six after round two, fourth at the end event, five, seventh and fourth and third event, six, fifth and fourth and second event, seven, fourth and third and second event, nine, 10th and seven, then six, almost every event for the last two years is like this where he's getting that last column. How come you're not reading the overall finishes?

Cause I can't, I didn't know. It was difficult to compare this to someone who wasn't in the same heat as him. When you're on the floor, yeah, when you're on the floor directly competing and almost all of these events, he's in the final heat. There are a couple of exceptions. You're saying he's the ultimate pacer. He, if anything, has the opposite problem that most CrossFitters have, which has come out too hot.

Scroll all the way up to the top, Caleb. The way I intro this article is by going back to the original CrossFit Games champion, which is, which was James Fitzgerald. And this quote at the end of the first sentence that he took, that I heard him say when I took the OPEX course live in Scottsdale, Arizona with him is that the pacer always wins. 16 years later, 15 years later, this is what Justin Medeiros is doing. He's outpacing everyone that's in his heat.

He's starting here and he's moving up and up and rarely giving anything away to the field. This is such a difficult skill to have. It's such a discipline and patience that's required in the first third of these workouts to let those guys go and know that over time you're going to reel them in. And it's like 75% of the events over the last two years that he's done that. And even the events that aren't like that, but are events where you have to not make a mistake, for instance, like the wall ball ball a heavy dumbbell snatch event hat trick like he doesn't make mistakes during those he doesn't ever make mistakes within the workout

um and it's and i did write it reps or yeah go ahead and so what and what john's talking about here is that relative to his closest competitors he's this is where he's winning against them so it may not necessarily be on fitness alone in a vacuum but it's the application of the fitness i wrote an article about roman and ricky for morning chalk up maybe a month or six weeks ago and i talked about that roman had two areas of deficiency over the course of the weekend there were two events that he started out too fast and fell off the pace and ended up giving away a lot of points. The most egregious one that's easy to watch if you go and watch it back is elevated Elizabeth.

He was in first after the first heat, but with the exception of Vellner, who just absolutely smashed that workout, every other heat winner for men and women didn't make their move until the first round of nine. And then they just hit the accelerator and left everyone in the dust. So Roman missed, missed approach that workout. And I think it cost him. Um, and then he also had a few minor execution errors where he also gave away points hitting one head of the dumbbell to the ground instead of two in the hat trick event, which was, you know, such a small margin for error and nothing to do with his ability to snatch that weight. It was just an execution error in the moment when things had to be fast and perfect. Justin doesn't have those mistakes. That's why I'm picking him. And where, and where Justin succeeds in that somebody like Pat Belner has always struggled

with that. Same thing from the previous year. Always make some kind of execution error. Everyone wants to point to the swimming, swim kayak workout. That's not where Belner lost. We've talked about this before event six. Maybe he had to take a crap. I don't know, whatever.

But he came to that barbell ahead of Justin, missed it. Justin hit it and got in ahead of both him and Fikowski. The moment I saw that in the arena and Dave Castro said the same thing in a postgame interview when he was talking about the games that year, that's the time that we thought, okay, Justin's the guy to beat here. You know, these little things. Fast forward two events to the handstand walking obstacle course event. Justin made no mistakes. He walked to the first obstacle,

which was like 25 feet. These guys are doing their sleep. He kicked down. He got back up. He took more breaks than everyone, but didn't miss. Vellner missed like six attempts at different obstacles. He's supposed to be amazing at his hands. He should win events. Top three. Easy on handstand

walking. It's almost like clockwork for him to make an execution error. And it's upsetting because I think Belder is one of the fittest guys in the world. And I think he should win the CrossFit Games. He won't do it because of these execution errors. And Justin never makes them. All that being said, too uh this year at the games adrian did uh through everything uh including the kitchen sink at justin to try to the pacers

to try to fuck with their pacing and uh and and he still overcame right i mean especially that last event where you had to do the fucking the row in a certain amount of time yeah and that's uh you know the table that that Caleb was showing from that article, there's another one that's for 2022 and it's the same story. He's just, he starts wherever he starts and he just doesn't give spots away. He's either moving up or staying the same. I will say though, this does lead to a better finish and a more event, a more event based, uh, competition. So over the course of 15 events justin will place higher than a competition with seven events so it depends what those seven events are i mean it does it does

but there's less of a chance to make mistakes the less events there are he had he has said in interviews that he wishes he were more dominant sure but i mean this is this is the counter to clive's point look at his rogue finishes last year these are event finishes at rogue from last year second third second first second fifth third who's beating that i'm telling you roman is going to beat that this year hey there's a chance we're looking at the greatest crossfitter who ever lived compete right now if there was if there was an if there was i mean you you see that that he highlighted there 75% of the time, he didn't give away even one single position against his field over two years at the CrossFit Games against his heat. Yeah, he's dope.

Not even a single spot. If he gave one spot away, like on Jackie pro, he was in first after the thruster, second, after the bar muscle ups, when he already had the championship, had the championship i still counted that against him 75 of the time he gives nothing away as the workout progress so he has crazy situational awareness of what's going on in the field well his consistency is just on unreal it's it's it's better than anybody we've ever seen if you don't count fraser just beating everybody every time uh so do you want to stick with your guns uh john i will say this if roman does beat him it makes the games more interesting yeah okay let me ask brian this do you think it is more likely that roman beats justin or that laura beats in roman beats justin so i despite all of the things that i've said about Justin. Did you say Laura beats Justin?

Roman beats. I think it's more likely that Roman beats Justin than Laura beats Ann. Roman is incredible. This guy's fitness is scary, scary good. The way I see Roman winning is he's going to have like three or four first place finishes. And then he's going to have three fifth place finishes where justin will be third third third third fourth third second and i see roman coming out on top of that dude this will change roman's life if he wins this by the way if he won 250 000 i mean the the performance he had at the games was was pretty significant but yeah of course

this would be a great accomplishment for him financially. He can buy a house in Madison. It'd be the biggest win of his career. I don't want to say that Roman doesn't have a chance to beat Justin. His fitness is incredibly impressive. And if you look at what he did at the games, it was a very, very, very elite performance for a first year at the live crossfit games he needs to be a little bit more dialed in he can't afford to have these little slips these

little executioners if he's able to eradicate those he does have a chance to beat justin but until someone actually does that when it matters i cannot bet against this guy uh what about this? Sorry to beat a dead horse, but do you think Roman misses some things during the athlete briefing due to language barrier? Like in the last event, Roman didn't advance when doing his pull-ups.

No, that's... Start with the end. You did not have to advance during the bar muscle-ups in the last event. If you were tall enough where the shorter bars would have affected your kip, they allowed you to do all 30 bar muscle-ups in the last event. If you were tall enough where the shorter bars would have affected your kip, they allowed you to do all 30-bar muscle-ups on the high bar. That's why Roman and others that were similar height were doing that. And no, I don't think that while he doesn't necessarily understand everything that's being said, he has an incredible support from the people who are hosting him in Madison, basically. And that woman is there to

translate for him. And she's very in tune with the CrossFit ecosystem competition. She understands all that stuff. So I think he's able to get all the information just fine. I don't know where a regular caller is, but Will Plummer, I will give you 15 seconds. Go ahead. Who do we think wins the log press, Roman or Justin? He's drinking from his Slurpee. Like, Will's sucking the last few drops out of the bottom of Slurpee where he asked the question.

Honestly, I think they're both going to be really close to each other. But Roman's shoulder to overhead is very, very good. But Justin's shoulder to overhead is also very, very good.'s shoulder overhead is also very very good so i i i honestly i'm gonna just say push i think they uh finish right right with each other i'm not gonna pick one great question i appreciate you brother great great question great awareness of how good both those guys should be at that implement to ask a question like that yeah wow look at that getting some love from uh from brian i would like to uh just do a quick uh intermission to um show you guys these are some

of the homes that uh these are 250 000 in less uh yeah we'll go with uh uh high to low in birmingham alabama god i can't believe what you can buy there look at this roman three bedroom two bath two thousand square feet look at this thing look at this thing right here there's the new krennikoff's home if you win buddy that's nice just had a baby that's a good you can put a disc golf basket in the front yard practice your putting look at everyone weighing in on their own bias. I love it. I still have to buy some discs, Brian.

Did you say Academy had them? Can we confirm that Brian's podcasting from his Nana's house, that picture and lamp? I know that you're jealous of that picture. That's a custom picture. You can't find that anywhere. Lamp? Yeah, whatever.

He'll take the hit on the lamp. He stands by his picture. That's a custom picture. You can't find that anywhere. Lamp? Yeah, whatever. He'll take the hit on the lamp. He stands by his picture. Anyone else even have a shot at the top of the podium? Why aren't we talking about Ricky Garrard, the most handsome man ever to take in the mantle from Rich Froning to ever participate? The most handsome man.

Yes. I like him rugged, Brian. I like him rugged. Looked like they could wrestle an alligator. Yeah, this should on paper be Ricky's worst event in the CrossFit space. He would do better in Guadalupe or Dubai or the CrossFit Games than Rogue. It rewards power, output, and top-end strength. And now that's not all it is, but it rewards athletes of that ilk. Somebody like Jason Hopper, somebody like Adler. That's why we have those guys ahead of Ricky.

And even though Ricky is probably fitter, I'll even go ahead and say he is fitter. He is fitter than those two guys. In a competition like Rogue, nothing suits him. There is no long endurance in rogue. There's no bike for 10 miles. There's no run three and a half miles. There's none of that. All the stuff he wins that he's better than everybody. That's not at rogue. So that's why we have him that low,

even though he is top three fit in the world, nothing he wins is going to be shown at rope. Mr. Friend. I think he will have a one or two events that he's top three still. But I, I agree. I agree. And the events that he's was worst at,

at the games, which are things that are likely to be exposed here. And even though, you know, I think that there's still worst at at the games which uh are things that are likely to be exposed here and even though you know i think that there's still you know he i don't think he's going to have bottom five finishes on anything i think he's going to have a couple finishes 10 to 13 and these other and there's enough other guys in the field that probably won't and you know it's it's really difficult at the top of the men's field you know we're not even we haven't even talked about velner yet and going to the 2021 games like and even after the 2021 games he might have been the fittest guy on earth he just didn't execute well uh and basically we're

like saying a great performance from him would give him third if ricky got third it would be scary for everybody else i would if ricky got third yes i agree he would be like right now in my head i have justin and roman in a tier by themselves and then and then i have like three or four guys who are like three through six who could podium it would be more shocking if ricky took third than chandler smith took third no that would not be more shocking. Chandler would be more shocking. Wow. But, uh, cause, cause you got fit.

It's still a fitness competition. It's just strength bias. It's not all strength, but, um, but if Ricky were to get third, I would put him into that top tier with Roman and Justin. Kate, if you're talking about Matt Fraser, there is not even a, Matt is a one compared rugged compared to Ricky. Matt's parents were professional ice skaters. Ricky was fucking raised in a trailer fucking park, one of those homes where the truck drives you in.

Ricky probably hasn't washed his hands in 20 years. Yeah, this motherfucker – do you understand? Ricky Garrard parks his fucking motorcycle in the house. If there was a fucking fight he will fuck all those dudes up I'm telling you you could give them all bats there is this guy and fire ants would think twice before biting him in the eye

oh yes I mean and on top of that he's more ghetto than Justin Medeiros this fucking guy is a savage I'm telling you and he could be a calvin klein underwear model though he's he's everything when it comes to ricky in this competition it's not just about him you need to also consider the guys that we've placed ahead of him

and we've you know we've we've touched on velner velner's career performance at rogue is second first second he lost to fraser and he was beating him after day one he won the online competition and he lost to madaris last year yeah if you look at the stats and you look at on paper both of us are low on velner as far as if you look at rogue and what he's done and like it is i know it's not considered a risk to put Roman ahead of Vellner, but it kind of is if you just look at it, what's on paper and what they've done in their careers thus far. So if we're talking about Ricky's chances to make the podium, we've already established how good Justin is and has been. We already know Roman's fitness level is insanely good and was better than Ricky at the full test of the CrossFit Games this year. level is insanely good and was better than Ricky at the full test of the CrossFit Games this year.

We're talking about Vellner's track record at Rogue being incredibly good, as good as anyone pretty much. Obviously, he also has multiple career podium finishes at the Games. Yes, he had a disappointing finish this year. Yes, Ricky beat him at the Games this year. But the things that will be tested at Rogue and the things that won't be tested at Rogue are likely weighing heavily in Felner's favor compared to Ricky. So then we slide down from there and we have Adler, Hopper, and Quant. And that's where I think that the majority of the conversation needs to be had about how

good Ricky can really do. I just want to throw this look, people. Look. Look. Oh, my shit shit i don't even know i don't know how to make this bigger how do i make this bigger how come when i put plus it gets smaller anyway i rest my case seven put your pictures on your fingers on the computer screen and go like this just go like that i don't know how they don't have that yet um okay uh

a lot a lot of good dudes there um we had talked about who who runs which horses run together are justin and roman in a in a league of their own is this is this kind of is this is this put up or shut up for pat velner do we find where Pat Vellner is in his career here? If he's still running with the big boys and sorry, go ahead. I would say yes for Vellner. I do think that there's a chance for Vellner to be in the equation in this competition. I would say it's maybe like a 30, like a third,

like 33% chance that he's in contention for first or second with one or two events to go. And it's a little bit more likely that he's battling for the podium spot with one of these other guys uh probably most likely adler in my opinion i think if belner finishes sixth or lower it's probably done i think if he finishes outside the top four it's not it's a bit it's a bad showing for him he's like fourth is the worst you can afford to do. No, but I'm,

I'm saying like where he's not in the equation. Yeah. Podium. We shouldn't talk, but I would say it's more likely that I feel like it's more likely he'll, he could finish second and six. I think he's going to do. Yeah,

I agree. And, and, and Jason Hopper is, is coming to prove something. A fifth would be great for him. If he finished, if he finishes top three, he's making a statement.

Yeah, and this competition suits Jason Hopper. As far as all the stuff I said, it doesn't suit Ricky. It does suit Hopper, and that's why we have him ahead of Ricky. We know there's going to be a high-power output event. Hopper will be top two in that event. That's a guaranteed top two. Over at the Hard Work Pays Off, they got Rob Kearney, the strongman guy. I guarantee they played around with the log. Do you think Hopper Young is beyond the shit to bed days?

Fuck up, get nervous. I think Hopper is a good soldier, and Matt will never let that happen to him. Hopper's best events at the games this year all feature things that we're used to seeing at Rogue. So he was second place on the Echo Press, strict handstand push-ups, and Echo Bike in short power domains

is something that rogue regularly programmed he was fourth on the sandbag ladder lifting odd objects for weight is something we're already expecting to see he was also fourth on shuttle to overhead the show you know part b bella complex last year he was sixth place pretty at rogue so he has the capacity to move a heavy barbell if that shows up i don't think it's outside the realm of possibility at Rogue that we get a heavy barbell for reps and then a heavy log for load or something like that. And he could do well on both of those things. And finally, he took fifth place on the Capitol. So anything that's displacement horizontally of objects, which we've seen over and over and over again at Rogue, dragging sandbags, carrying sandbags in the barehead, carrying them on your shoulder, throwing sandbags over hay bales. All

of these things, jerry can carries are things that Rogue has programmed in the past that he's great at. And he had to run three and a half miles in that workout, which for a guy that size, same with Roman, it's impressive that they're still able to do that, you know, and not give away too much. There will be almost definitely, go work is sponsoring them again, a weighted run. I'm sure he's been practicing that and he's going to be fine. So he's got a strict handstand pushups and high volume ring muscle ups. The best thing that could happen to him is that it happens like it was last year where those are in the same workout because then he only takes one hit. He did have three 14th place finishes at rogue last year. One of them was in the mule, which is deadlifts and burpee pull-ups, where there's

probably the most surprising of those three. One of them was on the chipper that had ring well steps and handstand pushups. That 14th place finish for him in that workout is not that bad. What that tells me is that he actually probably executed that workout fairly well relative to his own capacity. And I think he's improved in those high volume gymnastics things in the last 12 months. So if, even if a workout like that comes up, I think he can do better than the 14th in that last year. And then he, he got eliminated early in the, uh, sprint style final with the snatches and the sandbag. And that's his execution. Yeah. And that's sort of a random, I'm not like, I'm not looking at that and saying, Oh, that's a big problem for him. Same as Velner. He got, Velner got 13th

Hopper got 14th in that. It wasn't that they couldn't do that workout just in the moment. They didn't, which is obviously something that's valuable, but it's not something that I'm holding against them coming into this one. Kind of like what we talked about Alexis Raptus, where it's going to be hard for her to get ahead of the people already ahead of her. I think the opposite of Hopper. I think Hopper has so much untapped potential that he could get better and better and better. And like, as far as like where people plateau, like we talked about Haley, Haley's kind of been stuck where she's been for three or four years. I, I don't see that with Hopper. I think he's only going to get better as the years go on. Cause there's just the stuff that

he is bad at is all easily improved with practice. And the stuff that he is bad at is all easily improved with practice and the stuff that he's good at is very hard to to be good at and he's has it naturally just because of his size and his uh power output um anything else on here screaming out at you guys that you guys want to talk about? And any other people? We're pretty different on Quant. I probably have Quant too low. It was just hard for me to put him ahead of BKG or Ricky. No, I mean, Quant's one of those guys, you know, coming into the games this year,

we didn't know what to expect. And then I think for me, he really solidified his spot as a competitor during the, you know, like a legit competitor for top 10, maybe even top five during the capital workout where he just, well, so many people, including people who were finishing close to him come down the weekend. We're struggling with that sandbag, Belner and Hopper and Jukic, you know. Oh, he's not going to struggle carrying something. He's a grind horse type of guy any grinder workout he's going to do very very good at the the negative thing for him is that he did not do very well at rogue last year he finished 13th with event finishes of 12th 14th 16th 17th and 18th he did have a second place but that was pretty much the standalone and it was in the final so his resume at rogue doesn't from last season doesn't really give credence to the spot

that i have him in or honestly the spot that john hasn't been but i think that he it's you know we i don't know about the medical condition and these other things that he's had chronically going on but when he has showed up to competitions healthy and able to perform in the past two years he's incredibly good and should not be overlooked who's better sam quant or jeffrey adler if you just put them in the face off crossfit games one-on-one mano y mano who's the better crossfitter i would probably say adler is he sam quant 2.0 no they're different athletes it's athletes. It's a great question. I also would probably give the edge to Adler, but pretty narrowly. Yeah, no, it's not by a lot, especially when Sam's on.

I'll come back. I have one more follow-up question on it. Sevan, who's going to be on the ground at Rogue? I know Brian's going to be there for bar bend all right dot com and uh and and and hopefully we can chat with him a little bit but the the two official people will be uh taylor self and jr howell and uh we will not be uh doing any actual reporting we We will just be making sure Bill and Katie have fresh biscuits and water and are happy. That's it. That's our goal.

Biscuits and gravy. Texas style. Yeah, whatever they eat in Texas or Ohio or wherever they're from. I feel like you would be remiss to not talk about BKG here. Okay, let me ask one follow-up question, though. And JR and Taylor are going to kill it, by the way. It's going to be fun. We're going to party there um uh what you said that they're different athletes

just give me one thing each of you where they're just really really different sam quant and jeffrey adler just for my own personal interest because i kind of think of them as the same guys good at everything but just strong as shit max out lifts sam is not strong as far as max outlifts go. So I'm confused by his barbell cycling ability and his strength. Yeah, he is a really, really good barbell cycler. Back when he was 19 or 20, he won, was it heavy DT or double DT, Brian? I think it was double DT. He won double DT when he was his first year at the games,

beat Matt Fraser. He's very, very good at barbell cycling, but his top max out strength, he's middle of the pack, and Adler is top three. Top of the food chain. Brian, do you agree with that? Yeah, I've spent some time looking at these two guys since the games.

And there are quite a few notable differences. Like you look at even the starting workout of the games. Adler took fourth on the bike to work. Quant took 26th. I think that there's some athletes that obviously just don't have any experience riding the bike. It's really hard to watch that event back and understand where Sam Quant gave away so many spots to Adler. It could be the high volume gymnastics. That is also obviously a significant factor, but it might just be, he's not very good at road biking.

I don't, I don't know. So that's kind of a weird one if you fast forward to elevated elizabeth which seems to be a gymnastics workout and most people's performance on that echoed um the echo press where if they did well on elizabeth they also did good echo press and and the other way around quant beats uh fell of adler by 21 spots on that workout 17th to 38 there's no way that the barbell cycling was slowing either of those guys down so it just came down to the pressing on the parallettes i think and then you go to echo press and adler's beating quant so when it comes to the gymnastic stuff i'm not really sure uh between these guys who has the advantage what john said about the lifting yes when it comes to one right,

max, especially barbell lifting Adler is elite, elite. And quant is a couple of tears, but who went further in the sandbag carry quant or. So odd object displacement. That's where quant will shine. He was better on a pocket.

He was better on the Capitol. He was better with the sandbag quant. If you're listening, remember what, did you see what I did there, Quant? See that? See that, buddy? No, specifically, like, max out clean, max out jerk, max out squat, max out deadlift, max out snatch.

If it's just one lift with a barbell of any kind, they are very different. Heidi says it's a tragedy that there isn't any beaver reporting from the ground at Rogue. I agree. We always take some beaver. We're very open here. So whatever. It doesn't all have to be cock and balls. I will say.

It's not a tragedy. The fucking Holocaust is a tragedy. Go ahead. Opposite to K quiet is amazing at odd object strength and adler is not like and he should be better adler is not good at odd object strength at like very at all considering how strong he is with barbells and he's a robot when he moves i wonder if that has something to do with it i wonder if that has if there well well i mean he's a robot when he moves. I wonder if that has something to do with it. I wonder if that has, if there, well,

well, I mean, he's just so perfect in his movement. Those double unders and thrusters. We saw him do earlier. It was impeccable. Yeah. I would say Medeiros is perfect in his movement. And what did he do with the sandbag?

He moved beautifully. We're approaching two hours. Let's talk about Björgvin, Carl Gudmundsson, uh, the man from Iceland. Um, what do you want to say, Brian?

It's, it's actually, it's like painful for me to rank BKG this low. The last two years at rogue, he's been second place and fourth place. It's remarkably good. He's had an event win each year. He's won the chipper in back-to-back years at rogue,

multiple top three finishes, mostly top tens, couple just outside the top 10, nothing outside the top 15. He's really good. He's been really good at the games. His consistency has been noted and documented. I've written and talked about it. This is the exact example of what we're talking about, which is how good this field is.

BKG, from everything I know, came into the CrossFit Games this year healthy and fit and feeling good, and he had his worst finish since his rookie year, which is 2014. And he was probably fitter and healthier than he was last year. So this is not saying that BKG is getting worse. This is saying the field is moving forward. It's saying Adrian's programming fucked him. Nope.

Oh. The field is improving. He might do better than this, but it's this hard, and when we see these people in the comments that are saying, oh, the disrespect for this person, how could you do this to this person? You cannot. How many times do I have to say this? You can't put five guys in third place.

You got to pick one and move on. And yes, someone's going to be a fan of Quant. Someone's going to be a fan of Gerrard. Someone's going to be a fan of BKG. This is this realm that John's talking about. You have Justin and Roman right now. Everyone else there that's three through eight on this list, those could be interchanged for sure.

I'd put Valner as like a tier of his own right now. Maybe. Maybe. But three of these guys beat him at the games and we can't discount that. So he needs to, you know, his, his career resume is definitely better than anyone else on that list.

He could use a second best for sure, but all those other guys are coming and they're coming hard and they're coming strong and they're coming really, really fit. So it's going to be a battle. I think it's going to be a battle for every position at rogue one through. I mean, look, look at the other list. We still have Cole. I already talked about going to be a battle for every position at rogue one through. I mean, look,

look at the other list. We still have Cole. I already talked about this. Like no Olson. He could easily be in the top 10, but who he had to bump out. No, no.

Like passed up. Like he had like badly. Um, cause they've always been in that. They were the five. They used to be the five through eight category. We never even went back at once to look at the second page. That's how good these first-page guys are.

And Lazar is in the same boat as BKG. Like, Lazar, I had him at 8th, and I'm like, man, that feels low. But then you look at who's ahead of him. I can't put him ahead of those guys. You know what I mean? He's the 8th fittest person in the world. This comment sums up men In their totality

There's two women in the chat just having a discussion Heidi and Renee And some dude Chimes in There should be a bikini wrestling match Like that's where guys just take it immediately Disgusting What's this world come to

Um Okay Anything else we want to add to this great list guys this is awesome what's what's our next show going to be about when is rogue what's today 18th it's in 12 days yeah i mean i'm doing when they announce the events yeah i'm hopeful that there will be some event announcements and that we can talk about that okay so hopefully next tuesday the 25th this same time and then and then and then we're trying to get a bunch of athletes on that week but then we'll build up to it we'll probably go on we'll probably when you should expect to hear

from us tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday on rogue right starting tuesday we'll be off to the races stuff will be leaking out we'll be doing last minute shows and whatnot right yeah yep that's probably caleb can we go run over to bill henniger's account and see if he's leaked anything over there just to make sure we're not leaving any stone unturned they did post something about that platform that we were talking about last time oh that it's been shipped right yeah i did see that that was the the roller coaster right that thing where they push it up and it clicks into each spot uh no there was something in that same room next to it that was made out of wood and it's an elevated platform this oh and there's something underground there yeah now the thing that we have to keep in mind is that there are it looks like a competitions going on that are not at crossfit there's something underground there. Yeah. Now, the thing that we have to keep in mind is that there are competitions going on that are not CrossFit.

There's also the Strongman competition. And I think they posted the Strongman events. So we may be able to see if these things are being used for Strongman. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't also be used for CrossFit. But in the case of this thing and that elevator, like we talked about previously, they're so big that it's hard to imagine them having multiples of these, which means that it's way more likely that these are implements which will be used for strongman than for CrossFit. That is something from the underneath there that hanging from chains, right? That you would guess that that shot at that angle. So we can't tell what the relationship is with those chains going to the top but something's being pulled from the bottom there right

it looks that way oh and there's this bar caleb's pointing at what that's weird it's a weird bar right it's like instead of being yeah that's a weird bar something weird's going on it's connected through the floor i think it looks like a deadlift platform wow okay or a farmer's carry uh like i said the strongman events are listed uh roman to win velner out of the top three love the podcast seven keep what you're doing even if you did let don uh fall off the dude let me tell you something the comments on the Don Fall podcast, I received like 50 fucking text messages saying I hit it out of the park.

And the comments on YouTube. Not that that means anything. Only you matter, William. Just saying. And my mom says I didn't talk too much, which is a one in a million. They have events for Strongman which are called the Tower of Power.

Deadlift for Rep for reps could be on that platform thing we were just showing okay i have another one that's called the roga coaster pull 54 foot i think incline pull oh shit those guys are gonna stand at the top and pull that thing up that's the uh yeah that's the roller coaster one then oh i never even considered that they might be underneath it and pulling down as the thing moves up we're not sure but i think that those two implements are for strong man that doesn't mean they're not also for crossfit but if they were for crossfit it would probably have to be in an individual endeavor not you know you could if they had a bunch of these you could

see them doing a rounds for time pull pull something up, go do this, come back, pull it up, do this again. But if there's only one, it's probably for strongman half, you know, half the size of field. Do you think he thinks of this? Who thought of this thing that bill, I can, we got to get bill and Katie on and find out who thought of this thing, this rollercoaster. Look at those wheels. It has something that's called the cry bell ladder maybe that's the seer seer no that's uh that's the one dumbbell that they post the three what do you think that that's your 60 pounds dear well thank you john what do you think that uh

dyslexia is showing up for me what do you think that bar is for that caleb was showing show it again the deadlift one they have fun i mean stone over hitching post yoke carry overhead log lift medley pussiville sandbag carry max distance i can't i can't have that thing in my house that that thing i can dear bill and katie when you're done with the rogue invitational can you send that roller coaster to my backyard you know bill did send me one time bill actually sent me the walls i'm sure some of you have seen it you know me the walls the first clear plexiglass walls from the crossfit games that they did the pegboard on and i actually have them up at my house and i cannot believe he sent me those that

was crazy kind of them that was a that probably cost a thousand bucks to mail to my house i'm curious if they're gonna have the crossfitters do the same event as a strongman for you for event five because it's the yoke carry overhead log lift medley and so we know we're doing the overhead log so it'd be interesting if they're gonna have all of us do a yoke carry and then overhead log lift and then something else and it's like a one minute sprint event you know what i mean i think that would be really cool if they did i think i think it would be too just a crossfit version of the strongman event five like like lower weights basically they don't need a thousand pound yoke no no they don't need it oh my god my spine i'm

not just saying this because they're my shirts, but if you want a sweatshirt, these sweatshirts are so nice. This is it. Life is RX. By the way, the sweatshirts are, I mean,

all their shit's nice, but the sweatshirts are like, what's your go-to. What's your favorite color scheme on here? They're all great. I like them. I like them all. I like the, the there's,

they have one that's lipstick that's weird let me show you this actually this i like all of them i like this this one's this one's so weird this pink one because it comes with a line in it and you think it's damaged and then you contact them and they're like no it's supposed to be like that that's like the lipstick look where is that one i really did not like that one other than that they're all dope i don't ever wear this one politically homeless i never wear that but everything black and gold is probably the best one i don't know when you get the green one it's so nice it's so gangster i like the army green it's this one but on the first page with the ceo that's the one

i would go yeah people like that one yeah that one's doing great i haven't seen any of these girls hotel room in austin say that again that one is gonna deliver that to my hotel room in austin yeah tell me send me and i will you you would uh you'd need to deliver it like 18 days ago for it to arrive in the mail on time hey heidi which one do you heidi pick one out of here too i want to send you one too it's a travesty we don't have more female reporters okay uh bkg uh i think that was a little homage to uh you at the end there um you're making me think he is though gonna finish top five you convince me that you guys have it all wrong with him. It could happen.

It's going to be exciting. There's going to be a lot on the line. I could see BKG being good at the strongman implement. He's from Iceland. They do that stuff all the time. Racist. Racist. John Clark, buy them at Vindicate.

Yeah, Vindicate has great shit, too. But I always plug the shit out of them, so I wanted to plug Life is RX. But Vindicate is great shit too. But I always plug the shit out of them. So I wanted to plug life is RX, but vindicate is great stuff too. Excuse me. All right. Uh, great show.

Anything else we want to add? Just back to where we were at the beginning is that you look great. Don't let these, uh, don't let these guys get you down. Thank you. Dawn fall episode was amazing. Spiegel always closing the show strong with a 20 donation um i don't think that's donation it is don't don't fuck up don't

fuck it up uh all right guys thank you uh i'll see you next tuesday it looks like we're gonna see a lot of each other uh i'm curious to see how John's eye develops as the week goes on. Make sure to make sure to follow John Young on Instagram. If you want to get updates on his eye, if you want the events ruined for you, follow Brian, he'll tell you who the winners are going to be and go check out all his new work at barbend.com. A ton of great stuff.

Thanks for sharing that by the way with us today, Brian, that was a hit in the comments. People love that. That data on just the left or right. Yeah. Makes a really good point from what you were saying as far as explaining it. Mr. Beaver. A hundred burpees for being late.

Sorry. Oh, you haven't slept in a few days. Oh shit.