In this episode, we have a special guest on the show, Angela Vellian. She is a former UFC fighter and is now a mixed martial arts fighter in New Zealand. We talk about how she got her start in MMA and how she became one of the best fighters in the game. We also talk about what it's like to be a female MMA fighter and what it s like being in the ring with a male MMA fighter. We finish off the episode with some questions and comments from the audience. We hope you enjoy this episode and don't forget to subscribe to our channel! Subscribe, Like, and Share to stay up to date with what s going on in the world of Mixed Martial Arts and everything else going on around it! We are part of the Sober is Dope Podcast Network. See all the great network shows on the network. Go check them out! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. We do not own the rights to any of the music used in this episode. Thank you for any amount you pay for the use of any of our music. If you enjoyed the music, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or other streaming platforms. We are using it in the next episode we'll be giving away a free ad-free version of the song "Goodbye". - Thank you! and shout out to our sponsor, and we will be looking out for the review and shoutout on the next week on Goodfellasapod. Thanks! - Goodbye! Love ya'll! xoxo, bye, bye. - Cheers, Cheers! Cheers. -- Cheers Cheers - Joe, Joe and Cheers <3 - Joe & Joe <3, Joe, EJ & EJ XOXO, - Mavos xOXO - EJ and EJGee . Thankyou, Joe & EK ( ) (Alfred , EJ ( ) and Joe ( ) & Ej ( ) . (MMA ( ) - Ej & Elesa ( ) ( & Ephrail ( ) ( ) <3 ( ) , EK & EZ ( ) Thank you, EZY ( )
00:00:32.000No, it's actually, it's kind of like, you know, those connecting joints where it's like, it's kind of like a big ball that goes in, but like when you pull it out, it's like, I don't know.
00:01:39.000I always felt, well, I guess I don't feel like that anymore because I realized with all the costume malfunctions and stuff, it can be a big deal, especially if you're really packing.
00:01:51.000I used to hate on girls who would fight in shirts.
00:01:55.000I'm like, come on, man, you're a fighter.
00:02:06.000Like, even the girl that I'm fighting in, Auckland, she has something weird where, like, I think the other girl was, like, pulling on her shirt.
00:02:13.000So, like, in between the first and second round, they took her shirt off.
00:02:51.000Like, it's okay for the ring card girls to like...
00:02:54.000You know, walk around the cleavage out.
00:02:56.000But the fighters, like, I don't know, they're trying to, I guess, make it more of an, like, okay, these girls are athletes, so don't stare at the cleavage while they're fighting.
00:04:46.000I think she's still fighting for the UFC fighters, even though she's not in the UFC. I haven't looked into that.
00:04:53.000I haven't looked at what do they want, what are they trying to accomplish, what's not correct that they want to fix.
00:05:01.000I think just any grievances that the fighters have in general, so like healthcare, salary, just things that everyone kind of agrees on is like not good enough yet in the UFC. I think those are the things that they're working towards.
00:05:46.000I can't think of any examples where they haven't taken care of the medical expenses of someone who got hurt.
00:05:56.000But I know a lot of times fighters don't claim it in time, like after fights, or it's a little nagging injury that becomes a big deal further down the line.
00:06:06.000And it happened in a fight, but they waited too long?
00:06:10.000Either that or just wear and tear from training in general.
00:06:15.000I can't go in for a loose tooth or a shoulder that I tore in practice if I wasn't getting ready for a fight.
00:06:24.000Well, that seems so crazy because you're obviously fighting in the UFC. You have a long-term contract.
00:06:28.000You've been fighting in the UFC for years.
00:06:30.000If you're training, you're training to fight in the UFC. Yeah, exactly.
00:06:34.000And I think a lot of instances, they still take care of the fighter, but I know if you're on the lower end, if you haven't really made a name for yourself yet, sometimes, even if you just don't ask,
00:07:52.000And most of my injuries happen outside of camp because I'm either training stupid, training with someone who I shouldn't be training with, like someone too big or too inexperienced, or I'm just like fucking around.
00:08:06.000Like when I'm fighting someone who's my size, it's a lot less likely that I get injured.
00:09:37.000I guess training with women, like the strength, the force that's coming at you versus the force you're giving to them, I just feel like it's a lot safer to train with women.
00:09:48.000But some people think that the opposite is that if you train with men, like say if you were training with a bunch of bantamweight men, yeah, they would be bigger than you, yeah, they'd be stronger than you, but you'd get used to that.
00:09:57.000And then you'd be used to men, and then when you fight with women, they would seem smaller and weaker.
00:11:00.000So it's good to, like, still have those checks and balances.
00:11:03.000Like, okay, like, yeah, maybe she's not as strong as the guys I train with, but she is going as hard as she can.
00:11:10.000Or she's defending it as hard as she can.
00:11:12.000Or, you know, she's taking my punches that I thought, like, oh, if I drop this guy with this punch, then this girl's gonna get dropped too.
00:13:01.000I just assumed that me landing a hard punch on a heavyweight isn't going to hurt as much as me landing a hard punch on someone closer to my size.
00:14:17.000Sometimes when I do commentary, people get mad at me, like either the fighters or other people, but that was one where fans of her got mad at me.
00:14:26.000Because you guys were right in front, and you had her in a triangle, and I was yelling, pulled ahead.
00:15:26.000I had a lot of, I don't know, I guess, ups and downs in my career.
00:15:33.000It's literally like up, down, up, down, win, loss, and win, loss.
00:15:37.000And I think after the Randa fight, I fought Randa Marcos about this time last year.
00:15:44.000And I was just so pissed at the way that went down because I was super nervous going into it.
00:15:50.000I felt like that was going to be a fight that kind of set me above the heap because Randa's so tough and she kind of has that same up-down that I do.
00:16:00.000So I'm like, okay, this is going to set me apart.
00:17:09.000Like, I thought I was doing everything right.
00:17:11.000Like, I would visualize and, you know, tell myself all positive things and, you know, do everything that you think you have to do before a fight.
00:17:22.000But that just kind of showed me, like, I'm not doing enough.
00:17:26.000Because I knew I had the skills to beat her, or at least the skills to make it look more competitive, but I didn't show it.
00:17:32.000Do you think it was the added element of the cameras following you around that just put this additional pressure?
00:17:36.000Yeah, like the pressure was already there, and then I found out about the ESPN thing, and I feel like it was just me over...
00:17:48.000I guess this fear of losing too much, you know, and it started when I got into the UFC. I had like my tough fight didn't go well, but I was one fight, you know, in my MMA career, and I was in the UFC already.
00:18:03.000So I went on to win a fight, but then I lost two in a row and got cut.
00:18:08.000And from that moment on, I'm like, fuck, like, people are just gonna think of me as this person who loses all the time.
00:18:13.000And then I went on a four fight, one streak in Invicta, but then when I came back to the UFC, I lost to Andrade.
00:18:19.000And even though it was like, probably the fight that people still talk about to this day, even though I lost.
00:18:47.000But when it came to fighting someone like Randa, who kind of had a similar story where she is talented, but she's fought a lot of tough people and lost to them or gotten weird decisions against people.
00:19:42.000We started reading those mental, me and my husband, but he read them and then he started doing the mental coach thing for me.
00:19:54.000Every resource that I looked at says pretty much the same thing.
00:19:58.000It's that you have to focus on being present and being present each day and not dwelling on the past, not bringing the past into that present moment, just trusting in your reactions and trusting in your preparation.
00:21:47.000That you're so honest about what went wrong.
00:21:50.000That's huge, because sometimes people make excuses, or they come up with something that didn't go their way, that should have gone their way, and they don't address the real issue.
00:22:00.000You're addressing the actual issue that was going on in your brain, and you know that that's what it was.
00:22:38.000And that really helped just like kind of calm my nerves and keep the anxiety from being crippling.
00:22:48.000Sometimes what happens when you go to a coach is the fact that you physically go to someone and you sit down with this – it's like a different level of commitment – You sit down with this person.
00:22:58.000This person formulates a strategy for how you address some of the issues that are going on in your mind.
00:23:03.000And then sometimes you can go to a hypnotist.
00:24:03.000Understanding what went wrong, letting it go, you're already doing that, and then concentrating on what you're really good at and just saying fuck it and letting it go and expressing yourself, being the you that you know that you could be when you're on.
00:24:17.000It's like how to capture that and hold that thought and then bring it inside the octagon and be able to recreate those feelings when you're actually under pressure of competition.
00:25:05.000There's a lot of weird stuff that people do in these comedy hypnotism shows where I was like, maybe I can't.
00:25:11.000I don't think they could do that to me because I'm not going to believe that I'm really on a cruise ship right now and pirates are coming or whatever the fuck.
00:27:01.000They look like this little thing trying to fight me.
00:27:04.000But it's this real thing in front of me.
00:27:08.000It's scarier than when you're watching it, like watching the replay of your fight.
00:27:13.000So it's just like that, I don't know, just that experience of being in there always scared me because it's, I don't know, it's just not familiar.
00:27:24.000It doesn't feel the same as going to spa or going to train or wrestle or whatever because it's like this big thing that we build up, we have a date, we go in there, there's a lot of people watching.
00:29:03.000You don't have the wear and tear of a lot of people start when they're 10 and by the time they get to 24, they already got MCL fucked up and back...
00:29:12.000And it probably stunts your growth, too, a little bit.
00:35:56.000And it was kind of halfway because, well, I don't know if this is why he asked, but once I said yes, there was a girl that used to train with us who was also doing it in my weight class, and he was like, oh...
00:36:12.000So yeah, I thought it was cool that he had that confidence in me because all the other girls who were in the tournament had been training a lot longer than me for years even.
00:36:22.000So yeah, I was just like, okay, let's do it.
00:38:25.000If you ever sprinted against someone and you really want to beat them, that's kind of what fighting feels like a lot of times.
00:38:31.000You're just pushing yourself to total exhaustion, just trying to beat this person who's neck and neck with you, and your lungs just get tired thinking about it.
00:41:19.000Yeah, I don't follow boxing too much, but I just know that for sure is that everyone who's made a name for themselves, they started off with like fucking 200, 300 fights.
00:41:30.000So yeah, Muay Thai, at least in the States, isn't the same.
00:41:34.000So it was just time to make that step.
00:41:37.000So I still wasn't considering that being my career of choice, especially because Muay Thai, you don't make shit.
00:41:43.000What's the most money you made as a Muay Thai fighter?
00:44:00.000So here you are, you're fighting pro as a Muay Thai fighter, and then what makes you say, you know what, I think I'm going to make a leap into MMA? Tough.
00:44:12.000Because at that time, there was no strawweight weight class.
00:44:17.000I was planning on being an atomweight fighter because in Muay Thai, I fought between 110 and 106. So I was like, oh, I didn't cut weight for it.
00:48:45.000Yeah, so you go to tryouts, you introduce yourself, there's MMA media there, and you tell them your little story, try to get people behind you or whatever.
00:48:57.000And then they had handpicked already eight girls to be on the show.
00:49:02.000And those are all girls that I've seen fight before, so I'm like, I was like, whoa, they're going to be on the show?
00:49:56.000And so you stay on top of this girl most of the round.
00:49:59.000Yeah, and the coach, the North Carolina coach, he was a wrestling, like straight-up wrestling guy.
00:50:06.000So that was kind of what I needed at the time anyway, so it kind of worked out.
00:50:11.000And I just stayed on top of her and her guard and smothered her or whatever.
00:50:17.000And then the part that I shined was the striking part.
00:50:22.000And my coach, Brandon, came down with me and we did our little routine and I did like, you know, you see the ties do like the 20 kicks left, 20 kicks.
00:51:25.000Like, everyone was showing up with, like, crazy records, like, winning records.
00:51:30.000But, like, at that point, like, especially for strawweight weight class, like, there were a lot of people just fighting whoever, whenever, just to make a paycheck, just to, like, you know, get an injury fixed or whatever.
00:51:44.000So, like, yeah, you had a lot of girls who were strawweights, but they fought at bannerweight before.
00:53:04.000Because I was just, yeah, I was just there for the experience.
00:53:07.000Like, I think coming in there, and this is kind of how I view my marriage, too, is like, going in there with low expectations made it actually a lot of fun.
00:56:22.000She had almost won the Ultimate Fighter.
00:56:26.000And then the Randa fight, where I was totally fucking myself in my own brain.
00:56:33.000Aside from those two fights, I had always been competitive.
00:56:39.000And I feel like even some of those I could have won if it was like different judges, but like the rankings never reflected that.
00:56:47.000So since then I stopped, like once I realized that I tried to stop paying attention to it just because I felt like it was affecting my own self-worth, you know?
00:56:58.000Like I was doubting myself as if this thing judged like how good of a fighter I was.
00:58:12.000In fighters, you see, like, there's a moment where they break through, where it all comes together, and they're putting things together in a different way, and you feel it.
00:58:22.000You know, like, you feel it when you watch them, when you know that they've turned a corner.
00:58:25.000And that's what I thought in the Cyphers fight.
00:58:27.000When you were on top of her, hitting her with those elbows, I was like, Jesus Christ!
00:59:39.000Even though I feel like I'm winning, and the punches that hit me aren't marking me, they aren't hurting me, cutting me, and I can hit them and see the black eye as I bring my fist back to my face.
01:05:39.000They do that in Muay Thai too, like traditional Thai rules.
01:05:42.000It's like they dance, or no, not dance, they fill out the first round and they fight the second and third round and then like the fourth round I guess decides who wins and then the fifth round is just a dance.
01:08:22.000Yeah, yeah, like a really big elephant I feel like really bad about eating just because I feel like its brain is bigger so it's probably more likely to be like sentient.
01:08:30.000Oh, I'd have to be starving to death to eat an elephant.
01:08:45.000There's this crazy video of an elephant being reunited with, I think it's a sibling or a daughter or a mother or something like that, and they hadn't seen each other in 12 years, and they see each other, and they run to each other and wrap their trunks around each other.
01:09:46.000They have incredible short-term memories.
01:09:48.000Like chimps have better memories than us when it comes to like, they'll flash a bunch of things on a screen and chimps can point out exactly what they saw if they get a reward.
01:14:16.000They pet them, and you could tell they had a sweet relationship with them.
01:14:19.000The elephant would wrap their trunk around the people, and the people would rub their head.
01:14:22.000They wanted to be around those people, and then they would feed them a lot of sugar cane.
01:14:26.000Like, we had these big stalks of sugarcane, and they would make you form...
01:14:30.000See, the whole idea was a rehabilitation thing for elephants, and a lot of the elephants had been in circuses and zoos and things like that.
01:14:38.000And then they actually had reintroduced a lot of them to the wild.
01:14:42.000And when we were there, these elephants were not in cages.
01:16:46.000Well, they all are abused by being rehabilitated or something?
01:16:51.000No, no, they're not abused, but they're contained, and that's what's depressing.
01:16:55.000It's like, most of them came from people wanting a wolf for a pet.
01:16:59.000They're like, oh, I'm gonna have a wolf, I'll be a badass, and then it just rips your house apart and doesn't listen to you at all, and you realize, oh my god, this isn't a dog.
01:18:06.000I mean, they're keeping these animals alive, and they're feeding them, and they do love them, and they go in there and take care of them and pet them, but to me, it's like...
01:20:08.000I used to have a bit about them like they're the only animals that I don't feel bad for at the zoo because they're walking around the zoo like another day with no lions.
01:22:13.000Like, my brain never thought of, like, oh, yeah, they must be drugged in order to be sitting in a room with strangers and not freaking out.
01:24:20.000I have a friend of mine who shot an elk in Alberta, and the elk, he didn't know it, but the elk, when, you know, they shot it with a bow and arrow, the elk ran and died, and they were trying to pack the elk out, and these wolves started circling them.
01:24:34.000They didn't realize they were in a wolf's den.
01:25:44.000Yeah, the wolves didn't know that my friend John was down to one arrow because he killed two with his bow and the other guy was down to like two bullets.
01:26:21.000They were killing soldiers that were on patrol and they were also, like when everyone, somebody got wounded and they were on the battlefield, they would just get torn apart by wolves in front of everybody.
01:26:35.000So they had to share communication back and forth between, I'm pretty sure it was the Germans and the Russians, and they said, let's just kill some wolves for a while.
01:26:43.000And so they had a ceasefire, they killed wolves, and they went back to killing each other.
01:28:59.000I think I just never tried to cut too much.
01:29:02.000I think if I was bigger, then it would be an issue.
01:29:06.000A lot of girls, they see who's cutting weight and how big they get, and then they get scared, so they try to go down a weight class below them.
01:29:14.000If you look at Amanda Nunes, she isn't really the biggest Bantamweight.
01:30:29.000There's a point of diminishing returns, right, where you just cut too much.
01:30:32.000If you cut a little bit, you're probably pretty good, but a lot of people became who they really should have been once they moved up in weight, like Masvidal or Dustin Poirier.
01:30:41.000Dustin Poirier just couldn't make 45 anymore, and now he's having a hard time making 55. He's so big, he might have to move up to 70. Yeah, and your body just, like, kind of fights against you.
01:30:52.000Like, once you had all those, like, really tough weight cuts, and that's why I'm not, like, super on that, like, oh, I'm going to go to 105 train.
01:32:07.000Yeah, and then the girls are so much bigger at 135, like crazy big.
01:32:13.000Kat Zagano was at Alliance for a little bit, and when she wasn't at weight, I was just like, dude, there's no reason I should be training with you right now.
01:34:19.000And I'm still hopeful that, like, that's going to be me eventually because, like, you know, Amanda Nunes didn't really do that for a long time.
01:34:29.000And then after that cat fight, I think after the Shevchenko, the first Shevchenko fight, she just started finding her groove and finding that money mark.
01:34:40.000She also just really took her training far more seriously and invested much more time in her strength and conditioning.
01:34:48.000That's a big factor because Amanda would get tired and that's what happened in the Katzingano fight.
01:34:53.000She had Katzingano really badly hurt in the first round but then Kat just so tough she came back in the second and wound up stopping her.
01:35:00.000Same with the first Shevchenko fight, too.
01:35:03.000I think that's why the rematch happened, because Valentina just had a really strong last round against her, so she nipped that in the butt.
01:35:13.000But it's interesting how you need weight glasses.
01:35:16.000You need those increments, because Valentina 125 is just a fucking monster.
01:37:28.000She went down to the range in Texas and the guys who run the range were like, the way that lady shoots, she shoots like a fucking special ops soldier.
01:37:39.000We haven't seen someone come in here and shoot that good unless they're a SEAL or a competitive shooter.
01:38:29.000And then as Anderson got a little older, and those guys got better, and Chris Wyman wound up beating them, and then the division comes alive.
01:38:36.000Just got mixed up, and yeah, it's exciting again.
01:38:39.000Now it's just chaos, and Robert Whittaker, and now Adesanya, and Yoel Romero's gonna fight Adesanya in a couple of weeks.
01:42:07.000That was one of Mark Coleman's big weapons.
01:42:10.000Mark Coleman, back in the bare knuckle days, he would take guys down, he would hold, it didn't matter if you were in the guard or not, he'd smash his fucking forehead right into your nose, and then start punching you and beat the shit out of you.
01:47:45.000I was so pissed because like right before we fought or when we weighed in and did our little face off, Tisha's like, hey, let's make some money tomorrow.
01:47:53.000And I was like, oh yeah, all right, let's go, let's go.
01:47:56.000I'm like, yeah, we're going to fucking stand and bang.
01:48:44.000He's gonna come back and fight heavyweight in the UFC. I saw him once in person and his hand was about two or three of my hands taped together.
01:55:49.000She had good reverses for Tisha's takedown attempts and stuff.
01:55:53.000And yeah, I just think it's going to be...
01:55:57.000She's going to force Joanna to move and to react more than most people, I think.
01:56:05.000I haven't really paid attention to how much head movement she has, but I do know that she just throws a lot of volume, and wherever the fight goes, she seems comfortable.
01:56:17.000I've never seen her in a spot where she looks like, oh, what do I do here?
01:56:22.000You see people freaking out against the cage or freaking out when they get taken down.
01:56:26.000She has that athletic flow through everything.
01:56:30.000That's the one thing I think she has going for.
01:56:33.000But I do think Joanna's reach is what's made her so dominant.
01:56:40.000Watching her fight Andrade, there was a moment where she's pushing Andrade up against the cage, and she looks like a big old praying mantis, just biting someone's head off.
01:58:29.000And I was like, I was probably walking about 125 at the moment.
01:58:33.000Like, and if they, I think we were talking back or he was talking back and forth and he was like, well, what about Michelle at 115?
01:58:41.000He just wanted to know just so he can relate a message.
01:58:44.000I was like, yeah, just let me know so I can like cut weight or not cut weight.
01:58:48.000You know, so I was sitting waiting for the call and then the rumors got like blasted and then people knew my name was in it for some reason.
01:58:57.000I was just like, who is talking, you know?
01:59:00.000But like it went viral and I just leaned into it.
01:59:03.000I was like, hey, anytime, anyplace, let's go.
01:59:05.000And I waited, waited, and then, yeah, nothing happened.
02:00:02.000So a fight with Ioana is always something that I've wanted to have.
02:00:07.000Just because I felt like it would be something that I've seen before.
02:00:11.000I'm not going to be afraid of the clinch, which she's really good at.
02:00:19.000I'm not going to be afraid of the clinch.
02:00:20.000I'm not going to be afraid of when an elbow is going to come.
02:00:23.000Because an elbow sparred my entire fight career.
02:00:26.000So it's like things that I see with her are less scary than a fight with someone that she's beat before.
02:00:33.000Like Andrade or Gedalia or someone like that.
02:00:37.000We're going to learn about her a lot this coming fight, like what she's got left.
02:00:41.000Because the transition to 25 didn't really work out.
02:00:45.000Shevchenko was just a little too much for her.
02:00:47.000Shevchenko had already beat her outside the UFC and then beat her again.
02:00:51.000And then it just didn't look like she had the firepower to keep her off her at 125. And then so she goes down to 15 again, but we know how hard it was for her to make 15. And that's one of the things that they had said, her camp had said about her chin when she fought Rose.
02:01:29.000You gotta wonder, like, when that catches up to you.
02:01:32.000Or, you know, one of the things that she was saying, that she was in a real bad relationship, and there was a giant distraction, and now she's done with that, and that was a contributing factor to a lot of her losses.
02:01:40.000So we're gonna find out, because, you know, when you go back to, like, when she fought Jessica Panay, she was the scariest woman alive.
02:02:06.000You know, so when she did fight someone who was good, who was actually a better striker than her and Rose, like the fact that just the fact that Rose could move laterally, you know, like Joanna was always like a back and forth fighter because that's like her style of very Muay Thai.
02:02:24.000And Rose just moving to the side every now and then or having head movement.
02:05:59.000Like, he gives you, like, real technical information in the corner, and he knows how to break it down quickly.
02:06:05.000Like, this is what you're doing wrong, this is what you have to do right, this is what you're doing great, keep doing more of this, look out for that, when you do this, do that.
02:06:11.000And he gives you all that show, and you see people go, okay, okay, okay.
02:06:14.000Some people are like, you need to take him out, you need to take him out.
02:07:38.000So when I came to Alliance, I was like, yeah, would it be okay if I train here?
02:07:43.000Because there were already, like, a few strawweights there, and I didn't want to, like, you know, come stomping in on territory and be like, I train here now.
02:07:50.000And he's like, yeah, you know, if you want to train here, train here.
02:08:08.000Because I had just like come from a place where I had to sign a contract saying I trained there for this many years or however many fights I have.
02:08:20.000It is strange because if it goes sideways and then you're locked up in a contract and it's hard to get out of it and they want money if you even have another trainer.
02:11:11.000It's interesting to see a company like One explode and get bigger, and then see guys like Mighty Mouse and Eddie Alvarez, and see world-class fighters go over there.
02:11:22.000Yeah, I was sad to see Mighty Mouse go, though.
02:11:34.000Like, they wanted him over there, and it was a big get because, look, for my money, he's still the best example of a mixed martial arts fighter I've ever seen.
02:12:33.000What he's able to do to Wilson Hayes, what he's able to do to a lot of guys who are good fighters, he makes them look like you have no business being in there with him.
02:12:40.000He's doing a whole different thing than you're doing.
02:12:42.000You think he's there, and he's here, and you think he's here, and he's there, and then you're getting hit, and you're getting punched, and you're getting taken down, and you think you're going to get hit.
02:13:44.000So it's almost like they were like, well, there's nothing else we can do with you.
02:13:49.000Obviously, you're going to do that to everyone else.
02:13:51.000The future of that division was uncertain.
02:13:53.000They weren't even sure what they were going to do with the division once Cejudo won.
02:13:57.000And then now that Cejudo went up and he beat Marlon Marais for the Bantamweight title, and then they have this situation where they're going to have...
02:14:09.000Figueredo and Benavidez fight for the flyweight title, so Cejudo abandons that title.
02:14:19.000They paid him a lot of money to fight in one of us, and they give him hard fights too, because they don't have hydration over there either, or dehydration.
02:14:26.000So you fight at what you weigh, which I think really is what we should be doing.
02:14:30.000Yeah, and I don't think Mighty Mouse was ever cutting weight.
02:15:21.000I feel like there's going to come a point in time where there's going to have to be some sort of a unification fight.
02:15:26.000Whether it's a Bellator unification fight, because I still think that Diego Lima, he's the one that I look at, and I go, that guy, I think, he's elite at 170. He might be as good as anybody alive at 170. I'd like to see him.
02:15:38.000And there was a funny face-off with him and Kamaru Usman.
02:17:06.000Which I was pretty shocked, because he went to Bellator, I was shocked at that, and then he won the title at Bellator, and then he went over to the PFL. I wonder why he did that.
02:18:18.000One of my saddest moments in MMA is that Fedor in his prime never fought in the UFC. When Kane was in his prime and Fedor was in his prime.
02:18:26.000God damn, that would have been glorious.
02:18:28.000To see those two go at it, that would have been amazing.
02:18:33.000That's the thing about MMA is that these organizations are, you know, it's the UFC really and then there's everybody else.
02:18:41.000The UFC is the top of the food chain and everybody else is trying real hard and every now and then someone will, like a Douglas Lima or a Fedor, they'll get to a point where you're like, huh, I want to see that guy fight against the best in the UFC. I want to see what's up.
02:18:55.000Well, they kind of do it with Bellator and Ryzen.
02:20:13.000The more they pay people, the more they start paying out as well as the UFC, the more you're going to get those talented people to go there instead of holding out for a spot in the Contender Series.
02:20:25.000And then once that changing of the guard happens a couple times, then you'll definitely see it.
02:20:31.000And then it'll probably be undeniable at that point.