Transcript of JRE MMA Show #179 with Josh Thompson & "Big" John McCarthy New

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. Gentlemen, we're live. What's happening? Good to see you.

What is up, my man?

I enjoy your show. Your show's excellent. You guys have a really good MMA show.

It's really solid.

Thank you. I kind of blew that.

Yeah, how'd you blow it?

We can talk about that. Yeah, I got to talk to you guys.

You guys are not doing it anymore?

I stepped back away when I started refereeing again.

Goddamn it, you got to go back to doing it. You guys are great. You guys are a great combination.

I think I might.

What we did is we— what we did is we started doing McCarthy Mondays, because when he went back to refereeing, he's not allowed to talk about promotions, not allowed to talk about fighters and what's wrong and the things that possibly, you know, can make some changes. And so we just started McCarthy Monday where we just talk about like the Joe Schilling situation. That's something we could talk about, right? Like, it's so So I just, I created a show for him to just only do on Mondays.

He created?

Nice. Well, it's his, obviously it's his input.

He created it, so it's his input. I was just trying to find ways to keep him involved.

I love that you're refereeing again. We need great referees, but I wish you were out there doing both. It doesn't make sense to me that you can't do both. Like, it's not like you're not going to be a great referee while also still being able to comment objectively about promotions. It's important.

Yeah, it is important.

It's important.

Look at transparency. Where's ever the problem with that?

Exactly.

But you get these people that, oh no, because you might say something that is going to create a problem. And it's like, it's not a problem if it's the truth.

That's ridiculous. I mean, if that was the case, why— how come I can do it as a commentator? How come all these guys can do it?

Because you're the best.

Yeah, but I mean, how— everybody should be able to have a voice, especially referees. You should— like, if something happens and you're a referee and you could say, here's my perspective, this is why I did what I did, and you have it on a podcast on a regular basis, that's a benefit to everybody.

So that is what I'm trying to create.

I believe you're right.

But what you run into is you run into some issues where the referee says too much and then people come back at them and then the commissions have to answer for it and then the fighters dig on them.

Good, people are talking. Yeah. Good, that's how shit gets solved. That's how you don't have like, One hand down does not— it's not a downed opponent anymore. Why? Because we fucking complained forever. 12-to-6 elbows, they're legit again. Except in New Jersey.

You see the problem? Yeah, the goddamn problem.

When we were in New Jersey, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. How the fuck do you guys not have 12-to-6 elbows?

You can't make it any more complicated for the referees and the fighters.

It's so dumb. It's the dumbest fucking thing of all time.

It's so unfair to the fighters themselves because you— when we— when, like, I was part— I wrote those things out and they were passed by the ABC, but we gave 6 months. 6 months, because you got to give the fighters time to train to make sure that they get it right. Okay. And so it's— put it in, it works great, and now you expect them to go back to one location in the middle of a fight? Exactly. One location, and now they're gonna automatically go back to the old rules. It's like, you— do you realize what you're doing to them?

It doesn't make any sense either. The old rules are fucking stupid. We all agreed. Everybody. No one was like, no, no, no, 12 to 6 elbows are too dangerous.

Oh, yes, there was.

Was there people?

Oh, yeah. Your broadcast partner.

Shut the fuck up. Which one?

Dan Cormier. No, I swear to God.

He says some crazy shit. He does say some crazy shit. DC, I love you. I love him. Oh, no.

I just had DC on recently.

Why did he say that 12 to 6 elbows are too dangerous? He goes, I think that rule should absolutely— that's dangerous. I swear.

If we're going to ban anything, and I don't think we should ban anything, but if we're going to ban anything, sidekicks to the knees.

See, that right there, right?

I don't think we should.

Okay, no, you shouldn't.

I don't think we should, but I'm saying if we should, there's an argument you're gonna blow out a guy's knee. Yeah, exactly. His career will never be the same.

Then we should absolutely ban kicks to the head and knees to the head. And we should ban— yes, because what's worse, the blown-out knee or the blown-out brain?

I'm agreeing with you. I don't think we should ban anything.

There you go.

There's one thing that does bother me, like the Khalil Rountree, Modestas Bakhavskis fight. Remember when the knee went sideways?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh, he's fucked for for a year at least, if not forever.

But what's the difference between that and, we'll say, you know, Edson Barbosa, Terry—

Terry Adams.

Terry Adams. And that kick to the head, you don't think that that was more than a year?

Terry Adams, you know, it was really— was never the same again.

Exactly.

That's my point.

Oh yeah. I mean, that was like getting hit by a meteor. Oh, that was just crazy.

I mean, it was absolutely perfectly executed, beautiful technique. That it absolutely altered.

And then we talked about the first wheel kick KO in the US.

Absolutely, it was.

I didn't know.

Yeah. Oh yeah, crazy.

Yeah.

But you look and you go, there are those fights, and we say it all the time, and you know, you as the— as a referee, as a fighter, you know, with him—

here it is right here—

we go and watch this thing. Oh, I mean, just—

that one was just insane.

But you— the fighters themselves, they get paid to get damaged. I hate to say that, but it's the truth. That's part of their pay is they go in and they're going to accept some damage, but you don't want them to have unnecessary damage, right?

No, I agree with you. So do you think we go Ryzen rules? Because there's something to be said for that.

I do. I look at— I've advocated for knees on the ground for a long time. It's never going to happen.

My position is it's better in a ring because you can avoid them a little bit if you're mobile, right? If you're still conscious and you have defensive capability, you can move around knees and kicks. When the cage happens and you're butted up and someone stomps you, that's a totally different—

First off, the stomp I don't ever agree with. And the reason why is this: name me the fight that you saw that a stomp was an effective technique when the fighter was not already seriously hurt. Doesn't happen.

Sakuraba.

Sakuraba used to do it all the time after he hurt people. Every time he tried to do it when they weren't hurt, they just moved and he was Mongolian stomping on nothing. Hmm, go ahead, take a look at him.

Yeah, I'd have to go back and watch.

Yeah, there was, there was a Minowa and Phil Baroni. He did that a couple times with him when Minowa couldn't get the takedown because I was there cornering him for that fight. There was that fight, then there was, um, and then Shogun and Ninja. Remember when they used to like do the stomping?

Ninja and Shogun, the brothers together. Yeah, those guys were phenomenal at them.

Oh, and we— people that only saw Shogun in Pride missed it.

Oh yeah.

You missed it. Excuse me, in the UFC.

His fight against Quinton Rampage Jackson was— I mean, because a lot of people didn't, you know, going into that fight, you know, that's Rampage, you know, this guy's young. He absolutely just annihilated Rampage in that fight, and it was like, oh my God, he's way better than I ever gave him credit for before that fight. That fight was— that was a coming-out party for Shogun.

Yeah, he was a lethal striker, lethal. And all those Curitiba guys were so hyped aggressive.

Yeah, his brother was just as nasty until he, you know, he started, got a little chinny. He started fighting big guys. Yeah, that was the problem.

Didn't he fight Alexander? Didn't he? Who did he fight? He fought some heavyweight, right?

Yeah, and he got—

he fought quite a few.

Crushed.

Yeah, but he fought one guy where it was like, what is this? Why is he fighting this guy?

Yeah, I can't remember who it was.

Was it Emelianenko?

Alexander Emelianenko.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think it was that.

I think it was.

And it was like one of those fights like, no, no, no, no, no, this is a real fucking heavyweight. A big one with nasty striking. Yeah, you know, I mean, he was fucking nasty.

He was good.

Yeah, he had some smooth striking.

People don't give the Emelianenko as a whole— Alexander was a little bit off, a little bit crazy.

Oh, a lot.

Okay, I'm just—

I just said I just said on his back, like, the fucking death holding a baby tattooed on his back. Like, that's a choice. That's a fucking— See if you can find Alexander Emelianenko's back tattoo. You look at that, you're like, what? But is going on in your mind that you're like, this should be on my back permanently.

But that's the brother. And then you have Fedor as the guy who was even better.

Yeah.

And look at Fedor is, you know, he was such a good guy.

Look at that fucking tattoo. There you go. What does it say in Russian, Jamie?

Jesus.

That's—

oh my God.

That is the craziest thing. The baby's got a fucking sword and a crown.

Oh yeah.

And then death is like, yes, let's kill everyone. Death is right there. Yeah, it's not even a good drawing. It's like, that's some Russian prison shit.

That's Russian prison, 100%.

He's 100% committed.

That's a ballpoint pen and a fucking sewing needle.

Yep.

Yeah, they did that in a Russian prison, 100%.

Urine and ash, bro.

That's a lot of time. God is with us. Are you sure? Are you sure? Based on that?

And then you got his brother. His brother has no tattoos.

No tattoos.

He can find them.

Small little wooden cross on his chest, you know. I know, right?

He's so stoked Oh, he's awesome. Alexander Emelianenko, James Thompson fight. James Thompson was an animal, built like a fucking Greek god. Comes out, rawr! Terrifying, fucking huge, massive.

The best is the look on Alexander's face throughout all of the thing. I'm going to fall asleep right now.

Just completely stoic. Look at Thompson so worked up.

Starts pounding his chest.

He's shaking. Look at him.

He's ready to fuck this guy up. He just stepped out of a bar. No flexing at all. Doesn't even lift his hand up all the way. It's like, hey everybody.

Got the belly hanging out a little bit. It's awesome.

Look how chilly he looks.

Yeah, I'm going to get a cup of coffee.

Look how chill Fedor looks too. Like no worries at all.

None.

Look at James. He's so fucking hyped up. Alexander's like, it's like he's ordering a sandwich. It's like, I'll have Swiss cheese and mustard. He's ordering a sandwich.

It's vicious. The way he rocks him too, right off the bat.

Oh yeah, James comes charging at him, puts him down, but he wasn't hurt. It's like he fell down.

Boop!

That hurt.

That hurt James. That hurt James.

Once he starts connecting— oh yeah, they had that Soviet-style fluid boxing that, that just whip punches.

Look, I, I'll tell you what, I worked out with Fedor, and it was, it would, it was a great moment in my life if you're gonna sit there and say Well, if you're gonna get your ass kicked, it's a great moment. But the one thing I always thought, you know, before, you know, watching him, reffing him, I go, he's got to have some kind of, you know, like, just tarred strength, you know?

Right, right.

No, he's fast. And I mean super fast. When he explodes, and his hands are down kind of, so it's hard to see when the shots are coming, and everything he does, he just explodes into. And you go, oh, I get it, because you got to work really hard to try to stay up with his speed when he also is exploding. And then it's like, oh, he doesn't get tired and you're starting to get tired because you're having to match that RPM that he's at, right?

And he's not a big heavyweight. No, he's not, which I think is a real benefit.

I think it is, dude, until you're fighting a guy like Ngannou.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, there's a problem there. Oh yeah, because that guy can be patient. Yeah, 265 naturally. Nuclear power.

And Ngannou hits you anywhere in the head.

It's a problem.

You're in trouble.

Yeah, it's a real problem.

He hit Philip, you know, Lins, hit him on the basic— almost, we didn't even say the temple— hit him almost to the top of the head. And look, he was out. I mean, he's not being able to control his body. That guy's got the ability to hurt, you know, when he fought Cain. Yeah, you know, take a look. Yeah, it wasn't a great shot, right? But it hurt him.

Yeah, he's got crazy power.

Yeah, just not—

but Fedor was a different thing because Fedor had that, like, that Russian style of movement. Movement that you see like Dmitry Bivol has, where they're like real relaxed and then they explode.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And the footwork, that little bit of a bounce, he's got that little bit of a bounce in, out, just sits there and wait. And he waits for your motion to come where he wants it to be, and then he changes that distance and just cracks.

Fedor did a really good job of coming around your guard as well. So it wasn't just a big straight right all the time. You know, Rich Franklin used to do that as well. He'd come around your guard, you put your hands up, and Fedor had a— he did a great job with that, coming around and landing the big overhand right, and then he'd come up, uppercut, then he'd take you down or hip toss you, body lock you.

And if you took him the ground off his back, he's got one of the quickest fucking arm bars in the game, which is nuts.

Transition.

Hong Man Choi. Oh yeah, he arm bars like a little kid.

He's all stretched out. He looks—

it's like this.

He goes— he's off the ground completely.

He was great everywhere. And, and you, you know, you think about him as being this overall picture of like one of the greatest, if not the greatest MMA fighter of all time, but people forget like his stand-up was so good that the Cro Cop fight was mostly stand-up.

He wrote the blueprint on how to beat Cro Cop.

Exactly.

Which is— you got to be him to do it, though.

Yeah.

The thing— I mean, he— first of all, his stand-up has always been real dangerous, but also it's like the way he was able to check that left kick. He was doing a lot of, like, lifting the knee up and catching it, like—

Yeah, up high.

Yeah. But how many people had you seen that would back Cro Cop onto his back foot and march forward?

Nobody.

Cro— exactly.

And that was—

Not in his prime.

That was the difference is when you— you looked at it, he told himself, nope, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make you go backwards. And it took a lot of what Krokop did, and it just nullified a lot of it.

Was a lot of it was the threat of the grappling. Oh yeah, that was a big part of it.

Well, not only that, because then Fedor didn't have to worry about if he did slip and fall, if he threw, if he threw a big shot and he got cut from underneath, if he did fall to the ground, Krokop wasn't gonna fall into the ground. He could just hop back up. Yeah, so there was that. And then on top of it too, when you fought him in a phone booth, you know, you're not worried as much for that head kick to get there if I'm within, you know, inches of you.

That left kick was—

yeah, there's this peak picture of Heath Haring where the shin is like halfway into Heath's ribs? Oh yeah, it's—

I know exactly.

You know that picture? Yes, I do. Crazy. You see Krokop's shin is just so deep, you just feel your own liver.

I've seen the Vanderlei ones because Vanderlei has his ribs were just tore up from, from there.

Look at that picture. Look at that picture, bro. That's crazy.

Do you know how much that hurts?

I mean, that is actually—

I do.

Yeah, no, that's, that's the part where you look at people and you go You know, do you realize what— yeah, that would hurt a little. No, no, no, your entire body is going, I quit. It just seizes up.

He had such explosive power, and he, to me, he was like the first guy to figure out how to transition from kickboxing to MMA because he did it with explosiveness.

But Maurice Smith, come on, you got to give it to Maurice Smith.

I got to give him— that's true, Maurice was the first, but Krokop was in that same era. He was doing it in Pride. Yeah, and all those other guys like Ernesto Hoost, it didn't really work out for them when they like like he only fought Bob Sapp in a kickboxing fight, but even when they were fighting like bigger— like Krokop fucked up Bob Sapp. Oh, like same era. Yeah, same time. Not— yeah, exactly, same time period.

Same, same.

Was that explosiveness, whereas like guys like Peter Aerts, that wouldn't translate as well in MMA. Elite strikers, but they wanted to get into a rhythm, they wanted to like get into situations and exchanges. And with Krokop, it was just these one-shots were coming at you like nuclear missiles, and it was a different threat. It was a completely different threat than a lot of other guys because he was so explosive.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's— Krokop was— what a great guy.

Oh, he's awesome.

As far as, you know, and— but his left kick has to be the best left kick there's ever been in the sport of MMA.

Yeah, I don't think you could even think of a second place. Like, who's got a better left kick than Krokop? Maybe Edson Barboza's switch kick. Yeah, that switch kick was preposterous.

Quick, so accurate too.

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

Yeah, they— Dana called me a couple times to fight him, and I was like ranked number 3. He was like just, I think, he hit number 15.

I'm like, no, give me a higher rank.

Sorry, dude.

Like, not that it's not that I did—

it's not that I wouldn't fight.

Yeah, give me a higher rank.

Yeah, make it make sense.

Yeah, help me out.

Help me, help me, help me.

This time in my life, make it make sense.

Back when he came in though, you got to look at me at Barbosa. You know, he's been there a long time now when you think about it.

Still going on.

But when he came in, it was like, dude, this is a next level of stand-up ability with what this guy can do.

Yeah.

And it was like—

and oddly, mostly kicks.

Yeah, yeah.

Because boxing wasn't threatening like his kicks were. It was not equal. No, it was mostly kicks, right?

No. If he could develop something along the Jose Aldo level of boxing where the body came back on top of the head, take down the first kicks, I mean, Aldo's takedown defense was nuts. Probably the best, I think probably the best in the sport that we've seen.

I mean, honestly, other than BJ in his prime.

Yeah, right, with the one leg hop.

BJ in his prime was ridiculous. His balance was fucking insane. Yeah, but I think he's the only guy that didn't get taken down by Merab. When Merab and him fought 3 crazy rounds, I think Merab went for like 90 fucking takedowns or something, and I don't think he took— I don't think Merab took him down. Yeah, I think Merab mostly won that fight up against the cage, hitting him with punches, working for takedowns, cage damage.

Extremely underestimated Jose Aldo's takedown defense.

People—

it's the fun— you take a look and Aldo doesn't— now all of a sudden it's kind of like the Anderson Silva thing. All of a sudden it's like, you know, well, let's talk about the very best in the 145-pound. And look at Alexander Volkanovski, he's right there, he's phenomenal. Like, you know, I'm not saying— don't forget what Jose Aldo did.

Absolutely.

I mean, through the WEC into being the UFC champ and all those fights, man, I'll tell you what, that guy was absolutely nuts as far as how good he was at one time.

Well, I think it was also because he was an elite soccer player, and the ability to— like, if you watch a live soccer game, professional soccer match, you're like, oh Jesus, like, these athletes, they don't get to slow down. They don't have a— like, there's no halftime, there's no like big break for commercials, there's no bullshit, they just go.

There's no timeouts.

Giant fucking legs. Yeah, they all have insane leg power because they're just sprinting all day long. And you go, oh well, that would translate perfectly to MMA for kicking for moving, for footwork.

Think about all— it's not just that, right? It's the stop and go, stop and go, like in a real fight, right? I get a takedown, I get to rest for a second, then he postures back up and gets back to his feet. I got to go again, sprints again, get the takedown. In soccer, same thing. You run hard down the line. Oh, ball gets turned back. Now you kind of jog back a little bit. Now the ball gets played to you. It's the stop and go of sprinting, just like a real fight.

This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to 2.5 years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist, and trust me, I know. I buy one, The Farmer's Dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human-grade food. The Farmer's Dog makes fresh food for dogs and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier. And isn't getting more time with our four-legged best friends something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously. So try The Farmer's Dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh healthy food. Plus get free shipping.

Just go to thefarmersdog.com/Rogan. This offer is for new customers only. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a bunch of different bases that if you come from them, they have a big advantage. It puts you in a big advantage in different sports.

Yeah, soccer and wrestling. Yeah, grinding of the wrestling and just the cardio fatigue and understanding that I can push through when I get tired. Because there's nothing more satisfying, you know, in terms of when you run down the line, the guy plays the ball in the corner, and you got to beat that defender defender there, and then you cross it across, and you're— it's that sprinting down there to beat him. But then also too, in wrestling, knowing that you can break another human being, like, I need to break you mentally, grind on you and hang on you. Those two sports, I think, are huge for the sport.

And getting used to suffering dehydrated, right? Yes, there's a big factor.

Yeah, the weight cut, the mental suffering.

Yeah, but the weight cuts and having to compete on the same day as weight cuts is a big difference. And for people that have never done that before and don't know, it's fucking hard. Even 24 hours is hard. Weight cutting is the grossest thing in MMA.

It is.

They should figure out a way to stop it.

I totally—

I don't know if there is a way.

You're gonna talk about one of the most—

there is no way—

one of the most dangerous things that you do with— like, think about this, Joe. Every, every sport— soccer, football, baseball, basketball— they all have team chefs. They all have all these things as far as we want our athletes to be as physically ready and have the right nutrition and all these things. What's the sports that we go and we starve our athletes and dehydrate them 24 hours before? The dumbest thing ever.

24 hours before the most demanding, most dangerous sport in the world.

Yep.

But Joe, even if we did it the same day, fighters would still cut weight to try and make that weight. They would still do that to themselves.

The question is, I wonder if there's a way to prevent that. Like, the way to prevent that, I would say, is everybody, here's your mandate: no one's getting out of shape anymore because we're gonna have random weigh-ins. So we're gonna just show up at your fucking gym.

Can't do it.

But you could— you like, let's say you fight at 170, you cannot weigh more than 180.

See, here's the—

you can do it any given day. I'll show up at your fucking house at 7:00 in the morning. Josh, get on the scale. 175. This is not good.

You could do it as a promotion. You can't do it as an industry within the sport. And the reason why I'm telling— saying that is, first off, you have all these fighters, we'll say they're all everywhere, okay, all over the world. And for a— for an athletic commission, we'll say the state of California, state of Texas, they have to have that particular fighter licensed for them to say, we want to weigh you. If they're not licensed in that state on that year, they can't— they can't— they're not.

But if it got— if it got adopted by the UFC, I bet most of the organizations would adopt it.

But again, that's the UFC as a promotion.

The UFC has talked about it.

And the UFC has the money to actually do that, but it's going to cost them a lot of money. And, you know, look, I understand why the promotion doesn't want to lose money.

I think the fights would be better. I think guys would be in way better condition.

Absolutely. I think we've seen the performance of Jon Jones since they stopped cutting as much weight.

You could sit there and, you know, the only way an athletic commission could kind of do it, but this is bad on promotions, is an athletic commission could sit there and say, you are allowed to weigh no more than 5 pounds. More than that weigh-in weight.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, but here's your problems with it. First off, the promotion can lose fights. The promotion doesn't want to lose fights.

True.

Okay, and the second part is, what's saying that the fighter themselves is not keeping themselves dehydrated to make that 5 pounds, and now they're going in even more dehydrated into the fight, which could cause them more problems?

Well, they couldn't be dehydrated through their entire camp, and that's where you institute that random.

That's why your randoms would work if the promotion was doing it.

Yeah, but it would have to do it sport-wide.

It'd be almost impossible.

It would have to take a long time to figure out how to do it properly and not lose fights because there's too many guys that fuck around. Oh, you know, there's— right, there's too many guys that like— like, how many times did Jon Jones not really train? Oh yeah, you know, like the Gustafsson fight, the first one, they said he didn't really train. 10 days, showed up a little bit here and there, didn't really train. So if there's a guy like that, what are you gonna, not let him fight? Like, what are you gonna do? Like, yeah, but then you also— 226, and then you're like, no, that's too much.

You also have guys like Michael Morales right now, 170-pounders walking around like huge. 210, 212, 205.

I mean, there's a few of those guys where I'm standing next to them like Gregory Rodriguez. I'm like, how? Yeah, how, how are you ever 180?

How was— how, how was Alex 185 pounds? I stand next to him and go, you got to be shitting me.

Nuts, nuts.

It's unbelievable.

And at 185 pounds, nuclear power. But I don't think he took a shot as well.

He didn't. There's no doubt about it. Yeah, you can go back and look at his fights. He got hurt by shots that were not as hard as the ones he's taken at 205, right? Based upon— yeah, it's that weight cut.

It's the point of diminishing returns, right? It's like there's a place where you're just doing it too much. And you know, you kind of love to see freaks You love to see a guy like Alex weigh in at 185. You're like, good luck with that. Good luck with this 226-pound fucking Amazon warrior that pretended to be 185 for 5 minutes.

For 5 minutes.

But you take a look at him, so surprised how he can make the weight. When you pass by him, you see how tall he is, how big he is, and you see him with the face-off with Cyril Gane right now, you're like, how would this guy ever make 185?

He's 250 now. Oh yeah, which is crazy. I saw him last week and it's like She's due to 50 means that's almost 70 pounds different, man, from his UFC debut.

The only case makes me believe that we're gonna see a better Alex is because he doesn't have to cut his— kill himself.

He also put on muscle. Yeah, and there's an issue.

But exactly, there again, diminishing returns. How much is that muscle gonna do? This is where you try to— you try to tell all fighters, and you know, it's Joe, if you— when you were fighting in taekwondo, did you care about the strong guy or did you care about the fast guy?

The difference is MMA with grappling. The difference is with weight, like if you get a big heavy guy and he gets on top of you, you're— all your speed is gone.

Absolutely, you're right.

Gone within the first 3 or 4 minutes.

The problem with being the bigger, stronger guy in the lighter weight class is you're never the faster guy. And so you've got to be able to maul that, that person to be effective. And it only lasts for a certain amount of time if you had to dehydrate yourself to that point, where speed is always there when someone has it to a point, unless they get tired, and that speed is hard for you to handle.

But there's guys that were big for the weight class and had ridiculous speed, like Conor McGregor's a perfect example.

Yeah, Conor at 145 was fast as Connor was absolutely dehydrated to the point of being a concentration camp victim.

Oh yeah, he looked like death.

I mean, it was unbelievable.

However, once he got in there, he was fast as fuck.

Oh, look, he used to lose so much at 145. He was—

he looked like death.

He was killing himself.

I remember the weigh-ins, like interviewing him at weigh-ins, like, this is crazy.

Oh my God.

But then you see him the next day all full.

I know, he looked good.

But he was fucking killing it.

He was also— what was his age back then? 26, 27?

Right.

Right? Can't do that now.

No, you can't do that now. No, it gets to a certain point in time where you have to realize you're cutting too much weight and it's actually ruining your career.

But I think the evidence has been pretty clear when you see guys go up in weight after killing themselves for so long. They've had success.

A lot of guys had— look at Max Woodman.

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

The BMF fight with Gaethje? Yeah, come on, man. That's— yeah, that guy should have never went down to 45 again to fight Topuria. It's too much loss.

What?

Because we had that argument about that exact thing of— he would— Josh was saying, look, he should never— it was a championship fight. Yeah, he was getting a world title fight at 145.

Yeah, right.

And I said, look, it's a world title fight. I understand why he's going back down. He's going— he's making a huge mistake. It should never take he should stay at 155, you know, work himself into a title fight. And I go, I understand why he's taking it.

That made him the number one contender. He beat Justin Gaethje.

I understand why he took the fight.

So do I.

Maybe he would have favored that fight with Ilia because Ilia is a smaller guy than Islam. Because if you think about it, Islam, he fucking smothers everybody.

Yeah, he does.

And his striking is dangerous as fuck. Of course you know. Yeah, 100,000 times. But it's like, that guy's— he's so fucking terrifying once he gets a hold of you. Like, he submits everybody.

He's a whole lot better in the stand-up than people give him credit for.

Oh, he is.

His stand-up is actually really good.

He head kicked Volkanovski. Oh yeah, I don't care if Volkanovski took it on 11 days notice, he still head kicked.

He's got a sneaky left head kick, high kick. It's nasty.

He fucks people up standing up, and that's part of the problem, is that like you get accustomed to thinking about this guy's takedown, and then all of a sudden, bing!

Yeah, my point was though, was that there was no— he put the weight on properly, he looked fantastic against Justin Gaethje, and then to go back down there to fight Ilia, I was like, doesn't make sense. You're the number one guy, or number 2 guy. It is, you kill yourself to give it down, back down, and then he gets knocked out, which we had never seen before.

Well, that's Roy Jones Jr. too, right? Remember when Roy Jones Jr. went up and fought Ruiz, and then he went all the way down to 75 and got knocked out by Tarver?

Yep.

It's like, I don't think your body wants to go back down again. You know, you put on all that weight over like a year, you're lifting weights, you're looking— Max had like a ridiculous strength and conditioning program. He put real weight on. He looked very good at 55.

When Max fought Aldo the first time for the title, he, he weighed, you know, obviously weighed in at championship weight, 145. The night of the fight, Joe, now he was in street clothes, but they put him on a scale, 178.

What?

Swear to God, 178. Now he's still— he was still clothed. That's crazy. What is he wearing, rocks in his pockets? Frank Shamrock with quarters in his pockets.

Let's— right, when he fought Tito. Let's just be real charitable and say his clothes weigh 10 pounds.

Exactly.

That's crazy.

You're looking at more than 20 pounds. But that's crazy.

Happens all the time.

The show that just happened in California, they know what they're doing with that, the MVP. The one guy, I can't— you know, 27-pound difference in weight at 170 pounds, came in 27, 197. Who was it? I want to say his name—

was the guys right before Saladin? Yeah, Parnassus.

I can't Frimod starts with a Z, I want to say. I can't, I can't think of it, but 27 pounds.

Well, obviously the biggest one was Rumble Johnson. Oh my God, Rumble Johnson was the craziest. He would weigh 230 and make it all the way. But basically what Morales is doing right now. Yeah, MVP event on Netflix.

Fazil. Fazil.

There you go. Namoh Fazil recorded the highest weight gain, 27.2 pounds. That's insane.

Can you believe that?

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

Oh yeah, like, excuse me, sir, Sean Brady is huge. Sean Brady is a thick human. He's not super tall, but he's thick. Oh yeah, he is put together. And Morales made him look like a lightweight, like he's in the wrong division.

Exactly.

Yeah, I was trying to make sense of it watching it on TV. I thought maybe it was the camera angle, and then they shifted. I was like, no, he's still bigger than him when he's further away. He's further away, he's still bigger.

He's way bigger than him.

Yeah, it was a— that's a crazy situation where a guy can do that. And it's like the Pereira situation at 185 too, when a guy can do that. How long can you do it? That's, you know, because you're basically killing your kidneys every time you do it. You're just taking a little bit out of them.

That was the problem with AJ, you know. Yeah, like I used to coach and corner AJ early in his career when he first came to the UFC, and that was his problem. He'd make weight sometimes, he'd make it sometimes he would— he missed weight a lot to the point that affected affected whatever happened.

Yeah, absolutely. God, that's fucking horrible. Yeah, that's fucking horrible.

Again, you're leaving small bits and pieces of yourself, of course, in that damn cage every time. When I've heard when you win, he died, I was like, no.

There's a true science to cutting weight, and he just, he didn't have it down. Like, he, he wrestled, you know, NCAA, and he wrestled Division II. Like, he was a really good wrestler. He knew how to make weight, but then trying to kill himself to get to 70 me every single time, which he never had to be. Which, yeah, he never had to be at.

I mean, he has massive power. He did great at heavyweight. He beat Arlovski at heavyweight in the World Series of Fighting. Yeah, a long time ago. He was still super legit.

Broke Arlovski's jaw.

Yeah, not that Arlovski's not super legit now. Fucking guy wins bare knuckle heavyweight championship at like 100 years old, dude. You gotta love it.

And fought it smart. Yeah, look at— there's a— you take a look at Andrei Arlovski and people say whatever they want about his career is since UFC 28 was his first show.

Nuts.

Okay, went all the way, went all the way into today's day basically. And but he changed his style, you know. Arlovski was a big power puncher for a long time and then was getting hit with big shots and said, you know what, I'm gonna be a volume guy. And he was successful with it.

Yeah.

And didn't take near as much damage.

Yeah, he fought a lot more technical, a lot slicker.

Yeah, didn't take big chances.

A lot of good guys too.

Yes.

Beat Travis Brown when Travis was in his prime.

Oh, that fight with Travis Brown—

amazing—

was a frickin' awesome fight.

Awesome, awesome, awesome fight. Yeah, look at him beat Rothwell. He tore Rothwell up, which is— a lot of people were super surprised by that. Oh yeah, a lot of people thought, you know, Rothwell's a tank of a man. Yeah, and he's a fucking scary big puncher, and he just looks hairy like a fucking bear. He's scary.

Rothwell's close to 400 pounds.

That's crazy. Is that real?

Yeah, it's real.

He's really that big?

He's that big.

He's Unbelievable.

But meanwhile, he's the one getting busted up in this fight, and it was because, you know, Arlovski was just fighting very clever, just so tough.

Everyone, you watch this fight right now, they think that this fight gets stopped for that cut on his forehead. That is not why. He has a cut on his eye running up into his tear duct, and that's why it— guy was— it wasn't that big of a cut, but anytime it goes to the tear duct, oh, right there's the doctor saying, oh no, it's over. Over.

Yeah, to touch on what John was saying though, is it really just comes down to how he changed his style of fighting. He either fought you all the way in or all the way out. He fought you in that phone booth so you couldn't get off big power shots to avoid being knocked out, because he went through a phase where he was getting clipped a lot and getting knocked out, getting hurt. Yeah, so he made that adjustment. That's good on him.

And all those years in the game, never lost his enthusiasm. No, you know, he's a character.

He's fighting influencers at shows. Have you I saw that.

The fucking little kid. That was crazy. Imagine those fucking dumb kids.

All right, little midgets running around trying to fucking get him. I was like, what are you guys doing?

Are you crazy? Do you know who that is?

The best part was that the Finn Florister kid goes, hey, you can fight my bodyguard. Bodyguards in the background going, uh-uh, sure, yeah, let's do it.

It's like, yeah, I'll fight him. That's a good idea.

If your bodyguard doesn't know who Orlovsky is, you need to get a new bodyguard.

He's telling him that my bodyguard will find him. I was like, oh shit.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Did you guys watch the Rico Verhoeven-Usyk fight?

Oh yes, I watched the ending. Yeah. Oh yes, I thought it was a—

I don't want to say robbery because I guess apparently Usyk was up on the scorecards 2-1.

That, that's robbery. That's the robbery. Yeah, that's the robbery. If that's the case, that's a robbery.

He was up, I guess.

I thought, first off, Rico Verhoeven And, you know, we know what he's been in kickboxing, and he's been fantastic.

Greatest of all time.

Unbelievable.

Greatest of all time.

Yeah. And you can look back on certain people, you know, Ernesto Hoost, how great he was. Badr Hari was a badass.

All of them were awesome, but Rico accomplished more than anybody.

Absolutely.

He's been undefeated for like more than 10 years in kickboxing. That's nuts.

Yes, it is. That's especially with the amount of rounds comparatively and stuff, because you can have a bad round and it can really affect your fight, just like MMA. But this fight, I really thought going in, I go, look, Rico will do okay for the, for the first couple rounds, and then it's gonna start to get to him. I was shocked by it.

He, he fought very clever, and he, he didn't fight, he didn't fight big.

He actually created the problems of closing that distance every time. See, look how close he kept on getting into the phone booth, and he would do work, and it was causing Usyk nothing but problems.

Also, Rico is known for his discipline and his fitness. Yes, like he's a guy who always has tremendous conditioning, and I I think there's a lot of heavyweights that would be surprised at the work that this guy does and the pace that he could put on. So a lot of people are like, oh, he's going to get tired. He only fights 3-minute rounds.

And that's honestly what I was thinking. It gets past 5 rounds, I'm wondering how he's going to be able to hold that pace.

The guy's such a cardio fiend and he's always shredded and it's just, he's so used to combat too that like getting in there, just fighting Usyk, it's not a big deal.

That right hand right there was, I mean, beautiful.

Bro, he was winning 8-2. In my eyes. I thought he was winning 8-2 going into the 11th round when the fight was stopped. Now, the fight shouldn't have been stopped the way it was stopped, but also, that wasn't 8 seconds after the knockdown. So, after he gets knocked down, he doesn't have his mouthpiece, so then they have to go over to the corner, they rinse off his mouthpiece—

Okay, that's a mistake right there.

Yeah, the whole thing's a mistake. It takes like 30 seconds, and then the referee stops it when he's still standing, moving around.

Look, if there's one— one of the things that changed in boxing since I— look, I referee boxing, boxing now.

So here it is right here. This is the end. We could watch it real quick. So this is the end. Look at all this time. So he's up and he goes over. This is a mistake right here, lumbering over to his corner. Hey, come on over.

Watch the first thing that happens, and this is what we'll talk about. Oh, oh, a drop. Yeah, that's on purpose. Of course, doing that on purpose.

Of course I would. Any second counts. But then look at this. So he swarms him with some punches, but Rico's moving. He's covering up. He's moving. What is he supposed to do? Yeah, what is he supposed to do? That's a bad stoppage. I agree. So if you're gonna stop it because you felt like the first knockdown was too much? Why would you let him rinse the glove off? And he didn't take significant damage after that. It's a bad stoppage.

No, that's— well, and it's also the end of the round.

One second.

It's the end of the round.

It's literally the end of the round. I think he actually stops it when the round's over.

But you look, as the referee, Joe, you know all of this, and if you don't, you're not doing your job. First off, you know he's got a full minute. If I let this go one second He's got a full minute to recover here. Even if I did think he was a little bit hurt.

Now, I think that if that was a legitimate 8-count and they went right back to fighting, he would have stopped him there. Maybe. I think he was really rocked. When you see him go back to his corner— maybe is the key word.

See, one of the things that used to be though in boxing, it was always that you would— if a mouthpiece hit the ground, you had to take it to the corner, have it rinsed with water, and have it placed back in the fighter's mouth.

Right.

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

Right.

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

is that—

you know, how does that—

in Egypt as well, do you think that's possible?

You're talking about, you know, with under the unified rules of boxing now, which is North America. Okay, okay. That's, you know, most of the time you go to Egypt, they're still fighting under the unified rules, but the refereeing is always gonna be different when you get a referee from England or somewhere.

It's a little bit different, but I wonder if the referee rules are different different over there, if you're supposed to rinse off the mouthpiece before you put it back?

No, what it means is you have not advanced as a referee to understand what we do now, right?

But what I'm saying is, do they have different rules over there?

No, this is what I'm saying.

Definitely not.

You have not advanced as a referee. Okay, so everybody understands what we do now.

Mouthpiece goes down, you pick it up, you put it right back in.

Can you? Yes.

So it's like when the UFC goes to a country that doesn't have a commission, they sometimes— they'll bring Herb Dean, they'll bring referees with them so they know the rules to make sure that something like this doesn't happen, that referee hasn't followed up with the rules. In a big-time fight.

So he's not— he's not gone and advanced his, you know, training to understand this is what we do now and this is why. Because we don't want— I don't want to take that time from Usyk because Usyk did his job, right? He hit him with an uppercut that absolutely blasted him, puts him on the mat. You go and he gets up, you give him the mandatory. Now his mouthpiece comes out. Am I gonna walk it over to a corner and have that mouthpiece washed out with water, which does what for it, right? Does it—

kills all the cooties.

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

Also, his mouthpiece came out earlier in the fight as well. It's like, that's a bad mouthpiece. That's a world-class kickboxer, world champion.

That thing should be so hard for you to pull out.

Yeah, it's odd that it kept falling out of his mouth. Rico with a Boiling Bite is nuts. Yeah, right, in the heavyweight division.

Do you remember Karl Parisyan? Sure, he would wear a Boiling Bite that wasn't boiled. Oh geez, straight out of the packaging. That's That's the way people are though.

That's wild to me.

Boil and bites are nuts. Well, it's also nuts. Here's a— we talk about this on the, the USC broadcast all the time, but I think it's nuts that you're still allowed to wear a Thai steel cup. I think it's fucking crazy.

That's crazy.

I would wear—

you have a— I would too.

Yeah, that's all I ever wore. I can't believe— I can't wrap my head around how fighters don't wear them.

100%. I agree with you 100%. However, it should be illegal. Yeah, it's fucking crazy. You have a piece of metal on your dick. You have actual iron over your cock, and if a guy kicks it with his toe, it's going to shatter.

I've always wondered the north-south position. You just start humping their head, right?

Oh dude, just giving them the business.

There was one that did that.

Do you remember that guy? I trained with him at Legends and he mounted me once and he almost made me tap, right? Yeah, by just digging his dick into my sternum. This is so rude. He grapevined me and I'm like, bro, you're fucking killing me with this fucking shoulder.

Shoney Carter.

Oh, Shoney Carter used to wear oversized cups.

Also awesome for arm bars.

Yes, that's how Frank Mir broke Tim Sylvia's arm.

Oh yeah, it was off of that. That completely makes sense. Yeah, but I think would have broken it if it was just his nuts. Well, with as strong as Frank, as strong as he was, how good his arm bar was in that position, that was a crazy situation.

Oh yes, it was.

That was crazy because I don't think the people in the audience had any idea what had happened.

Are you If you go back to that, you know, because Herb Dean was the referee and Herb did a great job. But it was— I was actually in the corner of Tim Sylvia, you know, where I was sitting and I had Jeremy Horn and Matt Hughes and Pat Miletic in his corner. Right. And they had this— I had the same view that they had. And what you saw was Tim Sylvia, but you saw his elbow out from that armbar. Yeah. Away from the hip. And all of a sudden Herb's stopping it. And they are going crazy. They're going, "What are you doing? You're—" You know, and they're calling him every name in the book. And I go right inside the octagon and I go, "Herb, what did you have?" And he goes, "John, his arm broke." I go, "His arm broke?" And he goes, "I heard it and I saw it." Yeah, you can see the vibration. And he goes, "His arm broke," right? And so So at the time, the person who was in charge of the medical staff for the Nevada State Athletic Commission, since it was in Nevada, they're looking at Tim, and Tim is like going, you know, but you saw Tim slowly stop using that one arm, started going down to the side as reality started setting in and the pain started coming.

But they basically said, there's nothing wrong with his arm, right? I swear to you, Herb's greatest response I've ever heard. He goes, X-ray that motherfucker, right? Because Herb never cusses, right? He goes, X-ray that motherfucker, it's broken, right? And sure enough, straight across both bones.

Well, we could see it in the replay. Oh yes, and you called it out. Forearm. Yeah, because everybody was booing. I'm like, you got to watch this, watch this. What's that? What's that right there?

That's what I'm looking at. When I saw it the first time on TV, I thought it just shifted off of the cup because sometimes you'll see that the bone will shift off, but then it—

you saw it on the replay, two distinct pops.

Had like that highlight where something bends like a piece of plastic. It looked horrible, man.

Oh my God, that was hard.

He's broken more arms. Like, he broke Nogueira's arm. That spiral fracture with the kimura.

Yeah. Oh yeah, he's nasty, man. No, that's— you know, it's funny because if you're around, you know, Frank and you're talking, he'll always say, oh, here it is.

Oh my God, I don't want to watch it again. Oh, watch it. Here it comes, right here. Oh God. And it's the forearm.

Yeah, it's just like super unusual. And everyone's wondering, why'd you stop it?

Why'd you stop? Yeah. Oh dude, Herb was getting booed out of the arena there. I remember.

So remember, Tim was complaining. Oh yeah, come on, bro. Yeah, like, you know what just— he has to know what just happened. He knows. He's got— he's just such an animal. He wanted to fight with a broken arm, which, you know, literally you might have to get it amputated if you did that. Oh, like, look, who knows what kind of damage you would have after that.

That, you could lose your arm. Yeah, you know, that's, you know, this is where you— but you'll get people all the time, you know. I mean, some of the commentators and some of the shows, you know, oh, if he wants to fight, let him fight. It's like, shut up, shut up, okay?

Yeah, this is— you gotta protect the fighter from themselves.

Exactly. This is not life and death. Yeah, if you lose a fight, I know it sucks, but it just sucks, and it's not life and death. It's okay.

Crazy situations like Carlos Olberg Guttenberg, who knocks out Jiri Prochazka with a clearly blown out knee. Oh yeah, well, you're like, if that went to the round, at the end of the round they would have probably stopped the fight.

Well, think about what Santos, right? He ended up fighting Jon Jones with two torn out ACLs or PCL, right? Yeah, that's Jon Jones. Yeah, I mean, and gave him a good fight.

He gave him a great fight. I think that was a split decision. Oh, it was, which is nuts. Yeah, that's nuts. Like, he could have won. We had like one more incompetent judge.

Now we're going to incompetent judges. Now we're gonna have problems.

Well, who Whoever was judging the Usyk fight was incompetent. Those people were ridiculous. The fact that they didn't have Rico ahead is crazy. They just— I think when you got a guy like Usyk, who's arguably the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, he's definitely in the conversation, and then you have so much money involved in him being undefeated, and whether the referee's corrupt or not, they know. Whether the judges are corrupt or not, they know. And if they fucked things up for everybody, you know, there's like, there's some weird shenanigans that go on in boxing. You remember that lady that scored, um, uh, it was a Pacquiao fight against Tim Bradley. She scored, she was one of the ones that she scored a bunch of fights.

I thought you were gonna talk Canelo against Triple G. There was a Canelo one.

Remember the first one? She scored bad. Yeah, there's a, she scored a bunch of fights where you're like, what the fuck is this? And then you have to realize about betting props. Yeah. Adelaide Bird. No, no, it's not Adelaide Bird though. No, Adelaide Byrd was, was the Canelo versus Triple G. Very nice lady.

She's a— look, she— I'm gonna give her props in this. First off, she doesn't do a whole lot of boxing anymore, but she does do a lot of MMA, does a lot of the UFC still. And that woman watches more fights, goes to more trainings. She puts in all the time that you could imagine to always try to get better. She is asking questions all the time. Now, if you're gonna sit there and say, well, that— has she, you know, you know, can she roll? No, she can't. But she knows what— you know, if you, if you say, okay, what's this? She'll tell you. Yeah, what's this? She knows it. I'm sure she puts in that time. But you know, you're always gonna have the— there's certain fights, no matter what, they're always gonna be there. You know, as the judge, you always— you're trying to do your best.

Yeah, but there's this one lady where she was involved in quite a few like ridiculous ones, and the Tim Bradley Manny Pacquiao one was a big one, and then they looked at some other ones, and then she stepped away from it. The problem is— and I'm not accusing this lady or anybody of this, but I'm saying that some people have done this in the past— is that all you have to do is make it a split decision. All you have to do is be one shitty judge that, even though it was clearly for this guy, you say it's for that guy, and someone's making a ton of loot.

Yeah, and especially in this day and age with betting.

100%, man. The UFC has a real problem. Oh yeah, there's a real problem with quite a few fights. The FBI has looked into quite a few fights, and there's one that they focused on the beginning because they knew that there was some improper betting, but now they're focused on a bunch of other ones as well.

Yeah, I'm gonna say this about that.

You can get away with it, John. To think that you're gonna be able to get away with it, you're an idiot.

Fucking stupid. You're an idiot as the fighter. You're a fool. But if you, if you, if you were around the judging, especially in the UFC, because it's It's mainly a lot of the same guys, you know. They— these guys are on text links. They are consistently— every— Joe, every UFC fight, my phone blows up. It blows up with fighters. It blows up from other officials asking, 'What about that? What did you see? What do you think?' And it's because, look, there is— at times we get media and we get, you know, people, you know, talking about our fights that call robberies when there's no robbery. It's a close fight, right?

And if you— you wanted your guy to—

hello, did not win. Yeah, fucking robbery. And I pointed it out to him. I had him sit one time. Hey, sit where the judge sits, because you get one view. You as the commentator, you get that beautiful monitor that's in front of you. There's times when you're watching the fight live, and there's times when you're watching the monitor because the angles change. As the judge, now they put the monitor there for the judges, and then like the UFC puts a great monitor there for them, but we didn't always have that, right? And you didn't always— many times you had the worst seat in the house to be able to judge a fight, especially if there's a post in front of you. Yeah, yeah. And it's so different than what people think. And it's when you are the one that's putting your name on that scorecard, you're signing it, and you know this counts. It's everything. It is everything to you to be right. You want to be right. But many times what you're seeing— and that's why they're at the 3 different points, and that's why something, you know, people get into this, well, it was a split decision.

Split decision is not always bad.

Do you think there'd be a benefit in having 5 judges instead of 3? No, no.

I've worked with it, I've done it too many times. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't, doesn't change anything. I'm just being honest.

If it did, I would say, yeah, we should do it. But if you have 2 bad judges and 3 good ones, why do you have—

why do you have 2 bad judges? That's the question.

That is a question. But when you're on the road, let's be honest, when we're on the road, we do it— let's not even name a state, but we show up and we have to use these regular local guys. There have been issues.

I'm not saying there haven't, right?

I'm not saying there are bad judges. Yes, absolutely. I love cops. There's bad cops. There are. I love dentists. There's some bad dentists. There's some fucking people that do surgeries that don't have to do them, you know what I mean? Oh yeah, it's like, it doesn't— it's not saying that the people that do it and do a great job shouldn't be supported and praised, and they definitely should, but it's also— it's like, it would benefit, I think, everybody to have a few more opinions. Like, I like Verdict. Have you seen Verdict MMA?

I bumped them up a bunch of times.

I think they're accurate like 99% of the time. I look at the Verdict score, I'm like, most close time out of 100 fights, most of the time I agree with the Verdict score.

There's many times though you can take a look at this. When I started teaching the command course and everything, people, oh, you got to teach us. I'm teaching people to take my job, right?

Okay, but in the end, I need a lot of referees. Luckily they need a lot of judges, but they also need a lot of referees for the big ones where you can't fuck this up.

Okay, I mean, yeah, like that's where it's important, but it's not the job that people think it is. It is not as easy as people think it is. Oh, it's definitely not. And it's definitely—

it's the hardest job next to being a fighter. Yeah, I think it's fighters number one, referees number two.

Yeah, yes and no. And you're right, as far as fighting is much more difficult as far as, you know, what it does to your body and what you have to put out into it and all that. Way more difficult.

So the consequences of fucking it up— boom. I don't have the consequences. If I make a bad call as a commentator, it's like, oh, Joe's an idiot. Okay, that doesn't mean anything. Like nobody loses money. Like somebody could lose half their fucking purse, which I hate, by the way. Yeah, I don't like— I don't like the whole win bonus. Everyone's trying to win. Can't stand it. Can't stand it. You should get paid. You're a prizefighter. That's right. You should get paid to compete. This is the number, whether it's $200,000 or $2,000. It shouldn't be dependent upon judges' decisions. It should be dependent upon you showed up, you fought your fucking ass off, you're trying to win. If you win, you're gonna make more money. No one's trying to lose. News, right? So it's like, what are we doing? This episode is brought to you by Bluechew. Listen up, Bluechew just dropped something wild. They're calling it Bluechew Gold, and honestly, the name fits. The stuff is setting a whole new standard for performance in the bedroom. It's not your typical blue pill. It combines 2 ingredients for blood flow with 2 for mental arousal and connection.

It's not just physical, it's the mindset too. Bluechew gets it. Sex is not just about being able to perform, it's about actually wanting to. And I've got a special deal for you listeners right now. When you buy 2 months of Bluechew Gold, you get the third free with the promo code ROGAN. You'll also receive an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information.

I'm okay with the win bonus, but it's got to be more skewed towards the show money. So give me like, let's just, I'm using a round number of $100,000. 80/20? 80/20, right? And then you give me another bonus for a finishing bonus. If I give a knockout, you give me another $20,000 or $50,000.

Well, they're doing that now.

You know what I mean?

The UFC's doing finishing bonuses. But I mean, for, yeah, exactly. But I just don't like win bonuses. I think that there have been bad decisions and guys have lost half their fucking purse when they need it and it's old, it's, it's, you got robbed. That's when you really got robbed. Yes. Not just a decision. Absolutely. You got robbed financially, which is fucking crazy to me. Yeah. I think fighters should get— I don't think they fight harder. I don't think anybody fights harder.

They want to win. They want to win. That's it.

No one's fighting hard.

No one's fighting harder because it's just something sitting out there.

And if they are, they probably shouldn't be fighting in the UFC anyway. Well, I always say they're not at an elite, like, world-class level if they're fighting harder for—

if you're in the top 15, you're not gonna fight harder because you're getting paid more. You've worked your way there to get there. Your pride is too involved. Your ego's involved.

You want to fucking good.

Yeah, I want to show everyone you're the best.

I've always said Look, if you ask a fighter before the fight, hey, how much you gonna win for that? If they're gonna get a 40/40, they're gonna get a 50/50, they're gonna say $100,000. They've already mentally spent that money. Trust me, it's always— they've got that win bonus in there. Impulsive. Yeah, it's—

fighters aren't the best at saving cash.

No, you know, so yeah, it's— but you take a look, you know, you know who's good at saving money though?

Strickland. You would think he'd be the most reckless guy. Very smart, very smart with his money. Yeah, buy—

like, most of these guys are buying jeans and shirts and glasses.

No, no, they're buying—

dude's buying Wranglers and fucking—

he wears the same thing every day. Doesn't care. But he saves his money, man. He's got a lot of money saved up. Learning how—

learning how to be smart, smarting how to be frugal is very important, especially if you're an athlete. Any type of athlete.

Especially if you're an athlete like Strickland and still rides a motorcycle.

That's psychop— I still ride a motorcycle.

You still—

oh yeah, you didn't learn anything from Frank Mir when he broke his femur? Like Fighters.

Frank Mir breaking his femur is what kept me from getting a motorcycle license. Yeah, that was the last one. Yeah, two friends crashed, one friend wiped out and fucked up his shoulder, and then Frank Mir got T-boned, and I was like, I'm out.

It all comes down— there's the old saying, there's two types of motorcycle riders: ones that have been down and ones that are going down. Yeah, and that's just the truth.

That's the problem. It's like, I felt like I'm hurting myself so many days a week just doing jiu-jitsu, they're like, they're doing that on top of that. It's like, I don't want to risk No.

Yeah, especially if you haven't been doing it, because there's ways to ride, and there's— you don't ride like— you'll see, you can— I can watch people on the road and I go, that dude doesn't know how to ride. And it's like, they're the ones— like, that's what's scary.

You get a license, figure out how to ride it, buy a bike, and you fucking— you know, it's like you could go to a car dealership right now and pick up a Corvette ZR1. You got a 1,000-horsepower car, right? And like Who knows if you know how to really drive that thing.

Who says that you're prepared to drive that thing? That's a fighter jet on wheels.

That's exactly right. That's fucking insane. And they just give it to somebody. But it's awesome. Yeah, your parents are rich, so you have a fucking fighter jet on wheels. Like, this is nuts.

But you know what you're talking about, Sean Strickland, with how many cars do you need? You know, I tell fighters all the time, how many cars do you need? You know, dude, I've had arguments with Rampage because Rampage got 8 million cars. Yeah. And I go Dude, how many cars can you put your ass in at one time, right? And it's like you're blowing through money that you can't get back.

You can't get back, you know. It's like, what about cars? It's depending on what kind of cars you have. Some cars are—

oh, if you can— if you're gonna do an investment, that's fine.

Muscle cars, shit like that, they're always worth money.

I think if you're a fighter, you need to take a page out of Forrest Griffin's book, right? With the Scion that he won from The Ultimate Fighter. He drove that thing into the ground.

Door handles were door off.

He had to roll the window down to open the door from the outside.

Like, he's such a character, you know?

But I mean, that's how you have to live if you're going to be a professional athlete, a professional fighter. That's how you have to live, especially early in your career. You don't know how long it's going to last.

Yeah, also, there's something to be said for the comforts of nice things and luxuries kind of slowing you down a little bit. Not everybody— not— doesn't seem to do it to Arman Tsarukyan. No, that fucking dude, come on, he breaks the whole rulebook. Yeah, rich kid, yeah, fights like a demon, built like a Greek god.

He is such a stud, man.

Constantly competing in wrestling, doing everything.

He's wrestling this weekend here at RAW Wrestling in Arlington.

Animal. Yeah, dude, I saw— when I saw him last, I said, just keep doing what you're doing, dude. He's killing it. Just keep doing what you're doing.

I think the best thing that could have happened to him is not getting a title fight. That guy's built—

no, yeah, I mean, he's capitalized on the bad situation that he put himself in, but it was also the headbutt with Dan Hooker. Absolutely. That was fucking crazy. Well, because you're— as you're— as a promoter promoter, right?

You could have cost me all this money if you get— if he gets cut.

Yeah, yeah, he gets cut, they pull the fight. That's right. Oh my God, can you imagine? Like, come on, knucklehead. Yeah, stop.

But, but I love watching the fight. Oh, what he's been doing with R.A.F., what he's been doing with his Nina drama stuff and all that stuff. Hey, keep going, keep going. People are talking about you. Very smart.

And he is the most interesting contender for Ilia Topuria. Absolutely. Oh yeah, without a doubt. 100%. Other than Justin, which is going to be wild. But I think him, the skills that he has, the wrestling that he has, and the size— he's a lot bigger than Ilia.

You know, I asked DC and Dustin both yesterday on my show, I want to— why do you think people were overlooking Justin?

That's a good question.

I mean, when I look at Gaethje, he's got all the tools and the weapons. Ilia Topuria is heavy on the lead leg. Justin Gaethje's got a heavy leg kick. Kick. He's got a great uppercut. He's fighting the shorter fighter in Ilia Topuria.

He's a bigger guy. He's a way bigger guy. He's not making 145 ever. No, he's a much bigger guy. He's a really good wrestler and he's a nasty striker, and he's also a kind of a fucking savage. Like, he's not kind of— yeah, I mean, like, like a real savage, not like pretending. Like, when he fought Michael Johnson in his UFC debut, he just threw himself at Michael Johnson, and he did the same thing with Paddy Pimblett. Yeah, the Paddy Pimblett fight, he could have fought that fight a lot cleaner. Yeah, and he just said, fuck you, I'm just gonna walk you down and just blast you every chance I get and break you up. And that's what he did. And he's a fucking scary dude, man. Justin's a scary dude when he's on. And this is the last dance, right? So you know that he's gonna be hyper-focused for this fight.

I just can't see why people are overlooking him. Like, they just look at him like, oh, he doesn't have a chance, gonna get knocked out. I think they're taking away from—

he is so good. Ilia has done it to everybody, all these guys that are also really good. Got 3 all-time greats. Yes, in a row, in a row. 3. But let me— let me— Max Holloway, Alexander Volkanovski, and fucking Dubronks fucking Charles Oliveira.

That's crazy, crazy. 3 KOs.

Yes, I don't hold it against him, but also, is it kind of somewhere— is there an asterisk next to it a little bit? Because Volkanovski coming off the head kick knockout loss, Max Holloway cutting from 55 to 45. 5 after putting all the weight on, then getting knocked out. The one— the only one I would say no is Charles, because he goes up, fights Charles. Charles, you know, Charles—

that's the only one. Max Holloway, yes, because he cut the— cut the weight, but that was his decision. That's right. And no one should have let Volkanovski take that fight. You got head kicked 4 months ago into a coma. There's no fucking chance you should be taking a fight with the scariest puncher in the division.

Is that a coach's, corner, family decision? He's an animal. He is an animal. Fucking animal.

He could do it. Yeah, but That's when you have to have the people, yes, maybe in your corner, in your family, or saying, hey, I think it's honestly in your family. I think you need like someone who loves you, someone who, someone who is just absolutely totally honest saying you can't do this this fast. I'm not saying you can't do it, right? You have to do these things to be able to make it to where you have an ability to take a shot like you used to because because it's diminished at this moment.

Not just that, you have to take into consideration that he gets knocked out and then he goes right into camp, okay? So you're not gonna rest your brain. No, you're just not. Even if you're just wrestling, you're not resting your brain.

You can't. Anytime your body, your body temperature rises, right, you're damaging your brain, right? Especially if you haven't let it recover yet.

And there's no way he let it recover. I mean, he got shinned, shinned to the dome by one of the biggest guys that ever fought at 55.

Islam's huge for 55.

6-foot-tall, and he fucking takes the fight on 11 days' notice with no camp, and he's eating barbecue and fucking drinking Foster's. But like, he's a fucking all-time great.

Oh, no doubt about it.

He's an all-time great. And you know, when you go back and look at his fights with Max, like, he was the first guy to figure out Max. Yeah, you know, and then you look at what he did cleaning out the division I mean, my God, I would have loved to seen a fair shake. I would have loved to see— I would have never advised him to take that fight with Islam on 11 days' notice. I don't care what the fucking UFC says. No, go Jon Jones. What does Jon Jones do? Jon Jones had an opportunity to fight Chael Sonnen with very little notice. That's right. He was already in shape. Dan Henderson fight? Nope, won't fight him. Yeah, not gonna fight him unless I have a full camp preparing just for him. I'm not giving anybody any fucking chances, period. See ya. Bye, I'm the champ. And if Volkanovski had that mindset, he would have never fought Islam unless he went through a full camp again, because he almost beat him the first time. It was a really close fight the first time. The second fight, he comes in, he's a little soft, he's not in shape, his mind's not right.

It's also the difference in the weight cut for Islam. Yes, Islam was on 30-some hours compared to—

right, he's on Australia time the first time. The second time, he's like fully rehydrated, much more time to recover. Much more dangerous.

It was more of the expectation that Volk thought, I'll just do the same thing I did in the first fight. Of course, cuz he's an animal.

Yeah, that's where you need your brother. You need someone to go, dude, I love you, you're an animal, you're one of the greatest of all time. But the brain is the brain. Like, there's just certain— you don't want to fight with a broken hand, right? Okay, just because you can't see it doesn't mean your hand's not— your head's not damaged. Your head's damaged.

That's the difference though, is exactly what you're saying. Is the brain doesn't hurt, right? You know, it doesn't have nerve endings. And so you can't sit there and say, oh man, I've got this problem, until you end up concussed, right? Until then, all of a sudden the headaches are occurring and the bright lights start to bother you and all these things start to add up and you're starting to get mad about things that you can't understand. Why am I getting mad right now? Those are the telltale signs of, hey, I need to step away for a while. Do you remember when Travis Luedke fought— oh yeah, yeah, who was it? Eastman.

Eastman. Marvin Eastman. Marvin Eastman. And he caught Marvin Eastman with a punch. It was just a regular punch, just nothing. He just clipped him. Yeah. And then we found out later, oh, he got KO'd really bad, I think by Tito. Yep. In training. Yep. And it's like, that's, that's it. He'd been KO'd twice.

Twice in training.

Oh God, you know, guys are crazy.

You look and you go, and that's why he went out the way he did. 100%. Because it was weird. Off of something he never would have been hurt by.

It was weird. Yeah, it was weird. It was like a straight left that caught him at the end of the punch. End of the punch. Hardly moved him. Just fell back. Yeah, because his brain was damaged. You got to give your time, full, a full time to recover.

45 days up to, up to 6 months. Eating more fats, more avocados, things like that to help your brain recover.

When Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out Pacquiao, Freddie Roach said, you're not doing anything for a a year. So one year, and he got his chin back. Yeah, took that year off and came back, actually recovered. But Freddie, being a longtime boxer himself and being around the game and seeing guys getting knocked out and seeing guys jumping back in too quick, he knew. Freddie being one himself.

Yes. Look, Freddie, you know, Freddie— people don't realize Freddie was actually a good, a good boxer. He was— he had a, you know, good amateur record. He was doing well in pros. Do you remember who his, his trainer was? His trainer was Eddie Futch. Eddie Futch, who was the second trainer for Joe Frazier after Yance Durham died. And Joe Frazier, he was there for the Thrilla in Manila with Ali and stuff like that. Yeah. And Eddie Futch told Freddie Roach, son, you're taking too many shots, you're getting hit with too many good ones, you're not responding the same way, you're done, you got to stop. And Freddie Roach got rid of of Eddie Futch and continued to fight as a professional and just kept getting knocked out. And that was the end of his career. And then he became the trainer. And, you know, you could take a look at a lot of the issues that he has. But as much as you're looking at, you know, you're looking at that with Freddie, take a look at his brother Pepper, who took a lot less, is worse than Freddie. Mm-hmm. I mean, Pepper's gone now, but I mean, headshots and trauma to the brain, especially when you don't get give it the opportunity to rest and heal, it will absolutely take and burn your career.

It'll burn it. No doubt. No doubt. And there's no way to really tell. There's so many guys that are damaged and we don't know, because you meet them backstage, like, "Hey, how you doing? Everything's great." But meanwhile, it's not great. No, no. These guys are struggling. They don't remember what you just said. Exactly. And then they're talking to people, they repeat things over and over and over again.

And you can watch, you know, I hate to say it, there was a fighter, fought in the UFC, fought in bare-knuckle boxing. Now he's now training guys, and it's Joey Beltran. Okay, no, I had a decent career, heavy puncher, took a lot of damage. And I'm just watching Joey Beltran walk off of stairs and having to go one step at a time with each foot. And you look and you go, damn, you know. And you know, hey, he's been all altered. You know, he's a great guy, but it's like, that's what all of this does in the end. No doubt. You've got to understand that, you know, you— I always, I try to tell fighters, look, you're a Ferrari, you know, you want to be a Lamborghini, you're a Lamborghini. But first off, it's like, you know, the whole Jon Jones thing is, you know, be careful of what you put in its gas tank, okay? Same with, you know, other guys. You know, I don't mean to pick out on Jon, but, you know, we knew— he's told the story of what he doing. And so be careful what you put in the gas tank and realize you can only crash that car so many times before it's a piece of junk, right?

And, and it's hard to get that through, that this is not gonna last forever and I'm not gonna be the same forever. Yeah, they just don't see it until all of a sudden it's there.

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

No, it's the start of your next life.

It's just you can't identify yourself. Well, Josh, you could speak to this because, you know, you fought at the highest level for a long fucking time and you stepped away healthy.

Yeah, and I did— I had this conversation with Dustin yesterday. I just said, hey, like, I feel like you could still do it. You're right there, like, you're one fight away from fighting for another title again. And he's like, it was just the time. And I can— I completely respect that. Yeah, I said, because he's having time now with his two kids, his wife, he's enjoying his moment. He just got done lifting, he was looking swole, and I was like, it was— I was like, it's good to see you. Came on the show, he's all sweaty a little bit, like, you know, he's enjoying this next chapter of his life. Life.

I like when guys go out like Khabib. Oh, just say we— absolutely. They offer him a bunch of money, he's like, nope. Yep, good, did it, done, bye.

And I hate when people try to rag him on it. It drives me crazy. They sit there and go, oh yeah, but you know, you know, you could have done this, you could have done that. Fools. Hey, he gives zero fucks.

Doesn't matter. He doesn't care. He doesn't look at it.

Look at what he did. Yeah, that's all you need to know.

Look, he dominated people that nobody dominated. Oh yeah. And he did it in a crazy way. Like, speaking of Barboza, I remember that fight where Barboza had that thousand-yard stare. So do I. In the first round, it's like he was like, oh my God, this is never gonna go my way.

It wasn't gonna. Hey, I actually looked something up the other day. Khabib is the only guy who's never bled inside the UFC octagon. That's— he's the only fighter to never bleed inside the octagon.

What have I told you? That's wild.

He's the most dominant fighter inside. Look at Jon Jones being, you know, considered—

look at Jon Jones is the greatest as far as you're gonna say Who's done it better as far as all the championship fights and all of that stuff? Jon Jones is the guy, right? He— the most dominant fighter I ever stepped into that cage with was Khabib.

Look at this: Khabib never visibly bled, was severely bruised, or was knocked down during his professional MMA career.

The only person you ever saw hurt him? Conor? Nope.

No, no. Well, Gleison Tibau.

You can say Michael Johnson.

Michael Johnson had one where he just He gave a little bit of— I was doing that fight. That's right. And he had—

I was like, oh yeah, that's right, Michael Johnson.

He sucked it right back up.

I said, I go, I go, you hurt? He's like, brother, come on, you know I'm not hurt.

You talked about, you know, Michael Johnson against Gaethje, you know, and after that fight, because I did that fight and I told Justin, hey, congratulations, that was a great performance, you got hurt, you went through it. He goes, I never got hurt. I go, go watch the video. I never got hurt.

Oh yeah, you got hurt.

Those guys went to war.

Oh man, the crazy thing was when Khabib was on top of Michael Johnson and he was saying, come on brother, you know I need deserve title shot. He was saying like, I don't want to do this to you, I don't want to. And then when he almost— when he got him in the kimura, I was like, please tap.

Oh, so yeah, you're saying please tap? Yeah. What do you think I'm saying?

It was so— I think the only reason why it didn't break is Khabib was probably being kind.

Yeah, like he's talking to him the whole time. No, the entire fight. You have to give up.

He's saying you have to give up.

Come on, bro, you know I need to fight for title.

It's my destiny. I have to fight for the title.

Yeah, I need to fight for the title. You know this. I deserve this. You agree? He's like, you agree? He's saying this while he's beating his ass. Michael Johnson's like, huh? I mean, he was just a motherfucker, dude. Oh yeah, so everybody agrees. Everybody agrees. Yeah, as he's beating his ass, he's saying, see, everybody agrees. Well, how about when he was on top of Conor? Did he say, let's talk now? Yeah, he's punching me in the face. Come on, let's talk.

Let's talk now.

Let's talk now. I love loved it. He was a monster, dude. Khabib was— he was just so relentless. But it's everything—

it's everything to do with his lifestyle.

And this is what—

this is where you get into, you know, you've seen it too many times, champions. And there's been great champions, but when you become the champion, everything in your life changes. The things that come your way change, you know. You get— you get offered things that you didn't get offered in the same way before. You get all these opportunities, and all of a sudden, instead of going to the gym, you're spending the day on a plane going to a location motivation to do something. Sometimes it's for the promotion that you're working for. Sometimes it's for the UFC or whatever promotion there is. And because they're asking you, so you're missing that day of training, and then you're getting back on the plane, you're coming back the next day, and that's another day that you're missing. He never missed training. He never changed his lifestyle. He did everything the same. Yeah. And that's why he had the results he got.

Well, for a super successful guy, he's still so humble. He's so like normal to talk to. He's so balanced. And it's that discipline that he has, the discipline and his religious beliefs. Like, he's just so, so rock solid.

The thing about him is that he tries to make sure he puts the guys that had helped get him there— tries to help them get elevated as well, you know. And that's it. Kind of what I'm trying to say is that how you've done with your guys, with your group of comics and friends, you guys all lift each other up. He does the same thing with the group of friends that he has. So not just like myself and DC and, you know, Islam and those guys. I mean, like, when they go to travel for events, he put, you know, he takes care of the house, he makes sure that it's all organized, make sure that there's enough room for everyone, there's food, you know. Obviously all the guys, other guys chip in, but it's like he's the one that's kind of organizing everything. He's the leader of that team. And I'd love seeing somebody that puts that much effort into guys that helped get him there as well.

Yeah, no, he's a real leader. He's a real leader. And now that he's coaching, I mean, you imagine you're a kid and you need motivation, you're literally being coached by one of the greatest combat sports athletes to ever walk on God's earth.

And, and one that did it right the entire time. The entire time.

And it is all about discipline and hard work. Like, you couldn't pick a better camp, especially if you're a grappling-based guy, you know, like send them to Dagestan 2, 3 years ago.

It's the greatest meme of all time. I think what separates, you know, Islam and Khabib that whole group is that there's never a moment where they're not training. Like, I was in Chicago at one of the events for Bellator. We were there, and I was headed down to the bar after the event. They were headed to the gym, passing me in the elevator. So come up and talk to me. So I was up there for an hour just chatting with them while they're riding bikes, you know, lifting weights, getting their workout in, and everyone else is down at the bar drinking. Wow. You know, and so it's— it doesn't matter. They don't even look at it. They don't think about it. They just go right to the gym. They get their sweat on. They're up there for 2 hours. Course. It's not— not— it's not like this intensity.

It's not a 25-minute— yeah, right. They're just working. Yeah. And they're never letting themselves get out of shape. No, that's it.

And then you see them in the morning, right? When they were living it— when they were training out of AK in the mornings, you'd see them at the, at the track in the mornings. They would just jog, but then there was little stations where you do sit-ups and push-ups. They would do those, and they would do it for 2, 3 miles, and they'd come to the gym at noon and they'd do their workout, sometimes hard, sometimes not. But they were always training, always working. And that's what separates them. They're not out at the club until 2, 3 in the then trying to recover the next day. They're not drinking, they're not smoking, they're not doing—

the no drinking is huge, huge, huge. If there's one thing that fucks fighters up more than anything, it's partying. Oh yeah, drinking especially. I guess coke, but I don't have a lot of experience with guys that I knew that were doing coke, but I have a lot of experience with guys that were drinkers. And you would see them in the morning on like— they would go out Saturday night, Sunday they'd be fucked up, they show up Monday to train and they just looked like shit. Yeah, because they have been partying too hard just 2 days ago. And you don't think that that's gonna make a big difference, but if you're getting drunk on Saturday night, that's days before you're back to baseline. Days, right? You know, and you can get away with it when you're 23. Yeah, a little bit, kind of. But are you? Because you're probably not as good as you would have been. And then maybe you're gonna get hit with some shots you wouldn't get hit with, or you've been gonna get tapped when you wouldn't have got tapped. Yeah, yeah.

But, and then you take a look, that's the big difference. If you go back and look at Khabib's career. Go back and look at his first fight in the UFC and look at how bad— and I'm serious, how bad his stand-up was. Yeah, it wasn't the best. Oh no, it was, it was probably the worst. Okay, it was—

I don't think it was the worst.

It was bad.

He did a lot of crazy shit.

Yeah, but take a look at it. Those were his— when he was at the end. Oh yeah, it was, it was tight. He always was improving.

Oh, he was dangerous.

Remember, he dropped throughout.

Oh, he cracked Conor, you know, with a big right hand, which was like— everybody was like Holy shit, like, yeah, shocker.

I had several conversations with Shab about that because I went down and did his show a couple times in LA before that fight. And I said, look, stylistically, Conor's the better striker. I go, but the intimidation of the takedown and the threat of the takedown for Conor is gonna make him hesitant. I said, don't be surprised if Khabib ends up landing some good, some good hard shots on the feet.

That's a giant factor, the fear of the takedown. About Kevin Randleman, he fought Cro Cop when he knocked him out. That was what it was, absolutely, the takedown. This is the thing thinking, the thought process.

Yeah, you can't let him—

well, you get it. If Kevin Randleman and Krokop fought a straight kickboxing match with no takedowns, Jesus Christ, it's a walk.

I mean, you don't want to watch.

It'd be terrible to watch. Yeah, but that threat of the takedown is this factor that keeps you from being comfortable. It keeps you from finding your flow state.

That little hesitation opens up so many opportunities to get to catch them.

Yeah, it's big. It's so big. You see it in fights all the time when a guy just has this extra element of the And when— so that's why it's so impressive when you see a guy like Pereira where there's no threat of the takedown. Yeah, there's no threat. That's not happening. He's not even thinking about taking down. He's just gonna fuck you up, and now it's up to you to deal with that.

We just don't have the level of wrestlers these days in the 205 and the heavyweight division to compete with him on there in the wrestling. That's where—

that's where you have someone like Stevenson coming in, Gable coming in the heavyweight division. Yeah, okay, Curtis Blades can wrestle. Now Josh Hokett, look at Josh Hokett, it's the real deal, you know. He was a— he's a, he's a good athlete. Yeah, he's a good all-around athlete. He's a character. You go with the shtick. Oh, hey, hey, you got a shtick, it's great.

Exactly. But also, he put up, he put up, absolutely put up in that Curtis Blades.

Hello. That fight as a heavyweight fight was awesome, awesome to watch, you know.

Terrible for your dome though. Oh yes. And that's the crazy thing, that he's gonna fight Derrick Lewis, who's the biggest knockout puncher in the history of the fucking heavyweight division. More knockouts than any one. He's gonna fight him, what, how many weeks? 7 weeks? Yeah, 7 weeks. 7 weeks. 7 fucking weeks after a war. Hello, you see Curtis Blades' fists? They're like this. Yeah, they're like that big. They're gigantic. He's a giant man. Yeah, he hit him a bunch. Oh, he did big shots.

And what, look, I get— I got to give it up for Curtis Blades. What a fight he put on, because he took some damage.

He delivered some big shots as well. Mad, mad heart.

Crazy, crazy heart, because he just did not want to lose that shit-talking dude. That's a funny thing, is like, Hokage will drop the act when you talk to him in real life. Yeah. And in, in the ring, you know, in the cage after the fight, I said, dude, that was a fucking amazing fight. He goes, he goes, I talked so much shit.

I mean, he goes, I had to win.

I talked so much shit. And then he went and did it again. Fucking—

Little Ilya Toporya is out there trying to pick fights with him.

Well, he just talks shit about so many people. He's just trying to get people upset and talk about it.

He's just pushing buttons.

Listen, that's the Conor McGregor game plan. Like, I mean, Conor did it the best. Chael did it. Chael was the first really to do it in MMA. Chael did it, and Conor took it to another level. But they kind of stayed in—

they kind of stayed in their lane. Like, this is my weight class. This dude doesn't care if you're 135, 145.

He talks a ton of shit. He just wants controversy. He's basically like one of them kick streamers. He's just trying to talk shit as much as possible. He's—

look what he's done though, man. He can fight himself. He can fight in the UFC for a division that the UFC has. They need, man, they need these people.

Yeah, yeah. I think Gable's the man.

That's what I think.

That's your nightmare. That's Mike Tyson when he was 20, you know what I mean?

He's still growing. He's got, he's got some work to do, but I'm glad they signed him early, you know, um, try to develop him hopefully a little bit. Give him 2 or 3 more fights inside the UFC.

The problem is the heavyweight division in the UFC is so shallow that you could see Gable fighting for a title within a year or 2. 3 fights. 3 fights. Yeah, could be. Yeah, could be.

He's gonna have to learn a lot though in that process. 100%.

But he's got Jon in his corner.

Yeah, you got it. You got to give him credit though. He has shown that, you know, first off, he's super fast. Oh yeah. But he's also got a chin. He got kicked up into the head-neck area. He ate that sucker, you know, and continued on, and you go, well, he's a tank. Don't let that happen again, right? But don't let it happen. A man— you've shown, hey, he didn't let it affect him. He didn't back off. Well, he's an Olympic gold medalist.

I mean, he's a winner. Yeah, he is a small heavyweight though, like that hybrid style. Yeah, but that's the best.

It is. It was 250. He's just not tall, but he's wide as fuck. Legs, legs. How about when he had that dirty boxing fight and then leapt over the top rope? Literally, that's the whole thing. Like it was a box of tissues on the ground.

The best one was when he had the first one and he hits the guy, the guy's out going down and he's taking him down.

Double while the guy's still cold. That's how fast he is. Yeah, he's the most impressive of the prospects. But you know, hopefully this is gonna excite that— like when you have a— like every division goes through these like peaks and valleys, and when you have a lull, hopefully that's when And people come in and they fill that void. And with Francis out of the UFC, and looks like forever—

which is a shame, it's a shame.

I don't— I tried to negotiate that, I tried to bring the two of them back together, I tried to have a sit-down. Dana was not interested. He doesn't want to have anything to do with him. It's about interpersonal relationships, interpersonal exchanges that they had that I'm not— oh, I don't know what happened exactly. I just know what Dana told me and I believe him. So it's like you have the best heavyweight in the world in the world, and he can't fight in the UFC, which is to me crazy. I mean, let's do molly together. Fuck, let's work this out. Let's fucking work this out, bro.

We could do anything, right?

I mean, this is why I'm not a promoter, and it's why I'm not a businessman. But if I was, I would go to dinner with him. Come on, man. I'm sure we could let our differences be aside. Like, he's not a bad guy. It's just, you know, sometimes people get upset, they say things, like, smooth it out. Out. Yeah, my experiences with Francis have always been super positive. A lot of people enjoy talking to him.

Francis has been nothing but kind to me and everybody I've introduced him to and stuff. He's always the best.

He's the scariest fucking heavyweight on planet Earth. He's huge.

He's huge. People— I was at an awards thing, and when Miesha Tate and Rashad Evans and I and my wife were taking a picture, and all of a sudden this shadow comes over the top of us, and it's Francis with his arms out like, hey, right? It's like, what the hell?

When you get a natural 2 265, a guy's now shredded, cutting weight to make 265. That's— yeah, I mean, he's— he— there was many fights where he was like 270, 275. Oh yeah, he would drop a little bit of weight to make the 260, which is also stupid. Why is there a 265-pound weight limit for the heavyweight division? Yeah, that's— isn't that nice?

Yeah, I know why. You know, you get those really big guys. Lorenzo, you know, Lorenzo was, you know, looking at it saying, here, I don't want I don't want fat guys. Really, that's what, you know, because you had it.

Yeah, everybody loved Big Country.

But it was at the time in MMA, you had no weight limit. I was lovable to a point.

Love Roy.

Yeah, no weight limits. And that whole thing was, he looked and said, I don't want, you know, a bunch of fat guys. We got to cut it off at a certain point because I'm not gonna have super heavyweight, you know. And he just never—

they never did. Well, not having super heavyweight is fine, but merge it. Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. If a guy is like Valuev— remember Valuev? Oh yeah, yeah, the Russian guy was 7 feet tall, fought Holyfield.

Let him fight! David Haye beat him, remember that one? Oh, that's right, David Haye.

And David Haye's a small heavyweight in comparison. Oh yeah, Holyfield beat him too, right? Didn't Holyfield beat him?

I don't think Holyfield didn't fight Valuev.

I think they did. Did they? I think— look that one up. I think they did. I might be wrong.

I don't think— I'm not sure Vander David Haye beat him, I know that.

Might be wrong. But there they are. Yeah, that's him. Yeah, 2008. Crazy. And Evander Holyfield was a cruiserweight. Remember when he fought Dwight Muhammad Qawi, who was 5'7"? Oh yeah, Qawi was a 5'7" cruiserweight and he would get underneath you and be like moving around. He was like, he was a nightmare to deal with.

He was, he was a mini Joe Frazier, bro. He's a tank.

That guy was— and he would pull his trunks way up to here. It was crazy. Oh, value of one. Yeah, highly disputed. That's what it is. Yeah, majority decision. That's where you get a fucking referee in your corner.

That's when— look at that. Look at the age of Evander. Yes, 46, which is crazy.

That's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. It's crazy when you see these guys that were, you know, like, oh wow, Yoel Romero can do it.

Okay, listen, no, he's a— he is a— not from Earth. Okay, this is where this whole UFO thing comes in. Yeah, right here. Here is the proof of the— yes, there are aliens, and Yoel Romero is one of them. Yeah, okay. He is built differently than every other human being on the face of this world.

I told this story before, I don't know if you guys heard it, but this, this actually happened. When the— one of his fights, he had broken into his orbital. The UFC brings him to a doctor. The doctor says to him, to the UFC, where did you get this guy? Yeah. And they go, he's pretty awesome, right? He goes, no, no, I've never seen a human built like this before. They said his tendons in his eye were 3 times larger than a normal person's. They said the orbital bone is already healing. Like, this is crazy.

I need no medicine.

So then there's some questions. It's like, you know, listen, the Cubans are very connected to the Russians, who are very connected to science. Oh yeah. Well, it's wild. I mean, you gotta think, if you had a kid and you knew this kid was gonna be wrestling, you're like, bang, bang, bang, when he's coming up, you could make a totally different kind of kid. Kid. Oh, I remember I read a story about this guy and his son started showing, uh, like, uh, androgenic effects very early on. They were freaked out. Like, the kid was getting— like, his dick was growing, he's getting hair. They're like, what the fuck is happening to this baby? And they realized that the dad had testosterone cream. So the dad was taking testosterone cream and he's hugging the kid, baby, and, you know, bare chest to bare chest.

It's It's—

he's literally juicing up his fucking kid.

Have you— have you seen Andrey Smaev? Yes. Holy Jesus Christ. Jamie, pull up that guy. Andrey Smaev is a— he's a— he's kind of a hybrid. He's a bodybuilder, powerlifter, strongman, arm wrestler. Yeah, he's 350 pounds. I mean, 20, 27-inch arms. His hands—

hands are so big, they look like catcher's mitts.

Yeah, and that's good. His hands, you'd Jeez, have you heard?

You know, 2016 to 2026, look at the difference. 2016, look at normal.

Look at his hands. Yeah, look at his hands difference.

His hands are huge because he growth hormone. Oh yeah, he takes everything. He takes 1,000 units of growth hormone a day. That's 10 vials.

What? He does?

Yes, he's going to die. Whoa, you cannot take that. Is that real?

That's insane. Yeah, 1,000. Oh my God, look at the size of of them.

That's so crazy. That dude does one-arm pull-ups at 350 pounds. I mean, he is absolutely— and he's not—

and he has a regular job.

27 years old. Look at him, he looks like he's 50.

Yeah, he looks at least 50. It doesn't— he have a factory job? I think he has a regular job, so it's not even— he's not even doing it for money. Oh no. But it's crazy when you see him when he was young. Like, look at that. That's him. That's the same guy. I mean, that, that looks like a regular athlete. He is a regular athlete. Sleep there. And then all of a sudden he becomes this fucking immense freak. He is—

he must have done a lot of testosterone to lose all his hair like that.

Yeah, he did everything. Everything. Yeah, he's done everything there is. Whatever you got, give me it. There's a lot of those dudes. Do you know about that guy Tom Haveland?

Oh yeah, in Australia. Fuck, dude, that's 6 foot 8. That dude, you take a look at him, he is— he's unique in the fact he doesn't do the normal workouts and stuff, right? He does basic farm stuff. He picks up, you know, things— farmer walks with stuff that's ridiculous.

He does like a lot of— picks up axles. Oh yeah, weird shit, dude.

But he's 6'8", let's say 330 pounds more, not an ounce of trying to get to 400.

He was trying to get to 400, so he's in the 390s. He was like, this is building up to 400 pounds, but shredded. Yes. And, and preposterously strong. Yeah, like farmers.

He's always, he's always working out when you can't see him.

Yeah, you see his back and he's always wearing clothes. Clothes, which is very odd. But there's photos of him without the clothes. Yeah. And it's almost like he's building a masterpiece and he wants to reveal it once he's done painting. Yeah. See if you can find some pictures of what he actually looks like, because there is occasionally they show his body.

Yeah, he always takes all the stuff like that.

Yeah. Fucking bro.

Wow, look at him right there.

Look at that. That's fucking insane.

He looks young. I don't think he's that old. Okay, he looks young.

I think he's like maybe 30 or something. Something. It's nuts. Yeah, he is gigantic, dude. 6'8", 385. What the fuck? What the fuck? Now imagine if he wanted to fight MMA and they're like, well, sorry, you've got to lose 110 pounds. Fuck off! That's crazy.

Fuck you. Okay, hold on, think about this. Look at that. You're the heavyweight that they want to put him against. Yes, there's a weight class.

No, listen, I think this should be a 225 and then should be chaos. 225 and then chaos. I agree. Yeah, you, you, and let the freaks in. Yeah, let them, them Iceland dudes in.

Like, I mean, some of them, some of the most entertaining fights in Pride, right, were the freak fights.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing though, that guy's gonna melt your piss cup. Oh yeah, 100%. So just like, you'll have it fucking just like in Pride. If you put that fucking guy in like one of them tester machines, it would ding like one of those cartoon things. Yeah, and it hits the bell.

There, there would be fireworks going off, streamers coming down.

Chance that guy's on the national. Come on. But that's just like Pride, you know? Yeah, exactly like Pride. Yeah, Pride, everybody was juicing.

They just had the enhanced games.

I know, but only one, only one world record was broken in the 50-yard.

Yeah, yeah, really, that was a 50-meter swim, but they were wearing a suit, wearing a suit that's illegal.

Yeah, because it makes you slippery.

Yeah, and it was a guy that had already beaten the world record like, I don't know, a couple years back. Yeah, somebody's beaten him since. It's—

no one really— it wasn't that successful. And I talked to a friend of mine about it, and he was like, I think first of all, they're not like monitoring everything everyone's doing. They're not optimizing them. If you really want to juice these people up, you can't let them do it themselves. Yeah, you've got to have like a whole program where you put them on this stuff. But also, like, what are we doing? Did you hear what—

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

Okay, so when did they— thank you, Jamie. When we had them on, Jamie, did they bring this up? I don't think they did. Maybe they adopted this later because we had them on like about a year before they were gonna do the games, and they were telling— I was like, let's go juice them up, juice everybody up.

Yeah, what about an enhanced fight games.

You know, my interesting— the whole question is this: when you truly look at it— because I look and say, look, as long as you— oh, if you open it up to everyone, then it's someone's choice. You're gonna hear all that thing, well, you know, you can do it if you want, you don't have to do it. But it's different when you're lifting a weight or you're swimming in a pool, right, or doing those things, and where you're beating on another human being. It's just— there's a difference. You're creating damage. In the sport of fighting. 100%. Do you want to enhance someone in being able to do that?

You're also enhancing your ability to take damage. You could take that into consideration. You're gonna get hit with less shots because you're gonna have more endurance because you're gonna be on EPO.

You're gonna have— that's always good for you too.

Super good. Yeah, the strokes that you get on EPO are the best. But I mean, like, I gotta think there's a way to do all those things if you're monitoring your blood work and you're being very careful where you don't go crazy like the Russian cat.

Yeah, you know, people, that's human nature. Yep, you're right.

One step, take another. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and if that guy has skills, imagine that guy. Well, oh my god, imagine if you got Fedor and you go, bro, oh yeah, you want to keep fighting?

I got 49, but listen, that's only, that's only biological. I can make you think 32 again.

Yeah, we get you in a hyperbaric chamber every day for 2 hours, and this is what we're gonna do: testosterone in the morning, testosterone at lunch, testosterone at night, and a little growth after. Oh, growth is all day long. You're taking growth from the moment you wake up. We're gonna get you up to about 290.

We're gonna shred it. We're gonna peptide you.

Yeah, I think part of the attraction to Fedor though is his belly. 100%, you know. Yeah, you lose that and I'm like, ah, I mean, imagine Lorenzo saying I don't want guys to fight.

And you see Fedor, he did everything he could to get Fedor.

Yeah, well, they did. They really did. No, he did. I remember those days. There was— it was kind of crazy. Like, the— he was negotiating with some dangerous characters. Oh yeah. And Dana was like, we gotta up our security. This is getting fucking— just getting heavy with these guys. They wanted a piece of the promotion. That was—

that was the whole— yeah, everything. Everyone talks about that stuff. Look, it wasn't— it wasn't Fedor, you know. Fedor would have fought for anyone. And it wasn't the price of what, you know, he wanted for money. It was M1 was associated— Vadim Finkelstein was Fedor's manager. He had M1 and he wanted a co-promotion. Yeah, with UFC. No. Yeah, we can't do that. That's the one thing we can't do. And that was, that was the end-all right there.

Yeah, which is unfortunate, right? Oh, totally. We missed out on the greatest matchup of all time between prime Cain and prime Fedor. Yeah, prime Cain and prime Fedor would have been fucking nuts. Yeah, I mean, absolutely nuts. Nobody had a gas tank like Cain. Nobody.

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

Just talked to him yesterday. He was just— I was just talking to him at the Fights?

No, he's just like, no, I'm kind of like just disconnected. Like, it's— he's just trying to get his life back.

Well, understandable, you know. Understandable.

That's the one fight I said, if there was one fight I could pick for you, it'd be Fedor. It'd be— that'd be the one fight I want to see out of him.

We missed that.

It's funny because everyone talks— I agree with you completely— everyone talks about, you know, the fight that they would have put together would have been Brock against Fedor. Yeah. And I look and I go, yeah, it's probably not that good of of a fight.

Yeah, it's like Brock had such a hard time standing up with that guy. Yeah, Fedor. Well, the good example, like the Brock fight to me that was like kind of the craziest fight was Alistair. Almost juicy.

Uber Eats. Uber Eats.

Yeah, the most juicy he ever—

that wasn't juice, that was horse meat. That was everything.

That was horse meat. He definitely ate some horse meat. Oh yeah, but there was no doubt about it. He was also eating pills. No, that guy, there's a lot going on. But he was monster. He was world-class kickboxer. Now, yeah, he's like a vegan now. He doesn't look anything like—

he looks like he did. Yeah, but he's back to his Pride days. Yeah, yeah, well, back to his supermodel days.

Good for health.

Yeah, right. By the way, that guy's been KO'd a ton of times, seems fine. Like, he did the commentary during the Usyk fight, the Rico fight, and it was like, guy is fucking talking great. He's like smooth and articulate.

It's not— and not everyone gets affected the same way, right? And it is, you know, there is, you, there's little factors and you can see the difference. There are guys, you know, that are been boxers with 70 professional fights, they do, they talk fine, everything's good.

There's also a gene, it's called APOE4, and if you have that, like, what is it, how does it work? If you have it, you're protected, or if you have it, you have the problem? So there's one, there's one gene expression that makes you more likely to get CTE. Yeah, for whatever reason. Yeah, yeah. What is it? It was— put it— put that into perplexity and see what it says about— there's a gene that you have in your body that— yeah, some people have it and some people don't. And if, if you have the— whatever it is, where there's a gene expression— I'm a moron, I'm not the guy to talk about this, but Dr. Rhonda Patrick talked about this, and she was saying essentially that if you have this— here it is— APOE4 appears to increase the risk of severity of chronic traumatic callopathy in people of significant repetitive head impacts, but is a modifier of risk, not a cause by itself. So meaning, obviously, if you have it and you're not taking headshots, you're okay, it doesn't do anything, right? But if you have it— yeah. So scroll back up again, please. A large postmortem study of 364 people with Rh1 294 with CTE, 70 without, carrying APOE4 was associated with more advanced CTE stage and and higher tau protein burden in the frontal lobe, but mainly in those older than 65.

But that's just because they haven't been testing all the MMA fighters or all the boxers, you know, because like if you really— you just testing regular folks or football players, probably it's like football players is probably in the country the most people that have had trauma.

Absolutely.

Because you think about high school kids, even junior high kids, they're climbing. Yeah. I mean, they did a study of— I forget how many different people, but they found that everyone— it was like 9 out of 10 had it in every group, whether it was high school kids, college kids, some level of CTE, which is nuts. Yeah, not just NFL, not just college, high school kids.

This is everything, everything that we've learned and we know today comparatively. From here, I'm going to Florida for the Association of Ringside Physicians. They have their annual conference, and they put on all these different things, and we, you know, put together programs for downed fighter things and all all this stuff. But we know so much more now, Joe. It used to be, you know, I would go in and do a presentation for him, and it was, you know, one of the first things, you know, when I first did it, I asked him a question. The real simple question was, let me ask you this: if a guy gets hit with a shot, boom, and he's out going down, and he hits the ground, and the fighter comes in and hits him with a shot, is it possible for him to hit him with a shot and actually wake him back 'Everyone from back then, no, that's impossible. All it will do is intensify the effects of the first shot,' all this stuff. And I took a DVD, I said, 'Let's watch.' What fight did you use? I had a bunch, you know, and it was a matter of— it was trying to show them, hey, all these things that we think are just not true, okay?

When we have to— we have to branch out and start to figure this stuff out a little bit more. Is it, you know, in boxing it's different because boxing establishes time for me to make decisions. MMA takes that time away because I have a fighter that is now, instead of walking towards or, you know, trotting towards a neutral corner or something like that, they're trotting towards that person to do more damage to them. And so you're making that quicker decision. And, you know, we've had too many fights where we have someone that, you know, they're out going down and then hit the ground and they're up, and you have to actually wait. You know, I just had, you know, one last week with Jason Jackson is fighting his opponent, Jeff Creighton. And Creighton gets hit and he's going down, and I'm going in to stop it, and I see he starts sitting up and I go, I gotta wait. Hmm. And it's like, I don't want to wait, don't sit up. And he comes back, boom, hits him, goes out, I stop it. But it's like, those are the ones that you look at and you go, man, to understand the way the human body— everyone responds differently in certain situations.

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

Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's nuts. In the Hermes-Fronka fight in UFC 47, I think 46.

Jesus Christ, don't go back too far. Yeah, too far.

But we're in the third round, I catch his leg and he throws a little loop shot and drops me. I have the leg in my hand and I'm just going— I can see my face headed towards the canvas. My eyes are wide open, but I can't put my hands in front of my face. My face bounces off the canvas. It wakes me up, and then I start fishing for legs. Wow. It was just— I can see everything, I can hear everything. I just couldn't put my hands in front of my face. And my face hits the canvas, I wake back up, and he starts jumping on me. I start trying to fish for legs and trying to get to guard, and that's how that goes. Wow.

The first thought to go through his head is, I hope I didn't damage my face because I'm so good looking.

Jealous.

It is a problem. Jealous.

This guy's jealous over here. I told you the whole time.

But actually, you violated the stereotype that good-looking guys can't fight. Yeah, there was a little bit of a stereotype that like good-looking guys, when push comes to shove, they're going to fall apart because they're too good-looking. They don't want to get fucked up. I don't think so.

Not true. I've seen too many good-looking guys.

Look at Rico. Look at Rico. Yeah, Verhoeven's a fucking model. Yeah, beautiful man.

That guy came to AK and trained with Kane in DC for a couple weeks. That guy's a fucking murderer. Oh yeah, he's a murderer. And like when we were talking about earlier about the fight and him, the box— his boxing is really good, his cardio, like you guys were talking about, is fantastic. But man, he has no fear of being taken down. He has no fear of any of these guys. Cain and DC didn't care. He didn't— he would fight them to the death on defending takedowns. They were like, man, DC was the— as soon as they got— they touched gloves, he would just right to the legs, you know, right to the leg.

FC. Yeah, they offered him Derrick Lewis, but then the Usyk fight came up and it was like, listen, this is $15 million. Oh yeah, $15 million. And look what happened. I mean, amazing choice because in most people's eyes he won most of the rounds of that fight.

Go, go back and look at some of the fights. That one right there, okay, you know, it's the most recent. Look at Francis Ngannou against Tyson Fury. Yep. And look at the scoring on that one. Go back to Conor McGregor versus Mayweather, because no matter what you want to say, Conor won the first couple rounds because Mayweather didn't throw any punches. You don't— this whole thing about, oh, you're general ringmanship, bullshit. You're not throwing punches, you're not winning a fight, okay? It's a fight. It's not a dance. It's not how pretty you look. And so you can go back and I can tell you, like, I've talked with some of the judges off of the Mayweather-McGregor. I may I made a mistake. I mean, I gave credit where I should have given credit. It's like, how interesting.

You know, I think it's easier for the heavierweights though to go up to boxing and have a little bit more success than it would be for the smaller guys. Like, Ilia Topuria to fight Bud Crawford— oh no, no, stop, stop. Sorry, you know, I mean, like, that's my point. The level of boxing talent there with Bud and— and it's not— it's not even close.

No, it's not even close. Bud's one of the greatest ever.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And but anyway, could be if he just went into boxing.

Yeah, I mean, but Bud Crawford could go to MMA. That dude can wrestle, right? Okay, so I would love— I mean, obviously not gonna happen just because of the money you can make. Boxing is not the same.

And also, he's another guy that's like, I'm done, I don't have to do this anymore. Oh dude, I did all I had wanted to do. Multiple division weight champion, undefeated, bye. Yeah, made a ton of money. See ya. Yeah, beat Canelo and boxed the brakes off of him.

When he was pity-pat punching him and then hitting him with big shots.

Like, that's what you do to someone when you're playing.

He had Canelo so absolutely frustrated during that fight. But I remember you watch— I was in New York, Gleason's Gym. Terence Crawford is there, and he is boxing all these guys and just playing, just absolutely, you know, come on, next one, boom, and touch, touch, touch. He never tried to hurt any of them, never tried to throw a big punch, you just look and you go, how good is this guy? He is that, you know, and he's that guy.

One of the best switch hitters to ever do it. Oh yeah, in my opinion, it's like him and Hagler. Yeah, they're like right there together. It's wild. Greatest switch hitters. Yep. He could box you southpaw, then all of a sudden he's orthodox.

Oh no. And dude, the funny part about him is, you know, you see it in MMA, guys will switch when they take a step and throw a punch, they'll switch to a different, you know, He does the same thing, and he does it and then takes a lateral movement that had Canelo like, where the hell is he? Yeah. And he's going, hi, bap, you know?

Yeah.

And you go, oh my God, he's so goddamn good.

He hit Canelo with a straight left, and then Canelo went to counter, and he had the hand still out there, and he threw it, turned it into a left hook. Yeah. And I was like, good Lord. Yeah, it was so pretty. You could see Canelo's like, here I come back, bang. Yeah, he gets dinged with the left hook. I'm like, that That is crazy speed and precision and technique.

I've said this before, I've sparred with Robert Ghost— Robert the Ghost Guerrero, and because he lived in Gilroy and we would train together all the time, he would use me for the— I'd be in fight shape, ready for my UFC fight, just watched his son's fight. Yeah, literally, I'd show up, I was the first 4 rounds of a 12-round session. He knew a new training partner every 4 rounds. This guy would just piece me up, he would just toy with me, and it was embarrassing. I'm like, I'm in the best shape of my my life. But I— by round 4, I was exhausted, and he was barely touching me.

'Cause you're working hard.

Touch, touch, move, slip out the side, slip out the side. So good. And he wasn't— and he wasn't at Mayweather's level. He's fought Mayweather, but like, he wasn't that level of slickness. But he made it look like it when I was in there with him.

It's all in comparison. So good. I mean, there's guys that look like— look at Jack de la Maddalena when he fought Carlos Prates. You're like, Jack de la Maddalena is one of the scariest strikers in the sport. Then he fights Prates, you're like, oh yeah, oh, there is a difference.

Levels. That's Levels. That's what you try to do. And everyone's got— has this idea, we talk about it all the time, and I go, you don't understand the difference this much makes in the difference of how you compare in a fight with somebody.

Levels. Oh my God, levels. Especially when you get a guy like Prates that had so many high-level Muay Thai fights. That's the big difference. These guys that own with only striking, they develop an understanding of positions and technique that's just not available if you're training the other stuff. Stuff too. And so then they get to this— like Pereira, they get to this super high level at this one thing, and then they incorporate the other stuff. But that other level, you're not gonna catch them. You're not gonna catch Prates when it comes to Muay Thai. That step-in fucking tomahawk elbow that he does, holy shit, dude. And he's playing, and he smokes Marlboros, and he drinks. He smokes Marlboros in the back, bro. It's crazy. He's getting ready to fight and he's smoking blunts. What was the guy that fought De La Hoya that come out smoking cigarettes. Yeah, but I mean, Mayorga was never at the level of Pratas. Pratas, like, is so fucking slick, man. Some of the shit that he was doing to JDM—

like, JDM is a fucking killer, and he had no success. He was drowning.

He was drowning. And it was— it's also like, what is going on with his limbs? Why are they so big? It's like crazy. Like, he says he's 6 foot 1. The fuck out of here, bro. I want to— I want to measure your, your height and length, because I think there's some bullshit. Yeah, he's just all like, you know, I think he did this for his reach. Like, his reach is nuts when you see him in there. He's like all arms and legs, and the technique is so beautiful. It's so beautiful. The setups— when he— when you think he's punching, he's kicking the fuck out of your calf, and he's like slowly breaking you down, slowly breaking. And then the knee, that fucking knee that comes out like a jab—

his knee is nuts, man. You go back to his fight fight with Gary, you know, and you look at, you know, Gary was doing great that last round. Yeah, you know, he came, he came back on it, and you look and you go, if this is 5 rounds, it'd be a real problem.

Hello. But it also shows you how fucking good Ian Gary is.

Oh, absolutely. Now that's the whole point. It shows how good he is because he has gone against guys that are a real problem as far as stylistically, you know. His fight against MVP, Ian Gary did you know, fought as smart as you could fight. Yep. And did a wonderful job in showing, hey, I'm multifaceted. I'm not just, you know, this one style fighter.

With Prates, when he, when he knocked out Leon Edwards, I was like, oh, like, I, I knew he was really elite, but I'm like, Leon's so technical and he's so slick. Like, if it's just— and Prates is not going to try to take him down. I'm like, this is going to be a very interesting fight. Yeah. But it wasn't. No, it was, it was Carlos Prates' show. Yeah, he put on a fucking show.

The relaxation, the comfort of being out there. Also, too, Leon understanding, like, I was the champion, I'm not the champion, it's hard to get back. He's had— he's— the mindset has changed a lot.

It's been hard for Leon ever since he— when he lost that, that title fight against Muhammad. And you look in everything that's happened to him since, it's just, you know, confidence is everything.

Yeah, well, the Sean Brady fight might have been even more brutal than that because Sean just mauled him. Mauled him. When Sean gets on top of people, like what he did to Joaquin Buckley was bananas.

No, it wasn't. I look at that, and this is why. Sean Brady won against Craig Jones. Okay, now it was an advantage as far as weight, but he grappled against the real Craig Jones and showed that he can stay with him. Poor Joaquin is not at that level. But you know in that match Craig was not allowed to use leg locks.

You know that, right? That's a good point. That's a big— that's like finding Ernesto Hoost and you only can kick above the waist. You know what I'm saying?

Well, that's if you're Rick Rufus.

That's a smart idea.

Yeah, yeah, but you know I'm saying, it's like that Craig Jones, like, you got to give him his full game. You can't have him thinking, oh, I can't do this. That's true. You're taking away 50% of his attacks. But it shows you how good he is.

But Sean Brady on the ground is elite.

Really good. Elite. But it was just the ability to hold him down was just shocking. I mean, it's like, God, and then when he was mounting him and just like he was doing drills. Yeah, it wasn't— he was just like staying calm and just bang, bang, bang. It was like he was doing conditioning drills on a heavy bag, like he was just sitting on a heavy bag pounding on the bag.

Time. Well, he was, bro. So nuts.

I said this, maybe I caught some flak for it a little bit, but I said like, look, I think the Ian Garry fight and the Proctor fight for Islam, both those fights— I'm not saying they're easy fights because they're not— but you put, you put someone like Sean Brady against Islam Islam, and that becomes a little more difficult, a little bit more difficult.

Styles make matchups. Styles make matchups. And they may— when you look at someone's style comparatively, it can— one person is easy for someone while they're very difficult for someone else. If you're going to put someone against Islam as far as it's going to be on the ground with him and give him difficult times, there's not a big enough—

there's not a big enough sample size for me with Michael Morales. I think Michael Morales could be a big threat on the feet.

The rest are gonna say, well, he beat, he beat Tom Brady, so obviously stopped him.

Yeah, yeah. But the size, I think, of Michael Morales will give Islam some problems as well.

And Michael Morales can fucking wrestle. Yeah, right.

It's not like he's the Ecuadorian national champ, I think is what he was. And then, you know, he's obviously got power. Athletic.

Super athletic.

Islam doesn't do the normal wrestling. Nope. His takedowns are different. Yep. A lot of, a lot of foot sweeps, a lot of judo, a lot of difference in the way he does things.

And world championship experience. Yes, and also the years of training with Khabib.

Yeah, years. What he does so well is he does it off a transition. As soon as you punch, you guys, anywhere inside the clinch, he's already hitting the foot sweep into the inside trip. Can't get it? Okay, I'll hit— I'll drop on down on a single or double.

You know, I'm excited about it. 170 is Amasov. Oh dude, that Ukrainian cat. Oh yeah, of course you know. Look, he's good.

He is absolutely the real deal. Yeah, he is good everywhere, everywhere. And his, his, his wrestling and his grappling ability, his submission ability is at the top of the field. It's right there with Sean Brady.

No, no, it is, it is. I just— there's one guy out there though, and he was just talking about him. He's the one guy that he lost to who's not signed by the UFC, and that's Jason Jackson. He's the one guy to beat him. I'd love to see Jason Jackson in the UFC.

Where's Jason now?

He just fought an MVP, MVP, one, one in like 10, 22 seconds. 22 seconds. I had a hard night.

I had 22 seconds and 17. It was very difficult. I was exhausted.

But he's the only one— he's the only guy to beat Yaroslav Amasov. Yes. Wow. He's fantastic on the feet. He has a wrestling background, but he chooses to stand. He's got like 30 jobs—

a coconut stand, car wash, he's got all kinds of business.

He works, he works. He's a working man. He's a working man. But, um, he's very talented. I love watching that guy fight. I think he him, you add him against a Protis or against Ian Gary, great, these guys would duke it out. It would be a great fight.

It's interesting when there's guys that are at that level that aren't known.

Yeah, yeah, he's a former champion.

Jason's been there. He was, you know, you got to figure he was in the UFC as far as the Ultimate Fighter when they did that whole Blackzilians versus ATT. Oh, that's right, he was part of that. That's right, you know, and he's just always been on the cusp of being brought back in and then not. You're looking you go, he's got all the talent in the world and he's tough as hell.

He'll fight. He is tough.

So who is that cat, that heavyweight that just knocked out Hannon Ferrera?

And oh, that's Sergei Bilistyno.

And he's one of Fedor's boys, right? Is he? He is now. Yeah, that dude.

Yeah, that dude's scary. He's— dude, that dude is yoked. Yoked and moves fast. He's fast and he's got power. But then you also got Nemkov's at heavyweight. Yeah, Vadim Nemkov. He's another guy.

He's another guy that's at the top of the heap that's not in the UFC.

Vadim Nemkov is good. Yeah. And man, he is extremely athletic.

He's not gonna— he's not a big heavyweight. He's got great lateral movement. He's really good with his hands. Beautiful kicks.

Yeah, he was a 205 and he can wrestle. Yeah, and he can wrestle.

He chooses to stand, but he'll mix up the wrestling and kind of get you guessing. And he's another Fedor guy. He's another Fedor guy.

Yeah, yeah, that's another one. Like, training under Khabib— I mean, if you're a Russian guy training under Fedor, like, good lord. Yeah, what a, what a crazy opportunity.

Yeah, but you got to live in Staryovskoye. Do you really? That's where they live? That's where they live. Oh boy.

Oh yeah, then no parties there. You better have snow tires. Oh yes, you better. Thick clothing, thick clothing, snow tires, and hate comfort. Oh my God, you're sleeping on a futon, bitch.

Yeah, there's a lot of talented guys that will come out out of other promotions, but I just, I'd love to see Jason Jackson in there mixing it up with those guys. Stylistically, the matchups are there, and the Protis and Gary and the 170s right now.

And putting Jaroslav— when the UFC finally signed him, I said, thank God, thank God. Yeah, he deserves to be there, and they need, you know, that kind of— and look, he's gone in and proven, you know, dude, his fight against Joel Alvarez— Joel Alvarez is a good fighter. I mean, he made him look absolutely like the guy didn't know hardly anything.

Yeah, I watched it yesterday. I watched it again.

I mean, you just— what, the last takedown, you know, the one he—

when he airboarded him?

Oh my God. And you look at me, and— but look at the ease that he did it with. That's the thing.

Spectacular technique.

Oh my God.

And the tightness of his grappling.

See, and his, his training partner is Johnny Eblen. Same guy that's training partner now for Sean Strickland. Yeah, Johnny, those guys go after each other daily.

And Johnny will tell you, he's the one that gives him the most fits inside the gym, the one that I spar with the most, the one that just gives me all the fits on the grappling, the wrestling, all those things. Go back to his fights too in the past when he fought Ed Ruth. He hip tossed— oh my God, took Ed Ruth down 3 times. Yeah, out of Penn State. I mean, he was having success against him. It was a very close fight, you know, and he ended up winning the fight, but it was one of those fights you're like, damn, you walked away going, this guy can wrestle, this guy can stand, he's got these chasing submissions, he's trying to get finishes. I mean, he had takedowns against Logan Storlie, a 6-time state champ out of South Dakota, Minnesota, and a 4-time All-American out of South Minnesota. Just phenomenal, phenomenal wrestler. But he's able to have exchanges with these guys chasing anacondas, darces, knee bars, everything. Extremely talented. There's a lot of guys that I would love to see to kind of mix in, because every time— because when you look at the history history of the sport, you got like Strikeforce when it came into the UFC, those were the best fights.

And you start pulling, plucking— I'm not saying that a lot of these guys need to come in right now, but if you can pluck one or two guys for each division, it starts to loosen this whole thing up. Because for a little bit before the Paramount deal happened, you know, because I cover this, I cover it, every fight every week, right? And we talk about on the pod, it just simply put, everyone's like, man, these fights are trash, they're garbage, this and that. I'm like, guys are being complainers. Like, this— the cards are great. You guys are just— they're used to that, that the next level of like the, the Connors and the Alex Stars.

Yeah, on every card, just technique and just fighting ability. There's some amazing fights out there, amazing fights.

When you add in someone like— when Michael Chandler came in, there was a lot of hype around it. When Patricio came in and, and, uh, Aaron Pico, when they came in, there's a lot of hype around it. It kind of puts a little shot in the arm into the weight class and gets everyone amped up. The fighters that are there, the FC, they're like, this guy ain't fucking beating me. I'm not letting this bum from this promotion beat me. And then the fighters that are coming in are like, no, I'm here to shoot, I'm here to prove that I deserve to be here. So it kind of— it gets the fans amped up, it gets the promotion amped up, and the division's kind of— it's a little bit of a spark. So I'd love to see that happen a little bit more.

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, the Pico thing is really interesting. It's like his last fight, he looks so tight against Pitbull. Pitbull. He looks so good. Everything looks so smooth. Like, his boxing was flowing, his transitions to grappling was flowing, fought intelligently. Like, that's the Pico that we needed to see.

Yeah, but you take a look at his first fight against Larrone, and I always say that was, that was a Pico that was pressing. Yep, he was pressing that fight and making, you know, look at taking chances. Obvious.

Absolutely, that he's coming.

And you look and you go Pico, this is the difference between, you know, that first fight in the UFC and wanting to do so well and wanting to prove how good you are and stuff, and then finally relaxing and just, hey, let the fight come to me. Let me show what I can do. And taking those moments when you get them, that's what he did in his fight against Patricio. And look, Patricio is good, and Pico could be so good. He just has to relax. He's still young. He's fighting.

Oh yeah, he is. He's had a bunch of pretty bad KOs. Yes, he has.

Boric one, and that's a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boric, you had the one against freaking, uh, Corrales. Yeah. Oh yeah, he hurt Corrales and then he got, you know, starched. He's had a couple of them.

Yeah, both those fights he was winning. Yeah, and that's the thing is he was winning, but he's beating Boric and then he was beating Corrales. The fights that he lost, I mean, so hyper-aggressive.

Yeah, and that's part of the problem, but it's also because he's so fucking good.

But he's got the best left hook to the body since Paul Daley. Oh, it's so smooth. Oh my God, it's beautiful.

I I mean, his— just his left hook, period. It's like such a whip.

The technique is so smooth.

It's so nice. So I got to ask you about the Joe Schilling fight because there was— it was such a weird stoppage where Joe just decided, that's it, I'm quitting. So his opponent headbutts him. Yeah. And then Mike Beltran, who's a great referee, takes a point away. He did take a point. And then puts him right back in the same position. Okay, stop.

That's not exactly what happened in the end. It's not? No. Well, it is what happened. Yes, you're right. But when you have a situation like that, you have the headbutt. Mike Beltran calls a stop, calls timeout, right? Gets him up off of their feet and tries to put Joe— Joe's pissed, and I understand why Joe's pissed. You know, he said, hey, you know, first off, Joe's 42 years of age. He doesn't come there to be fouled. He's trying to, you know, he's gonna fight, okay? You know, and the whole thing is, look at the— look where his hands are. They're overhooked right now, right? Okay, the other guy's got his hands on the ground. Right, okay, so you know you don't want your hands on the ground, okay? So Joe's in a decent part to at least— if he wants to defend himself. So when he gets up, he's pissed off and everything, and then Beltran takes a point from the opponent and asks Joe, do you want to be— you want to stand up or do you want back on the ground? And Joe picked, I want to be back on the ground.

Okay, now why do you give your— why do you— why are you allowed to make a decision?

You're allowed to make the decision because you were the one that was fouled. In a normal situation, he said, I want to be back on the ground. He said, I want to be back on the ground. That seems crazy. I agree with you. It's not what you would expect out of Joe Schilling, world-class, world champion kickboxer. Exactly. Yeah. And so with that, you got to, you know, he's the one that fell. If the person on top is the one fouling, normally we're going to say they're going to lose their position. But there are many grapplers and people that have a hard time getting that person down. And so we, we went back to saying, all right, we're going to give the person who was fouled the opportunity to make a decision. Normally we're going to put it back on the feet, but if you want to put it back on the ground, I'll put it back there, but you're going to be in the same position as you were when the foul occurred, right? And that's what Mike Beltran went to do. And so he put— starts to put back, uh, you have— Abena is the opponent, and he starts to put his hands on Joe's biceps.

If you watch when they start to—

when they put him back—

put him back on the ground, Joe tries to do the overhook. You saw the overhook, and Abena starts to put his hand on the biceps.

He did on the left bicep, right? Yeah.

And so it's not a matter of, you know, Beltran wasn't there to start the fight yet. He's got to put him in that position. But Joe, once that bicep thing started happening, he got mad and he said, "I'm done. Stop the fight." You can't make somebody fight. If someone says, "I want out of the fight," they're out of the fight. So Beltran was in a position where he says he wants out of the fight. He started— "He fouled me," and that's what he's saying. And now he feels like he's not going to be put back in that same position, but he hadn't been— it's not like Beltran started it. That he's trying to put him back in the same position when Joe's kind of just losing his steam and getting pissed off. And so, you know, I look and I say, look, if you're gonna be that pissed off, it's a good thing you're not fighting because you don't fight smart and you're gonna end up getting hurt. But he's the one that decided that—

So he clearly has two overhooks at the end of the fight.

At this time of the foul, he's got an overhook both sides.

Yeah, well, sort of. The right one's not totally—

but he's holding the back of the tricep. So you're gonna say, okay, so that's where he's at. Look where the opponent's hands are at. Opponent's hands are under his shoulders. Yeah. Okay, so that's where you should start. That's where it should be started. But he never gave Beltran the actual ability and time to say, no, no, put your hand here. And you can see Beltran starts to, you know, as Abena starts to try to put his hands on the biceps, Beltran's just starting to put them underneath. So it's not, it's not to go back to the ground? You know, that's the real question. And, you know, all I know is at 42 years of age, you know, you're looking and saying, you know, Joe Schilling can fight. You know, Joe Schilling, he was a gangster, no doubt about it. And he at this point is, you know, is he looking to, you know, become a champion? No, he's not looking to be a champion. So I've taken the fight for what reason? For money. And so I think he just looked at it and based upon, well, this is not what I expected. I expected a fair fight.

I expected us to, you know, fight like professionals, and this dipshit is now headbutting me. He just got pissed and he lost his cool with it. And when he wasn't being put back right away into that same position where he thought the guy is now trying to up again, take another advantage, right, it just sent him off the end. And he said, I'm done, right? He just got too emotional. You got too emotional with it.

That's a bummer.

Yeah, it is, because Joe's a great guy.

When you fought at the level he's fought at, you expect a certain level of professionalism. Yep. And when you have these young guys that come in, there's no— it feels a little disrespectful. Like, you knew where you were at, why are you trying to game the system right now?

Just headbutted him. Yeah, yeah, which is crazy.

Well, there's a lot of people saying, well, you know, I don't think it really hit him. It hit him in the jaw, okay? Didn't hit him head-to-head. And you're not allowed to use your head as a striking instrument.

It's a foul. And it's pretty clear that he was trying to do that. Yes. It wasn't as simple as like positioning his head. No, try to get a better—

look, we say you can use your head head as a steering instrument, as a third arm. You can press with it. You can do a lot of uncomfortable things with it. You cannot pick it up and bring it back to strike.

And it was clear that that's what—

that's exactly what he did.

I think it's just very awkward for a lot of people that see Joe Schilling in his past fights. He's been through it all. And then for him to get super frustrated this way, it was— a lot of people question. I'm like, I don't question at all because you expect, like I said, a certain level of professionalism. Like, we know that we're both going out there to fight and knock each other out. Why do you gotta cheat?

Yeah, there's a certain— there's a certain set of rules that we're doing this under, right? And now you're taking those rules and just tossing them aside like, you know, this doesn't mean something. No, it means something to me. You know, I'm 42 years of age, I don't expect someone to be fouling me just on purpose. And then look at the whole— no matter what that was, you know, right now we use intent, okay? That was intentional, right? He did something. I call it malicious It's a malicious attack on him. You know, you're maliciously trying to inflict an injury on someone through a foul.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Did you watch the MVP fights?

Yes. What was your takeaway on that, the overall card as well as the Gina and, you know, and Ronda fight?

I mean, look, when you're coming in as your first time putting on a promotion, there's no way it's all gonna be smooth. It's not possible, you know, just there's no way. You're also— you're not dealing with the same caliber of names other than Gina and Ronda and Francis, you know. The Mike Perry, Nate Diaz fight was— when was the last time Nate fought MMA?

It's been a while, probably 6 years.

A while, yeah, somewhere around there, which is kind of crazy, yeah, right? And Mike has been fighting bare-knuckle and fucking people up for quite a while.

Dude, he's an animal. Look, you He's found his support though.

2022, so 4 years ago. 4 years ago he beat Tony Ferguson.

But he's found his way. This is stylistically his— the best thing he could do for his career is fight bare knuckle, fight boxing. This is the best thing for him.

And Mike is like uniquely talented at bare knuckle. Oh, like uniquely. He's made—

look, I'm being honest, I used him as my demonstrator for Andy Foster is the executive officer in California, and he didn't like bare-knuckle. You know, I wrote the rules for bare-knuckle long ago. Dave Feldman came to me and said, hey, you know, I need rules written for me, I'm trying to legalize this. You know, someone, someone that I knew hooked him up with me, and I said, look, I'll write your rules. I go, and I gave him two prices. I said, I'm not doing it for free, it's too much of a pain in the ass. So here's my two prices. My one price is you don't say who wrote them and you just use them. And the other price is you say who wrote. And it was because I knew I was gonna get in trouble for doing this. And, you know, oh, what does John McCarthy think he's doing now? He's writing rules for—

did you write the rules for slap fights? No, I don't like that.

I hate— I hate those. But so you can't defend yourself.

That's the only fucking rule.

Dumbest thing ever.

So you're easy.

You know, have you seen the other where they just run at each other?

Oh, it's even worse. They're like, hold my beer. Yeah, you think slap fighting's retarded? Hold my beer, we're just gonna run at each other.

That's what it's called, run it, right? Those things are crazy. It's crazy. But the whole thing with, you know, the Mike Perry thing is, you know, trying to get athletic commissions to start to understand, because they're all into this thing, Joe. It's like, you take a look at MMA, I'm allowed to hit you with a shin to the dome like you talked about. You know, I'm allowed to take my knee and hit it to your dome. I'm allowed to take my elbow and smash you, you know, even when your head's against the ground. I'm allowed to do all these things, but my bare fist is the big problem, right? Funny. Oh, it's ridiculous. But it's perception, and perception is a real problem because people believe what they're saying. Oh, it's horrible. So, you know, Andy Foster was one of the ones that he— I don't— he didn't like it. And I said, Andy, as you know, I tried Tried saying, look, it's— go through those whole things with the shin, the knee, the elbow. And he goes, yeah, I know. He says, I just don't— I don't like it. I said, and I need you to look at it this way then.

I go, there are people out there that are made for boxing. Floyd Mayweather, Terence Crawford, Canelo Alvarez. They're made to be a boxer. They have all this technical skill. You know what? They're just unbelievable. I said, there's these guys with same thing in MMA. There's the Georges St-Pierre cares. You know, you got the Alexander Volkanovskis, you got the— all these people, you know, that are, you know, Islam Makhachev was the last one I used. I said, they're made for MMA. I go, Mike Perry was an MMA fighter. I said, he's not made for MMA. He's a tough guy. I go, but bare knuckle, he was made for. I said, and this is a guy who can make a living fighting for bare knuckle. He can pay his bills he can support his family fighting bare knuckle and become a star. I said, yeah, I said, and possibly get, you know, sponsors and everything. They're gonna make it so he can live the rest of his life. I said, and you're gonna say that you want to take that away because of a bare fist? I go, it just doesn't make sense to me. He looks at me, goes, you're right.

The best thing that could have happened to him was him leaving, him being released from the UFC. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Absolutely. You got an old-timey ring. Andy Foster's calling ya. Put him on speakerphone. I don't want to put Andy under a spot like that.

You know, and Andy's done such a great job. He does things that people don't realize. You know, there's— he's now got a license plate that's out for retired fighters to try to get them a retirement. He's got, he's got, he's got a retirement for boxers already that was set. He's been doing things to try to get a retirement fund for, you know, a Josh Thompson who fought 15 times in California. 19, I looked it up. Is it 19? Okay, I'm wrong. 19 times in California, he can get an actual retirement. Now, it's not going to be a retirement that he gets paid every month, or they'll give him a large sum of money that he can then go— he can go to a trade school, he can go to— he could buy a house, he can do these things as a down payment. Andy just put in a thing thing. It just got turned down because of a staffer. It was Assembly Bill 2130 in California, and that assembly bill was no money out of the taxpayers' money, zero taxpayer money. It's about sponsorship. A dumbass like me as a referee has to wear a sponsor's thing on my shirt.

That will then— 75% of it went to retired fighters. $25 million of it went to training for upcoming and in-service officials, both judges and referees. What's the negative? There is no negative. But you get these people in politics that sit there and go, oh, I don't like this. You want to know what their negative was?

This is in California, by the way.

Yeah, this is in California.

California is the best state for decisions.

But their whole thing was— as we both live in Texas now— think about this. All. But their whole thing was, well, that would allow the sponsor to say that they're basically part of California and they're running— they're doing things for California. It's like, they are doing things for California. They're helping the people that fucking put on fucking entertaining fights and things for people here. It's ridiculous. There was nothing good. There's some great people in California. There are, sure, you know. And there's some great assembly people. I just did a whole thing for for, you know, Heath Flora, who's an assemblyman there, and he's putting up a bill about you being able to— if you protect somebody other than yourself and from somebody that's trying to do something, he's trying to make it to where they can't civilly go after you. Makes sense. Yeah, you're doing the right thing, right? But no, there's people fighting against it. It's just— oh, politics.

Politics suck. They suck in California.

Yeah, yeah. My dad always used to say, think about the word politics. Poly meaning many, ticks blood-sucking little insect. It's a bummer. Yeah, it's crazy.

And then did you, did you see that Coker's returning to MMA? I did.

Give me, give me, give me your take. I like Scott a lot, but good luck. You have $60 million. Yeah, when I saw it was only $60 million, I was like, that sounds like a lot of money until you think about putting on an MMA promotion and then getting television production and then, you know, paying fighters and then securing venues and then having staff full-time for— like, maybe, you know, you got Tony Hawk with you, maybe. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm rooting for him. I think he did great when he was running Glory as well as when he was running Bellator back in the day. He's a really nice guy. Yeah, I think I think it's great for everybody if there's more competition. I think this whole MVP thing and the Netflix thing is great. It stirred a bunch of cash into the organization. A bunch of people got more money than they would have ever gotten anywhere else. Awesome. Um, more options, the better. Yeah, I think just, you know, I hope he could do it. Yeah, I, I think a lot of us—

I think, I think a lot of people do, because I think as they do grow promotions, right, the fighters get more experience on a high-level competition. You get to fight fighters from all around the world. I'm just excited for more promotions to be involved.

Yeah, more promotions is good, more options is good, more money is what we really want. The fighters need to get more money.

It's always going to be the UFC here, you know, and ultimately it just comes down like you need more people to build up to get to that level.

Name a good XFL game that you watched, you know what I'm saying? It's true.

Nothing wrong, I'm sure there's great athletes, but it's the whole thing in you're part of it. You, you know, what you did with the UFC and how you made it exciting for people when you were calling fights. So, you know, it's a— people now, a lot of them, they don't even know the fighters that are on the card, but they'll, they'll turn it on when it says UFC because they believe in the product. Yeah, right. And that's, that's what you're supposed to do as the company, you know, and, and for marketing. But the one problem I do think they have right now is they're unable to market people like they did when, you know, you and I were early in it and stuff, you know, they now are in a position every week. And so it's tough to market, you know, those— the guys who are not well-known.

If you're not at fight nights, a lot of times the casuals have no idea there's even a fight. Exactly. And some of them are fucking insane.

Oh yeah, some of the best. We talk about all the time, it's like, you know, the card itself rates— if you're looking at it honestly, it rates a 5. On paper. And then you'll watch it and it's a 9. 9.5. Yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah, they're working to get to the top.

That's— yeah, those are the—

they got something to prove.

Yeah. And for hardcore fans, it's like giving them constant food. Yeah, right. But it's giving them that dopamine. It is the thing.

When you look at it, it's the hardcore fan that the UFC has, but the casual one's the one that puts it over. Yep. And it's hard to get people to understand you need to get the casuals, the ones that don't watch fights all the time. And that's the one thing I'll give— I'll give Ronda Rousey, man. I thought she did an amazing job of talking, 100%, and putting, you know, things out there the way she did. She made— she got people's attention. She did what was her job. Yeah.

And they— 17 million people are watching. That's right. That's huge. Yeah, it's all good for everybody. It's good for the sport. It's great for the sport. It's like, that's what we need. We need more competition, more, more eyeballs on on it. And unfortunately for the cat, you know, the people that are casuals, it has to be a name. You know, it has to— like this Conor McGregor fight in July is gonna be fucking bananas. It's gonna be bananas. I mean, people are gonna go crazy for the return of Conor McGregor because he's a giant personality.

But don't expect the same. How could you? Can't.

He hasn't fought in 5 years. Exactly.

It's been 5, and that's— but that's the problem.

Maybe more, because they're gonna—

I think it is a little over 5. It's almost 6, I think.

I think it might be 6 at the time of the fight.

It might be— I think it's 5. I think it's 5 right now. Do—

are we expecting to see a Conor that looked like Nate this last fight? Are we expecting to see a better Conor than someone that looked like Nate? Because they did not look good.

No, but Mike Perry did. And yeah, he looked like a fucking murderer, you know what I mean?

Like, Mike Perry is a murderer. He's a murderer. And this is such a sad— you take a look at that and you— when you're taking an older fighter which Nate is now, and you're 21, you're 5 fucking years ago, July.

So it literally will be 6 years.

Yeah, yeah.

And but when you know, it'll be 5 years, 5 years.

When you're taking a younger fighter and putting them against the old dog, it normally doesn't end well for the old dog.

Well, the thing is about Max Holloway is like, Max Holloway, no, he's young, that much younger. Yeah, then no, Connor, he's not. But the thing is, Max has been in constant high-level competition the entire time, won the BMF fight fight, you know, beat Dustin, like constant high-level competition. That's right, it's a different thing.

And I honestly believe him at 155 is the best thing for him, you know, but he's not 155 in this fight.

This is 170.

Yeah, honestly, he might be even better.

Might even be better cutting at all, just no weight cut, just kind of walk around.

And also knowing this is such a high-profile fight, he's gonna— I mean, Max is always in insane shape, but in particularly in this fight, he's going to be in fucking insane shape.

And his last fight, he took almost no damage. Damage. He got— he got taken down, controlled, back taken, and there was not a lot of damage. No, just frustration. Yeah, frustration.

Yeah, bro, Charles looked like a motherfucker. He's so good.

Yeah, dude, he's so good.

Good everywhere too. And on the ground, he's just so goddamn dangerous. And it just makes you think, how good is Islam? Islam just smushed him.

I can tell you he's really good.

I mean, it's kind of crazy though when you think about how strong Charles's grappling is and how Islam just—

yeah, dude, he called it. He called it. He said, he goes, look, he goes, Islam is gonna submit Charles. And he goes, and he's gonna submit it with a head-on arm choke. And I said kimura.

I said either one for sure.

I go, shut up. Yeah, okay, just shut up. He's not gonna do that.

I said he would do it before 3 rounds. He did it, you know, obviously very quick. But it was— his grappling is just otherworldly.

And just the way he secures that darce grabbing the forearm. I've seen a lot of guys try that now. A lot of guys are going to that now because you don't have to get as deep.

You just go through and it's right at the top and then cover, cover the chest with your— cover the head with your chest and just suck it in.

You see people doing things all— you know, we always talk about, you know, back a long time ago, figure four in the body, we go, don't do that. They step the foot inside, it's gonna— it cranks you. It's bad. How about that?

They just had the girl do it. Guillotine that AJ McKee does. Oh, the McKee-otine.

Yeah, how about that fucking thing?

Like, how come no one's doing that?

That's the whole thing.

Look, okay, look at what he does. When he did that, I was like, wait, yeah, his body style, he's so long, he's long to reach, especially at 145.

He's huge for 145.

Yeah, he's a big boy.

But Grant Dawson just did the genie choke, okay? How many times have you seen that done in competition? But I've seen it in the grappling room all the time, right? Guys doing it, right? And all of a sudden people are like, never seen that. It's like, dude, it's been around forever.

Well, it's like when we talked about Edson Barboza knocking out Terry Etim. How do we get to that fight before that was the first wheel kick KO. Yeah, we've seen a ton of them since then, but that was the first one. Like, that doesn't even make sense. When Anderson Silva front kicked Vitor in the face, we were like, wait, hold on, you could do that? Yeah, like, I remember Eddie and I having a conversation about kicks, and he goes, what do you think about front kicks to the face? I'm like, eh, doesn't really land that often.

Incorrect. And then Machida does it to Randy, and then Machida does it to Vitor.

Oh my God.

So Vitor's been on the receiving end of twice on that kick.

Yeah, I'm Man, I mean, there's been a bunch of them now. Now you see a lot of front kicks to the face because it's such an unexpected thing, especially if a guy's, you know, you're getting hit to the body with it a bunch and you're getting used to doing this, and then donk, yeah, it hits you right on the chin. It's just such a, such an unexpected technique.

Every time we think that we're not gonna see something new, something new pops up.

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

Just like that.

Exactly. And that's what it looks like too, like all goofy and shit. The fact that that's the kick that— and then calf kicks, of course, like, that's number one, you know. It's interesting because, um, Cub Swanson is actually saying that he was the first guy to throw calf calf kicks. He was saying like, no, no, go back to like 2011, I was landing calf kicks. I forget who he fought. They said he fucked somebody up with a calf kick. Well then I'll tell you, before that Benson was one of the early ones.

George Mosvadal. Really? Yes, he was doing it in Strikeforce in 2007, 2008. Really?

Yeah, well, I believe around that time. If you look at ATT as a team, they do calf kicks. Kicks all the time. That is a huge weapon that they use.

You go back and watch Masvidal when he fought KJ Nunes and how he just destroyed KJ Nunes, and he was kept kicking the calf to the head kick, to the body shots, to the boxing.

He just pieced him up. God, how good— when he knocked out Yves Edwards, oh, the head kick. Like, people really sleep on Masvidal.

He was slick. He was so good.

When he knocked out Cowboy, people were like, oh, when he knocked out Darren Till. How about that one? That was bananas, that step-in hook.

Yeah, that was a weight class above what he normally fought.

Yep, yep.

You know, he's—

he was one of those things, but he was better when he went up, just like most guys are.

But he never got the credit he deserved everywhere he went, whether it was Strikeforce into the UFC. He never got credit until he started doing things that people didn't think he could do, right? You know, when he knocked out, like you said, Darren Till, the running across the cage with Ben Askren, like those kind things. He had no love up until those moments. That guy was always nasty. Always.

Yeah, dude, all the way back to his street fighting days with Kimbo, right?

Yeah, some good ones. Yeah, that's—

I have this— I wanted to ask you this because I look at these guys now. What is it with the younger fighters that can't get past the old dogs? Like, Dustin doesn't have to retire. Justin Gaethje doesn't have to retire. They're still ranked at number 2 and number 3. What are you seeing on your side that makes you think like And these young guys— these old guys, they're not going softly into the night. They're not letting these guys come by. Why can't the younger guys get past them? Well, Paddy not being able to get past Justin—

like, Paddy was not at Justin's level with stand-up. Yeah, no, Justin's level is like quite a bit. First of all, Justin is an elite grappler. So like, what is Paddy gonna do? He's gonna take him down? That's not it. That's no picnic. And standing up with Justin— Justin has like some of the nastiest fucking leg kicks in the sport.

I wish he'd use them more.

I know, right? Remember when he used to throw them from the clinch? Yeah. Like, he's in tight with you and he's kicking down on your legs, like, and you're like, how are you moving your hips like that? He was an animal. He still is an animal. It's like, he's not— he hasn't faded, you know? Justin's not faded. That Fazeev fight— Fazeev is an elite world-class striker, and he beat him up standing. Yep. Yeah, he hasn't faded. Justin hasn't faded. He's just 36 or whatever he is, 37.

I think he's losing, but You gotta have a passion for the sport. And I think Dana's, you know, says, look, if you're not 100% in, right, don't do this. And he's right. And I think there comes that point where it just gets to that, you know what, there's, there's other things out in the world that I want to start doing and things.

Do you think Justin's at that spot right now?

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

I think he lives a comfortable life. He does. He lives a good life. He enjoys playing golf with the boys. Oh yeah. You know, he's another guy— I know he's like, oh, I spent money, I need to make more money, and this and that. But he also, to me, every time I take a look and when people talk about him, I think that he's done pretty— he's done really well for himself. I think he's doing well for himself. I don't think he's In any danger where he's losing the passion of it?

Well, I did the Naked Gun, whatever, the second edition of the Naked Gun with Liam Neeson, and we had Kamaru Usman and Justin Gaethje were two of the fighters in it, right? And he was hysterical throughout the whole thing, right? And he's such a button pusher with Kamaru. Kamaru would say, "Okay, let's go easy," and all of a sudden Justin's doing something crazy, and Kamaru's like, "What the hell's wrong with you?" And it just— he loves life. He enjoys life. His life. And I think that, you know, there comes a point where he always had that attitude, you know, when he was undefeated, he goes, "Oh, someone's going to knock me out." He's honest about things. And I love that about him. That he doesn't sit there and he doesn't play the, you know, "Oh, well, we'll see." He's honest and he tells you, "You know what? This may be my last one." And he's thought about it. And if he's thought about it, it's telling you it's a thought process is there, how far will it go? If he has a great performance against I think he'll stick around. Maybe. Unfortunately, I kind of think I'd rather see him go away.

I know that's saying— because I love watching.

I would love to see him win and go away. That's the whole point.

That was what I said.

That would— it would be nice if he wins the title at the fucking White House.

And that says, that's it, I've hit my bucket list.

The White House thing is odd. I don't like it. I don't like the idea of fighting outside at all.

There's problems with it.

And then there's June, and it's DC, and we looked it up. The last time, like last year, same day, was 100 degrees. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, hot as fuck.

You add the lights. Oh yeah, yeah, the lights. You add the lights.

Yeah, that attracts bugs. How about dehydration? Oh yeah, yeah, the bugs are a big one.

Go back to— go back to UFC. Yeah, with all those lights. Yeah, go back to UFC 3, see how hot it was.

How are they gonna fucking do anything about the bugs? Because I know that Dana was talking about that recently. They were talking about maybe using fans. Fans. Is that enough? No, it's not enough. Bug strips everywhere. What are you gonna do? Like, how are you gonna stop the bugs?

There's a lot of bugs. That's pretty much all you can do.

That's good. That's good for the fighters. That'll, that'll help with their breathing.

I just don't think that you should compete in a world championship fight in a non-controlled environment. Yeah, I think it should be inside an air-conditioned arena. It should be a controlled environment, just like every— like, you don't ask someone to do any of that. You wouldn't ask them to play a world championship basketball game outside in the sun. That would be crazy. Yeah, right. You have to— you play in a fucking air-conditioned arena, and that's how it should be.

Yeah, I agree with you, but I understand the whole thing.

I get it. Special. Listen, but it's gonna be a pain in the butt. A fucking roof. Yeah, build a roof. Like, you've got all the money in the world, right? You're doing this, you want to do this.

I don't know, it's not my money.

4,000 seats. You build a 4,000-seat arena. How big is that? Get a fucking barn dominium, put it in there. You know, like we did UFC's, uh, the troops. Yeah, we did them in the troops. We did it in hangars. Yeah, we did.

But yeah, they want that White House in the background.

Put it in the background on TV. Who gives a fuck? It's just like when world-class fighters are competing, I don't think they should have to compete outside.

Look at it, they're already putting it in.

Imagine if someone loses loses a fight because it's too hot out. Oh yeah. Imagine if that becomes a factor. Imagine the dehydrated fighters, like the dehydrated fighters that are now being forced 24 hours later to fight in 100-degree heat outside under the spotlights.

Go back, I swear to God, UFC 3 was in North Carolina and it was the hottest thing I've ever been in in my life.

It was outside? UFC 3?

No, it wasn't. It was inside with no air conditioning really inside. They put— there was— it was a 3,500-seat arena. They put 6,000 people into it. It was under the lights, had to be 150 degrees, okay? It was— you saw everyone falling out. Hoist had the problem after chemo and stuff, you know. Ken Shamrock fell out. They all pulled out and stuff. It was, Joe, it was the hottest thing I've ever been in in my life. It was brutal.

You have to ask yourself as a fighter though, is this is the spectacle worth my career, right? Like, is it worth me going out there and fighting in, in these circumstances that I'm not used to?

Well, we did one outside at Abu Dhabi. That was when BJ Penn and Frank Edgar fought, and then, uh, and that one, bro, there were bugs flying around. It looked like birds. They were so big. I was like, that's a bug? What kind of bug is that? Can that kill me? Oh yeah. This is crazy. You're in the fucking desert, man. There's some giant-ass babarrr flying by. You can hear it.

Yeah, yeah, bro. Make sure your microphone's not picking it up.

Sounds like a helicopter coming by.

You're outside. It's hot. You're in the desert. This is crazy. Like, why are we fighting outside?

No, because I think I had read somewhere where Khabib had said, no, I prefer Islam not take a fight there at the White House. There's too many distractions. You got all the media, you got that whole week. Plus it's outside. These are all things that your fighter is not used to doing. Why would I jeopardize his win streak, his second title. Why would I jeopardize all of that? Yeah, his legacy, everything, just so we could fight at the White House? I know it seems great. Yeah, I was— I fought there, but at the end of the day, you got to look at it. I worked so hard to get here. I don't want to lose it over this one thing.

I just feel like you could put a roof over it. I mean, you got all this money, you're making a ballroom, make a fucking— make a little— do it just on a regular basis.

I mean, are they making— are they finishing the ballroom?

Are we gonna get that Make your own apex setter. Boom. Come on, make a fucking barndominium. How hard is that? Yeah, you know what I'm saying?

Hard. Trust me, I just finished one. Oh my God, you're one guy. Oh God, exactly. Get a fucking team of the United States Civil Engineers.

Get the, uh, fucking the Army to do it. Yeah, cheers, man.

So you're gonna be at that one? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna be there.

Allegedly. Allegedly. If there's not a bomb that goes off between now and And then who fucking knows? This world is crazy.

I love what you did with the ibogaine, with it, man.

Thank you. Way to go.

Well, it was the process on that.

How long does that take? Oh, I don't care what the process was. Way to go. Thank you.

The process was me texting Trump. Literally. I'm not bullshitting. There was a long— I texted him on Friday. Yeah, he showed up at the UFC on Saturday, shook my hand and said it's done. You're kidding. Oh no, I'm not kidding at all. No, I texted him. He texted me back. Are you looking for FDA approval? Sounds good to to me. I tell him how effective it is at helping all these veterans with PTSD, people with traumatic brain injuries, all these different things. People— I mean, we have a problem with fentanyl in this country. This is one of the best things that we've ever demonstrated. Yep. I'm like, listen, there's so many people that risk their life for this country, they come back and there's no help, and this is the only thing that they've found helping. Yeah. And it's illegal, and that doesn't make any sense. You shouldn't have to go to Mexico to get treatment for something that you got because you were defending your country. That's nuts. And so he right away, he was like, look, this makes sense to me. Like, he cut through all the bullshit.

It was common sense.

And there was a bunch of people that were trying to get in the way of it. Of course, a bunch of people. I mean, inside the White House, people that were trying to get— and he's like, fuck you, fuck you. Yeah, do it. And he like was telling them, just do it, make it happen. And he made it happen. And that's amazing for everybody.

Yeah, no, it was amazing that, you know what, you stepped up because you are gonna be helping so many people. I don't think— people don't have an idea of how bad it is and what that can do for them. So I think, way to go. I was like, God, you see, I always say, you always, you always talk about you're a dummy. I'm a dummy. I always tell people, he's super intelligent, and you are, because you got that done. Well, proves it.

I never asked him for anything else. I've never asked him for anything.

Never. Maybe, maybe a signing pen or something. He gave me those anyway.

I didn't even ask. I've got a bunch of stuff. I got a pen. I got a bunch of things. But I was like, if there's anything that I would really ask him for, that is, it's bipartisan supported. Like Democrats support it. Republicans support it. 85% of the country supports it. Yeah. Especially when it comes to things like ibogaine, which is not even remotely recreational. No. I haven't done it. Makes people sick. Everybody's done it. Says it's horrible. You get diarrhea. But it's 24 hours of misery, but when it's over, you're a new person. Good. And look, and Rick Perry, God bless him, because if it wasn't for him getting behind it, that changed everybody's opinion. Here you have this Republican former governor of Texas who's talking about it and then talking about his own personal experiences doing it, you know. So him and Brian Hubbard, I mean, they, they, they really went all out. And when I had them on my podcast not once but twice to talk about this and the state state of it where it's being passed in Texas. They got $100 million from Ken Paxton. So which is— yeah, no, was it Ken Paxton?

No, no. Who is it? Corn— uh, uh, Dan Patrick. Sorry, Dan Patrick. So Dan Patrick, who approved this $100 million for this ibogaine initiative. Like, these people all deserve praise. This is like— there's a lot of people that for the longest time they thought of psychedelics as being something that And then they realize like, no, there's a lot of people that need help and this could help.

It could be a good side.

I was just, I was just in San Diego last Monday and then I was in LA on Tuesday and it's unrecognizable. It's crazy. It's sad. Like, and I, and when you take a look at San Diego, it's always been beautiful, beaches in the background. And but it was worse than LA. I was in the Burbank area and actually it was a lot nicer than San Diego was. And the Gaslight District was just destroyed. Disgusting. It's crazy. What is it, Gaslamp? Yeah, Gaslamp. Yeah, it just— I couldn't believe it. I walked into a couple restaurants, you got homeless people stumbling in, trying to order, knock, trying to take food off of people's plates while they're there.

I'm just like, what is going on? No law enforcement. It's right on.

It's the first time that I've went back, and I've been back, you know, in the last 3 years, I've been back 2 or 3 times a year easily. It's the first time I went back, I was like, man, this is not this is not what it used to be. This is not— it was— it just felt— I felt like it— I felt like for the first time I didn't feel safe there. God. And it's weird to me.

And how do you get that? How do you bring it back?

Oh, it's simple. You bring it back by doing the right things, common sense things, taking it, you know. I do— I understand.

I said, I think Chad Bianco does it. Oh, Steve Hilton does it. Like, who do you get to turn the state around.

Your girl Katie Porter, she'd get it done. Oh, Jesus Christ.

She'll scold everybody into compliance. She is ruthless, man.

I'm sitting outside having dinner last night, and I'm watching a bunch of homeless guys talking to themselves. And this is the problem. I was a police officer for 23 years, okay? I've been out there with them, and you have people that, you know, they have serious problems. And I understand the ACLU and stuff. They— oh, it's not right to put them— no, it's better for them, and it's better for the people that are out on the street just trying to live their lives to have that person be put into a place where they can receive some medication, receive some help, and try to get them back than it is to let these people just rot on the street and self-destruct. 100%. And I'm watching, and it's like, how is that so hard to figure out that it's better to do something with them than it is to just let them be. It's crazy. Yeah, it's—

we've lost our way, you know, as a society. And I think a great reflection of that is how many homeless people you have camped out on your streets. Oh yeah, those are the places where they've lost their way the most. That's it. And this is unfortunately a lot of these Democrats-run cities.

I owned a couple of gyms in San Jose and just— it was tent city. And along the highway, like leading up to my— along the road that led up to my gym, all those things. But you would see, they would— they were stealing solar panels from people's houses and they would put them up on the sidewall so they could charge their cell phones. Like, they're smart enough to do these things, right? It's not as if like they're not—

they're just drug addicts.

That's a lot of— that's it. And then in areas like Santa Jose, that can help with that 100%. But things like in San Jose or San Francisco, they're giving them needles, they're giving them drugs, they're giving them phones. It's like, why are we— why are we doing this?

Well, the other problem is the amount of money that's involved in the homeless industry now.

That's right.

When you find out that California spent $24 billion in and homelessness. What have they done? Nothing. Not only that, but the fucking— they tried to do an audit on it and the governor vetoed it. It's like, no, nothing. Why waste time? It's only $24 billion, guys.

Well, how much did they spend on that bridge that had the—

for the mountain lions? Yeah, for the—

oh my God. Yeah, what are we doing?

Hey, hey, hey, that's okay. The mountain lions need a fucking bridge.

They need hugs. They need It's a— they need, they need to wake up. Then the problem is that they're in this bizarre mindset, this liberal leftist mindset that's just not tenable. It's not— you can't defend it. It's not— that's because it's crazy.

Yeah, yeah. I always look at this, people talk about left and right, and most people are— I'm in the center. I mean, you know, it's— think a lot of people are. It's not, it's not where—

but you get labeled as being on the right if you're not all—

absolutely. If you're not all crazy crazy, you're to the far right. Yeah, it's nuts. It's absolutely just a nutty seesaw.

Oh my God.

Well, I just saw something that I can't remember who it was, but they continue to talk about, you know, let's keep taxing the billionaires, keep taxing the billionaires, and do what with the money? And that's the point though. That's the thing. So why don't we just not—

gonna go away.

Why don't we just not tax the people that make under $200,000?

That's actually something Jeff Bezos, uh, brought up. He said why should the, the bottom 50%, the people that make the, yeah, the, the least amount of money, don't tax them at all? He goes, because they're not contributing that much to the tax base anyway, and they would contribute more to the economy if they had more money. Absolutely. It would help everybody. That's right.

I think he's right. I always said $150,000 down. Yeah, you don't pay taxes.

That's a great number.

I also thought about it too, is if you were to take— if you got rid of the, um, you know, because they're talking about this housing shortage and all the other things, why don't we get rid of the low interest rates? You know, because I have like a couple of interest rates on some houses that I have are at 2%. How do you get rid of those? Well, why don't you just raise my capital gains tax so I don't gotta— my wife and I or whatever, we can pay like less on that versus that $500,000 threshold. Why don't you make it a million? So then I'll cash out on those and just take my money out, and then I'll start putting it back into the economy again. Like, there's all—

you're talking like a sensible businessman. You can't be doing that in California. Jail.

You could do it. You can do the death penalty. Tax that he did in New York. I mean, look at what Mom Donny's trying to do. Oh, that's nuts.

Oh my God, people are just going to bail out of that city. It's crazy. It's these fucking people that think like taxing the rich is the solution. And do what with the money? If you were doing a great job with the money and everything was accounted for and there was no fraud and waste, I'd be like, well, maybe you just need more money. But that's clearly not the case. You've got so much fraud and you're ignoring it. Yeah. And then this Nick Shirley kid, oh my God, he exposes it.

Everybody after him. Yeah, they go after him. You look, you go be praised. Give that kid an award.

Give him a fucking award.

Here, I want Journalist of the Year, and he's not a journalist.

How much fraud do you think is in this country? Billions.

Billions and billions.

I mean, Elon had said— Elon had said when he first came in, he goes, hey, I think it's close to a trillion dollars, maybe a little bit over.

He said it was so bad that he didn't want to talk about it too much.

He's worried they'd kill him. You know, he really said that.

Don't on it.

It's wild, Joe. This— he's not He ain't stupid. No, he's not.

No, he's not. He's anything but.

He's not stupid. He's anything but.

But I mean, to think though, and think how much in California they've discovered, or let's just say what, $200 billion at least, you know, somewhere around there. That's on the low end. New York's probably in, and Chicago is, and then I mean, but they've got to do it in all states. You can't just do it in the ones where it's LA and in Chicago and New York. We've got to do it in all states.

It's got to be in Texas too. Yeah, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. There's fraud, and these people were profiting off of the fraud. They were funneling it right back into the parties, and it's, it's dirty business.

Well, you didn't really think that that shovel the government pays for was really fucking $900?

I mean, there's a lot of that, as they get a budget and they have to pay— they have to spend all the money, every bit of it.

Yeah, otherwise they won't get the same budget next year, which is wild to me because the schools, the schools operate the same way. If the teachers don't spend a certain amount of money on these things, and they don't get the same budget for next year, they No, why don't we reward the people that actually save the money? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

It makes— that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What is wrong with you? I want to know, when do you come into my class? Your, your refereeing class?

Yeah. When is it?

When you have it? July 17th to the 19th. He's gone. Oh, I'm not even gonna be in the country.

Okay, but when are you doing one? Where are you doing them?

Usually I do them in Vegas at like Extreme Couture or something like like that because I need the gym to put people in cages with fighters.

If I can, I definitely will. I would love to see it. I'd love to see it.

Is there a location we could do one?

That way I don't have— that way, you know, look, at any time, you know, you have my number.

Text me if you have a question during the fight.

It's the text. It's like when you say the waiter, I get them all the time.

So it's not— let's wrap it up.

I get them all the time. So it's nice when you know exactly what the referee can do, where they're gonna go. And when you're looking at, like, with, you know, a Mark Goddard or Herb Dean, when you know, if you go to the class, you'll know exactly, hey, this is what he can do, and this is why he'll do it.

I'll definitely ask you, I promise. At the very least, I'll ask you next time an issue comes up. No problem. I'll have you on speed dial. There you go. Maybe I'll put you on speakerphone at the UFC. Hey everybody, Big John's right here.

Don't do that. It's, yeah, it's the one thing that I'm always watching, and it's like, you know, and you guys are like, I don't know, I don't know. I'm like, this is the answer. Well, you know, I'll reach out, I promise.

Love you. Thank you, brother. Love you too. Thank you very much. This is fun. Let's do it again.

Oh, absolutely.

There's always going to be fights to talk about.

Freaking A.

I live up the street, so let me know anytime.

All right, fuck yeah. All right, bye. Talk to you later. Bye, everybody.