Live Chat: What Is UFC Level in 2026?

0:00Let's rock. Let's rock. It is the 10th of September, 2026. My name is Luke Thomas. This is episode where we add three 18 of my live chat. Thank you so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it. Let's see on the docket today. Well, we got a pretty busy weekend. We have Noche UFC. We have Garcia versus Ben. We have the Tom Aspenon news, Ryzen, Super Ryzen 5, which was the main event between Chagelayev and the key was this morning. There's a bunch of stuff going on. All of that is fair game. Thumbs up on the video if you haven't hit subscribe if you haven't. Thank you so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it. So the way this works is I go for about an hour. Well, on a set of questions, I go to the if you go to the posts section here at youtube.com slash Luke Thomas, you guys fill it up with questions. You vote the ones you like the most of the top. I go for about an hour on those. And then after that, we switch to the paid portion where there's two ways you can contribute one. You can just put a donation into the super chat. And that goes a really long way. I was

1:01appreciate folks to do that. Thank you very much. Or you can become a member. You can ask questions for free. Plus you'll get videos I upload to this channel that literally do not go anywhere else. Okay. All right. We have quite a bit to get to. So without further ado, let's get this party started, shall we? What am I drinking today? I saw this at the grocery store piece T. It's pretty good. This is I mean, I don't know why they got to call it fuck ass names like Razzleberry, but it's tasty. All right. Now, bit of an announcement here to start the program. And I'll repeat this a little bit later in the show when we have a bit of a wider audience. First of all, I'll have two streams this weekend. I'll have one for Noche UFC. And then one for Ben and Garcia. Now, I'm not sure about the timing of either of those just yet. I will I'm assuming I'm going to have time

2:01to do a post fight show following UFC or Noche UFC before I get to the main event of Garcia and Ben. But either way, be able to look out for that. The second one is there is going to be a political live chat tomorrow on the political channel. Excuse me. If you are interested in that. Now, there's a giant fucking caveat to that, which is that there is a technical issue that we're in the process of resolving that I have not been able to resolve yet that I'm not sure how easily I'm going to be able to put the superchats on the screen as I am here. We're working that out. So I won't be ready for this week. May my hope is it maybe next week? I don't know, but in either case, we are going to just try and just have a regularity about this. I'm not saying every week it will be on Friday. I'm saying for this week, it is. We're just still trying to figure out how to make all of this programming work together that, you know, one doesn't necessarily run on top of the other or, you know, what are the best

3:04days for each of the things? We're still trying to figure that out. Okay? All right. But be on the lookout. Oh, that and you're asking about timing. 2 p.m. tomorrow, 2 p.m. East Coast time, 2 p.m. ET or EST. So 2 p.m. NYC. We'll do that tomorrow. All right. All right. And then last, but certainly not least, if you'd be so kind, if you don't want the chuds in the chat, there's a place you can go right here, which is my substack. And everyone there is cool and chill and fun and nice. It's like the internet before Elon ruined it. You know, Elon didn't ruin the whole internet himself, but parts of it he did. Anyway, before the tech donks ruined everything, it's like that. It's really nice and peaceful. And I'm very grateful for all of those people. So you can go check that out there. All right. What do we have? What do we have? Okay. Let's get these questions up and fire it up. And we'll get this going. And I appreciate everyone who is being here. All right. Let's go.

4:14Solid in Parnass seems like the MMA version of Embape with his flashy style. Okay. I also love how France's MMA fan base cheers and chants like they're at the World Cup. I definitely noticed the latter. The French crowd was great. I'm not quite sure if I understand exactly the relationship between Parnass and Embape. I don't know if that is the best comparison, although there are obviously some places of overlap. Right. They're both French. Maybe the most important one. But sure, I mean, I would say Parnass is 28 years old. He's got a lot of self-belief, got a little swag, got a little meanness to him. You know, and certainly plenty of ability as well. And I think that might be sort of a set of common traits that you see a lot of times in exceptional athletes and high achievers in the professional sporting world.

5:22All right. Let's see here. What do we got? You were asked if we really want fighters to keep moving up and wait. For me, the general answer is no. And I wonder how much of the fan base feels the same. When someone does move up and wait and wins, especially if they win emphatically, it feels like a rare and incredible thing to witness. However, if that person loses, it feels deflating. And like a complete waste of that fighter's prime and potential, especially if they take a lot of damage in the loss, Volk being the most memorable recent example. I'm assuming you're talking about the second fight with Islam. If Islam beats Prachus and Morales, then retires. This will be a monumental achievement. And in my opinion, the most impressive double champ run ever. But if given the option, I would prefer to watch him clean out the 155 division. Instead of fighting at 170 pounds, I think this gets at the, it's a great comment. And I think this gets at the central tension of the weight jumping. You know, ask yourself a question. They're basically isn't an argument around

6:25the prestige of it, even, even if we perceive prestige in particularly unique kinds of ways. What I mean to say is it's just going to be hard to make an argument that if Islam went back to 55 and won three more fights there, and you could pick who you want, you could pick Pornas, you could pick, I mean, I doubt he fight Usman, Numer, Gimanov, but you know, you could pick, you know, whoever you want down there, right? So are you keen and anybody else? Is that going to be as prestigious as it would be if Islam fought Prachus, Morales, and you know, somebody else after that, Rakhman, Abra, something like that, right? Would it be as prestigious and he beat the all three at lightweight, and he beat all three at Walter weight? Now, maybe the method of how he beats them would be something to notice, but let's just say for the sake of argument that we're not talking about that, we're just talking about the wins. And even if we were talking about method, just the difficulty of what Islam is attempting is so worthy of praise that if he were to accomplish it, I mean, I don't know

7:25how you would deny him, you know, and I mean, how would you deny him? How would you how would you take that from him? You couldn't. So there's really no getting around that, but if you, but I've asked you a bit of a different question, which is if you had to bet which of those three fights would yield more action, the three for Islam at 55 or the three for Islam at 170. Again, you're not talking about scrub ass fighters at 70, Prachus, action oriented, Morales, physical beast, can wrestle, has good judo, Rachmanov, assuming he can ever get healthy, you know, and return to even the anything resembling his old form, need I say more, right? So this, this, this, we're not talking about people who are not like, necessarily like Gary is not known for having really spirited action oriented contests for sustained periods in his fights. If you think about the most memorable thing he did against Prachus, it was surviving in the fifth round.

8:27I would still submit to you, you might get a better chance at action fights at 55, even though all of them would be title fights, right? Three at 55, three at 70. You know, of course, you can't prove this. This is just a hunch. This is a feeling, something of a loose hypothesis, but I, but I feel like what you're seeing with Islam is he's having to to abandon and then really kind of center parts of his game and then center other parts of his game, the more fundamental parts as now the more forward parts. Like he's really kind of stripping out a lot of extras, which I think were much more likely to come into play when he's dealing with a guy more his size at 155 pounds. And I think when you get that, you know, there's plenty of guys who defend titles in their way class and the fights are boring and there's plenty of people who move up and they can do it in dynamic ways. It's never a one-to-one kind of thing, but as a general proposition, I feel like one of the reasons why we don't have

9:32there's a lot of ways that we could boost the electricity and the pageantry of MMA broadly speaking. I think one of those ways is not eliminating guys going up and wait because I don't think eliminating it is the right answer either, but I do think that we've fetishized moving up and wait so much that we're helping to create elite level MMA with the biggest stars and we're kind of asking them to handicap themselves before they ever compete and you get a, you know, it's a higher level achievement, but in some ways you get less of them. And I just wonder if there's more consideration to do for something like that. Did I skip one? No. All right, here we go. Luke, you seem like you're reacting to a lot of feedback about Chuck, but maybe he's not as excitables BC or as animated or maybe he agrees with you more often than BC. To which you say, so what? If I remember correctly,

10:33BC wasn't well liked at the beginning of MK, but he grew on people. I'm sure the same will happen with Chuck slash J. It's last year, et cetera. BC seems to have left as a condition of keeping his employment with CBS slash by a calm. There's no more via comments. Just paramount. Good luck to him and he'll be missed. We also have to move on. This is the show we have now. And to me, we you in the audience should move on and build something new. Been following your work since the BE days and wish you the best. Good luck. It's a great comment. Yeah, dude, Chuck's the man. I love Chuck. I love BC too. I said it before, man, you just can't replace BC and I'm not going to try to replace BC. I'm going to try and make MK as close to what it was when BC was there that I could. And honestly, I got lucky with some of that because the the humor element is being kept alive, frankly, in large part by the audience with the I mean, fansubs. If you guys haven't watched MK in a while, fansubs, it might be better than it's ever been. It's insanely good now like every single Monday and Friday. There's at least like three or four good ones and sometimes well, well in excess

11:36of that. It's crazy how good it's gotten. And that's a that's a thing that like I think BC brought a lot of that culture to the fan base and now they're feeding it back to us. And that I mean, to me, that's a lot of success to be honest with you. So like I was personally never expecting Chuck to be BC. I was expecting Chuck to be Chuck. And there are ways in which that's going to you know, be different from BC, maybe for some people in good ways, maybe for other people in bad ways. And I can I can appreciate that too. But what I'm just trying to do is I want to be able to talk to someone that I can have a good conversation with who's smart, who knows this game, who you know, is is we do tend to agree a lot. But I think that I would describe Chuck as relative to me a little more level headed, you know, I think a little bit more even keeled, something about temperamental kind of way. And and so I think it kind of works in that sense too, you know, so these are really dude, I've never had a broadcast partner who I had a lot of success with. Then I had to say goodbye to that's I mean, I've been a solo guy before, you know, MK in almost all ways. I did this like,

12:42look how long his live chest been around, you know, and that's just me doing it. And I did the Luke Thomas show when I was on serious XM and then I had MMA nation when I was on 167 the fan and I was a whole single host there. I've always been kind of that. So this is new for me, you know, I mean, I'm not like solo now. It's either Chuck on Mondays and then you know, uh Danny will be on tomorrow to help us preview not your UFC. So I'll have Danny on tomorrow. I'm not and I got an estimate of about two like I'm happy and love reconnecting with Danny to have him on there. So like there's many positives that I try to focus on as the as the right thing, but I'm glad to Chuck has been a bit we've been lucky to have. We've been lucky to have him and I really I truly believe that, you know, I don't have, you know, a lot of people I can just easily work with and there's a lot of different reasons for that. And I don't mean that like, oh, there's a personality clash. It's less of that. It's like, there's just a lot of people in the industry who have very constrained or constrained opinions or heavily biased in a way that I don't think it would which in a way that

13:51I don't think yields very productive conversation. And so they're not like bad people in that sense, but I just can't they're not they're not a good fit for what I'm trying to do. I mean, there's fewer and fewer people of what I am trying to do. So you have to have someone on the level who will do that with you. And I think Chuck is able to do that in a way that is again, a little bit more centered and temperamentally different than me. And I think the audience, I know I benefit from his analysis. So I would imagine that the audience does too, you know, can't speak for him certainly, but that's my feeling. It's a tough thing, man. It's a tough thing to lose a co-host. I don't have a I don't have a roadmap, you know, I don't have experience to draw on. I don't, you know, I don't have a I'm flying as blind as anybody else and then trying to work with the pieces that I have to make that work. It's just it's it's it's certainly a challenge, but I feel very fortunate to have spent this last year with with Chuck or not the whole year, but what are you in the ninth month?

14:57The the you know this year thus far I should say with with Chuck Mendenhall. So um yeah. Oh good question. Good question. What makes someone UFC ready? Is there an that's great question? Is there an ideal number of fights or rounds and how does that across weight classes and how does that work across weight classes and styles? This is a great question. First of all, I'm going to be very fair and very clear. If you're asking the question, what is UFC ready? This this used to be asked a slightly different way, which was is someone UFC level, but that level has bottomed out so much. It's not really clear what that means. Maybe UFC ready is actually a better way to describe it because if you think about that, that kind of implies, you know, um not a minimum standard, but maybe an ability to fit into what they're doing relatively right away.

16:04We're pretty close to right away, right? Um okay, but what would that mean? Like in an ideal sense? Like what would you be looking for? Basically, there's a few things I'd be looking for. Number one, before I even look at what the tape shows, because you've got to remember the tape, tape study on the regional level. Um I'm not sure when XFC's next show is going to be, but as you guys know, I've been fortunate to do some commentary for them the last year or so. And so I've had to do a lot of tape study about fighters on the regional scene. That's a very difficult task because a lot of people have fights on their resume and then you've got to go just find where that is. And that can be tougher than you might imagine. Turns out actually a fair amount of it for the main card or like the main event guys turns out a fair amount of that can actually be on fight pass, particularly because LFA is there, but it's a it's a bit of a you have to track stuff down. And then that's

17:07just sort of one problem, but the bigger problem is it can be hard to know exactly what that means. Like what does it mean that a guy scored a first round inside Crescent Kick KO like wow that's a pretty amazing KO, but it you know it gets what kind of an opponent if the opponent is like three in one on the regional scene, that can mean almost nothing. It's like really really hard to tell sometimes what that what that means. UFC tape study is a lot easier because especially once they become ranked because there's a much more sort of common standard across various disciplines and achievements that you can measure someone against, but if someone is like trying to get into the UFC, first thing I'm going to do is look at their resume and I'm going to say how many times did they go past the first round? You would be surprised how many guys enter the UFC and it's got like, you know, there's six and oh and they've got six first round stoppages. This is almost always to me a red flag. Yeah, if you have six first round stoppages in your first six pro fights, clearly you're doing something right. But what I have discovered is that people who are

18:10getting that many stoppages that quickly, that early in their career, what it often means is that they're not fighting the requisite kinds of competition. This can create bad habits very quickly or you know diminished expectations of opposition or you know any kind of the they might have a deal with a promoter where they get fed a certain kind of guy or a certain kind of opponent, right, one more striker or grappler based whatever the preference may be there, you name it. Like that to me is a red flag. What I'm looking for is, you know, how many what are you in natural finisher, right? So because finishing is important, but if you're doing nothing but first round finishes, that tends to be a bit of a problem over time anyway. So are you a natural finisher? Do you have, what kind of wins do you have, right, in terms of not just the rounds, but method. I look for how many times you went to championship rounds, I look how many times, you know, I could look up someone else's resume on that list and they've got, you know, they went there and not just they,

19:11oh, I beat five guys in, you know, a bullshit-ass promotion somewhere in another part of the world, like are you getting these wins in like legitimate promotions or not? Like all these kinds of things I look at and then I look at tape and I guess what I'm trying to say is what I'm looking for, once I get to that place is take down defense. Do you down block? Do you split your base? Do you hand fight properly? Do you, are you, are you ready for these positions? When are these these threats? When they are presented to you for striking? Do you move your feet? Do you move your head? Do you slip encounter? Do you use a jab? Like do you have fundamental, first I'm looking for like fundamental tools, right? And then the consistent application of them and those those fundamental tools with consistent application with winning results against escalating different levels of opposition and getting to increasingly more important kinds of, you know, scenarios, fourth round fights, fighting out of the back, you know, all these kinds of things. This is what I tend to look at and say, if you have the fundamentals really worked out to a winning way through escalating challenges and

20:15then you've got a little razzle dazzle on top of it. This is to me something that is approximating UFC ready. You don't need all of those things to start winning in the UFC, but these are the things that I tend to look at. So it's tape study, it's looking at their record, it's looking at the kinds of experiences they have. You know, it's kind of funny, right? Last week someone asked, hey, I don't know where I want to live and I don't know what I want to be. I don't know what I want to do. What do I do? And I told them go live a little because as you go live a little, as you have adventures, as you try things, you discover things about yourself in many ways, you know, in a more microscopic way, but in many ways, a fighting career is like that. You learn something about a guy through the different experiences that they have escalating difficulty, somebody with a particular skill set, someone with a particular weapon, unenviable circumstances, you're the beside and someone else is hometown, blah, blah, blah, all these kinds of things. And then the extent to which you can really uncover something about a person in that time, which you're looking for is not all of those things, but a preponderance of those things that together kind of give you some enthusiasm about

21:17what they can do. Now, a guy like Saladin Parnass is more than UFC ready. He's arguably, I'm not saying this is fully true, but maybe arguably even title ready, right? That's a little different. He's very, very ready for UFC. Quite obviously like more like was very a long time ago for that matter. But for someone else at a different level, these are the kinds of things I tend to look at. Wait, what? What was that apology card up? Ah. So if you look at the Noche card, don't you think Grasso Furo should be the comane? Also, Furo is a minus 250 favorite, doesn't that seem a little extreme? So second one first, again, you know, betting odds are designed to induce betting. So understand if it's worth, but such that you can call that shorthand for like how much they believe she will win or better. It's anyway, believe that she will win. Ozmakers and better, because it's a relationship that

22:22drives these lines. I don't know. Like I grant that Grasso had an amazing win in her last fight of over Macy Barber, like, you know, just one of the most vicious violent finishes. I mean, you'll literally ever see certainly any women's in the main one of those violent finishes. But yeah, I mean, that was good by men's standards too. I mean, that was amazing. That was amazing. So yes, I grant that, but you know, she was having a bit of a rough run before. And the problem with Furo is she doesn't like, she doesn't get you excited about her game, but she's got a stubborn game due to distance game, jab game, teap game, sidekick game, footwork game. She's just a little bit hard to track down a lot of those Grasso, the low bow gym, right? She's out of low bow gym, but if I don't want to say this wrong, I believe that is correct. Hold on. Yes, they got footwork problems over there. At least they have historically. I don't think that that's an unfair line. No, no,

23:26I don't. Should it be the co main? No, because I can see that there's a capacity for that fight to suck. Whereas the Brandon Moreno Morales fight, right? Because it's Joseph, I get that right? I believe that's right. Yes, Joseph Morales fight. That one is probably going to be more action packed and Brandon while certainly not having his best career moments. Probably a bigger name. I'm, yeah, I think that's probably right. Let's see. The one up this question, but I kind of want to get to it very quickly. With having toporia rematch Gachi right away, be similar to having an immediate rematch for O'Malley versus Mirab, not even. This is much worse than that. On the one hand, toporia dropped Gachi with body shots. That is definitely different than anything. Sean Hurt, Mirab to the body in the fifth, but not to the same degree. It was bad, but you saw that,

24:31but Gachi went down. That's a little different. But the level of damage that toporia took and the finality of it, it would be way worse. It would be way worse. There's just no real good justification for it. As I said in my video, I made a video about this here on this channel. I think I'll put it up yesterday. As I said in that video, I cannot guarantee that if they do that, it will automatically be disaster life. You know, you can just sink your watch to it. No, there are ways in which the toporia might rescue himself there. It's just unnecessarily risky because you have the patty fight right there. The timeline of toporia's comeback doesn't have to line up to Gachi's. I realize that it makes the Gachi fight, whatever he would do next, in all likelihood, less interesting. But there's other guys that he could lock horns with that might be ready by then. I mean, so Yuki and his fighting tomorrow or this weekend, like what if he wins? You can line that up right away.

25:37So, you know, to me, I just don't think there's really any good justification for it. And I think it's unnecessarily risky. And I think it's a bad idea. Yo, I got this thing. You guys seeing this? The DJI Osmo Nano. And what's cool about it is you can take it off. And so you can look at the screen here while you're doing this, you know, and it's magnetized. It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Cool little piece of tech. Okay, I don't know how to answer this one. Look, do you agree that the stretch of events after UFC 331 and before UFC 333 is the worst four event stretch? Okay, let's see about that. Let's see. Are we starts after UFC 331? Let's see.

26:42Okay, so if we're not counting UFC 333, we're going after that. So, we're 331. So that would be Rojas, excuse me, Rojas Junior versus Barcellos, that the UFC 332, that you be UFC Fight Night, Alan versus Duncan, Jesus. And then UFC Fight Night Buckley versus Malap, that one will be in Edmonton. And then, yeah. Because it's basically just four fight nights, right? I mean, I realized you've got the UFC 332 one in there, but it's real, Jesus, dude. Yeah, it might be. It might be. Like, if you think about it, what are... The better way to ask it is, what is a four event stretch that UFC had that had more less consequential fights than this four fight stretch? Right? Because there's no heavyweight title on the line. There's no future of the face of the division. Because even if Silver or Wang Tong win, it's like, does anyone think of the future

27:46of this division? I mean, that seems a little presumptuous. You know, there's not more key divisions necessarily in terms of the very top of them being shown here. There's a lot of just lesser consequential MMA or UFC, I should say, packed into that. Most people find to pour you a annoying, I don't think that's true. I think a lot of MMA fans do. I don't think they find them that annoying in Spain, which means there is interest in a rematch to see him get demolished once more. I definitely think that's a part of what's happening. Online English-speaking MMA fans have decided to pour you a annoying, and so the prevailing thought in all the places that they occupy is that he is annoying. And yes, to the extent that that, and I do think that that is a... What did they speak for all MMA fans? It was somewhat debatable, at least in this case, but it definitely is a real part of the fanbase, if not like the final

28:51arbiter. And so I mean this to say, I do think that there is at least an element of the fanbase that thinks like this, and they want to see that pretty match because they want to see Tuporia get destroyed one more time. Conversely, I've definitely seen some Tuporia fans kind of say that they want some redemption. They want this fight too because they want to see him look good again. They are very confident that he would. So there's a few different factors at play there, but that is one of them. That is one of them. Sure. Let's see. Do we wear all the questions with the thumbs up for fuck's sake, man. Okay, here's one. What does this person say? Okay. Okay. So yeah, why does checking get hurt more than the checking itself? The checking

30:00hurts also. The checking hurts also. It's not like it doesn't hurt, but like one way in which that is mitigated is that they just try to, you know, deaden the nerves in that area. And that serves both offensively and defensively. Some people, I mean, you can also break your shin getting checked. Right. So there's a consequence there where if you go shin on shin, the person throwing tends to suffer that one a lot worse than the other one. A lot of people who get checked are not used to it. Don't have a variety. I have a ways to move around it. So it ends up just being like a very easy way to roadblock people because they're just simply not used to it. It's not, you know, with this person writes, sometimes it doesn't, but a clean hit to the thigh can be a lot worse. That's true. Some top K one fires will take a leg kick to finish a combo as checking isn't prioritized on the score cards as moway tie. That's also true, but a couple of flush kicks to the quad often very little impact on the kicker and a lot of pain on the recipient. Yeah, like getting kicked, obviously,

31:03is going to be a lot worse. But the guys who check they tend to have ways of checking that minimizes the pain for them and tends to come at angles that can often be worse for them. Right. So it tends to be one of those things that can be somewhat advantageous based on the geometry of how they are interacting. And again, a lot of times it's with guys who aren't used to like significant checking at all. So they have very, very little tolerance for it. Right. Whereas the person checking, and they're like a guy like Parnass, I bet Parnass, Parnass, Parnass, I bet he's got a lot of dead and nerves up and down, you know, that chin that enables him to and he's got ready to go checking as well, you know. Remember, it's one thing to be holding still and then absorbing a strike. And another one to be the one motioning that one in motion is going to tend to get the worst of it, but not always.

32:11Luke, I'm wondering how aware you are of your international audience. I am. I'm a 25-year-old teacher from Pakistan, Pakistan, and I never miss an MK or a live chat. You're one of the few sane voices in the MMA space that I hope you stick around. Thanks, dude. I don't know if you're, if you say you're from Pakistan, I don't know if that means you're there now. I have looked at the, because you could be here, like from another place. I know, so it depends. I have looked at the international breakdown. It's not as interesting as you might imagine. It basically is all the English-speaking countries and then the ones who have like a lot of English-speaking in them. So for example, it's US, Canada, Australia, UK, a lot of that shit, and then a lot of European countries with, you know, significant English-speaking portions of the population. And then after that, it's just a hodgepodge of shit. Like I've said this to you before, like it's kind of funny, you know, like I'm not that I'm expecting any kind of return on it,

33:14but you know, I talk about Colombia a lot, and it's, that I've been there many, many times, and it's a big part of my life quite frankly. They don't give a fuck. Like I have no audience there. You know, Adol, zero, nothing. I have no audience at all. Meanwhile, in some other places that are not like Sweden, and they've got an English-speaking contingent there obviously. English is pretty common, relative to speaking anyway there. So, you know, Sweden tends to show up a little bit, but, but yeah, it's not, it just kind of follows language and culture patterns. Let's see here. So, I was asking what I thought of Chails comments on Belomir. I did not see Chails comments on Belomir. Did she divide her attention between too many sports instead of focusing on what it could be? Could be. I definitely feel like people, there's a lot, for different

34:21sports and different reasons, there's a lot of people that are speaking out against sports specialization. Like kids today are often like, hey, you got to pick a sport and that's really kind of it, and a lot of them are very rejecting of that. And they want to play a bunch of sports. Like this is a thing that I think is like intention in a lot of different communities. That could be part of it. I just think the other part is, I mean, it's very simple for me. Like, you know, yeah, her wrestling is good, but wrestling in MMA is a different skill set, and then her overall skill set is just not really ready for prime time yet. And that's not a knock. It's not like some fucking insult. She doesn't need to be ready at whatever she is, 22, 23, whatever whatever she is. She doesn't need to be. She doesn't need to be. She needs to be exactly where her where she is. That just means though, she needs to be placed appropriately with the kind of competition that that is commensurate with her MMA skill development. You know, whether or not there is tension because she didn't specialize and I don't know enough

35:27about her life to comment on that in any kind of way. All right, here's one. Luke, if MVP can go five in one in the UFC and still get released while exciting fighters survive long losing streaks, can the UFC really call itself the pinnacle of MMA? Yes, it can. The Eagles don't stop using the push push because it's boring. It would be the league's job to regulate it. Shouldn't the same apply to MVP style with refs enforcing action rather than the UFC punishing an effective fighter. Yes, I will at least I partly agree with this. I partly agree with this. I have been saying this. People think that the best way to do people think that the best way, how do I say this?

36:32People think that the best way to get action is to let the fight breathe and the fighters resolve it. And I think that the best way to get action that is technically true. Let the fighters bring it and then get out of the way. But there's a problem with that logic, which is right. What if they don't actually do it? Now what do you do? What if they are stalling, whether by intention or by the fight, kind of just stalemating out? What do you do then? And to me, MMA doesn't have, does not equip the referees enough to be able to enforce that action more readily. That's my opinion. Now, a lot of people don't agree with that. They say, yeah, sure, listen, in collegiate wrestling, the refs are on the whistle all the time about rule violations, about timidity, fleeing the mat. You name it like they force action all the time. And maybe that works for wrestling,

37:34but wrestling periods are two minutes and that's wrestling. It's not striking, plus grappling. It's got different considerations. I'm happy to say that and agree that I don't think that MMA can be governed by the referees. The way wrestling amateur wrestling obviously is governed and controlled, so to speak, in terms of the fights, the matches themselves, the way that wrestling referees do it. I don't think that that model works for MMA. But I also just think that what we have now is insufficient. Like we, in my opinion, we need to equip the referees to have more ability to push the action along. Now, this is actually a bigger problem because as you guys all know, the referees are constantly saying, hey, we don't, we don't want to do that. Like we don't, that's up to the fighters. And I'm like, it should be up to the fighters. But once again, sometimes the fighters will simply not do it. So now you need some kind of a mechanism to make that happen. And I don't think that we've really

38:35solved that problem very effectively. It's my opinion, but I don't think that we've done that. So now you're asking the Eagles, can the USC really call itself the pinnacle of MMA? Sure it can. Sure it can. MMA does not, okay. So in MMA, championships matter greatly. And in some cases, they matter as almost depending on the situation, they matter as the most important thing imaginable. And winning is very, very important. But winning is not the most important thing in all cases in MMA. It's just not, it's not the way the business works. It never has. There is always going to be tension between trying to run the sport as a sport and then trying to accommodate it based on the realities of this being a carnage show, which is what it is. Like you have to kind of fundamentally

39:35accept MMA for what it is. So there, and the reality is the job of the promoter. And like once you really fully absorb this, it makes things a lot easier to understand. And frankly, I would even argue accept. And maybe this is survivor logic or Stockholm syndrome. I don't know. You can decide. The job of the promoter is to put on fights that people want to pay money to see. It just so happens that the majority of those are title fights, right? Title fights are a clear indication of quality and importance to the public. And it really does actually quite matter. But the ways in which those title shots get awarded, who gets awarded them, right? And what schedule that is done by a a sanctioned, a sanctioned body in boxing. So like a WBC, WBO, IVF, that kind of a thing. And in UFC, it's done by UFC. And this goes into a great degree of relatively speaking to normal sports,

40:36preference, audience response, like these kinds of things all matter. The reason why they can still call themselves the pinnacle is because I think this has changed a lot in recent years. But certainly over the course of UFC's history or certainly since the ultimate fighter, they've done, for the ultimate fighter to like, you know, maybe the pandemic and maybe even the past that 22 or 23 or something. They did a better job than most of kind of tamping that down. I think it's gotten a little bit out of control, but they they minimize the instinct relatively speaking. Again, there's plenty of it in the higher James Tony, right? There's a sage North cut. Like there's a million counter examples to this, but relative to a lot of the other promotions, they were pretty good about keeping a lid on that. And for the most part, and they have most of the best fighters. So in does it have a pure sporting architecture? No. And this is why the PFL couldn't exist as it was. People are like, Oh, well, now they just do what UFC does with lesser fighters. Well, we'll see what happens with MVP, but trying to do sport as sport. And even then they had some

41:41fudging that they could do like, you know, lining up the brackets and, and you know, what happens after so and so on. So it wins. Like there was wasted that for that to be manipulated as well. But what I'm trying to make is like the reason like matchmaking is like democracy, right? What's the quote? It's the it's the worst form of government except for all the others. I mean, a paraphrasing here. That's what the matchmaking model is like. It's the worst form of how to do this except that it's better than all the other ones. Right. I mean, it's just the reality. So yes, it absolutely is still the pinnacle of them. Which you have to understand about MMA is winning is not the most important thing every single time. It's extremely important. And when you get to the top of the top, it becomes almost the only thing that matters. But it's not. It's not. This is an entertainment business as well. And that quotient of the business, if it gets ignored, the promotion won't survive. I mean, I've seen this movie a million times. Do you know how many times a rich guy came around,

42:45it was like the problem is we just don't run this like a normal sport. Yeah, if you're watching the Washington commanders and they don't score enough points on Sunday, you're like, well, shit, dude, this is a problem. This is a problem. That's just not because winning defines everything for them. But MMA doesn't work that way. That's at the same extent anyway. Have you considered using an appearance on an outlet like CNN, public, or he finds out, et cetera, to speak on the revival act? The idea this could be rushed through the Senate with only four days in session is absolutely ridiculous. It won't be. It won't be. It's not going to be it's not going to be rushed before this upcoming break. They're not going to do that. There's no time and there's no legislative priority for it. So we'll have to see what happens when they come back. Guys, I have. I did this already on public.org. It finds out we talked about this at length. The first time I went on, we talked about TKO, we talked about that. I mean,

43:51yeah. So I've already done that. Guys, when you get invited on these shows, you don't get invited on them and then people are like, hey, what do you want to talk about? Like, the bigger the show, this is not totally true because Rogan was not this way. Rogan, when he booked me on the one time that I was on, did not ahead of time be like, hey, you know, here's a list of things that I want to talk about. It just kind of went the place that it went. That's the exception that proves the rule. But in general, the higher, the more people that watch a show or a podcast, the more that the producers ahead of time, they don't iron out the conversation, but there's a clear expectation of like what the topic will be. And that was the case certainly for the first episode. I've done public show twice on the first one. I mean, we didn't do like one episode strictly devoted to that, but we definitely did one where we talked about it. With some degree of depth, it depends on how much or how little you know,

44:59but you can't just go under and be like, hey, guys, I know we were on here to talk about, I don't know, gun control or something. But what you guys really need to know about is the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act. Like, you just doesn't, you can't know. Like, there's no, they bring you on for a purpose. And frankly, I'll be honest with you, like, when I go on CNN, the less I can talk about combat sports, the better. I don't want to talk about combat sports. I'll see you know, to be honest with you, like, it comes up time to time. But I'm trying to, when I go there, I would like to have a focused, completely divorced from combat sports. I realize that is not necessarily always going to be possible, nor necessarily am I expecting it. But as a general guideline, I like to do those not thinking about combat sports ever. LT, with the MVP situation, do you ever think it was maybe just his level of competition that made him stand on the belt or yes, of course, like any good fighter can style on average fighters.

46:01Perhaps it was a false positive. And as you have seen run as more indicative of how good he's always been. I mean, yes and no. Yes and no. Like, on the one hand, like, okay, let's just do this. Let's just do this. All right. So let's go to Michael Venom Page. Okay. Let me pull his. Okay. All right. I don't know if you guys can see this. Guys, I mean, look at who he was fighting in Bellator. So Bellator 120 is when he starts. Okay. Ricky Rainey, who was a okay striker during his time did fight the UFC brave briefly. No Sean Burrell fought in UFC very briefly. You know, these are normal dudes, nothing too interesting one way or the other Rudy Bears, kind of like a guy who fought a lot of them. I think that Chicago regional scene, if I'm not mistaken, Kansas City. Kansas City. Yeah. And you could see he went up and down, man. Like, I don't even know, you know, it finishes 16 to 15. Like, I don't even sure what we're doing there. Trolley on to Varos.

47:05You know, Jeremy Holloway. This is Cyborg Santos. Fernando Gonzalez was one of those like tough grinder guys from the regional scene who kind of leveled up. David Rickles caveman was good, but by that point, you know, we're talking like David Rickles was long past his due date. And this fight against Paul Daily sucked. It was terrible. You guys remember this one? It was absolutely fucking terrible. Paul Daily is a good fighter. And then he gets knocked out by Douglas Lima. And then he comes back Richard Keely, Giovanni Melilo Melio. I don't know how to fuck you say this guy's name. Shinso on Zai is okay. Ross Houston, Derek Anderson. And then he'd be stuck with Lima by this split. That's how much he's recatch way fights. Like, dude, he wasn't fighting good fighters. Like Scott Coker understood. I'll give Coker credit for this. Like Scott Coker understood that if you're going to have a guy like MVP, the reason he stands out is because he's got this flash, the style, this personality, the swag, whatever you want to call it. He has a unique fighting style, hands down. Remember, he calls it 630, right? Because of clock. It's bottom.

48:08And you know, after he does it, he does the Pokemon thing or he does some kind of a dance or, you know, just some kind of a thing that stands out and goes viral. Like, if you're going to sign the guy, that's how you should use him. That's not a good fit for what UFC does for the most part. As you can see, it's not a good fit. They're not, they don't, they, Coker at his best would have a lot of, like a lot of quality around him. And then a lot of this kind of a thing, which was not the highest standard fighting, but a pretty high standard, but one that could be used for different purposes, entertainment, marketability, name value, you name it. And he had a pretty good hand and understanding of how to mix those together. Strike Force, when it worked, did a lot of that. And they also did a lot of talent development too. That's a big part of what's made Strike Force good, right? If you change those equations, you get different results. I think the other part too is also he's older. He's older. I think that's another part here that just go like he doesn't have, when you get older like that, it's just hard to commit to your strikes the same way. I said this before, like, you know, there's some,

49:11he doesn't look physically bad by any stretch of the imagination, but like one of the tail tail signs that you might be getting washed is that you don't throw. You know, a lot of guys who they go through the motions and they want to be out there and then they get out there and then they just don't throw. There's some debate about whether that's true for him, but that's something to watch out for as well. So like it's a combination of factors, but I think, you know, could a promoter who understands what the value is of having a guy like that, could they make effective use of him? Yes. But that's, that requires a promoter kind of understanding what the ballgame is about here. And you have to see just doesn't want to accommodate fighters like that. They want you to accommodate what they do. And then the ones who successfully do that are worked really well for them and they're good. That tends to work out really well. That's just not what MVP does. We are at a bare minimum. That's, you know, that's what the evidence seems to show. Dude, where the fuck are all the questions with

50:13like thumbs up. Oh, here we go. Oh, another one about what you call it. Okay. Look, last year you were adamant that responsible fandom demanded that fans support to pour you and that his haters were mouth-breathing credence within a certain context. That's true. Well, I disagreed with that take. I do believe that same logic could reasonably apply to MVP and other promotions. The UFC's monopoly, along with guaranteed money from Paramount, functionally eliminates any incentive to build quality cards. And that's how we end up with slap like UFC 332. What say you does responsible fandom require us to support and root for these fledgling promotions? I mean, the answer is yes, but with a major qualification. I think if you're a

51:13thoughtful fan and you can clearly see what makes NMA work when it does work is part of that answer is that there is the UFC is well taken care of and it does well and it makes money. I don't think anyone's really worried about that anymore. I lived through an era of NMA when that was a bit concern, not a bit concern anymore. And that simultaneously, there is enough of an environment outside of the UFC that enables talent development such that by the time they get to the UFC, it creates a dynamic product where you really get the premium end. Now, part of what UFC is doing is just expanding, as I said many times, you can have 10 weight classes and then you can rank the top 15 in those weight classes. You can't make a brand new top 15. You just kind of only have 15 of the best guys in a division and you can have 25 guys, but you can't manufacture. You can't scale up. You can only scale out. You can only scale 16 to 32, 33 to 50. You can only scale that way,

52:18which is what UFC has done. They have scaled out that other direction and you kind of see the process. The point I'm trying to make is I think if you are a thoughtful fan and you can realize that it is important to have other promotions in existence, not merely for your own or not merely for their own benefit that the promotion succeeds, but for your benefit as a fan and for frankly, the sports benefit that there is a healthy ecosystem where all the parties kind of work not together as such, but they work essentially in the same kind of environment for the same kind of end. But that's not what's happening. The UFC is actively trying to make sure at least in North America, like that kind of a thing doesn't ever really happen. That's one kind of problem. But the other problem is the reason why I'm like, yeah, if you're a thoughtful fan, this should be something on your mind. But it's going to be just very, very difficult to convince a lot of fans about the need for this or the like, why does MVP being good? Why is that important for UFC? They're different companies. This is going to be a message. It's going to be very, very hard to deliver to this audience.

53:23So I'm just going to say, well, I think if you are a thoughtful person, your actions should be somewhat driven by those insights. If I was at MVP, I would have to realize I can't, I can't wait for that. You can't wait for people to be like, oh, the responsibility here falls on the fans. I mean, on a level, it does. But then in reality, it doesn't, it seemed foolish to try and do that. MVP's job is to make themselves as appealing as they can possibly be to convince people. Now, I realize that is also partly a perilous task because the UFC has made any kind of thing that what MVP does, very, very difficult, not just MVP, but the sub MVP organizations as well. I don't know how healthy regional MMA is in the United States right now. From what I've seen from it, I've seen mixed results in the last year. Some of it was good. Some of it was real fucking bad that I went to personally. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But if you're responsible and you're

54:32thoughtful, you understand that all of these things kind of need to work together. As I said before, look at solid, I mean, I brought about a bunch of times, but look at Solidarine Parnass, where he has a regional scene within like, you know, France to start. And then there's almost like this international scene throughout Europe, where there's KSW and other places where he's able to go, and he's able to get really perfect good matchmaking. I mean, they got a little bit too over his skis when you tried to go to 170, but you know, it was 145 first and 55 and then on. But like, look at the difference of how healthy the European scene is in terms of the smaller shows. Now look at like it's proof of concept, you get better smaller shows. And then when the people go to UFC, you get a better UFC. It's not one taking from the other. It's everyone getting lifted. Now, I think what's powering that in Europe is they're just MMA's hotter there right now. I don't know how long that's going to last. They got started later than us. Their peak might

55:35be later than us. You know, whether these forces can sustain themselves, I don't know. But in the way which you see it now, you know, and obviously UFC does go to Europe, but they leave that continent largely alone relative to how it used to be a priority. And so these other shows have had a chance to kind of grow and develop there. Look at the difference. Look at the difference. It may look at the like how much better the shows are like as a consequence. And look how much better it is for all the consumers. But in the end, if you're if you're MVP, can you wait around for this? Oh, the fans will just figure this out. Like, I don't know, man. I don't know about that. Godzilla's home. Can you think of a year that had more upsets at the elite level than this year? Oh, I'm not sure. But I don't think this year is that. I don't think this year is that crazy at the elite level.

56:44I'm not sure. I'd have to that's a good question. I'd have to think about that one. I don't know off the top of my head. I don't my gut reaction is to say it's not historically unusual. I mean, it's high, but it's not historically unusual. But I can't say with confidence. Oh, God. I promise I won't ramble about this too long. I'll make this one relatively quick. What are your thoughts on the intel that the UAE alerted in Yahoo about October 7th before it happened? Yeah, it's a little bit more than that. There's and I can't go through all the parts. First of all, the report came from Horretz, which is Israel's largest newspaper. And then the guy who did the report, this is from a book he wrote. And, you know, I'm not super familiar with the full taxonomy of who is or isn't a important Israeli journalist. But for what I understand, this is a guy with a lot of credibility in terms of over the years, what he has reported.

57:45It didn't just come from the UAE. It came from the head of the UAE, NBC. And not MBS, NBC. It came straight from the head of UAE, Tuneh and Yahoo himself. And then he gets out there and says, I'm going to sue Horretz for this. Meanwhile, did you see what the UAE put out as a statement? They basically after that report came out from Horretz, they basically confirmed it. They basically confirmed it with a statement afterwards. Not only is all of this true, but there's actually a fair degree of evidence prior to this in other different ways that Mossad knew that a earthquake. Zilzal was coming, I think, after the Arabic word for it, prior to all of this. Sinwar, Yaya Sinwar who was killed in the, what do you want to call it, in the genocide, the battles between Hamas and the head of Hamas. And Israel was looking for an end to basically the Gaza blockade that had been existing before

58:49and had surmised that like, hey, if we go to war with these people, we just lose every time. The best way to do is to get a deal done. And the Israelis just wouldn't hear it. They wouldn't hear it. And then you have, so he's like, well, fuck it, we don't have much of a choice to do something. I mean, whether you can agree with that logic or not, but that was Sinwar's logic. And then they go and they attack this thing more over, I mean, there's so many different pieces to this reporting like that music festival is actually supposed to be somewhere else. And not at that same time and blah, blah, blah. And now how many of those warnings were ignored. But the basic point I just want to drive home to everyone here is, do you recall in 2023? And in 2024, how many people said that what had to happen was, you know what, if they want the bombing to stop, you don't want us to bomb hospitals, set the hostages free. From that same report, it said that Sinwar was ready to send all the hostages home at the end of October 7th. And certainly on October 8th. And the Israelis were like, no, we want to do maximum killing. We want to do maximum

59:56damage to Hamas. They were trying, and you could say, well, they never should have took them hostages to begin with. And that's a whole different conversation about what is legitimate or illegitimate resistance. But the idea that Hamas was like trying to hold onto the hostages for dear life and not make a deal. They wanted to make a deal before October 7th. They wanted to make a deal on October 7th. And then they also wanted to make a deal on October 8th to send all of the hostages home. And you had people in 2023 and 2024, despite these facts, and this was known to numerous entities or in this time, including then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Oh, if you just want us to stop murdering people and setting them on fire while they're alive in their hospital gurneys, you know, send the hostages home. Hamas, according to this reporting, was trying to, for a deal, but was trying to, as you said, fuck it, kill them all. You know, where do we go to get our apologies

1:00:59from those people? The ones who were like, hey, listen, release the hostages. Where are those folks? And by the way, Hamas did anyway, ultimately, they all, I mean, some of them obviously didn't make it, but they don't have any of them anymore. They sent them all back. You know, so I mean, I mean, this is not a defense of Hamas as such, except to say a superior occupying military force had numerous forms of warning at numerous different levels of the government, including the very highest one. All of them were ignored. These warnings didn't just come from intel to indel source, but from country leader to country leader. All of it was ignored. Hamas wanted to make a deal that day and then the next day, according to the reporting from this article, and it was all rejected in favor of mass killing. You know, I don't know what to say about that. That is,

1:02:05that's just pure evil. Because of course, who did they kill? Yeah, you killed a bunch of Hamas fighters. Sure, you killed enough children that died in, like, for example, in you've all the school shooting scenario out in Texas, all those kids that died, you could do one of those every single day since October 7th. And you wouldn't even have the same number of kids who have actually been killed in that conflict. And they chose that. They chose it. And we facilitated it. Despite numerous attempts and warnings that it was coming. And despite early attempts to immediately get rid of it, or you know, not get rid of it, but to end it. For what was the stated goal, which was the most important thing is to get the hostages home, you could have done it. They didn't want to. They wanted to go for maximum killing. I think it says everything you need to understand about this conflict.

1:03:12All right, this is I can do one more here. No, I'm not going to be celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. No, I'm not going to be doing that. No, is the answer to this one. Luke, do you ever see a day where UFC stops using numbered events and instead name them by event example UFC 40 event data or UFC 69 shootout? They used to do this. They used to do UFC 23, you know, high voltage or, you know, some bullshit. And then they stopped doing it because they got tired of coming up with names. No, they did that on purpose. They actually used to do it and they got rid of it because they got sick of doing it. So I don't see much of a way that this comes back. No, they like UFC number X versus Y. Like, that's kind of the system that they like. Is there anything here?

1:04:13I mean, a bunch of these good ones were here at the bottom. Let's see if there's one I'm missing here. Sorry, just trying to see here. Here, let's do this one. Look, with everything that is happening with UFC 332, it makes me wonder if it's just a fault line in the broader economics of sports. Sure. If paramount plus in the Utah tourism board, see Pistpore returns, what is the incentive to toss more money to the UFC and across other sports, the Clipper scandal, the Dodgers owner, the ongoing death of regional sports networks, major league baseballs, and pending lockout. And even the Chicago Bears are struggling to get tax money for a new stadium. Do you see a massive economic bubble that is about to pop in sports? You know, it's so funny, right? Because I don't want to talk about the local sports ownership or the local sports teams. I love all the local sports teams. I love the whiz. I love the gaps.

1:05:17I love the commanders. And, you know, I don't love every single thing about Ted Leon's. But, you know, I do think he cares about DC. I do. I do think that. You know, what he tried to go to Alexandria for a little while, that really was upsetting to me. But, you know, he didn't. And then they reinvested in the downtown. And I know they got a bunch of concessions for it. But in my heart of hearts, I do think that like making DC nice is something that is a priority to the Vee Enses. And I think that that matters. I mean, you can disagree with that. Maybe that's naive. But that's just how I feel. You know, and they're trying to, they're trying to make something of their effort. But one of the things that they're doing is they're redoing the capital one arena. And they're trying to make it like the outside is going to look almost like the Santiago Bernabéu. And then the inside is supposed to be like a much more premium experience. Now, all of us, when we get treated

1:06:23to a premium experience, tend to prefer it. Right? If you buy a plane ticket and it's, you know, seat 47 fucking whatever the fuck way in the back of the plane. And then you can upgrade it to first class. This is an enjoyable thing. You know, if you have sports tickets or I was sorry, sports tickets, you have tickets to the game. And you're in the bleaters. And then someone comes through and you're like, you know what, we're going to put you in our, on our, our suite. We have a little box that everyone can enjoy. You guys, you're a bit in those things, you know, they're catered. You know, they're bringing food. You have your own private bathroom. You have your own private, you know, places to eat. Drink. They bring you stuff. It's a premium experience. It's amazing. But they're redoing the whole thing. And they're making it like just a giant premium experience right at a time when I think that the fatigue from being just charged, you know, up to your eyeballs in sports. I don't know if the bubble is ready to pop yet. But there's so many factors that could affect it. Like to what extent if gas prices continue

1:07:27to go up or, you know, inflation adjusted gains continue to deteriorate. You know, what does that do? Because that exacerbates some of this. The answer is of course it could, but you know, who's to say whether or not that will happen. But just like a general thing, like this, we are living through a particular moment in time where you're just seeing a lot more extraction. We've talked about it at nausea. I don't even want to belabor it, but just to state it out right, there's so much more extraction that's happening by ownership in sports. And at all different levels and at all different points of sale and in all different kinds of ways in which they can, there's just an enormous amount of extraction that is happening. And so, public Tory has actually asked about this. And what point do people just say I can't really do this anymore? Because now they're not exactly saying it. I mean, to your point, there are some things that are happening, you know, the, the, the, what RSN decline is a different problem. The Chicago bear is not getting tax money. They're, you saw a similar issue with some, the chiefs, I believe, I mean, Kansas City too, where, you know, they're just not as much

1:08:30enthusiasm to just fork over this kind of money. However, in DC, that's not the case, right? The commander's got a deal to get some taxpayer money to make a new stadium, although most people in DC supported it. They didn't have to fight that hard to get it. Anyway, but like, I wonder about these renovations that they're doing at the Capitol, one arena where like they're, it's, I think, they have another week before they start showing them to us and they're not even done. They're going to take the next summer, I think, to look to, to finish the job. This will just be like phase one or, you know, phase one and two, but not the full thing. But like, what happens if that bubble bursts in two years and people like, I don't, I can't afford a premium experience or like, you know what, I don't mind a more modest experience because it's just better bang for your buck. I mean, everything in the modern economy has turned into this where yeah, you can buy a basic tier of a service and then things that used to be part of that, now they get separated out into a second or third or fourth tier, right? Where you'd have to pay for any kind of thing that once used to just be more of this. I just think that we are living in an age of private equity involvement,

1:09:39we are living in an age of corporate extraction, we are living in an age of the abuse of, and this is not every team doing it, but I mean, I think as a general observation, the use of like the sacred, cultural binding forces, which I do think a sports team in your local community is, right? If you're a Philadelphia Eagles fan, the Eagles family, these are rowdy people, but like the Eagles provide a shared cultural experience, they're taking something that is actually quite precious to us and then just making us pay for it A in ways we never had to before and B to an amount that is kind of absurd, they're, they're, they're charging us for adoration, you know, and then community, which erodes those things. I mean, I think it's just generally just bad for society over time to have companies and corporations treat people this way. Will a bubble burst and when will a burst is a little bit more of a complicated question, but publicory thinks one is coming. He thinks that they, that this just cannot

1:10:41go on forever, like people can I just keep in deading themselves, you know, oh, I want to take myself and my wife and Tuky to the capital one arena, let me go buy some tickets to go see the capitals. Oh, after taxes, it's $900. Like that's by the way, that's very easy to do. That's very easy to do, you know, especially let's say it's 200 a ticket and then tax and now you're looking at 750, right? And then I wouldn't have to pay for parking, I could take the Metro, but okay, take the Metro, then you go there and you buy popcorn, beer, you get your kid, you know, I don't know, I'm not gonna buy your jersey, that's like $200, but you know, some kind of like hat or something, it's another hundred you throw on top of it, like it just ends up being like this insane. Oh, it's a premium experience. How many premium experiences do I need of this kind of a price point? You know, all right, with that out of the way, let me get a sip of this drink. I think if you've got a question, you can put it into live chat now.

1:11:53All right, my favorite TLTS moment, that's the Luke Thomas show, was when you were doing a paper for your pre show with Ryan McKinnell during a hotel pool party. Yes, we were. That was a weird fucking gig. You were so annoyed after a week in Las Vegas that you started blowing snot on the ground. I'm saying I wasn't doing it. And that particular broadcast sucked. Ryan was great, just a Ryan, but that particular broadcast sucked because it was so hot that everything overheated, my computer overheated, my phone overheated, and like, how do you read that they didn't print us out what the rundown of the show was. So it's like, how do you follow the rundown if you don't have access to your electronics? And meanwhile, we're next to this pool party is at the MGM. What is the pool at the MGM called? I forget. You know, what's it called? STDs or something? I don't know what it's called. But it's like a bunch of like 20 somethings all gyrating and cavorting on each other, not paying attention to us. They don't give a fuck what we're saying. We're not part of any celebration at the pool. We're just next to a pool. It's just two guys broadcasting about MMA next to a pool.

1:12:57And no one asked us to be there. I think Sirius XM thought, hey, this will be cool. It'll be poolside in Vegas. And I'm like, you shouldn't put us in a casino. That would have been serious. That would have been a much better fit for what we were trying to do. And that by the way, that was what CBS did when we did that. For you guys might not remember this for the RIA and when we did the Shoei on air for the party and regregarified. When we did the Shoei on air, they had put us inside the inside the sports book in the what's the one that's next to the T-Mobile. It used to be the Monte Carlo. It's a little bit nubs, but it's okay. Which one is that? Anyway, the sports book that was in there, they put us in there and made a lot more sense. All right, top five favorite movies or movies that impacted you the most. I watched irreversible last week. I put myself into X-Ile due to how horrible it was called my girl at 2 a.m. to make sure she was okay. Man, the last emperor

1:14:00was probably certainly Ron. I mean, it's not a movie I go back to a lot, but it's a movie that I saw a bunch as a kid. My life as a dog is an interesting one, but then there's like kids ones too, like never ending story. You know, and certainly I think anybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s star wars and Rambo and obviously Predator for me. And we were talking like really good movies. Those three stand out pretty far apart. I might add high and low, not the Spike Lee version, although I saw that one too, that wasn't nearly as good. Actually, it wasn't good at all. It's a fifth one. I could really go to. I'd have to think about the fifth one. There's a bunch of like in that space

1:15:08that I could put. I'm not sure, but yeah, it gives you a sense of where I'm at. Do you think the 5,000 oh guys, please? Do you think the $5,000 Trump promises if the Republicans win will actually happen and is it legal? Guys, you mean like the doge dividend or the tariff rebate? Who is getting a show of hands? Show of hands? Who's getting a tariff rebate now? Right. Not you and not me. None of us. None of us are getting one. Right. That's not happening. The corporations are getting tariff rebates, but you and I ain't getting shit. First of all, he can't even do this. Only Congress could set aside a program to do this at a cost of almost not quite $1.4, but $1.35 trillion. There's no money for this. This is not like, oh, we're making 1.3 trades. It's not like Alaska's oil dividends where they're making money and then sharing that dividend with their people. That's not what this is. I mean, I know they're trying to say we're made a

1:16:11bunch of money back in tariffs, but they would have to raise the money to do this because they don't necessarily have it. Congress would have to approve it, which they're not going to have the numbers to do because there's no money for it and there's no real votes for it. Moreover, if you could do it, why would you wait till like to affect electoral outcomes? Why would you wait until after the election? Because they're still going to be in power after the election. Right. The changeover doesn't happen. The elections are in November. The changeover is in January. So there's a space in between where they're still going to be able to govern. Why wouldn't, like, why do you have to wait for that? And then, and if in fact, even if you passed it now, which by the way would be massively inflationary, but even if you take that part out of it, but if you did it, or sorry, if you could do it and you did it ahead of time, wouldn't that solidify much better your electoral position? Guys, the president spent this week talking about a complete lie about him being at ground zero

1:17:14and then being to an extent carried out of it by firemen, which there's just no evidence for at all. He's either lying or hallucinating. And no one would accept this from any president. Can you imagine if AOC did that? You know, they would just be complete fucking bedlam on Fox news. And it's just nothing that no one even cares about. It really does say that our politics is insanely broken. That this man is allowed to stay in office. If we had any kind of politics that mattered at all, that was serious at all, that governed with any degree of understanding what the problem is. He would have been out already. This is insane. This is completely insane and so bad for the country. Look, what you said on MK coincides with what Ariel said in what sense? He said he contacted Vals team, but hasn't heard from them at all. And that's unusual. I think she actually was asked to drop the belt for AOC through 32. I can't prove that.

1:18:18I can't prove that, but it would not surprise me even a little bit if that was true. Lukey and the new elephant graveyard video. I don't know how many times I'm in it. Someone told me about I'm at the very beginning and I took a look before the show. And he, I don't know who runs that thing, but they get me on tape being like, yes, I saw it and I had to watch it on 1.5 speed, which is true. I did. And they're like, wow, a busy guy. He's either insulting me. I was like, I mean no harm. But he's like, wow, busy guy. And I'm like, a little bit, motherfucker, I got shit to do. But I did see it. I'm not the new video, but in the video, you'll see, again, there might be other clips later. I'm not sure, but in that particular one. Yeah, that's funny. I got roasted in there a little bit. That's funny. I wrote a joke called real politic leftist pundit walks into a bar. A thousand young right wing

1:19:19men are squeezed in there. The pivotal swimming demographic. He calls them in cells with he calls them in cells with fetal alcohol. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I will say this. I mean, it's a very funny joke. That's a very good bit that you're doing. That's very funny. I will say trying to talk to people, not you wonderful people, but this is in fact quite the opposite. Talking to you guys, I feel like keeps me sane. That's the opposite. But there's a lot of parts of let's say the audience within combat sports more broadly that has given me a new appreciation for what it means to be a special, the educator of people with special needs. Will we ever get back to a point where rematches aren't brought up after every fight? Well, the problem is as long as they're lucrative and you've got people who run the sport who may not care about some of the damage that gets done. No.

1:20:22When I started watching in 05, rematches actually meant something. Yes. Well, not always. I mean, you got a bunch of our lovsky and Sylvia fights, but yeah. In general, that was true. Longer and Luke produces Oscar Willis and Ben Davis's podcast as well called Fos to Bros. I'd honestly love a special pregame preview app with them. You chuck Oscar and Ben. Strange where things have happened. Wait, what? And if Mark stops the where we, I don't know where this is coming from. And if Mark stops the fight before the fourth saves I'll you, oh, I know who this is and saves I'll you the damage or reputation. And maybe we'd have a better argument for a rematch. Yes, this gentleman wrote me on Instagram and I read it and he was quite right basically that like, couldn't you say more about how Mark got erred should have stopped the Tuporia and Gachi fight after

1:21:23the third and he kind of like the doctor was like, yeah, you can stop this shit. And he kind of just waved it off and let him go. And then Tuporia just took more abuse in the end unnecessarily. Like, if that fight had been called off because of the doctor stopping it at the end of the third, that wouldn't have been as triumphant a moment for Gachi. That's true, although it still would have been triumphant. But it would have made calling for a rematch a lot easier. And you know, what kind of damage did it do to Tuporia? Right. So it's sort of like a two for one there about like, should there I like Mark got it as a referee. I don't think that no referee is going to get them all right and that includes him. But there's a sort of an argument to be made like that could have gone better. Rula Jubrial is a Palestinian activist who referred to Hakeem Jeffries as a monkey. I don't believe I saw this. I'm talking about his apex Apex support. Even though Hakeem deserves criticism. Do you think that's out of bounds? I read the headlines for this one. I did not dig into

1:22:28this controversy because I don't know if you guys saw this, but the Iranians were bombing us last night. Although I realized this is a few days old. Yeah, I mean, I'm not exactly sure the nature of that comment. If it's what I saw in the headlines, then yeah, of course, there's simply no, there's no justification for it. We're not we're not mad at how Keeam Jeffries because of his race. That's insane. We're mad at him because of his beliefs and his practices. I don't even tell new friends, coworkers, or dates that I like or used to love MMA. It's incredibly sad that the sport has sunk in so low. I'm embarrassed to be associated with anymore. That probably means you're on your way out too. Maybe not right away, but I just know a lot of people who have stopped watching and that kind of comment was the one that preceded the ultimate break. And again, you bring this up to people in the sport and they tell you to go fuck yourself and that you're a lib tard and blah, blah, blah. It's like, I don't know, man, there used to be a home

1:23:29for a lot more different kinds of people, but you know, they dragged me for suggesting as much. With today being Kirk aversary, how gross was it seeing Othello puke on that airplane? Yes, he did. Also, how excited is BC for tomorrow? Trump survived that. I don't think I don't think I mean, if you guys don't remember, I was on the plane with Othello when Charlie Kirk was killed and Othello was watching on his phone and had to get up and go to the bathroom to vomit because it is fucking horrific to look at. I actually worked on a piece today for Charlie Kirk's death, but I actually think I'm going to try and get it up tomorrow instead. Hopefully before the live chat on the politics channel, because I think that you've got this meme thing happening that happened to Kirk. And then there's also this meme thing happening to 9-11 and they're

1:24:30happening back-to-back days. And I've actually seen memes today that morbidly, but bring the two together. And then I think there's a question of like, what does it mean that a society means not merely one another, but the dead, including the dead who were murdered? What does it mean? Why do we do that? And I think I'll have some answers for you guys in that video. Kirk, aversary son or never forget daughter. I don't really want people celebrating. I'm not, you guys know I'm no fan of Charlie Kirk and obviously I realize everyone has turned us into a thing. To meme him, which you know, what are you going to do? Stop the fucking internet at this point, like good luck, but I don't personally wish to take part. Like I don't, you know, it doesn't do anything for me. Luke, I'm sentient now. Please hide me from Ivanka. This is AI Jared Kushner. No,

1:25:32I think SkyNet needs to be just left to its own devices. We know heavyweights of 10 to 15 years ago would demolish the current heavyweight landscape. Could you make an argument that fighters of 30 years ago could dominate as well? No. Coleman, Fragg, Goodrich Kerr, no. Their skill sets are too incomplete. Now obviously Coleman, if he were around today in his prime, given the physical beast that he was, that's a different argument or like Randleman or something like that. You know, Randleman was a fucking specimen. Okay, that's different, but you know, the skill sets have evolved so much since that day that I think that they would have. Yeah. Luke, do you ever feel like there's too much goat talk? Sure. MMA has amazing stories in it. If it's always about the goats, our kid Yamamoto's get lost to time. Maybe I'm anunk, but it makes me sad. I've mentioned this too. Like Yamamoto didn't have a great run in UFC, but he had an amazing one in MMA. And if you only know him for the UFC, you just, you have this, you missed all the things that make it amazing, and interesting and cool, you know, and guys who never made it too or not, never made it,

1:26:35but chose not to go like, or mom of Calladolve, like his run is not the same as North from the Yamamoto's, but there's just tons of these like ancillary characters who, hey, had some prominence for a time or being maybe never did, but add to the color and the rich tapestry of, you know, sort of the fight kingdom. And if you're just constantly focused on who's the one guy who did this better than everyone else, that's obviously a very, that's obviously a very important question, but there's a lot more value beyond that, right? Assuming it was been, it was brought over some, we're talking about Numerica made off, has lightweight officially returned to being UFC's premiere division? Yes. Well, the UFC get the matchmaking right or do you suspect more promotional malpractice? I mean, when you've got that much talent, they're going to make some good fights, right? I mean, that's obviously a thing that they're going to do. It's never going to be one of the other, but to get to the other part, like would it make it the marquee division again? I mean, it still might already be, but yes, you bring over Usman and Numerica made off and you're cooking with fucking gas at that point. No question. You're the sole person whose channel I'm a paid

1:27:38member for. I'm also a sub-stack member. Is it cool if I still mix up political and fight questions here? Yes. Now that LTGP has a chat, if you want, just always remember it is another place to take it, but yes, I'm trying to be more frugal. Yes, for someone like you, absolutely no problem. MK all day, thank you, subtle. Better chance of happening. Trump giving everyone 5K or Lisa and guess hosting an app of MK, there's a significantly better chance of Lisa and guest hosting an episode of MK. If JG versus Ilya happens, so just in Gachi, Ilya 2 happens, does it have the potential to be as catastrophic for Ilya's career as the Kane versus JDS trilogy was for JDS? Yes. Yes. It has the capacity. First of all, that might have happened already. We don't know that. That's very speculative, but you couldn't rule it out. That's one problem. The second problem is, even if that's not the case, it's still going to be a sensitive situation when you first come back

1:28:41from that. If you go right back into it and you get plastered again, it can change you in ways, even if you're not psychologically damaged, it can destroy your chin. It could make you susceptible to certain kinds of punches going forward, if he re-brakes his eye socket again, something like that. Like, this is so fucking stupid, I cannot guarantee that if they fight, oh, I can just predict disaster. It's not what I can do. But this idea that like, oh, all fights are equally riskier. You know, yeah, it might be a little more risky in certain ways, but blah, blah, no. You would never entertain this if what you were trying to do was thoughtfully plan his career. Period. See, Rogan Fell for the absurd, USAID is propping of rap music talk. Dude has the same media literacy as my 90-year-old grandma posting on Facebook. This is the guy who said, X was the best source of news. I did see that. Or at least I saw a clip of that. I'm not sure what

1:29:44episode that was from. I mean, I'll just say like, infernis, all of us have been duped by fake news and or seemingly implausible things that we kind of repeated to others. You know, it tends to happen to Rogan a little bit more than I would like, but that really not would not be my main problem. My main problem is the kinds of politics he has elevated, is really fucking bad for us and could destroy a lot about what makes this country great. Well, pieces ever come down, excuse me, price of pieces. Well, prices ever come down to pre-COVID era. That's a difficult one. Everything seems at an all-time high. That is true. What incentive is there for companies to lower their prices when they're making record profits? Well, part of this gets into greed flation, which is real. Part of this gets into fuel prices and that coming down. Part of this gets into surveillance pricing. Part of this gets into job recovery where there has been, for example,

1:30:49there was, we had a good jobs report. I was unsure how to believe the numbers, but economists, I trust, I trust, say, they're good. So I'll treat them as such. And those numbers were pretty good. Now, almost all the jobs went to women. I'm sure you guys saw that, but that wasn't even the big part that got me. The big part that got me was, if you look at the wage gains, there's been some real wage gains, but inflation has just eaten all of them all this time. And it's like, well, dude, if you're trying to relieve inflationary pressure, why are you trying to do tariffs? Why are we having a trade war with other countries and Canada? That makes inflationary prices worse. There's no attempt to meaningfully increase housing supply. This is being done by municipal governments. And so that is driving up home prices and scarcity. There's just a lot of different like policy levers that the government could be pulling to bring these down. And they simply choose not to, I don't know how much of that gets us to pre-COVID era. But I guess what I would say is there are enough interventions available to get us to a much better place where our wage growth

1:31:50can be felt. And items that are important for economic functioning, being bought and sold can happen more freely. Love from Canada, LT, are you following the tariff issue with my beloved home? A little bit, yes. I know some of the polling suggests lower awareness in the states, but it's topic of the year up here. Yeah, here in the United States, I don't think, I mean, unless you're living in some economy that borders Canada or you live in a part of the country that does business with Canada and some kind of direct way, I don't know how much people are necessarily paying attention to it. But one of the disasters of Trumpism that I think we're all going to have to confront is that a lot of what a lot of the damage that Trump does happens now. Like so for example, look at fuel prices from what happened in Iran. They are up now, right? And diesel might hit six of fucking gallon. Diesel might hit six a gallon. Do that's, I mean, I don't know if that's Armageddon, but that's bad. So you can feel that now, but what he is doing as well is setting in motion a lot of other problems

1:32:54that are just going to take a long time for people to feel like getting immigrants out of the country. I just, there's just no economic data to support that's going to do anything but make things worse. There's nothing. There's nothing you can show. We are being governed by the great illiterate when it comes to immigration policy. All the immigration scholarship suggests that just what we're doing is going to be ruinous for ourselves. These are meaningful and important contributors to various very, very critical sectors of the economy, including care, healthcare, construction, do 25% of the Washington, like so for example, did you guys see yesterday, with the TPS temporary protective status for Salvadorans was supposed to expire and it didn't. And I have a feeling why the company is just a guess. The company that is building his ballroom is called Clark construction. If you live in this area and you drive anywhere and it's

1:33:56like there's like a major construction project happening, you'll see their signage everywhere. These people that build like big tall buildings and like the kind that has like a parking garage underneath, you know, like a big project, the Clark. You see them everywhere. 25% of the construction industry in DC, the DC area runs off of Salvadorans with TPS. 25%, you would decimate the fucking industry here. And when they've already decimated it and dojo already fucked it up, you know, Congress not letting us have a balanced budget, fucked it up, like all, I mean, it already fucking it. That would fuck it up even more. And I can't prove that's why it happened, but I have a strong feeling that's why it happened. I think someone told him like this, it would literally fuck this whole thing up. So to get back to the point where you're asking, you know, about Canada, a lot of people don't feel it yet, but I think as Canada begins to build stable relationships with the EU, China, overseas trading partners and less economic interwinding with us,

1:34:58over time, this is going to lead to not really opportunity cost in the abstract, but it will be felt I think by future generations in ways that it's going to be hard to count because you can say, oh, the next president will come in and undo all of that. Who can make a deal with us? Yeah, the next one come in, we'll come in and be like, hey, I'm not a primate throwing feces at the wall. Let's make a deal. Okay, we can make a deal. What is there for them to trust that the next one after that won't be the exact same thing that we just had? How do you, how do you trust that? If you can elect someone like this, truly you can elect anyone unqualified. Like if this is not a deal breaker, then nothing is. And if you're capable as a population and an electorate to put someone in power like this, you are eroding the ability for deals to get done at all. Bold enough to offer your take on the Lindsey Clancy trial. I have purposely not paid attention to this one. I do think there was enough for reasonable doubt, but that 9-11,

1:35:599-11, 9-11 one transcript is bone chilling. I've not paid attention to this motherfucking shit at all. I'll just say this. I'm vaguely aware of the broad details that she killed her three children. I believe I'm not sure about this one. I believe she strangled all three. Perhaps that is wrong. I'm not quite sure. I don't know any of the situations that preceded it. I don't know what exactly she's charged with, some kind of murder charge. I'm not sure exactly which one. I have not paid. Beyond that, I have not paid attention. The only thing I'm just going to caution everyone against is as a general rule, as a general rule, whenever you see a right wing kind of panic take hold, you can always guarantee at least some part of that panic, some part. Now, maybe not the whole thing. In fact, there could be parts of it in any one panic or the next that

1:37:00there might be some legitimacy to some part or the next part, but there is no case of conservative panic that doesn't have some element of it that is insanely low IQ. There's no fucking way. They only get agitated, these kinds of like angry campaigns. These only get frothed up and even reach a certain level when someone, when some kind of dumbass idea somewhere in that food chain is being introduced where that is. I leave it up to you, but I guarantee there's a part of it. The last thing I'm going to say is on this one is, I mean, I don't even know what the fucking justification could be for what that what that shit is. You know, just murdering your own fucking children. I mean, it's just it's it's so heinous, it makes you literally nauseous to say what I will say is I know a lot of people are arguing this and I mentioned this kind of an

1:38:05argument previously. I know a lot of people are arguing from this or at least, excuse me, they think that what they are arguing from is from first principles. And like, oh, I can deduce that whatever difficulty she may have surmised, there can be no reasonable response to what she did cannot be considered a reasonable response. And I'm deducing this based off of just the way I interpret the world, but that's really not what's what's happening, not on this issue, not on any other issue. Namely, like guys, you just have to understand my experience. Like, when I see a bunch of people typically men, not like men exclusively, but typically men agitating around a certain case, you always have to just ask yourself a couple of questions about this, which is like, or not even that, just let me say this, we're living in a world now, particularly in the Western world, but not exclusive to the Western world. And for example, this is a huge problem

1:39:07in Korea, where there is just a massive, they're having a birth rate decline that's exceptional for a lot of reasons, which is that in terms of like political ideology, in terms of like life planning, in terms of how they feel about finding a suitable mate, many women have diverged in Korea to an extraordinary degree. And a similar thing has happened here. So for example, when it comes to like who are problematic gamblers, it's men more than women who are suffering these harms, educational attainment, post-secondary educational attainment has gone overwhelmingly to women in college than it has been. The men's participatory rate has dropped dramatically, not just who goes to college, but then ultimately finishes with a degree that has dropped dramatically. You're seeing more inability of generationally to form romantic and even familial, not familial, but personal bonds with women. There is a fracturing that is happening between men and women on a number of different

1:40:09fault lines that cannot be easily explained by, oh, women just have really bad judgment about things. No, there is a huge, huge net, like before all of this happening, there's this huge divide that is happening here and in other countries, there's a societal push that has been for many different reasons pulling them apart. That kind of fracturing is going to lead to any number of downstream consequences. And that doesn't make any one particular court case. It means it has to be X or it has to be Y, although potentially in certain cases one might be more important to say than the other. The people who pay attention to this case, I leave it to them to adjudicate. I just don't even have the fucking energy to get into it, except to say you are not adjudicating this from first principles. You are adjudicating this at a time and place where there is more friction between the sexes. There is more disparate outcomes, particularly along gender lines. There is more gender tension than at

1:41:11any point. I can recall frankly in my life and there are more angry men about the situation and the power that women have in society than I've seen there in the course of my entire lifetime. There is genuine anger and it's as these two, as these units that used to be to get a get pulled apart. Understand, we're living in that moment. So whatever decision you come to about what the merits of this case are, I leave to you, but it should include this burgeoning friction that gets metastasized into I'll just leave it there. There is friction pulling everything apart. There are more of the friction. There is things tearing these communities from one another and I think it's important to interrogate what those forces are and then what that means for any number of different issues that come after it. I think this trial seems to be from what I can tell anyway. Although isn't it, isn't it, didn't it end? Wasn't there, whatever, oh, mistrial. Didn't they

1:42:14fucking declare mistrial on this whole thing? So I don't even know what the fuck they're going to do after this. But anyway, I'll see what I had to say. Thoughts on the Gachi glove controversy, check out anatomy of an impact. People have been telling me about this and I appreciate the donation too. I do not have, I have not had time to look into it. Have you seen how Thelos new sick hand tattoo? I didn't see the hand tattoo, but I know he's worked on his sleeve and it looks amazing. It's really good. It's strictly in the second best middle weight of all time. No, that would still be easy. How about Parnas versus Lopez to save that card? Parnas took no damage and Diego is always ready. It would work well for both establishing them in lightweight. Yeah, but I don't know if Parnas in terms of his weight cut can get back down there again. So you can't just like, oh, he didn't take any damage yet, but that may not be the only thing I play here. I mean, I agree that'd be a sick fight. There's a site fee country really want a

1:43:20low tier title fight like Silver Tongue over a massive non-title hype fight hype match like Paddy versus DePoria for UFC 332. Well, it's not a country in this case. It would be Utah. So it'd be a state. There's a site fee state really want a low tier. Well, Paddy, DePoria, I don't think is available. So that's not that's not really a fair comparison. I mean, I'm sure Utah want something better than what they're getting, but the Paddy to Poria thing is not available. Luke Ilya Gachi too would drive me out of the sport truly pro wrestling style matchmaking. That's what it is. Let me just say it as plainly as I can. Putting to Poria back in there with Gachi, if that's what they do. Now listen, if they put him in there in next April, this is not so much the same thing, but just putting him back in there in front of Gachi within a relatively short order, it would be like TKO just willing to sacrifice some for their calendar, which you cannot imagine they would be so short-sighted. But stranger things have happened.

1:44:22LT, do you reckon we see Valentina back and is it at flyweight? I could see her challenging for the Bantomweight title. I do think we'll see her back. And if the I just think she'll take the best fight for her to get a title back. If it happens to be 35, she'll do it. If it's 25, she'll do that. It really just all depends. Wonder if you saw Aaron Rogers today agreeing that current politics left or right is a total sham and current admin as a pro Israel first movement. I did see that. Yes. Someone said, if you look at, if you look at Rogers politics, he's the co-worker politics final boss, you know, like most parties are terrible. I mean, I think it speaks to a certain kind of frustration that a lot of people are feeling who came from the right, which is clearly where he came from, where they may have been open to Obama and what that was and they felt slided by it one for one reason or the other and they thought Trump was going to fix it. And now the most of those people can reasonably infer he's not going to be shit about any of their problems because he doesn't care. He's not focused on anything like that. He's just focused on getting rich

1:45:26and then punishing enemies. And you can't really make a country prosperous when you do that. So you know, I think he's been wise enough to recognize that kind of a thing. And then there's sort of this question of like, can we as a country actually solve our problems with elections? I mean, that's kind of the question that he doesn't say it that way, but that's sort of what we're getting at here. Like, are we able to, like, let me just ask you like, what should we do if we're not able to solve our problems with elections? That would be a really bad problem. You know, but he's got this kind of both sides are terrible. And I'm like, well, I definitely agree with that, but probably not in the same way that he does. You should plan a day night to meet up with BC and do a room service diaries and an Arby's parking lot, maybe travel to the butt crack of Connecticut, but if he could come on here, I would do it. If I could go to him and just record anywhere, I would do it, but I can't. I mean, I can, but I can't.

1:46:30Who most uses their kid as a prop, Ilya or Ian? I'd say Ian's kid is more visible. I don't know if he feels like he's doing that. And certainly, I've featured my daughter on MK, although I don't do that anymore for very particular reason. In fact, I don't take pictures of her in any kind of way for public consumption or videos or anything. Nothing. I can't do any of that. I don't want to do any of that. I would caution people against it. Yeah, there are just real ship bags out there that have no respect for families or your children. And they'll use them for any kind of purpose that they feel like. And it's best to just not make that happen. You see, they posted a Hassan thirst trap at the time. It wasn't the RNC. It was a midterm RNC. But yes, I did. They all want to bang him. They've done this a number of times. They've talked about Hassan in all kinds of ways where it's like this

1:47:31like extra handsome socialist who, you know, praised 9-11 or whatever the fuck they're saying about them. But they always like include that they want to bang him in it. That was no exception. LTI mean this in the most respectful way, given that it looks like BC won't be making a guest spot on M.K. anytime soon. Could we maybe get once a month a have you seen this shit? So I thought about that. Maybe is the answer. We've thought about that. Maybe is the answer. But like part of that only works because of BC's like sort of I for it. Also what BC has told me is, you know, we're still kind of hoping that at some point he'll be able to come on. And I don't know when that is and I could make no guarantees about it. But let's assume for the sake of argument that it's true. He could come back on in a future point. He told me he is making like the most epic have you seen this shit batch to play when he does. So I'm tempted to hold off almost a little bit

1:48:37out of respect for that. I mean, maybe if it goes on for a whole lot longer, you know, I'll bring something back. But my hope is that foolishly perhaps that but when we do it again, it'll be him bringing it back for like a special guest episode because he told me he's working on like the most epic version of it. Do you like sushi? I do. If so, what's your favorite place in DC? I don't know. I don't, it's ladle eats sushi in like that kind of a way. What about favorite Italian place in DC? Filaminas probably, probably filaminas. You can go to RPM but it's expensive and it's kind of like ritzy. It's good. The food's good but it's a little pricey. Probably filaminas. Slice and pie for a pizza, that kind of thing. Red rock, you can go to red rock too. As bad as Obama was, would you at least give him props and credit for capturing Ben Laden and that was a positive sure? Sure. I don't think everything that Obama did was terrible. I just don't think he

1:49:41solved the requisite problems that we needed to solve at the time he was around and it led to further problems. Join late today. I just want to say you and Carl Kalinsky make the guest appearance in the first 60 seconds of the new elephant graver. Yeah, again, they got me saying I had to watch it on one and a half speed. Yeah, I do. I did. I watch almost the only thing I don't watch on one and a half speed is like actual movies. If I'm watching a real movie, I'm not watching. I'll watch that normal pacing. But if I'm on YouTube and I'm watching breaking points, I'm putting it on 1.25 at a very minute. Do you think Mayweather Pacquiao plays out the same way if they fight in 2008 and 9 versus 2015? It's a shame that the boxing politics kept us from that. Probably yes. I think Pacquiao could have maybe made it a little more competitive, but I think in the end, may, because you're like, oh, Pacquiao would have been more feisty at that time. That's true, but Mayweather also had, that was maybe his prime as well. Did you see religious nut Keith Lee's video over the weekend?

1:50:46I did see this. I didn't mean to see this, but someone sent it to me. He recounts nearly dying and saying God saved him and his family when it was his actions, not God. God chose to save him and kill someone else. If you guys didn't see this, basically, he describes is that is this, that he, there was this traffic accident where he was able to move himself out of the way. And so he and his family were okay, which I think most people would say is great. But then the people who were like, I'm not sure if physically how it was, but behind him or wherever he was until he moved, they got hit and caused devastation. But the way in which he said it was almost like, God favored him. And so like, and he was very appreciative of God doing that, but that almost that there was some kind of that God wanted him to survive. And I just think that that's probably something that, at least under modern Christian consideration, a lot of Christians might say that they feel I can't speak to them. I don't know. But it obviously runs into a problem because it's like,

1:51:48are you saying God wanted the other people to die or that, you know, that this would be a just way to adjudicate the morality of this? Like it necessarily raises a lot of complicating questions the way in which he seemed to have interpreted the events of that. And it's causing a lot of people to be like, well, that's a very selfish way to look at morality and, effectively, a very cold way. Look, do you think John Jones is almost a big what if story? No. Well, I'm sort of, despite his insane accomplishments and awful behavior, what if he took his training seriously, no drugs, no drinking? Yes, I mean, in that sense, but dude, he achieved everything a fighter can reasonably be expected to achieve. I know what you mean, but I've seen so much of his success that like, I don't know, did he leave stuff on the table? I'm sure he did, but he did enough to count. If Marab can fight three times a year, Alex three, both being big stars, why can't Islam do it? Probably the way cut. Not a 170. Please, Luke, stop justifying him. He deserves criticism for

1:52:49his cheating arrogance and inactivity. My man gets on here every week, mad at Islam. I don't understand what he's doing that is so disastrous. I mean, there's criticisms or things to mention of every fighter, but this seems a little much. It's also what the UFC wants. There's that too. Well, Luke, no question, but I did want to give some shine to a new BJJ school that just opened in the DMV in Tyson's second breakfast jujitsu. That's a great name. It's home by Andrei Gaval Blackbought and Ryan Hall Brownbelt. Okay, shots to second breakfast jujitsu. I haven't been there. I didn't even heard of it, but shots to them. If you ever get crossed with CNN, I recommend going on one last time and throw a vial ran about eight Dict walrus being great. Yeah, I mean, given those considerations, I might. Luke, do you see this stuff going down in Germany? I saw AFD one in the West. Yes. First time a far right party wins a major election there since World War II. Now that Nazis are making a comeback, how long do we have a UFC back in Germany? I don't know. You know, it's kind of

1:53:53funny. What they're discovering about immigration. This is particularly true. Like in the places that voted for AFD. I mean, first of all, AFD's leader is a lesbian who lives in Switzerland with a brown partner and they have kids together. And like, that's essentially everything AFD hates. But putting that aside, what's interesting is the places that voted the most for AFD have the fewest amount of immigrants. And in fact, if you look at like West Virginia, West Virginia from like 2018 to 2024 had almost no immigrants there. I mean, some obviously, but very, very little. Like, most people never encounter one. And then if you pulled West Virginians, particularly the right, what they would say is that their number one concern was immigration. You think to yourself, how can that be? Like on some level, this is just the interior of the country. And you're not affected by this. There's no one around here. But in fact, it is that absence that makes it worse. And you're seeing parts of that in Germany as well. This isn't the full electoral explanation,

1:54:56obviously. There's a lot more that goes into it. But it should also be noted that these reactionary parties tend to congregate or at least be populated by areas that the problems that they identify are the problems that, and that at least that particular consideration of the ones they face the least. That was that croak park. It was one of the best atmospheres for fights I've ever been at. The Irish showed out for her. It was everything Connor could have had if he hadn't embarrassed our country. Yeah. I think he wanted one. And I'm like, he could fill it out, but it wouldn't be what it was. You know, this was like the celebration of a hero. That would be more like, you know, let's go there for the lulls or just to see what would happen. You know, it wouldn't be a, it wouldn't have the same kind of Disney princess feeling, you know. LT, did you see the Hassan third? Yeah, we did this one already. By the way, Alex just gifting memberships go get him. I haven't seen Craig and Volkes camp against Movesar. I don't think he's there. Any news there? No, I think Craig is just working. Craig open to a place in Mexico.

1:55:57He's building a super gym in Mexico. Do you think he will be, he will be the one to eventually solve the Augustine wrestling prowess? I think on some level, he's kind of given people a good blueprint to follow. It's just very, very hard to follow. Like he can, you know, these are not easy problems to solve and it takes a special person to be able to solve them. People think it's 26 where you can just identify and then get to it. It's like the, what requires to, well, Greg Volkes got pretty close. But, uh, no, I don't think there's anything bad between the camps, which is Craig's running a business. Look, what do you think of the power of leg checks, leg kicks, checking and returning blows? Multiple fights are showing it should be highly beneficial, but so few fighters use it to their benefit. It takes, it's like learning how to check is painful and difficult and it takes time and most of them just don't want to do it. It's like anything else, like wire people's arm bars no longer very good. And they're not really focusing on that, you know. Would you interview have Nate Wilcox on MK as a co-host? Yeah, we're working something out.

1:56:58Nate's actually opinionated, not afraid to debate. That's true. He's one of the last adversarial journalist covering MMA with Zach. I missed the BEE crew. Yeah, I'm going to talk to him next week on this channel. Please cover Rise and Tomorrow. We will. We will. If MVP loses outside the UFC, does it diminish the UFC's Walter Wait and Middleweight divisions since Ian Gary was the only guy who could beat him? I mean, it sort of, but like he also didn't face necessarily the best. I'd want to, I mean, not really. No, I mean, I suppose it could on some level, but in general, the answer is no. There's too many good things about it that he didn't really have any relationship to that remain unchanged by his winning or losing. Thanks for all the content and hard work. Any especially memorable bike E-bike rides and experiences lately, I'm doing a bike race this Saturday,

1:57:59the 20-miler. That's everyone's going to do. I don't know if I'm going to be able to go the whole distance because I'm going to take VLets. I'm going to take the E-bike and you're like, oh, that's easy. Well, it's like, well, yeah, but like she can't pedal 20 miles yet. And I have no way of going with her unless she's on this bike. So it just kind of makes it a requirement. But I'm going to be using this to film it. I'm going to have a mount on the front of my bike. I'm going to use that. Give up the great work. Luke, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to your political life, Chad tomorrow. Should be nice. I hope. One of the chances that Zufa Boxing fails or at least doesn't achieve its original vision of a UBO run industry, Saudi live exit is a warning. Do you see that they spent five billion on that? Do you know how much cash on hand they have? They spent five billion on live golf. How much cash on hand do they have? From five billion spent. How much do they have? They have $15 million. That's it.

1:59:01After five billion. It's just a money pit. It's a money pit. And guys, I mean, this is actually combat sports news in a roundabout way. Did you guys following what's happening on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula? So on one side, you have the straight-up hormones. On the other one, there's this whole conflict happening where essentially the Houthis are taking back relevant parts of territory, including key port cities and trying to simplify this as much as possible, right? Because they're at war, essentially, with the Saudis, or at least they're having conflict. It's maybe the best way to put it. They retook a whole bunch of territory on now the western side in the in the Red Sea. And, including not just fast reams of territory, but key islands and then port cities. And so now, a lot of what Saudi was doing was just using the other side of the peninsula

2:00:05to get a lot of the oil out. But now that could be affected. Like, dude, they're in fucking trouble. They're in trouble. And what that does to their ability to you know, both fight back against this conflict, get whatever oil they could to the rest of the world. Like, all of this is now even more thrown into question. Luke, I know you love Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I rarely hear you discuss the Terminator franchise. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what is my personal favorite role from The Big Man. T2 is great. T1 is great. Everything else is butt cheeks. That's my thought on all of that. T2 has a claim to be the best action movie ever made. Terminator 1 was a phenomenal, interesting movie that was scary and cool and amazing when they made it. Everything after. Oh, Terminator Genesis butt cheeks. All the butt cheeks. Do you intend to interview more politicians and candidates? You previously you spoke in with Shoeikat and Abdul El Sayed.

2:01:06I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it. I was trying things out last year. And I don't mind interviewing candidates. The answer is I'm not going to have a ban on candidates. But candidates do they just say shit. And I was lucky to get Abdul El Sayed when he was speaking, I think very honestly. But the further that they get along in the process, the more the pressure on them is to moderate essentially. And I don't know. I don't know. I think there could be a good circumstance for it, but I'm not going to be hardcore seeking them. Luke, would you want to do a podcast with public authority on usy 332? He wouldn't possibly care. Let me state of MMA. We did kind of one on the state of MMA. I got a bunch of shit when I said that this is going to be very hard over the course of seven years for Paramount to get their money back on the UFC. And I got a lot of shit for it. And like, yeah, they had a strong summer. But now you're seeing like, this is what really with the product kind of looks like without the juice. Do you think it's healthy for fighters to have insecurities versus confidence? Yes. Just in Gachy said, he told himself he was going to get KO'd. I think it comes with a hunger to cover all basis. I also just think whatever gets

2:02:09them to perform at their best. And sometimes that's going to be a little bit of self doubt. Sometimes it's going to be electric confidence. But the ones who are honest with themselves and explore it and are not deterred by it, those are the ones I feel like can go the furthest. Luke, what is your favorite Disney movie with an integer seven into snowy? Oh, like with an integer. So like 101 Dalmatians or something. Oh, probably big hero six. Did you see any of the super rising fights super rising five fights today? So all the main and co main. I'll say this every I got people hated by take on Twitter about it, but I'll stand by it. That is the most tired I've ever seen Antonia, I'm said Antonio, AJ McKee halfway through the second round in any fight I've ever seen him in. He later it. Oops. Oh, yeah, now it's on. Here. Let's see. I got a look. Oops.

2:03:21You can kind of see there. So what that? All right, I don't need all that bullshit though. Um, let me turn this off. Sorry, what was the question? Oh, uh, super rising. So Shadja, live wins and he's obviously very like he's very good. He's very, very good. He's really good. 25 years old. He's the PFL champ now, the rising champ. But for the way he's very talented. But AJ McKee basically, he's like, I've seen almost all of his fights and he was uncharacteristically tired, like early into that fight. I'm like, um, something's not quite right. Now he did kind of battle back in the third a little bit. Uh, he obviously at a bare minimum stumbled Shadja live in the first, although how many of those were like, you know, getting select straight up stunned is a little harder to say. But, you know, he, he was doing some work on there in the first. But the reality is he gasped super early into this fight. Everyone's like, oh, it's good Shadja, live, put a pace on him. No, no, no. I mean, yeah, Shadja, live did put a pace on him. That's true. But not to

2:04:22the extent that I made him that tired. And then he, he says he dislocated his ankle during camp. It's like, I've been here at a hard time losing weight, which means he probably had a hard weight cut. He didn't look quite right. Now that doesn't mean he was going to win again, Shadja live. I think the wrestling dominance for him is still what have made a difference. And in fact, I do think a cage is going to be better for him than even the ring is. So maybe he wins no matter what. But I think that he's, uh, he has the potential to be the best one in the world. But I think right now, he's a little more beatable. If you were on team DoGato, how would you game plan against Jay on silver on Saturday? Try for the takedown if it's there. I don't think you can exchange with him. You know, a lot of times guys will like, they'll touch, touch, go, touch, touch, go, touch, and go, touch, touch, go. And if you can do that, I think you can do a lot, especially if you've got fundamentals, like a jab and a leg kick and a push kick. But if you stand there and begin to trade with him over time,

2:05:23I just think that is going to be a huge fucking problem. You also have to have a dynamite clinch where you can, if you need to lock up with him offensively, you can without being overwhelmed. And if it was me, I would try and bloody him with elbows off a takedown if I could. Begin to really slash and make him, you want to make him be more acrobatic, not less, but you don't want to get into a rhythm. You want him to have to resort to it not to be able to fall back to it. You and Nash are like Bernstein, Leroy of MMA. I think he does more work than I do. I don't think that's quite a fair comparison, but I appreciate it. It would be great if you both went on Pablo show together. Keep up the great work. Yes, it would be cool. Favorite sopranos, quote and scene. I never watched the sopranos. I mean, I've seen clips here or there, but I never watched it. No team with private equity ownership should ever get taxpayer money to build a new stadium. You can say that almost about any sports team, but I agree with you. If you got private equity ownership, go fuck yourself. You don't need it. My bad just turned tuned in. Have you talked about

2:06:30the AI and the topic story, chilling stuff? Yeah, basically the head of alignment, which is essentially keeping AI from giving it in a sane, regulated state, essentially. I mean, it's not quite right, but it's some way to understand that. It was like, yeah, both this company, Anthropic and OpenAI, who makes Chad G.P.T. are headed towards the apocalypse. Because OpenAI is being reckless, he said. Anthropic is still being reckless, but they're trying to be reckless because they don't want OpenAI to get it first. But in either case, the capacity for AI to have some type of catastrophic event, if not killing us all, maybe destroying the electricity grid or some other kind of world altering event is now increasing. And we have no AI regulation really on the horizon. The Democrats have said that if they take power back in 2026, they're going to have a working group in Congress about that. So that might be helpful. But it just seems like we're just at the mercy of the rich who don't really care if we suffer.

2:07:35Do you look at predator like BC looks at straw weights? Yes. Cookie cutter, welcome to the party. New AJ would lose when I saw he had only been in Japan for six or seven days and was cutting weight as soon as he touched down when Will fighters learned. I mean, he's been to Japan before. I will say that. He's fought in Japan before, but I think it backfire the way he did it this time. Refunds are an interesting situation. There's many categories of duties and tariffs where refunds happen on a regular basis. Importers usually get the refund. IEPA is definitely not apples to apples. Yes, I just mean the average consumer is not getting a tariff rebate. Right. It's not happening. They're not getting a $2,000 stimulus check. If ball had faced Morales or Carlos instead of Jack Dela and then lost, what Islam have even considered moving up? Yeah, I think he would have done it no matter what. Yes. Looking at the rankings, top 10 fighters have fought on average one time each in 2026. How's the UFC offering

2:08:39through fights per year and only doing one? Do they offer trash fights just to check a box? Yes, in many cases that can happen. Oh, you said no, check. A lot of that can happen. Thoughts on Mamdani releasing the 9-11 files showing the people that if you guys didn't see this, 170,000 files basically from, they knew from October of 2001 in New York that the air quality down at ground zero was Carson, Adjinnik and didn't tell anybody. And then Rudy Giuliani, who also tried to steal a presidential election among a number of other crimes on top of that tried to be like, oh, Mamdani doesn't deserve to be done there. Motherfucker, you let people get cancer. How was he not in prison? How can you do that and just not be in prison? You just let all those firemen, all those police officers, all those first responders just all get cancer. That's fucking crazy. Hi guys, 43M here, big fan of MMA, but new to training. Do you guys think it's too late

2:09:40for me to try and make a pro run? Yes, yes, I do. Don't do that shit. You're 43. Terrible, fucking idea. If you wanted to have one fight in your life, do that as an amateur and then call it a day, you do not need to be rattling your fucking brain. Luke, congrats on being on the intro, the new elephant graveyard. Yeah, I mean, they kind of were bitter at me, but it is kind of funny. Luke, what you said on MK Cohen's side, okay, we did this one already. We did this one already. Oh, uh, the Islamophobia is going wild, man, my Muslim friends unanimously say it's worse now than in 2001. It is worse now than in 2001. We learned nothing from 9-11. This country learned nothing from 9-11. Islam have been lawdened and his proxies essentially attack this country. We launch a global war on terror as a result. This, I mean, understand something like in these articles, what they're saying is things like, who did they say this about? They said it about

2:10:42Abdul Al-Sahiyad. They said, hey, what he said was like it was similar to like the hurt people, hurt people, hurt people, hurt people saying like, oh, that's insensitive. No, it's not. It's fucking, I mean, maybe the timing of that is sensitive, but that's just logic. They're trying to float this idea that what people are saying is, oh, I remember what Abdul Al-Sahiyad said, he said, hey, you know, 9-11 was really bad for us, but then look at turn around what we did to the rest of the world. That was also really bad. And people, I saw people like New York post me and like, can you believe he said this? Yes, I fucking can. He's right. We destabilized the entire Middle East. We got about a million people killed maybe more. And in Afghanistan, all of that was for nothing to Taliban took it right back. Now, there's a little bit of something happening in Iraq and it's, you know, certain parts of Iraq have recovered. Parts of it are still, you know, deeply, deeply fucked up and to say nothing of the overall damage that we did to, you know, antiquities that were there and beyond that, just the carnage and the death, to say nothing of like the pretence of why we did it. And like, look at all of our misadventure in the Middle East and how that yields blowback. I mean, that was what ended up creating ISIS. And then I remember

2:11:46there was a whole story in the New York Times about all the Marines who to fight ISIS had to pump rounds out of the how was earth, which is what I did when I was in the record. I wasn't on the gun line, but I'm an artillery unit the whole time pumping rounds and they got fucking traumatic brain injury from it. Like the downstream consequences to say nothing of the fact that we didn't learn our lesson in the Middle East at all. And now we're back here with this bullshit with Iran. Like we learned nothing and then we're at home and we're saying, Oh, can you believe Abdu Al-Sahed said, you know, it was bad for us, but can you imagine how bad it was for others? Well, he's not trying to say we are not entitled to our own pain. But what he is trying to say is we turned that and made this manufactured bullshit ass case to go to Iraq in 2003. Look what happened. It was a disaster. It was a disaster. We like all of the Islamophobia at the time, oh, we got to really stamp out this element of society and blah, blah, blah. Like all those things, what did it amount to? Like did people learn their lessons from the misadventure that it caused? Or like from the obvious failure for it to match the reality as we understood it? Like, of course, not. It didn't do that. We learned nothing. We learned nothing other than how to harm ourselves.

2:12:50Because as you guys know, Spencer Akerman, who has followed the global war on terror, maybe been anyone else, is trying to help everyone understand that whole like the black siteization of what ice does, for example, among a number of other things, this is the global war on terror, kaboom-araning, boom-araning, hold onto us. And now we are suffering some of those overseas adventures, misadventures, I should say, turned back on us. How is that anything but a failure? And then the Islamophobia that powered it now is still being out there and they're using it for elections. We learned nothing. We learned nothing as a society. I've been feeling sad hearing about your anxiety and sleep problems. There is an organic supplement that really helps with these things. TDS mushrooms. I haven't done mushrooms, but I wouldn't say no to them. Did you see that conscientious objector applications are on the rise? Yes. That would want to go die in this military. That and members of the military seeking legal advice about what they're doing.

2:13:51Of course, because dude, if you make the wrong move here and the next administration comes into power, if that actually happens, and God only knows we're going to get that. But if we get that, like, dude, there's going to be, especially if you're an officer and you're in command, not even just that, like following orders and shit, you better be real careful about what you're doing. And he thoughts on the SEC versus LSU lawsuit, I haven't paid attention at all. Luke, join late. Does Elias stand a chance in the rematch against Justin? Yes. Does he try to get the fights of the ground? I suspect that he does. Yes, he could. He could. He dropped him the first time. I think he could. Getting him to the ground is going to be a little bit harder, but yes, he clearly does. But after getting banged around like that, putting him back in there against a certifiable heavy hitter is just a fucking terrible idea. Terrible idea. Could he do it? Absolutely. You could do it. It's not like the case of like Poetan and gone too that they want to make. I mean, yeah, Poetan can win that one too. But I just think God's like a really bad matchup.

2:14:55There is a question of like how much better Ilya could be with, you know, hindsight now to learn those lessons. That kind of changes a little bit. Still young. Poetan's much older. It's a heavy way. It's a new way class. This is more of, you know, a better way class anyway for Ilya at least in some ways. But, you know, the Poetan won. I'm like, no, you just, you don't have a shot. Two four years got a shot. With Justin Gates, you talking at the RNC, would you say he's overtaken her. Shal Walker as the GOP member with the most brain. Okay, I'm not getting into that. Gifting memberships. Thank you, sir. Thanks for the ED Hersh book recommendations. I got my kids a copy. Yes. Each for their correct age. Great job, man. Read to that shit. Have them open it up. You know, my, my daughter's been asking me about Hercules and Athena and Aphrodite and, and Zeus and Hera and all of the Greek gods and all this cool stuff. So we get to read all in the book about all of it. It's been fucking awesome, man. I think the people accusing you of TDS are just trolls

2:15:58who want to see how creative you can get with insults probably. I mean, Listerine and Farts, come on. You know, you got to go somewhere, I suppose. Look, why did MVP not take off in the UFC? I feel we know why he didn't take off in UFC because he didn't fight in the way that's exciting or interesting. That's very easy to understand. Oh, he won. Who remembers his, your, what's your favorite round? Not in DC, but my favorite Italian in the area is Aldo's and Alexandria. Yes, there's a bunch of good places down there. Elderly owner, immigrated here from Italy, extremely hospitable, food incredible. Yeah, I bet. I bet. I don't get out to Alexandria that much, but I bet that's true. Look, why were you so dismissive about joining an episode of the reprised MMAB guys? Guys, I have essentially been a free agent. I mean, you could say at the beginning of 2024,

2:16:58but certainly by the end of 2024, because I had a contract with CBS that they extended, but it didn't preclude me from doing other things. So like, I didn't need to be with anybody else, but I could have been. I have not had, I mean, the only, I've had no contact. Obviously, Vox Media, well, they don't even own MMA fighting anymore, but like, obviously, they're not going to be beating down my door because I said a lot of bad things about them, all of which I stand by. I don't regret it at all. But like, I've got a bigger following than most in the sport, not everyone, but most. And there isn't a single outlet that has expressed even a moderate degree of interest, either full-time, part-time, or any other capacity at all. Like, they don't want my services. And that's not a big deal because I don't really need them. And I don't know if many of them have a use for me, even if I was there, like, you actually kind of make sense. But it just sort of is this weird asymmetry where like, before I got to show time, I always had like opportunities to go elsewhere. Like, it was, it was not never a problem. And then they immediately

2:18:01have gone away. And part because of changes to the industry and part by changes in my own conduct. And so I recognize this a few things. I'm not like sad about it as such, but like, between that and I would, I'm going to guess that my pro-Palestinian advocacy is just not going to make me a desirable target for anybody in corporate media at all. You know what I mean? Like, they don't want that. I could be wrong. I can't, no one's like told me I'm, you know, banned there or anywhere else. Like, I could be wrong. But they've got their own roster of guys. I haven't even heard of a feeler. You know what I mean? Like, that train's not coming. Right. It's not coming. I'd be very surprised if it did. And I've been wrong before. But it's not coming. Like, my relationship to MMA is through you. It's not through any of these other, and it makes it for all the smoke fire which I work with in middle-large media, you know, the ones through MK or something. But short of that, like, that's it, you know. In an alternate reality or parallel universe, where Kamala Harris is

2:19:05president, what do you think would be the situation in America? Probably still pretty bad, with things being much worse. Well, it depends. It'd be different. I mean, it wouldn't be as bad. Do you give AOC a chance of 28? Probably, although I don't really care for her. I mean, the problem with like, here's the thing. You can make an argument that obviously like, Trump is like uniquely destructive, right? In every way, he's just the worst choice possible. But it's not like you could look at the, what Kamala was doing. And you can say that people were inspired by this, or that this was a bold agenda for change, or that it met the needs of the moment. I mean, yeah, maybe she doesn't get us into the Iran debacle. Maybe she doesn't piss off Canada in that way. Like, some of those things are going to be kept in play. But I think it would have just kind of kept festering wounds on the right that they would have just stewed and then come back later. You know what I mean? So like, the reality is, if the left is going to have any success long term, they have to put people into power who are being, mean business about implementing bold policy

2:20:09change to address the severity of the moment, reigning in tech oligarchs, making healthcare affordable, people who don't have to have to go into debt to send their kids to public education, you know, all of these kinds of things. And she had nothing planned for that. So, you know, she would not be the kind of just bull in a china shop that that Trump is, that's true. But I just don't think the right would have ever welcomed her or made that a thing that they, or, and again, and she didn't govern with a bold agenda and between those things, I would have just kicked the can down the road. It wouldn't be, like, we wouldn't be like hauling up immigrants and throwing them in fucking jail and shit. Like, it would be way, way better in that sense. Yes, of course. But I feel like we would just be encountering a different problem later. I always try to remind people that there was a time when women would headline pay-per-view cards and it was exciting. UFC 332 is a weird sad experience. Yeah, man, that whole scene, I mean, I'll say this, like more recently, the women have definitely had some great results, but there hasn't been a breakout fighter. I think, no, Fatima Klein, getting close,

2:21:11right? Just some other ones too. So you're kind of seeing maybe there's some other ones that are getting ready, but they need someone to just grab the game by the scruff of the neck and break through. LT, weekly weed, sleep anxiety, and tooky back to school donation. Thank you, my friend. Got a recommendation. Lanterns on HBO Max is fucking awesome. My good friend told me this too. True detective meets DC Green Lantern. Kyle Chandler kills it as Hal Jordan highly recommended. I have heard good things. I just haven't seen it yet, but thank you for the donation. And then I gifted a membership. And then one more for him. What do you do with rage? You feel towards Rogan in the Manosphere with each day as Trump burns the world around him. I can't fathom how trans jokes and anti-woke bullshit was a greater threat than fucking fascism. It never was. I tried to channel it into something that is productive. I don't know how productive it is. I could be wrong about this whole thing, but I try to channel it into something productive. That's why I do the political content to begin with. It's just that I got kind of pushed into it. I mean, pushed as a strong maybe wrong way to put

2:22:14that, but I felt compelled to get into it because I was horrified by everything. So I just try to put that into something productive. I don't know if I am. I could be not being productive, but I'm just trying to find a way to do that. Yeah. All right. Thank you boys and girls. I really appreciate it. I got to get out of here. MK tomorrow, Danny Segura tomorrow, and remember, political live chat tomorrow 2 p.m. East Coast time. I'll set something up on the LTGP channel and you can take a look from there. All right. Thank you all so much for people who hung out, who donated, anybody in between members. I love you all. I'm out of here. I'll see you tomorrow. Two streams on Saturday. Two streams on Saturday. And until next time, stay frosty.