Live Chat: The Gable Steveson Fallout

0:00Before this... There's this! As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass, they've in the lots, weld in the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hardworking people that make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com slash join the trades to learn more. And we're off! Hello everyone! On this 24th day of September, 2026, my name is Luke Thomas. This is episode 320 of my live chat. I appreciate you joining me. Thank you for being here. Let's see on the docket today. There was... Well, the news today actually was that fury in Joshua will be December 11th at... I think its principality stadium in Cardiff Wales. It'll be on Netflix. They didn't give a time. However, there is already conflict because in the press release that went out, it was

1:01like his exalancy. Turkey Alashique says that Dana White is going to promote it. And there's like a quote from Dana White in the press release. And then Eddie Hurne came out and being like, under no circumstance is Dana White promoting this fight in any capacity whatsoever. So we still have a lot of conflict about that, which is really interesting. So we'll talk about that. There was some consideration about the oblique kick. And whether that should be banned, it's very weird. I know Gable Steven has responded in kind. So there's a lot going on. And of course there's Raoul Rousa Jr fighting this weekend. There's BKFC this weekend if you care about that. Yeah, there's a lot. All right, so thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe if you haven't already. Send this video around. Now the way this works here is that we go for about an hour on the free questions. What are those? Well, usually on Wednesdays at youtube.com slash Luke Thomas. And the posts section, I put up a call for questions and you guys fill it up. We'll go for about an hour on those, the ones that basically you vote to the top.

2:03And then we'll do the paid portion. How does that work? Well, you don't have to. If you just want to hang out and just chill, that's cool too. I appreciate everyone who comes. But if you would like to be here to help the channel as much as possible, then the best way to do that, of course, is to put a donation into the super chat. The caveat to that is you can become a member in which case you can get videos that I put here that I don't put anywhere else as well as well as you get to ask questions on the live chat without, hey, of course, you can't do like 10 of them, but you could do at least a few of them if you wanted to. Okay. All right, we have quite a bit to get to. So without further ado, let's get this party started, shall we? Before this. There's this. As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass, they've in the lots, weld in the gold posts, inspecting every football, the hardworking people to make every Sunday possible.

3:04Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com slash join the trades to learn more. Imagine if this stability piece and the innovation piece were each other's missing piece. First Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank are combining financial security and innovation expertise to create a full suite of solutions for all your business needs. With the scale to back every stigge of growth, from pre-c, to IPO, and beyond, you have everything you need to make your big ideas click into place. First Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. It's the best of bank worlds. All right. All right. I have new glasses. They have a bit of a problem though, which is that these are Nike's. They are a little bit wider than the other ones I have and they sink on my face.

4:10So it makes my face look even fucking longer than it already is, which is not great. So I got to get something to hold it up. I'm going to get some strips on the nose pad. But these are what they call. I never, I mean, I don't know. I'm only learning now about glasses because I now have to wear them. Progressives. So I can look down and I can read, see I can read very easily here as well as I can see long range. So these might be my only glasses that I wear. We shall see. All right. You don't care. Who cares? Nobody cares. I'm just going to get a little bit of a question. Sort of, shall we? Let's do it this way. That. Okay. Okay. Such a beautiful S here. Oh, yeah, this one. Such a beautiful S to your photo. Yeah, I picked it on purpose because I figured all would have a strong reaction to it. The marine closing the loophole true arting BC style is this art. Are we art? Is art art? Yes. This is, you know, hang that in the loop. They say it right.

5:10All right. Is Joshua Vance rise to becoming a UFC champion not talked about enough? He has no background in martial arts training and only started training in MMA in 2019. Barely knows who DJ is. Isn't that unprecedented at the lighter divisions? Yes. I mean, unprecedented might be a strong word, but yes, it's extremely unusual. I mean, I think it says two things simultaneously. I know a lot of you, one of them, I don't like it when we say these things, but I think it's important to have some sense of context. Okay. On the one hand, I think the thing that it says, perhaps more than it says about anything else, but certainly one of the most important messages that that sense is that Josh van is very special. Clearly, right? He is doing things in a way that his peers, not merely in this division, but frankly, in any of the divisions can't really do. Again, we know there's some exceptions around there, but you get the idea.

6:11It's just very, very unusual in the lighter divisions to be able to advance that quickly on that short amount of time. It's extremely rare. 24 years of age, he technically already has his second title defense. As we mentioned, I do think that his defense is really quite poor and he takes not his striking defense and he just takes too much punishment. And I don't know what that will do to him long term, but he is obviously a very, very, very, very, very, I said it numerous times. He is a natural. He is a natural, the gate, he has not, people often understand what it means to have natural aptitude. It's when you can, when the game comes to you very easily, right? It's very easy for him to do a lot of this stuff. You can do it without nearly the same amount of repetition as it takes other people. He is naturally good at it. I'm sure he works hard, but lots of people work hard, right? He is naturally good. But I do think it is important to say that like, dude, you can't do that in virtually any other sport.

7:12I mean, there are probably some exceptions here or there. Certainly you've seen cases where somebody played, you know, in the American football system and then ended up in the Australian rugby slash, slash Australian football system or vice versa. You've seen people who started there and then they ended up as like kickers or whatever in the NFL. Like that's happened, you know, but that's a lot of the same kind of prep. Again, there are meaningful differences obviously, but you know, that's, that's a very, if you're going to make a move in sports, that's very possible. But like, you know, this is, this is, he beat the second best flyweight of all time. Dude, think about Olympic wrestling. You, you, you probably could not do this, right? You didn't start training until 2019 and you could be an Olympic champion in 2026. And especially if you didn't start until much, much later in life, you know, like a lot of those guys who wrestled the Olympics, they've been wrestling since they were in single digits, right? So they might be quite young, but, you know, if they're 18, they've been wrestling already

8:14for 10 years, but the 10 formative years, you know what I mean. So that's why I went, Henry Sahuto did was kind of unprecedented in that regard, but, you know, he couldn't, he couldn't repeat, like he couldn't even have the next year, there was nothing for him. You know, this is, this is sort of what I mean, like to have, to be later in your athletic development and then quickly get through it, you can't really do that in like you could, you know what I mean? Like, it's just not very possible. Oh, I'm going to pick up baseball at 19 years old or whatever. So he started training, you know, let's see, what was the question again? Oh, here it is. In 2019, so seven years ago, so he was what? 17 when he was doing that, you know, I'm just going to start training for American football at 17. And then by the time you're 24, you're in the NFL, that maybe that's happened in a couple of places, you know, again, it speaks to Van, I think being kind of special, but I do think in general, you're going, how about this? I don't think it's utterly unprecedented across sports, but it's exceedingly rare in

9:15general. But the thing that I would say is, if I'm trying to defend this as best I can, you're going to see this kind of accelerated timeline in fight sports more than you're going to see it in other ones for the reasons that we all already know it's not just that they have better athletes because they pay more or whatever, but you know, you get people from their formative athletic years steered in a particular direction that just yields a higher ability over time than it does picking it up later and then trying to get good. It just does. And so there's a lot of cases in like Josh Van where people like, how many times have you heard about someone's like, oh, I got into MMA just to lose weight. And then they make it to the UFC. Obviously, Van is a much higher level than that, you know, significantly higher level than that. But you hear that kind of thing. Like you don't really hear that in other sports. The barrier to entry to get into the UFC relative to a lot of other sports is much lower. To be a champion is still a very, very high threshold. But I would just caution that there's going to be a lot of sports where something like

10:16this is going to be really, really, really, really much, much rarer to come by historically speaking. And even in the case like wrestling where Henry Sihuda was doing it again, we're talking about the formative years of wrestling of your athletic development or, you know, like learning a language later in life is hard. Learning a language when you're five is easy. They can pick it up super quick. Like there's a certain kind of yes, neuroplasticity that allows that kind of a thing. As you build your own general capacity in line with skill capacity for application to a sport, it tends to root in a little bit better. So I think it's a little bit of both. That's an interesting question. I guess I haven't really thought of it this way. Hey, Luke, what is the tipping point for you to leave combat sports reporting? I guess if I just didn't want to do it anymore abuse with the Ali Revival Act, no, I fully expect that to pass more water down cars with rushed prospects getting KOed on a regular.

11:20I don't know. I'm sort of kind of already there. Also, three years since my dad passed unexpectedly, I'm sorry to hear that. I asked you in a live chat how you dealt with your mom passing and you had great advice about routine community and just being with the paid. I appreciate it a lot. Thanks, King Bo. Yeah, great question. I get asked, I don't, I mean, the reality is do like I. Combat sports itself went in one direction and that may change over time, but like the damage of what it could have been has already been baked in. It's hard to see how it would get worse from here. Although I suppose it's possible. I mean, you know, you'll never, never count that out. But and it's not that I'm exactly at peace with it has changed my relationship to everything, but I think at the same time, like I don't know how to explain it. Like I think what has had to happen is that my relationship to the sport has had to change.

12:25And I still greatly appreciate it for what it has done for my life and for my career and my opportunities and just the, you know, the years of enjoyment that I had, I think that is all quite real. But at the same time, I think for a long time, for a really long time, what I wanted to do was to excel in the media departments. I wanted to, you know, have my name top of the mast head or I wanted to be on television or I want to be at a time when it matter to be at the biggest websites or when I was a showtime to be interviewed and spread my wings. And what I've noticed is that the core media business itself has changed. We're the kind of editorial perspective that I tend to provide. There's within corporate structures. There's just less opportunity for that. And I think that's not going to change. I think that's only going to accelerate. And then on the other side, the sport itself to me became less interesting. You know, it's sort of one thing to consider, and when I say the sport, I mean combat sports,

13:27like across the board. I mean, boxing is having a horrible year, independent of the legislative prospects. It's having a horrible year. And MMA, I think, had a good summer. Certainly, I think for itself, right, in terms of the kinds of things that are memorable, stand out, or, you know, did it meet UFC fan demand? I think most people would say the summer certainly did. But, you know, the changes to the product are already baked in. They can't just undo it. Maybe they'll get... I think one thing that's been better is that they've been better about signing people who they were otherwise saying no to previously. And I don't know. Maybe they're opening up the pocketbooks a little bit more like the Kitas and the, what you call it, the harnesses of the world. Like before, I was kind of really down because it's like, we're not even going to get that. And then they got those. And so that's gotten a little bit better. You know, some of the kind of consider, but like, I'll be honest, I don't pine for any of that anymore. In part because of recognition that I don't think it's going to be a thing I could even do anymore. But like genuinely, like why?

14:28So I don't know if you guys have noticed. I've kind of withdrawn to a degree anyway from the sport itself. Like I don't do interviews hardly at all. Or, you know, the kind of thing that I used to. That has been done because that is... That part of me that loved it to such a degree that I would want to do those things. It doesn't exist anymore. But I still have great love for it. I do. Truly, I mean that. And I have great appreciation for it. But it's not the same. And so I'm not trying to hold on to something that I really wanted to hold on to before. Like, and I mean, I don't mean like altogether letting go. I mean, like, you know, parts of the, of my fandom, parts of my professional ambition. I've let a bunch of that stuff go. And so I put my focus in other places. And that in general, that brings me contentment. If you're asking what would take to leave, I mean, yeah, I guess if, you know, everything continue to go even more Nazi, yeah, that would do it, I suppose. But probably the answer is just that I would be making more money elsewhere.

15:30Oh, I figured this might come up. So since BC was free to make an appearance on Long Island Luke's channel, is it safe to assume this is just a personal vendetta against you by the powers that be. And so I look, it's a really shitty position to be in. Yeah, I mean, again, this is the kind of thing you just, this is why people don't like, in general, this is why people don't speak up right because they don't want to deal with all the consequences that come with it. But I'm just not that guy. Um, well, the good news is I think yes and no. So as I understand it, like he didn't give any commentary on, um, like contemporary, contemporary events or something, I think he was just reading out winners or whatever. And so given that there wasn't really any kind of issue or conflict with something so low stakes in that regard. And as I also understand it, the way it was explained to me was there, there hasn't been a, um, again, perhaps this is, there's newer truth that's better.

16:37But like again, as I understand it, they didn't tell him that it would never happen. Like, oh, we can't, you know, you, you should just give up now. We're never going to do it. Now they may just not be saying that and end up, they'll just end up doing that anyway. That is very, very possible, of course. But they didn't expressly say it will never happen. What they just basically said was, you know, we don't think it's a good idea. And, uh, you know, we can revisit this at a later time that kind of kicked the can down the rows. Again, as I understand it, which perhaps is not the best. So I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, I, you don't really know what it means, other than it doesn't mean good things to, for the chances of talking to BC again. But you know, like in the end, if they never let him do it, I mean, I will make sure everyone knows that that was Paramount's call, you know, because it's sure as fuck not my call, you know, it's not mine. So you know, yes and no, I mean, I mean, the other part too is like, I think that there might be, uh, I don't, I'm not too certain about this, but I think that there might be some

17:43limits on like any kind of podcast appearance you could do. Again, that one was different because he wasn't really doing a podcast appearance as such. So, um, but yeah, I mean, you know, I, whether it affects this particular issue, I can't say with any degree of certainty. What I can say is that, um, you know, the UFC has not hesitated to tell places in previous times in my career to not hire me and that those media places, uh, relented, you know, out of fear. So, you know, could there be top down pressure to not allow that kind of thing? It would, it would be the least surprising thing imaginable if it was true, but we shall see. Look, why is it that wrestlers from the caucuses region who come into MMA, used their wrestling

18:47in MMA, but guys like Gable and Bo seem so intent on showing that they can strike as opposed to utilizing the skill set that they came up with. And do you think today's American wrestlers would have more success at MMA if they utilized their skill set once becoming UFC MMA fighters? A guy that comes to mind for me is DC always utilized his wrestling until he got into the steepest fights, but by then he was old AF. And we know how hard it is to wrestle past a certain age. So I gave him a pass for that. But in his youth, you never saw him regularly trying to prove he was some sort of top tier striker because they are coming from Dagestan in places like that again, the better ones, right? So again, you could point to some examples where this is not the case, but the, the, it, there could be some cultural factors that could be some sport factors that play into that one. But this one's a little bit easier to understand the guys who have the wrestling from the caucuses region. Again, there are some exceptions to this for sure. But in general, these are guys that are typically also more well rounded, you know, in many, many, many cases. So like they may have very good wrestling. And in fact, wrestling might be their dominant strength, but they can do a lot of other things

19:49as well. In other words, they have a little bit of balance to what they want to do. There's like Gable and guys like, um, Bow, who, you know, have these really, really prestigious wrestling backgrounds. Once they get into MMA, they kind of want to make this switch from like, I used to be a wrestler and now I'm a fighter. And they're almost not trying to reject it, but they're trying to lean into their new identity that they might be getting out in front of their, over their skis a little bit. Certainly in the case of Gable, you can say that, right? That was definitely true in his case. It's that kind of a thing, right? Where it's, it's, it's this, it's this switch from one thing to another, whereas a lot of those guys in the caucuses region, they tend to have a little bit more balance to their game. So that's just more about elevation than it is like you used to be one thing and now you're another. It's trying to reconcile with that new identity that I think tends to be the place that trips them up the most. Before this. There's this.

20:49As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass, they've in the lots, weld in the goalposts, inspecting every football, the hardworking people to make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com slash join the trades to learn more. Imagine if having your cake and eating it too was about banking, not baking. Silicon Valley Bank and First Citizens Bank have created a recipe that blends decades of innovation economy experience with more than a century of stability. Now you don't have to choose between deep sector expertise and lasting financial security. Instead, you can enjoy them both. Silicon Valley Bank and First Citizens Bank. It's the best of bank worlds. If Patty doesn't get the Ilya fight next for whatever reason, what would you prefer to

21:55see him fight next? Assuming Armin decides to hold that for a title shot, Max would be my personal preference, but I think a lot of people would be intrigued at him versus Charles. Curious what your preference would be and how you'd see that fight playing out? Definitely. I think Patty doing what he's done, certainly holding the line against Justin. He knows a tough assignment and he hung in there. He did what Ilya couldn't do. I'm going to take that for what it's worth. Then of course the BSD win was really, really great and showed how dangerous his subs could be, especially if you're a fucking dog. You don't set shit up. He will make you pay for it. I don't think either of the fights that you proposed you can lose with, whether it's Patty versus Max or Patty versus Olivera. You can't lose in either way. But for me, I find it more interesting if he fought Olivera. The reason why is the Max fight, I mean, here's the problem with the game of Patty.

23:03He's big for the weight class. He's certainly tough, although I don't know how wise it was to take all that kind of abuse him to fights ago. But in any event, he seems to be quite tough. He's big for the weight class. He's got dominant subs, very, very good attacker from the back. Good grappler, generally good guard, but not in any way a proficient wrestler. There's just no evidence to that. I've done breakdowns on all of his fights. He is not a proficient wrestler. He's got some decent take down defense at times. At times he can weaponize subs to counteract wrestling, which is cool. But in terms of actively going for it, he can't. Whereas Charles Olivera can do that very, very easily. And can marry back exposure and then taking the back in ways that a lot of other guys can't. That would be a really interesting fight against Patty. To me, that would be a really fun one. I feel like he might accommodate him in certain ways. At the same time, you'd get something of an interesting battle striking on the outside. Now I'd probably favor, I mean, would you favor Patty over either of those guys?

24:07The max fight is interesting because it'd be striker versus grappler. Whereas one never knows with Charles, he could easily just strike it out too. But there's at least reason to think that that could be more interesting. Whereas if Charles can't sub max, Max is not going to get out in front of his skis. Max could still get his back taken or something like that. But he doesn't have, how did Charles get all of what he got with Max? He would shoot in, typically go to a leg. It's not going to work. Comes up to the body. Does a body lock take down, but goes chest to chest, maintains that, then goes to knee on belly and then goes to mouth, then goes to back. He did it every single time. That was how he did it. Patty can't do that. Not like that. No, he can't. Not like that. So you might say, oh, Charles has a good chance of beating him. Max has a good chance of beating him. At least with the Charles one, it could get mixed up on the floor. That to me makes it much more intriguing.

25:11Styles make fights. I would probably pick Olivera and Max to beat him. But the Olivera one is interesting because Olivera has got more striking weapons than Max and could easily just use that. But I wonder how that grappling quotient might come in and make the fight more interesting. Look, I'm with you. I agree, Ilya, in no way should get the next title shot. He might though. He might. Armin definitely deserves it more. But my question is, do you think, and again, I'm not advocating for this per se, but just thinking of possible scenarios that UFC might do to try to appease multiple sides, that the UFC might make the Justin versus Ilya fight and then guarantee Armin the winner. Yes, of course they could do that. I realize this means Armin being on the shelf for a bit because if Ilya and Justin fight in early 2027, then the winner isn't fighting till mid-2027, June or July-ish. And again, I'm not advocating. I'm reminded of a similar situation with Leon, Colby and Balal, where UFC stated Balal

26:15versus Burns was the number one contender fight when they fought in May of 2023, but made it clear Colby was going to get the first fight and the winner would have to wait for Colby to fight first, which ended up having Balal wait 13 months, but UFC did honor their worry when they said Balal's next. Again, not rooting for this, but do you think the scenario is as possible as it grants Armin the title shot in the next fight that was promised while also putting Ilya back in the title fight, which seems like something else they want to do. Yes, of course, of course, that is absolutely a possibility. Or what they might say is, yes, we're going to make Ilya versus Justin too. And what we're also going to do is we're going to say Armin, you're number one. So you get to fight the winner, but to the point you raise, we don't know exactly when that is. It could be it could be third or fourth quarter of 2027. You know, do you want to wait that long? And but we're not going to put anyone in front of you. Like you can be the guy and he might say, okay, but I don't want to wait that long. Which case are saying, well, you have a choice. You can wait that long and you'll be the guy or what can happen is that you can just take another fight between now and then and you know, risk your position.

27:18Right. So yes, that is, I've seen that a million times too. Yes, that is absolutely a thing that can happen. I really hope that it doesn't, but it'd be foolish to not consider that that is something that they could easily attempt. Yeah. I'm trying to get to the ones that people have voted to the top a little more. Here we go. Oh, great. Thoughts on Dana stating he supports the California State Athletic Commission's idea on banning side kicks to the knee oblique, to the knee slash oblique kicks. If this happens, I might actually throw up. I find this whole thing. Baffling. Baffling. I'm like, let me, let me see if I understand this. When you think of people who have absorbed an oblique kick and then they talked about

28:28it after the fight and maybe even many years after the fight about how it kind of messed them up. Yes. Yes, I can, I can think of one. Rampage would be one of the more nowherely cases. He was adamant that after that fight that that messed up his knee and that messed it up his knee for the rest of his career and maybe even his life to a degree. I'm not sure exactly what he's doing to keep his weight down, but you get the idea. Yes. But relative to the number of people that you could name that have had their mother fucking eyes gouged, raked, injured, affected, not from punches, which can also happen to, but from the gloves like that, the list is endless. In fact, we have lost our heavyweight champion who was, I can't say current anymore because he's not, but he was about a month ago because his eyes are so fucked up.

29:28And I'm supposed to believe that this oblique kick, which again, I'm trying to figure out like what is the scale of the problem that it poses. I'm not saying that there's nothing that it does, but it doesn't seem that big and certainly relative to the problem of eye pokes and eye gouges and all of the issues that arise from that. How the fuck are we even talking about this? I'm going to say it one more time. I bring this up because it drives me fucking crazy. The association of ringside physicians formally had a study conducted that they ultimately published in 2025. The association of ringside physicians, these are fucking doctors. And they found that there is statistically significant evidence that demonstrates a curved design on the knuckles, meaningfully reduces eye injuries.

30:29So we have good evidence, not really anecdotal that you can kind of see that there's a difference. No, no, no, they can measure it. And in that paper and the abstract that came with it from the association of ringside physicians, they say, we don't even give a fuck what manufacturer you go to. We don't even care. Any kind of curved design is going to be vastly superior to any kind of non-curve design. That was the conclusion. Hey, did ever last make a curved glove? But you don't like ever last. Maybe you like Reyes or maybe you like, I don't know, pick any glove manufacturer. Oh, yeah, yeah, I like Reyes. I don't like ever last. Great. Use that one. That's fine. We don't care. As long as it's got the curved design. And we're talking about motherfucking oblique kicks. What? What?

31:31What the fuck is that? I have said this before and I don't think that there's really going to be any great model of governance and regulatory oversight within the sport. I think that these are always going to be areas of the human community that are less policed than other places for reasons good and bad. But I don't have even the fucking slightest degree of faith in the state model of governance for combat sports. It has proven to be a failure in so many different ways. It has proven to be a failure. But it is, it is, it is of all the regulatory agencies that I've ever had to encounter. I can scarcely think of one filled with more morons who are resistant to progress, allergic to good ideas and then beholden to the corporate interests that they're supposed to be regulating

32:37then the various state government regulatory commissions. There are some, obviously like anything, there are going to be some individual cases where that is not true. There's going to be individual cases of very competent regulatory folks in one state or another shore I grant. But as a general oversight like that model. It sucks, it's really bad. They get full of dumb ass ideas for problems that I'm not even sure exist and such that they exist. They've got nothing to do with like the real problems that we face. Oh, UFC couldn't afford to do a curved glove. They passed some kind of regulation. Word. Word, is that what you think? They don't have the money to fix this shit. Then there's that, that's just sort of one component like which is government oversight, how meaningful it is, how useful it is, and then what we count as the more significant problems and what attention we pay to them.

33:38That's a separate question of like, hey, is this even a problem at all? The oblique kick argument is that, hey, unlike let's say a kick to your thigh, they'll say, listen, the kick to your thigh, you could that, could that shred your knee, it could, it could. But each individual one of those pound for pound tends to happen less, right? Like the amount of injuries from oblique kicks. At least it's argued are happen more regularly than it does with ordinary kicks to the calf or you go to the soft issue essentially rather than just trying to attack the joint. I don't understand what is different from an oblique kick and a heel hook. A heel hook works because yes, you have to like understand what a fucking heel hook is when it's done correctly. I'm going to use my entire body. I'm going to attach it to a leg, right, when it's done correctly.

34:41I might even control the far side leg too. Might be controlling your balance, all kinds of things I might be in control of. And I'm going to use my body to isolate one joint so I can reap the next one and use that to create breaking pressure. Which by the way, like yes, people can tap to that, but sometimes they don't and they just get their shit broken. Or if I don't break the ankle or something, I can then just shred the knee, right? It's designed to do that. It's designed for me to wrap my body around it so that I can hold it in certain places while giving torque to it in others to create breaking pressure. That is what you want. The you have to have breaking pressure in order for it to work. Now, that doesn't mean you break it every time, but they don't break the knee every time on the oblique kicks either. What is the distinction between these two things? Oh, well, one is blunt force trauma.

35:41Okay, one is a little bit more he-man than the other one, but it's still I get the highest level has to be applied somewhat discreetly. More to the point like they are designed to do the same thing, break joints. Also, not for nothing, there's plenty of ways you can defend a heel hook. There's plenty of ways you can defend an oblique kick. People do it successfully all the time. I don't deny that it's some ways different than a ordinary kick to the calf, which is I'm just going to take something like something that is materially durable. Right? I mean, you covered in skin, but you're trying to slam the bone into their soft tissue. That's what you're trying to do. And that is different than trying to drive my heel or the bottom of my foot into your joint so that I can break the joint. I recognize that these are not the same things, but again, it's not really a huge problem, even if you were wanting to grant that these are different things.

36:42And also with the heel hook or other submissions you can throw in there as well, not necessarily all of them, obviously, chokes wouldn't necessarily apply and even arm bars wouldn't necessarily apply, but even then it kind of would too, right? But I'm trying to go over after the knee, right? Like I can violently wrap my body around your thing, your knee, and then apply coordinating coordinated torque to shred it to pieces. And that is okay. I mean, yeah, you can resist, but like if there's anything that's the closest to power slap, but I know this is a strained comparison. The point is you know how they have to hold them there and then they slap them. Well, you have to hold them there. And so that's it's meaningfully, of course, very, very different. But I'm pointing out like if you get a good bite on it and you hold them there, the shit's getting torn, dude. Like how many injuries do we have in the gym and in training from guys training oblique kicks and then training heel hooks? Like you got infinitely more from the other one from heel hooks, infinitely,

37:46more, infinitely more. This is not a real problem. This is not a real problem. It's not a real problem at all. It's a violent sport. It's a very, very violent sport. If you are going to make attacking not merely limbs, but attacking the full crumb of limbs, elbows, knees, things like that, if you're going to make the breaking pressure allowed on it in one context, how are you going to deny the breaking pressure in another, especially when the breaking pressure in another is not landing in such a way as to be a very noticeable problem at large. I mean, just this is like, what the fuck are we talking about? What the fuck are we talking about? Before this, there's this. As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots.

38:46The people grow in the grass, they've in the lots, weld in the goalposts, inspecting every football, the hardworking people to make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com slash join the trades to learn more. Imagine if this stability piece and the innovation piece were each other's missing piece. First citizens bank and Silicon Valley bank are combining financial security and innovation expertise to create a full suite of solutions for all your business needs with the scale to back every state of growth from pre-seed to IPO and beyond. You have everything you need to make your big ideas click into place. First citizens bank and Silicon Valley bank. It's the best of bank worlds. I got asked this last time and I don't know what the odds are,

39:47which is is 2026 the best year for underdogs in MMA history. I mean, just with the gable thing and the bell a mere thing. And I know there's been a lot more than that too, obviously, quite a bit more. But just that alone might make it that way, but I don't know what the actual math says. And again, the question is best year for underdogs. I'm going to treat it as an, I can odds question who was the favorite, who was the underdog ahead of time. I realize that people sometimes have different senses about who's the favorite or how much of a favorite they are, but I'm in that particular sort of narrowly defined context. But that's a math question. OK. How many fights would Sean Strickland win if he fought 10 times against each of these middle weights in their prime, so 10 20 30 40 56, 70 80. All right, talking 80 fights. Dan Henderson.

40:50Dan's right hand is going to win him a few of those, but Sean's got. You know, Sean's got a lot of ability to get out of the way. I reckon Sean will win six or seven of those Nick Diaz. Maybe Sean loses one or two of those. Gagard Musassi. I think he'd beat Musassi most of the time. Again, seven or eight times. Frank Shamrock. Frank Shamrock was an amazing fighter, but just a very different age. I think I don't know if Strickland would win or would lose very many of those. You know, yeah, no, I think Strickland wins all of those. Robert Whitaker. That's a little different. Whitaker might win. I think Whitaker wins five or six of those. Jaco Re soza. I mean, Jaco Re had amazing jujitsu, but that's going to be tough to get on hand.

41:52Um, you know, maybe Jaco Re wins one or two of those. Vanderlai Sova probably wins one or two of those. And do you know, I'm glad you put them in there. Marilla Bustamante, one of the most forgotten names who was a fucking quality fighter. Maybe one or two of those. I mean, I think Strickland is just the passage of time, dude. Like Strickland's playing with a different set, like a different understanding of the game than any of those other guys. What made me with the exception of like Robert Whitaker or something. But like, you know, all the other ones, they're playing with a with an outdated game, or they're playing an outdated game, I should say. Um, I mean, a bunch of these get snuck in like under the wire and then don't have thumbs up on them. Here's one. Genuinely question. Why are so many fans quick to call doggaston fighters like Islam and Habib, white bullies? Habib in his active days was about the same size or sometimes smaller and height and reach

42:56compared his peers like Justin, ways 180 on fight nights. Tony said himself he cuts down from 200 before camp. He looked really small next to the likes of GSP who's been a woodly back then saying with Islam, these fought guys at 155 who were bigger than him, Dober Charles Moicano and is struggling to hold guys down at 170 and not risking transitioning to submissions, less to lose position of control. Question is why the bias. I mean, partly, for example, Habib had issues with weight cutting for a little while. Again, I'll never forget interviewing him at media day before what was supposed to be the Tony Ferguson fight and he had the fucking worst cotton mouth. I'd ever seen on a fighter. And I've seen some bad cotton mouth. He had terrible cotton mouth. I knew he was struggling. His lips were all chapped. Like I knew he was struggling and then he didn't, he didn't make it. So like the fact that he's had issues in the past of me, you know, kind of makes people believe in you got then you got this like wrestling heavy style. People are like, well, he's missing weight. He's in their bullying people.

43:57He's got this wrestling style. You know, that kind of tells us he wants to use like size and bulk to affect this more than other ones because you know, Michael Chandler gets up well above 190 before fights. Dari Bajar, I should say in between fights as well. I guess not 190 is on the higher end of what I've seen from light weights, but it's by no means unusual to hear. So there is that. And Islam is also, you know, he had his own issues with weight cutting, not missing weight, but like, for example, like in the fifth round against Volk and even before that, trying to get the back in the fourth or the third or the fourth, whatever it was. So there's been ways where you can see that they kind of have run into how the public perceives their weight management and whether or not they perceive that to be not necessarily above board, but gaming the system as you kind of indicate. I think that's part of it also, you know, again, they have a style where it kind of lends itself to questions about bulk and heft. But you know, there's also people who just don't want these guys to win.

44:58They don't like the fact that they're Muslim. They don't like the fact that they're Russian, some combination of the two. I don't, I'm not saying that's the predominant reason, but I do think that that plays a role, but like all of it. So like they're winning. They're not from here. They have a style or like you can imagine why we're bulk and heft would serve them. They kind of had some issues with weight cutting, like all those things kind of work together. And maybe we'll be like, ah, some shit. And then listen, you know, like also we have to have a sense of like what weight bullying means. If you're above 90, 195 and especially if you're above 200 and you're fighting at 155, I think the questions are pretty, you can ask some questions about it. It's fine. That's definitely starting to get to a point where it's like, wow, that's really a shitload. But if they're topping out at high 80s, low 190s, then there really isn't much of an issue. That's, that's just kind of about what the elite end up sorting at. Good question.

46:00Justin Gates, he said he's not sure if he'll fight again. When do you think the UFC should set a deadline for him to make a decision to fight again? He doesn't have to fight before the end of the year, but he should know. He should know before the end of the year. I think it's a very, very easy way to put that. I don't know whether he will, but I think he needs to. I mean, Luke, is the MMA decline due to Dana's disinterest or vice versa? He hasn't just switched off. He has constructed the world around him to not receive critiques while being dismissive and root to anyone who doesn't bend the knee. He is the opposite of scrum Dana. Yes, scrum Dana used to like to spar with the media. That was the kind of thing that he used to do. I think that Dana's issues are probably somewhat about the larger state of the sport.

47:02Although again, I don't, I mean, the fights in 2026 have been better than I think they have been to me. They might not have been the highest stature, although the White House fights, depending on your perspective, might have been. But I do think that the week to week quality of fights has been higher this year than it was last, maybe even 2024. Although 2024 at UFC 300, but certainly in the last year. So like I think that relatively speaking, the quality of the action has been a little bit higher this year. And that's worth acknowledging. I don't know what the current data says on what we had seen for many, many years, which was this contraction of the sport. I've not seen that updated. So I guess I should look into that and see what the data currently shows. Because again, I was always pretty clear like, has it contracted? Yes, there's just the evidence is very obvious. But is it going to keep contracting or does it just kind of hold out in one spot? Like you get to a spot and then the contraction basically stops. I don't know the answer to that. And it could be that we maybe stopped and maybe even slightly rebounded. That's possible to.

48:03It's really, really hard to say. But I think for data, it's just, you know, some of those issues might play into it. But like I think MMA is boring to him. Obviously, it is boring to him. It is boring to him. You know, I'm not even, I'm honestly not even saying that in a pejorative way. I mean, I don't think it's good that a promoter is checked out in that way. I mean, I'm not saying it's good. I'm, I'm, I'm trying as a person like they had such ambition to just dominate. And they did. And now they're trying to dominate another industry and they might get that too. And you've been made wealthy so many times over like you've been never even come close to spending your money, even if you tried. And again, there's been something of a decline in the sport beyond that. Why would you be as clued in and checked in? I don't, I wouldn't be. I can say that very matter. Effectively, I would not be the response to that, of course, is going to be well, then you shouldn't be the promoter.

49:03Yeah, you're right. I think that's, that's probably the answer. But like I sort of get like where he's at. I mean, he. What is there left to do? What is there left to enjoy? Just more guys fighting and like, especially like when you've, you've scaled your own product to make, you know, success, success of watching of it difficult to do unless like you're, you know, knee deep and gambling or like a, you know, like a crazy hardcore. If there's, there's so much of it, like you just can't, I mean, you can't, especially when there's other things he has to do. And he's passionate about power slap. He wants everyone to believe that's going to be the greatest things in sliced bread, you know. Um. Look, you've said for a while now that PFL is going to finish and it can't maintain itself. With Jonathan Martin, a John Martin leaving, is this the last sign we needed to see that it's done?

50:07Not, not exactly. Not exactly. Um, I don't have all the information about why this happened. I've seen some public reporting that looks pretty good. I contacted some people who work at PFL and I got a somewhat different story than what's been out there publicly. Um, I, I, I'll say this. I mean, Jake Paul was out there with Trump this week saying the dumbest shit you could ever fucking imagine. I mean, Jake Paul, I do think is an adept promoter, but he is clearly a fucking idiot, right? He means like you can watch a guy tank an economy, uh, threaten annihilation of a nation and its people. Um, kidnap world leaders and hold them hostage, tear the fabric out of communities, every which way is possible. Um, destroy America's security posture. I mean, I could just go on and on. He's like, yeah, this is, oh, and by the way, you could be an all star of the Epstein files.

51:11And Jake Paul is like, yeah, you know what? That's amazing. I said, you're a fucking idiot. You're a fucking idiot. You're an adept promoter. You are an adept. I give him credit. He is an adept promoter, but he is a fucking idiot, like the highest order. So I think the last thing I would just say about this is I think it's worth seeing what Nikisa and Jake Paul can come up with. And again, I think Jake Paul is a moron, but I do think that he's got some natural promoting skills that you just can't ignore. I'll be curious to see what he does with them. But like, like nothing, I don't, I don't understand. People, it's like guys. The UFC, I said, I feel like a broken record sometimes. The UFC has a lock on what the public perceives as the legitimate talent within the sport. These are the ones that used to be called like, you know, pay-per-view talent or, you know, championship, caliber or championship, pay-per-view talent.

52:13Like that, the one that really moves the market is that that key portion of it. And they've got virtually all of it. Right. And they're not going to cross-pollinate with another roster to help them substantiate their own roster or their presence. They're never going to do the cross-pollination. So you can, you do individually big events or individually big fights outside of the UFC on occasion. Yeah, you can. It's possible to do. That's not impossible. But to provide sustained competition, particularly in a regulatory environment that is anti-competitive, how are you going to do anything? You can have Jonathan Martin promote it. You can have tournaments. You can have no tournaments. You can have Nikesha and Jake Paul promote it. And I think of anyone out there, they'll do the best job. Or at least as good a job as someone could possibly be expected to do in their circumstance. You know, we got Scott Coker out there just finessing investors like, and he's got a different thing going on because I think he's looking at a different status of our different level of the sport.

53:13So his might have greater durability. And I think Rich Chow's a very smart guy. But my point remains the same. How are you going to overcome these circumstances to get the section of the fighters that are the very thing that makes the UFC what it is and trenches. It's market position. Unless you can get a meaningful share of those fighters, you can't do it. It cannot be done. And so I get, you know, every time there's like a change in PFL people like, well, they got rid of the tournament and now they're going to have just regular matchmaking. Is that going to turn their fortunes around? No. No. Oh, they can abandon the matchmaking model and go back to the tournament. Well, that fixed their fortunes. No. No. No, it will not. Oh, they could, uh, you know, they can come stateside more. And I think, you know, some of those changes are beneficial for growing a live event audience.

54:13I do think that that is a kind of important, you know, like there's some things better than others. But like people want to like people want to put every I have been around too long. I have seen the IFLs. I have seen the WFLs. I have seen the, I mean, you want to even count afflictions, but I've seen the Sen Goku's. I've seen the dreams. I've seen the prides. I have seen all of these fucking shows, the strike forces, the, you know, Garib Shamus coming through and fucking Scala coming through and Bjorn Rebney coming through. I've seen Bellator. I've seen World Series of Fighting. I've seen PFL guys. It is the market and regulatory environment in which we live. That is the answer. It doesn't matter how much you, dude, how much did PFL burn through? Hundreds of millions? Hundreds of millions. What you always see is that people want to say, aha, all of those promoters over all those years.

55:18You see, the problem is they just didn't have it. Right. And then you look at what UFC does and it's like, well, what are their promotional assets? Are there posters killing it? No. Are there previews killing it? I mean, they've got it down to a science where nothing they put out is bad, but it's not like especially interesting. Are they out there like doing a bunch of promotion in the cities that they go to? No, like what's so magic about it? Okay, well, they both have the brand equity at this point where a lot of that isn't required, but they're not like hammering the boards as a promoter. They're not doing shit that is like so amazing that they're like every week you're seeing the most amazing promotional effort in such a way to maintain that position. They're actually like not doing that shit and maintaining it. Well, all the other ones are trying to figure out a way around it. You can't beat this regulatory environment. You can't beat it. It cannot be done. It cannot be done. So this urge that people see to like put the the onus, the responsibility on the promotion.

56:21Yes, of course, you want to see them make better decisions than others. I have seen them make good ones. Various promoters over the course of time. I've seen them make decisions so good that the UFC borrowed from them. I've seen that too. But I've not seen one one last. Guys, I have seen promotions led by fuck-ass promoters in boxing. True fly-by-night operations last much longer. Why? It's because of the regulatory environment. This constant urge to be like if you can't survive against the UFC, it must be because you did something wrong. There's nothing anybody could do to survive. Unless you can change the rules, get access to that particular class of fighters. Now you're cooking with gas. Now that's different. That's a completely different ballgame at that point. But as long as that is unchallenged, it is hopeless.

57:25Utterly, completely, fully in every way hopeless. People don't want to believe that because it sounds so sad. And they don't want to believe it because they just want to think there's got to be some kind of iteration to the product we haven't thought of yet. You can differentiate the product in a different way like BKFC, right? Unless like a meaningful difference to normal MMA audiences. Okay, there's that. But I'm saying if you're just going to do more MMA, it can't be done. It cannot be done. And I need people to understand when you see that level of failure, year after year, era after era, approach after approach with hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in. Yeah, sure. I've seen a lot of bad ideas. I've seen good ones too. And they all ended up in the same place. It is the market. It is the regulatory apparatus in place. This is why you need rules on the books to create a robust competitive environment.

58:28And we don't have that. So this is what you get. Before this, there's this. As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass. They've in the lots, well-d in the gold posts, inspecting every football, the hardworking people to make every Sunday possible. Carrot is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit Carrot.com slash join the trades to learn more. Imagine if the stability piece and the innovation piece were each other's missing piece. For Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank are combining financial security and innovation expertise to create a full suite of solutions for all your business needs. With the scale to back every state of growth, from pre-C to IPO and beyond, you have everything you need to make your big ideas click into place. First Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. It's the best of bank worlds.

59:29Why are we so hesitant to call Josh Vanna Prodigy? I'll tell you why. He's 25 with a belt and two defenses. He's only been training five years. We call BJ Penn the Prodigy before he even had a fight in the UFC. Make it make sense. Well, the reason why is because BJ became the first American ever to win the BJJ World Championships. He did it after competing and training for four years. Like, understand that for a second. I've seen people get black belts after four years, which is probably the fastest way you could get it. Maybe someone's got it in three, but in general four has been like, what I would describe that as an extra elite benchmark.

1:00:30But the other ones who got it in four years never came close to winning a World Title. And even if they got their black belt in four years, it may have taken them another four years of black belt competition before they won a World Title. BJ Penn did it in four. And that's how he got nicknamed the Prodigy. Like, again, it's the same kind of thing that I would say about Josh Vanna and MMA, that I would say about BJ Penn and Jiu-Jitsu, if you're just slicing through everyone like that, on the one hand, yes, you are very, very obviously extraordinarily talented. On the other hand, you shouldn't be able to slice the world sport like that and win a World Title. Like, maybe there's some competitive, you know, what's the world looking for? Depth issues there. So it's the same kind of thing. But the difference is, you know, for Vann, I mean, I guess you could call them that, but the problem is, you know, you look at DJ, DJ, you know, in terms of the amount of damage he took through his first three title fights, and it's less than half, it's almost a third of what Vann took.

1:01:34You know, and DJ, again, got started a little bit later, but the point I'm trying to make is, Vann has run through the sport, but it's mostly by having a very narrow game. He doesn't really do Jiu-Jitsu with you. He doesn't really wrestle with you. I mean, there might be a little bit of that, but like in general, no, it's mostly grappling and wrestling negation. And even the striking, he doesn't really kickbox with you. He mostly just boxes. Again, there are some exceptions to these things, but in general, it's what it is. And then as a consequence, he takes a lot of abuse. Among UFC champions, only Justin Gachy's average strikes, strikes him sort of per minute is higher. You know, there's a bit of a problem there. I mean, if you want to call him one, I suppose you could. It's fine, right? But I think the thing I want people to understand is, like, is Vann talented? I mean, there is just, again, not only is he talented, he's a natural. Like, that is the thing for me. It is effortless for him. But I do think there are some long-term questions

1:02:36about what it all is going to amount to, not because we don't think he's talented. We know that. But the other ways that might derail him by not having sufficient well-roundedness and then by taking too much damage, whether or not that changes what their nickname should be, I can't weigh in. But I just kind of want to provide some context with Penn there. Penn didn't just, oh, I got a black belt after four years. Penn won the World Championships at black belt after four years. That is, that's insane. You know what I mean? If you were up-and-coming fighter and could choose between Contender Series key MMA and PFL MVP, which one would you choose? I would choose a Chail chose key. I would choose key probably as well, especially right now. They might spend more. Now, I mean, again, you're kind of trusting a promoter here. And I don't have, I'll say this again. I trust Rich Chow. I'll say that.

1:03:38I do trust Rich. I think Rich is a very bright guy. And if I had a relationship with Rich Chow, and my team had a relationship with him, and we felt good about it, yeah, because I would get proper development there. Or at least the chances of getting proper development would be higher there. Right? They could always be counter examples to that. They'd be something like that. But like, just rushing, oh, I've got seven fights. I'm going to sign up for the Contender Series now. You're not going to make it that long and all likelihood. You can't play that shit. You got to wait. You got to wait. You got to get proper development. So I'd probably do that. Oh, good question. And then we'll go on to the paid portion. You talked about how Gable Steve said, is no Brock Lesnar on your livestream for UFC 331. And that got me into thinking. I got into MMA basically right after the main stint of Brock Lesnar's career. So I have no concept of what that was like in the moment.

1:04:40Can you talk a bit about Brock Lesnar's initial UFC run and what it was like for you watching and covering it at that time? And what the community thought of him back in those days. Yeah, man. That was an exciting time. And the reason why is because you have to remember something. There's the Brock specific context. And then there's the sport context. So around this time, remember UFC hits paid are 2005. Right? Ultimate fighter, boom. Changes everything. And second season was also a huge hit. And it was still ongoing. When would did Brock see here? When did he fight Frank? He fought Frankie. In February of 2008, how remember that? That was a crazy day. All right. Here's what you got to understand. So 2005 hits again, the world, the MMA world just changes.

1:05:42You have to, I got a reminder of one of this. MMA was in a bad shape in 2004. And it almost died in 2004. Like, I think about that for a second. Like none of us would be talking like this. You know, it almost died. 2005, they get this reprieve and it works. And then they're off to the races. And when it got hot, you got to remember, dude, MMA was like snowballing at that point. So, you know, at the beginning of the year, February of 2006, the sport was meaningfully different to a degree almost by July of 2006. And then by January of 2007, like it was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And you began to see references in pop culture. You know, doing bigger and bigger gates and bigger and bigger audiences and bigger and bigger venues. To the point where then it was consistently going and doing, you know, you know, major venues in major cities, like absolutely consistently at that point. You know, and it was doing huge, or growing share of pay-per-views.

1:06:43Like every month, man, it just felt like a new wrinkle that was being shown to the world. 60 minutes was covering it. You know, so like it was a very exciting time because all of these new possibilities were consistently being unlocked. And then Brock Lesnar has this fight against Minsu Kim at the K1 show in Southern California. And it didn't go really all that notice. Johnny Morton got knocked out on that show. And by, I think it was Bernard Ockah who knocked him out. But in any case, that, you know, anger Dana White to the Nth degree. He didn't want anyone to churdle on covering it at the time. But eventually that they had, they got to deal with Brock to come over. It gets getting like, why does Brock even come over at that point? You know, maybe to stick it to WWE. I'm not sure where he was at his time with them. But this was a great opportunity for him to get some money. He had wrestled before. Again, we're living in an era where Matt Hughes is still relevant, the tour is still relevant. All those guys who could wrestle were still relevant. I think Lesnar took a look at that and was like, well, maybe I can do something. Everyone's talking about this MMA stuff now.

1:07:44I'm going to give it a shot. And he did. And what was immediately obvious in that first fight was that he loses it with a kneebar. That wasn't even that high. If you actually go back and look at the kneebar, Frank Mir has it kind of around here. But the kneebar, like the ankle should be up around here. It should be very high. But he still gets it because of Brock Lesnar's inexperience. But there's a moment there where Brock Lesnar is like moving around Frank with Frank Turtles. And he like, like this fucking wildebeest who is moving like, like a gazelle in that octagon. Everyone was like, oh, like again, people are discovering new techniques. People are discovering new audiences. Audiences are discovering. There's like this massive discovery process that's happening all the time. And when they brought him over, like the ad for it was Lesnar in like a wrestling ring and like wrestling trunks. And then he shakes the ropes and then the screen changes. And then he's flexing and he's got MMA gloves on. So they were leaning into all of that audience to begin with.

1:08:48And so you're asking what the expectation was. On the one hand, there was excitement about what that star power meant. But even I was like, I didn't watch wrestling because I didn't really get what the whole thing about it was. I knew he wrestled obviously at Division One and one of national title at Minnesota. But you know, we're just kind of like, what's it all going to mean? What's it going to look like? And then we also kind of felt like people who were like MMA, I was MMA first. We're like, you know, I don't think people understand how like if you don't train this stuff, you're not going to be very good at it. And sure enough Frank won that time. But but like Lesnar showed clearly this is something he could do. And then he was just off to the races after that. But then when you look at the numbers that he produced, like dude, I thought MMA was so hot before he got there. And it was. And then he shows up. And it's like, I mean, I'm not trying to like suggest anything. But metaphorically speaking, it was a shot of adrenaline to an already ballooning thing. It was insane, dude. It was a hit dude. It was a hit off the crack pipe. Like it was crazy.

1:09:49And I'm telling you after he starts fighting, I started getting calls for like, hey, this news organization wants to talk to you. And I remember I had a meeting. I had a weekend radio show on 167 the fan. And the only time it ever happened was I think Lesnar fought maybe two times already. And then they brought me in for a meeting. They're like, we want to sell ads on your show. Like dude, it was transformative. Trans. That's why I always say dude, I give rock a lot of credit because I was not a pro wrestling guy. I didn't know how big he was in pro wrestling. I certainly respected him as an athlete and I certainly respected him as a wrestler. But I didn't know what it was going to be. And then I saw what it was. And I was like, oh, this is that he do he was. Like Poetan is probably the closest thing, but even then it's not the same. Because Poetan came over with some mystique. But MMA almost introduced him to the mainstream. This was very different. The mainstream already knew who Brock was and Brock kind of introduced MMA to them.

1:10:51Do he was a fucking jolt of electricity? Like get the paddles. That's what he was man. I mean, I guess not the paddles because I would be applying someone needed to a jolt to come back to life. But you know, you get the idea. Like it was it was fucking crazy. It was crazy. All right, with that in mind, let's uh, let's say what you got on the pay portion. You don't have to. You can just hang out. But if you want to be so kind, it goes along distance. All right. Ah. If Patty subs Ilya next, would he retire like Rhonda? Would Ilya retire like Rhonda? He might. He might. That's a real bad one. He might. Ilya's face looked unusual.

1:11:51The balls and Justin's hands were unique. If legal, then explain how. Their dismissal of the claim is the sketchiest part. Not exactly. So it turns out if you actually go back and look, there is video and photo evidence of his corner wrapping his hands. Which whatever. And then there was, um, it appeared to be a regulator that was paying attention to it. But we don't really still have great evidence about what hand wrapping technique he used. The ones in the ball in the middle, like, I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I mean, that's a, that's a. Again, I've talked about this before. I'm familiar with putting almost like a rope like tape in between the knuckles. And then what they call stacking, which is tape, gauze, tape, gauze, tape, gauze. And then it swells up and harden and you have to go tape first before you go to the gauze. Instead of just gauze, gauze, gauze, gauze, gauze, then tape. They call that stack. And then you have to go to the gauze. And then you have to go to the gauze. And then you have to go to the gauze. They call that stacking. This is, I've said this before, one of the best ways to solve this problem is have the corners

1:12:53of each fighter watch the other corners. Hands get wrapped, period. Did you see Gable's statement I did? Do talks about how he's clear because his lawyers did their own investigation, how he just got caught in his fight. They actually can't make this stuff up. Yeah, he wasn't, I mean, he was not like shitting on Chanturap, but he wasn't exactly all that complimentary, which I thought was interesting. He denies the allegations made against him. I mean, from what I've read, they don't look great. Perhaps there is some effort at revisiting it. I don't know exactly if there's anything exculpatory in them. I mean, from what I've read, there's not much exculpatory in them, but perhaps I'm missing some piece of information. I guess, but I mean, none of it really matters. It's like, dude, you have a sketchy pass at a bare minimum. And then your choice to sign up to fight with someone is John Jones. It's like, oh, John's one of the best of all time. Yeah, but dude, he's a fucking, you have a sketchy pass and you're picking a guy with the

1:13:54ultimate sketchy pass. And you think that that's not going to cause blowback. Not only that, but John's been actively fucking with the MMA fans the last few years. It's not like he's been building up goodwill. Like, it's just there's so many different levels to what he's doing that is like a bad idea. Any chance LT gives his thoughts on the Boston Globe story on the COVID conscious lesbian part. I heard about this. I've not read the story. I don't know what the there is some kind of lesbian bar and Massachusetts. Again, I've Bayley know this. And I guess they wanted to impose some kind of mask-waring thing or maybe they wanted to get rid of it. I'm not sure. And it led to like someone explaining to me a little bit like it led to this like insane veto culture overriding of anything. And I think the bars and trouble. I don't have all the details, but suffice to say it's got operates in a world I don't live in.

1:14:57What does Rogan have to do to make you view him as a bad bro? Okay, do you ask me this every week, bro? Look at who he associates himself with constantly spreading misinformation and sanitizing the elites. He is the 1%. Okay, I appreciate you sharing your perspective. Look at you. With both Van and Pantosha coming in at 145 and 141 respectively on Fight Night, is it safe to say champion level fights walk around 20% above their weigh-ins weight? Yes. Going on more. Yes, give or take. Give or take. 20% can sometimes be on the higher end, but not necessarily, but that can happen. Yes, they typically try to get it into the high teens, but 20% can happen. How do you feel about Gable Steven as a fighter and as someone who's had legal trouble from the essay? Well, the essay part, I mean, what do I need to say about that? You know, I mean, I realized that there are. The only thing about Gable's essay is that I don't understand why that counts and then no one has this energy for Connor.

1:15:58I don't quite get that. I don't like Connor. Didn't like Connor has gotten into more trouble from what he's doing than Gable has. You can be like, oh, that's because of illegal loophole. Okay. Well, there's something to be said for that, I suppose. But like at the same time, just objectively, like, Nikita Han took his ass to court. And yes, it's not a reasonable doubt basis. It's one of the preponderance of evidence. But nevertheless, like it was unanimous in every fucking way. And the entire country soured on the guy and then anime is like, oh, we're just going to look the other way. I don't get that. I don't understand. Like, even if you want to say, oh, there might be differences such that you can identify them. It's still bad enough where like, you know, where everyone was weird about it in July. I don't quite get that. How do I feel about him as a fighter? He shouldn't be in the UFC. I did a tape break down. I have to repost it on my substack. Oh, Jesus.

1:16:58All right. Well, never mind. But I posted about it on my substack. I need to repost it on my substack where I went into it. There was nothing accidental about that. He's not ready. He's not ready at all. Yeah, I realize he's a great athlete. I realize he's a very good wrestler. He's not ready to do this. After everything that went on with Pitbull, were we too early counting him out? Yes. You see a French top 10 guy now or more like a journeyman? Not say French top 10. He had a rough, but the thing is, I knew when he went to UFC and I even said, you can go back and look at the MK episodes. I knew that it was going to be one of those things where it's like, man, we're getting him well past pride here. I just didn't know what that was going to amount to. And then you had a rough early run of it. But that was a great showing against Duho Choi. He seems to be in a better place. 39, I still think you should have very managed expectations. But dude, that guy was legit in his prime in Belatoria.

1:18:01Very, very, very legit. One of the best fighters to never fight well. I mean, during his reign, you could have said, you never had an early run in UFC and washed out. He had never done it. And the fact that he's doing this well past his prime is very remarkable. Do you feel like Gachi will beat Armin if he does it retire and defense his belt? Imagine a left brain and a right brain got together and came up with an incredible banking solution. The innovative minds at Silicon Valley Bank and the pragmatic ones at First Citizens Bank have put their heads together so they can deliver solutions tailored to your unique financial needs. You want deep innovation insights paired with the financial power of a top 20 US bank? Now you can have it. Silicon Valley Bank and First Citizens Bank. It's the best of bank worlds. And then I... It's just you and me boy. I just caught it. Two soldiers bonded for life. Manic, manic! 58 miles.

1:19:01No one's coming for us. When anyone else would quit, they'll do the impossible. I got you and get home. Part of the beast is an uplifting trial. You're the greatest dog ever bred. I'll get you home. Part of the beast. Now playing RPG 13. Maybe you appropriate for children out of 13. I think Armin probably wins but I think Gachi has some unique elements to his game that could be a problem for Armin. If I found my old laptop with my varsity days and it still had some classic heavyweight UFC fights saved on to it. After rewatching some classics, it just made today's division 100% more depressing. I know, dude. Like you can't believe how much better some of the fights were a long time ago, which I don't say in a lot of divisions but in the heavyweights you can definitely say it. I'll trade the oblique kick for Knees to a grounded opponent.

1:20:01Okay, if we're making trades, I'd make that trade too. I'll make that trade. But like, you know what I mean? Like at least get something out of this. Look, would the UFC actually go and try to make McGregor versus Gachi? No. Ali was out trying to suggest something else as a store for Justin but McGregor's not going to be ready anytime soon. They probably wanted to do that in July before he messed everything up but not now. Worse loss. Worse lose. You put real worse lose. Worse loss. Silber Olympic medalist Richard Torres getting knocked out by Moses, Etauma, gassing out and subsequently getting stopped. Thanks for your continued commentary. Oh, Richard Torres getting knocked out or Moses, Etauma. Worse loss. Richard Torres because Moses just kind of gasped that seems fixable. Torres's problems seem much worse. Is this weekend's UFC event bottom 20 ever?

1:21:04Yes. In the modern era. Yes. Like, dude, the main the main event's not bad. It's Raleel Rosa said how many of our cellos? Okay. Not bad. The co main is Hidalphal Vieira and Robert Birchick. What's your opinion of Ralph Nader? Love him. Debs made an example, scapegoated him for challenging them and first called a spoiler. Forever disciplined public and other candidates to never dissent in fear of third parties. I love Ralph Nader. First of all, a great Arab American number one. And number two, a consumer advocate for all his life. And yes, one of these guys absolutely unfairly maligned by a democratic establishment that is unseurious about tackling real challenges and facing power in a real way. And Ralph Nader never had that problem. What's up, my friend? Welcome. Hate the guy, but Hoke gets a champ chance. Was thinking Josh Van and Josh Hoke had both got to the title quickly.

1:22:06If Hoke wins, given the state of their divisions, who would be more dominant champion? I think Van, I mean, well, no, Van's got tougher competition. Here's the thing. Van to me is better, but also has tougher competition. Hoke it to me is worse than Van, relatively speaking. I mean, I realized there are different way classes, but has easier competition. So I'm not sure how that washes out. There's been reports that Gavin Newsom helped stop the legal action against Paramount. Yes, he's been wishy-washy on Gaza, stopped Medicare for all. And now this, he also vetoed a lot of pro-union legislation this week. I'm done with him. Thoughts on him and the merger guys. I don't know if, I mean, I'm not sure where we stay in now. Did they did a judge? Potentially stop it today. I know there was some question about whether that could happen. I don't know if there's anything. There's Obama saying dumb ass shit.

1:23:06Let me see here. I don't know. Cory Booker urged it. I'm just trying to see here. Let's see. No, I don't see anything yet. So I'm going to take this as like kind of just where we are about the Paramount merger. It's so funny to me that I get a lot of accusations about like what I believe and what I don't believe from critics. And one of the things that they will tell you that I believe is that like I'm a hardcore Democrat, but in fact, if you pay attention to my work at all, you'll find that I fucking hate the party. Now, I might not hate them for the same reason that my antagonists also hate the Democratic Party, but the idea that I have great allegiance to them is just really not realistic. There is nothing in the DNA of that party that is willing, that is committed to battle and frankly committed to big challenges.

1:24:06There's nothing there's nothing running through that party that is a part of that other than defensive Israel. But other than that, there's nothing. There could be individually great legislator, lawmakers, you might find one that votes a pretty decent way versus others. Okay, fair enough. But again, as a party, they are just not up to the task. And the California Democratic Party in particular is especially impotent when you look at understand something. So Paramount wanted to go through with the merger and then they put a TRO on them, a temporary restrictive order from the judge. And the judge cited a bunch of arguments from the attorney general's office that, well, not just that, but the attorneys general, the 12 states. As like, wow, this is a very, very compelling argument. Okay, I'm going to hold off the merger until a later day, we're going to have a trial and march and blah, blah, blah. Like, that was the first indication that they had a strong hand.

1:25:08Ultimately, what happens is David Ellison leaks to the press in a million different ways that if they have to go to trial, even if they win, they're going to move the company to like Nashville, they're going to, you're going to leave LA. And that apparently spooked everyone to the point where, you know, Xavier Bacera said you should find a deal, Karen Bass, they are of LA said you should find a deal, Gavin Newsom wanted everyone to find a deal made it publicly. So like put on public pressure to get this done to the point where Rob Bonta, the attorney general comes up with an agreement where if you go, I made a whole video about this, where if you go through the fine print like so, for example, they have to make, they have to release 30 theatrical films a year for the first two years, 32 films a year for the following three. You have except not really, they have to release 30. They don't have to make 30 and if they don't make one, they have to pay a fine of 30 million great, but they can just re-release old movies and get up to that quota.

1:26:09Also, if you look between Warner Brothers and Paramount, how many movies they were able to release in the calendar last year, it was I think 18. So now as a combined entity written into the agreement, they are agreeing to make less. They're agreeing to make 15. They made more than 15 separately last year. Terrible. There is a force, a force, a force, a major clause in the deal. It's a, all contracts have this like an act of God. They have vision earthquake. The deal is no, no, no, no, no. In boy, in this one, if there is a recession, right? Automatically, the deal is void. If there is a writer strike, a strike of any kind, deal is void. There's a sunset clause on it for five years anyway. Understand, like think of the threat that they were saying, we'll move to, let's say Tennessee, and one of the places that they would go. Like, yeah, you could probably move like your headquarters

1:27:10there pretty quickly, but how are you going to move studio space very quickly? How are you going to get all that talent moved over there very quickly? It's not. It would take years to do that. And so like this threat, they're like, oh, we're going to leave. I mean, understand the implications of this. The state, like the reality is the Department of Justice, this is a can nakedly illegal deal on its face. The Department of Justice should have never approved it, but of course, Trump just gives away the country to his friends and to the rich. And of course, this is where we now are. So it fell to the states to do something about it. A company said, if you try to follow the law, we are going to do economic terrorism against you and the state blinked. So in other words, a company just threatened their way out of anti-trust enforcement. I want you to like noodle what that means. Can you imagine other companies of significant size looking at that and saying, well, then there is an anti-trust enforcement in the country.

1:28:12The federal government's not going to do it, right? We've seen that. They're not interested at all in this administration of doing any kind of anti-trust enforcement. And if you just sufficiently threaten the states, they'll back off. We, who is going to stop monopolies and mergers and acquisitions, especially if any of them are regime friendly? Guys, I want you to like wrap your head around something, okay? We live in an age of vandals. We live in an age of vandals. And I don't just mean people who are desecrating stuff, although there's that plenty of that as well. But like the kind of vandals who also do looting, right? That kind of throws a rock through a window and then maybe steals a TV. But I'm not talking about that kind of vandal. I'm actually not talking about that kind of a looter. I'm talking about the guys who lobby Congress and the president

1:29:14to get federal labor protections overturned so they can monopolize a sport. Right? I'm talking about the various powers that be that are trying to get this, what is it? The college, the PCSA, the College Safety Act, they're trying to get that past. Like it's powerful interests trying to legally entrench their position at the expense of the labor providing the economic engine to all of it. And here is a case where you're just having market consolidation because the regulators who are supposed to be there to stop this kind of thing to keep the balance are uninterested in doing this job. These motherfuckers are looting the place. They're not just vandalizing it, they're fucking looting it. And it's not the dog snatch and TVs out of a best buy or something like that. It's people changing laws or using the laws to entrench their

1:30:16market or even their legal position. And they're doing it with billions of dollars in key sectors of the economy because nobody's stopping them. And you think that the problem are the dogs picking strawberries on farms in California? I mean, we got a trans swimmer in high school. Oh, shit. How am I going to sleep through the night? It's just like the most insane thing. Random. Last weekend in Jersey City, a guy in a silver SUV held a big orange balloon out of the window. He'll income get some whip. It's broke on an empty street. Remind me of him. It's probably BC. Should they let Ty to evasa go for 10 in a row? I mean, at this point, who gives a fuck? Right? What's the why not? Let him. If the internet was around when we genocided the natives here, would we be looked at as

1:31:22horrible as we look on other countries? Oh, I'm sure. Yes. I mean, just look at the trail of tears. You ever like looked into the trail of tears? Yeah, there's no question. Is how people perceive us priceless slash why is it? I don't know what that second question is. But yes, like if we, if I mean, any kind of people are often like, yeah, what about the what about the genocide in Darfur? What about the genocide in Sudan? And I'm like, these are all bad. But like, we don't have access to them. They're not here in the States anyway. And that's at the same degree. And I think any population or any group of populations, various populations that were exposed to this kind of thing would probably have negative attitudes towards it. Luke told a colleague about USC business practices. He said fighters need to unionize. I said they've tried the fighters are too stubborn. Yeah, it's basically right. They don't want to do anything. They want to just surrender. So they did. Do you think Ilya knows he's not a hetero?

1:32:26And the future parallels between Van and Aldo's career. Aldo was more well-rounded. Aldo beat Cobraña at the Brown belt level and was a really good athlete. Might be a better athlete, but also was like a good and white tie guy. But the anti wrestling, you know, there's some parallels there. There's some parallels there. Yeah, that I'm talking it out. Yes. I would say slightly different. There used to be more of a premium and well-roundedness. And now there's more of a premium one having a simplified gain. Like a thing that you can just do no matter what. But yes, there are some there are some different ones there. Big look, have you seen the clip of Scott Galloway's insane genocide denial while interviewing I will say yet there's a video that this video should send you to when we're done here about that. It'll be out momentarily. Luke, you've talked about the potential reasons why MMA fans were so quick to rightfully turn on Gable while still welcoming scumbags like Connor. Is it possible?

1:33:27There's a racial element here too. Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, it's hard to say when everyone's a dirt bag while there are differences, but I wouldn't again, if you bring this up like the various folks who are, you know, the great, the great. I'll try to be friendly. There's a lot of resistant, there's a lot of resistance within the sport to obvious facts of life. And I don't really know how you solve that problem. I've not been able to solve it. But yes, clearly there could be, I mean, anyone who claims either for positive reasons or negative reasons that nationality, creed or race plays no role in how fans either accept or reject an athlete in all of combat sports is a fool. Thoughts on studio Laker, the people who made Coraline and the Wildwood movies, the Wildwood movie comes soon by daughter and I love Coraline. Also, are there any stop motion movies that you really enjoyed? I mean, I don't, I can't, Kubo and the two strings is a good one. A pile of dogs is another good one.

1:34:34But my daughter and I love Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton fucking smoked that shit. You go have had a poll giving the general public a binary choice. The results were 54% so they'd prefer a democratic socialist versus 38% favoring a maga Republican. It seems huge. Thoughts, yeah, I even saw that like socialism has never had a higher socialism purely. Like pure socialism has never had a higher polling amount than the total then it does today. I mean, it's just so funny. Like all the arguments that they want to make about the harms of socialism or you know, more exaggerated example communism is like, did you're living under all of it? Yo, there'd be big brother with communism. Okay, we're living in surveillance capitalism. You know, oh, the government would have bad health care. Good chunk of the poor population doesn't have it and even those who do can barely afford and have to ration treatment. Like what are we talking about here? Oh, you know, the government wouldn't work as well. I have you noticed that we were eating shit lettuce all

1:35:38summer? I mean, I could just go on and on and on about this. Like all the things that they warned about you just there and then to say nothing of the pedophilic elite class that's all in charge. Like what is the threat anymore of again, communism has sort of an exaggerated example, but what's the threat anymore of socialism? Like you you have made it so that it becomes palatable because the failures of the system we have can no longer be ignored. Hey, Luke, have you ever considered the 888 principles seems to be working for the finished president at least? I do not know what that is. Luke, if there are if these three gentlemen, who's less interested in the duties of their job? Dana, John Federman or Mitch McConnell? Probably Federman because Mitch McConnell is just a vegetable at this point. You know, I mean like, my my man is just there's just a few ganglia at the end of his spine just like you know, holding function together. That's it. Dana still tries to do stuff. Well, you know, I think it's a tie, but you know what? I didn't know I take

1:36:42that back. It's a tie between Dana and Federman. Like Federman's power slap is Israel. Did you get your subscription to Trump TV? No, not yet. Imagine actually defending this guy in Twi. They try in my mentions. Can you remember a more embarrassing time to be an American? It was pretty bad with George Bush when they invaded Iraq. I mean, then when Iraq turned and started getting really bad, it was very, very bad. But this is this is also really fucking bad. GFL is reportedly prepping their first event in November in Argentina. Who could possibly care? Which will happen first? GFL one or key MMA one? I'll say key MMA, but you know, maybe they can shit out something in Argentina. Who knows? My conspiracy is that Gachi iPokes to keep iPokes in the public discussion to help Whitman sell his gloves. You have to see the public pressure. It's a bit of a convoluted theory. I don't think so. What current elite fighter do you think is winning primarily because of process and

1:37:47decision making rather than an overwhelming physical or technical advantage? I mean, the ones who have the best process and decision making also have technical advantages like Volk for example has that, but also, you know, Movesor has some physical advantages, but both of them have a process. They're not just fucking winging it. I mean, Van kind of wings it a little bit, but that's not the other ones are not doing that. You said you would favor Hoket. God is faster, bigger. He stuffed Tom's takedowns. We just saw an elite wrestler get KO'd. In my opinion, God picks him apart. How do you think Josh Hoket can set up the takedown? I think he's fat. I mean, the thing is if Hoket fights like a dog that I don't know if any of this means anything, but like hit his ability to get to the back and trip and then keep him down. I think is actually pretty high. I'd be surprised if he couldn't do that to be honest with you. I don't think God's a great athlete and has definitely gotten better, but I've not been overwhelmed with his takedown defense in the kinds of ways that

1:38:52I think Hoket could threaten it. I know I ask every time, but if God ends up on the ground with Hoket, will he sit for a hill hook? Yes. Yes. He's got that he's got that he's got that reflex in him. Does the current state of the heavyweight division make it a good candidate for a tournament model for the title? No. Maybe like if you had four of them, you could do a tournament like a four man, one night tournament, but other than that, no. I mean, I know what you mean, like to kind of resort it. So yeah, in that sense, to make a tournament interesting, you need a bunch of interesting names. They don't have that. Luke, how poorly is the UFC utilizing Volkov here? He had not the problem is they're not in a sense. He had a controversial loss to serial gain is among the most consistent high level heavyweights for a while. Am I wrong? But like, promotionally, he is not super valuable to them. Otherwise, he would have gotten his shot already. That's the issue. That's the issue.

1:39:56He doesn't he is worthwhile to have in the division for quality, but he is not a promotional priority. Have you seen Othello's sick new hand tattoo? I've not seen the hand tattoo. I've seen the sleeve, but not the hand. This year is the 20 year anniversary of Pans' Labyrinth. I love that movie. One of my favorite films. Have you seen it? Of course, I have seen it. If so, thoughts. And do you have any other films you like from Guillermo del Toro? I like a lot of what he does. I mean, he's pretty good with help way too. And I've not seen Frankenstein, but Pans' Labyrinth is an incredible movie, which I think takes place what at the end of the Spanish Civil War, something like that. I mean, there's so many things to love about the movie. The story is great. The characters are great. But the practical effects, like Guillermo del Toro makes things. He makes not just interesting dream-like characters and these incredible, like, imaginative ideas and presets and stories,

1:41:01but they actually make things. They make prosthetic costumes that look so real and add so much depth. And that movie is highly enriched by that fact. And Pans' Labyrinth is a 10 out of 10. Luke, have you seen that clip going around with NAMFAN speaking? It's insane how he is allowed to still fight. Is he allowed to still fight? Did he get licensed by a... Did he get licensed by an athletic commission? Because if he did, that's a problem. But I saw... The only clip I saw was at him saying he was gunna. I don't know that that was ever confirmed. Luke, you think MVP fired John Martin because of his take on ESPN? No. He was unhappy about them burying the product, rightly. While MVP has a great relationship with them. It's Bethesda... It's not bathed, it's BE, Beth Bethesda. Marilyn's better than McLean, Virginia. They're pretty similar. McLean might be... Bethesda is right outside DC, whereas McLean's a little

1:42:08further. But you're talking about roughly this... McLean's got more mansions probably. It's I think richer than even Bethesda. But you're just talking about very, very rich people in either case. No, I don't think that was what it was. That my understanding is that's not what it was. Comments about ESPN? No. Coutiqueo slash R.A. use influence to block the PFL TV deal. It would depend on who the partner would be. It's possible, but that's very speculative. Do you know if Craig's gym will be strictly BJJ or will it make it an MMJ? I do not know. With his... I think it's mostly BJJ. With his knowledge of BJJ in context, he really has a chance of building a powerhouse gym for Hispanic fighters. I don't think he's trying to do that. I think he's trying to give back to Jiu Jitsu to give Jiu Jitsu something nice. I mean, he's not trying to build a gym to build fighters to make money on that model. I'm not even sure how his thing is gonna make money. I mean, I'm not saying it won't. I'm just saying I don't know what the business model is. But it's

1:43:11Craig is trying to give to Jiu Jitsu. He's not trying to do stuff for MMA. Are we overhyping Armin too much? He's very good, but his only win in the top five is Charles. And some may argue Charles won that fight. I think Gachi will surprise us again. Well, that's my point. I don't think we're overhyping Armin. I think that Gachi is being a little bit slept on here. I noticed that Van had shorter legs relative to his height and pantoja longer. Body composition is an overlooked factor. It changes your center of gravity. If you think about it, changes your ability to hit certain positions like sprawls or knee pounds or whatever. It changes a lot. Body composition has a huge role. Luke, given the state of NYC, is it still a dream city for you to live in? Yes, of course. What do we mean given the state? NYC is fucking amazing. Also, do you have any fun sketchy e-bike stories like near misses? No, although someone got killed outside of Logan Circle. You guys are heard me talk about Logan Circle because they were supposed to

1:44:14have the grass repaired there for July 250. And they never did. And the fencing is still up there because Trump's a fucking idiot. But right on the other side of it, there's Logan Circle. I think what is it? There's like 11th. So it's like basically like 12th or 13th at the end of one side of it. And then there's 14th on the other side in the middle of that road. A biker on his e-bike was, he came around Logan Circle and then just drove into oncoming traffic because there wasn't any. He didn't realize that like it's not a two, it's not, it's not two lanes that go this way. It's they go this way. And he had to swerve or then trying to swerve. He got hit by the truck and killed. This was yesterday. That's not that's a terrible story. It's not my story. Was there a part of the question? Yeah, dude, if I had the money to live in New York City, I would live in New York City. New York City is one of the great cities of the world if not the greatest. I mean, I don't know what people are talking about. Was fortunate to be up close to the fights in L.A. The shots penetrate

1:45:19the audience. You feel a sting. The level of punishment they can withstand. You come away with a newfound respect for the fighters. Yeah, man. Remember the first time I went to an MMA fight in person and I heard it and it was like, yeah, this was a small venue. You're like, holy shit, dude. This is this is a little more than I thought it was, you know. Cody, welcome to the party. Connor gets the credit. Brock deserves. Not Connor deserves credit for making MMA big too. You know, it's not it's never just one. But I think the modern audience may not appreciate what Brock did before Connor was around. What's Obama's role now, bitch ass? Constantly metals behind the scenes as power broker, but faces no media scrutiny talks NBA players out of walk out made a ES a moderate coup against Bernie is the kiss of death. Yeah, I mean, the thing is he's still wildly popular though. They're actually look at how he polls among Americans and Aussie Democrats in particular. He still has very high numbers. So he's able to just kind of do his same neoliberal project with the same

1:46:22kind of neoliberal people from afar to steer the party and its interests and, you know, what the boundaries of that are supposed to look like. But it is if you can get him to campaign with you because he has such high numbers, there is a value in that. So like this is partly why Bush doesn't really campaign with anyone in Trump land because he has pretty high negatives relatively speaking. And no one's really interested in his endorsement, whereas within democratic politics, Obama's endorsement still carries a lot of weight. Can we ever see fighters argue implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing about the three fights a year? Yes. UFC must offer bad timeline slash fights with all the inactivity and complaints with the fighters. You'll never see it. You know, I don't think you'll ever get to this kind of a situation, but like in theory, is that something that's on the table that could be done? Yes, I think so. The Brock Lesnar hype was crazy, especially after his car wind come back. Yes, that's one of my all-time favorite heavyweight fights. When his toughness was doubted in the nasty

1:47:26beating, he put on me or the rematch. Man, I got to do a watch along on my sub stack because if you've never seen that fight, dude, Shane Carwin beats the living dog shit out of Brock Lesnar with ground in pound that sounded like he was breaking his face. And somehow Brock found a way to hung on Shane Carwin gasped in epic fashion and Lesnar turned the tides and put him away. It was insane, dude, like two grizzly bears getting after it. It was wild, man. Luke does Dustin Porier who fought Islam beat Ilya who fought Justin. I mean, the chances are a lot higher. Chances are a lot higher. I still have probably picked Ilya maybe foolishly, but you have to rethink it a little bit. Phil Baroney still hasn't had a trial for his 2023 murder charge. Is this part for the course in Mexico? I have no idea. Three years is a long time. Yeah, but if you read the

1:48:28details of what is alleged, they are, you know, yes, in this country, you have what's supposed to be a right to a speedy trial. I don't know what rights he has afforded in Mexico. I would hope that he would have something equivalent to that, but you know, I'm not sure Phil's a great guy. Not that that means his right should be violated, but you know what I'm saying? Not to discredit Pitbull. That sounds like that's what you're going to do, but Choi looked uncharacteristically bad. Yeah, because Pitbull made him look bad. Would you consider having many subtitle definitions on your breakdowns of fight moves? I understand it's tedious. Would be more than happy to do the legwork to email you and just copy and paste. You mean like terms? Like what's leg drag and stuff like that? I suppose I could make a glossary. Would prime cane beat DC? Yes, Aspenal, yes, gone, yes, and Fador, yes,

1:49:34which fighter had the most talented corner in a fight? GSP with Dan Herring Gregor? No, it was GSP had Dan or her Jackson Faraz and then another one. Oh, Phil Nurse. Yeah, that's probably one of the most all-star corners I've ever seen. Is Joe Rogan the best comedian for a Fed? I don't think he's a Fed, but that's funny. What's up, LT? Weekly Weed donation. Thank you, my friend. Tookie back to school. Yes, she is currently. Oh, she, yeah, she is currently waiting for a blood test, apparently the person in front of my appointment fainted just hanging at Quest Labs listening to the goat much love other. Thank you, my friend. Don't believe it everywhere. I hope everything's all right. Ireland playing Israel the next two Sundays in football, our national broadcasters showing the match, but as a protest there will be no commentary, no pre, no post halftime analysis. Will it mean anything? Yes, I am shout so the fucking Irish. Yes, you have to every, every encounter that Israel wants to have

1:50:38in the community of nations should be met with friction. And maybe you can't stop them all, but treating them like they're just any other place. No, no, no, I, I, I utterly support that. Is Ilya the first metrosexual UFC champ? You sure? I don't know why you're donating these. You mentioned Hendo, KO of bisp being being a higher ranking MMA feel good moment over gay, which I'm not higher ranking, something kind of similar. I raised home KO, Rhonda as the highest. Yes, that's a great call. Wow. There were a list actors coming out celebrating her KO. That is one billion percent true. And remember in the lead up to that fight, Rhonda was like, I'm going to show you for being a fake sweet girl, some shit like that, right? Called her fake and sweet. And then just goes out there and gets the doors blown off of her in this monster upset. Yes, that's a great, great call. Again, the Gable One had more hate to it, but that's a close one. The Allison saw you making good points on CNN and put in the call. Maybe.

1:51:46Also, I think Nate Wilcox would still be talking if you didn't end the interview. Yeah, he's, he's chatty, but I was glad I got an opportunity to connect with him. Hey, I'll see. I visited Chicago for the first time last weekend was blown away. I think you once said it's slept on still feel that way. Yeah, dude. Chicago's an amazing city. I would love to live in a place like Chicago with the problem is man, the winners, dude, I just can't. I can't with six months of, you know, you got ice coming off your balls. Like I'm no, I'd rather live in a place that's hot. I can't. And then DC can be cold too. But I mean, like if I'd live in a place that's really cold, I mean, I just can't. I can't. I'm so high right now. Hell yeah, brother. I think if Hocket is, oh, imagine if Hocket is lefty doing an Andy Kaufman bit, see now that would be one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. If he was doing some kind of a bit, but like the real bit is not even that the real bit is like trolling the audience as a about lefty or some kind of

1:52:46pretend lefty, you know, look, I love your content and support you here and on sub-step. Could you please encourage the old chat of MMA and life advice politics on the other chat? Yes, there's going to be a political chat tomorrow. I can't control the questions and I don't want people to like be told they can't talk about stuff on this chat, but yes, there's going to be a political chat tomorrow, okay? All right. And he thoughts on John Kariaku. I mean, he obviously knows what he's talking about, but he also just has a lot of tall tales that are a little hard to follow, but he's got some interesting stories to tell. Check out Nerdwax. I have some awesome solution to the glasses sliding without the need for strips. Also source fat nose bridge and all glasses fall off my face. Ah, oh, you have a fat nose bridge. Oh, okay, okay, yes, I've used Nerdwax, but the problem is that I don't want like film on everything. Remember when Gable threatened Hocket to go to light heavyweight? Oh, to go to light heavyweight? I guess I don't. I don't know.

1:54:00Dude, like no one like my credentials as being critical of Israel are probably better than most peoples. If you're writing this to someone like me, you're probably either A, high on drugs or B, so down rabbit holes of like a phony kind of anti-Israel position that I can't take it seriously. Video showed Dana White talking to Van after his win and asking how old he is and then acting shocked. Am I insane for this insane? Excuse me, am I insane for this insane from a promoter? I haven't seen that, but if that's true, that is insane. Yes. Like again, dude, what do you want to do? I'm not defending Dana being checked out of UFC. I am saying like it's so deep within him. He can't, he can't get it. He can't, he can't stop it. It's up to the leadership of UFC or TKO to stop it. But some respect and has Bull as name. He's a real man. Okay. Did you see

1:55:02what happened to Jack Hager's eye and power slap? It literally exploded. Had Iju's coming out. What is the, did we get a doctor's update on that? I heard that. I didn't know if that was actually confirmed by a medical professional. And again, one more time about the oblique kicks, the people that brought you power slap want you to think that like this is better than an oblique kick. And then there's Steve Austin. All right. Thank you boys and girls. I appreciate you being here. MK tomorrow. It's me and Jimmy Smith. So be on the lookout for that. And then after that, I'll have my political live chat on the political channel. So come hang out for that. And I've got my Gable Steven breakdown on my sub stack that I'm going to post here in a minute. So thank you so much for being here. I greatly appreciate it. Have a wonderful day. I'll talk to most of you tomorrow. No live stream this weekend. Sunday wrap up. Until then, I love you all.

1:56:05Stay frosty bitches. It's the best of bank worlds.