Joe Pesci ( ) joins Jemele to discuss his trip to Mohegan Sun casino, the new hazmat suits they're wearing, and how to deal with the aftermath of a night out. Plus, a new Black Mirror episode about the Black Plague and more. Guests: Joe Pesci and Jemele Halpern ( ) Guests: John Joseph Cromag ( ) and Luke ( ) Thanks to our sponsor, for sponsoring this episode! Thanks also to everyone who supported the podcast and gave us a shout out! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The 500 is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. Our theme song is Come Alone by The Weakerthans, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. We are produced by Riley Bray. Additional engineering and mixing by Will Witwer. Special thanks to and . is a proud member of the New England Patriots and the New York Yankees. joins us on this episode of the podcast. If you like the pod, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, rate, and tell a friend about what you think of the pod! We'll be listening to it on Anchor.fm/New England Patriots, and we'll send you a review! in the next episode of Black Mirror! Thank you for listening and sharing it! - Thank you so much for listening to this episode. - Your continued support is so appreciated, we really means a lot to us. and we appreciate you're a lot of love and support us. We really appreciate it. Thank you, bye. XOXO, bye, bye bye. Cheers, bye Bye Bye, bye Love Birds! - The Crew, Rory, Cheers - Joe & Rory, EJ & Alyssa & Jack - M. & K. <3 - P. & J.A. & Rory - E. & Lizzie - AKA <_____________ - OJ & JUICY ~ - - J. & A. & R. (NSYCHEY & JL & AYO ( ) - JOSY & B.B. & C. & S. & EJ
00:00:35.000What did you do traveling for before this?
00:00:36.000So I went to the Charlo Brothers doubleheader in Mohegan Sun, which was interesting because I got there early in the week and the casino was empty.
00:00:43.000That bitch was slamming by Saturday night.
00:00:45.000I had not been in crowds since March, right?
00:02:52.000I mean, this is the future, and it apparently has some fog-proof attachment some way, somehow or another, and you put your hand, if you have to scratch your face, there's little zips on the side, and you put your hand through.
00:03:07.000You know, I appreciate the spirit of innovation here, but this is a Black Mirror episode, right?
00:03:29.000You obviously got a very mild dose, and you had a very mild case of it.
00:03:33.000That's why the masks are important, right?
00:03:34.000Because even if you get it, if someone has it, you know, they're not wearing it properly, you're not getting sprayed with this huge amount.
00:04:32.000So I knew a bunch of people that went to Iraq because I was in the Marine Corps, but I got out right before my unit sent.
00:04:36.000So I was very, very lucky in that regard.
00:04:38.000But a bunch of them came back super fucked up.
00:04:40.000You know, they're all fine now, but super fucked up.
00:04:43.000These doctors who were in New York in March, they all have PTSD. Watching day after day.
00:04:49.000Remember, there was times when New York was losing 800 people a day.
00:04:53.000And he was telling me, like, you know, you hold up enough phones to someone who's dying and so their kids are crying on the other end of FaceTime.
00:04:59.000And you do that day after day after day.
00:05:59.000But my stepfather, my mom eventually got divorced, but I had a stepfather for a time, and he was a cop for 30 years in Washington, D.C. I'm not saying he had the most enlightened ideas of the world, but when you spend a few months in the hospital because they broke all your ribs...
00:06:12.000And you had to deal with a two-year-old with a gun and every other situation.
00:07:10.000For others, it means not going to that nuclear option, but sort of rearranging funds to go to different policy or other kind of intervention projects.
00:08:49.000But unless you do straight-up army combatives, which is the best thing maybe the army's ever done for themselves in terms of that kind of aim, policy aim...
00:09:01.000And every cop I know who has ever trained, there's a bunch of guys who I know from various different martial arts schools, they took the initiative to go train outside of what law enforcement was providing them.
00:09:13.000But like, this is what I mean, they don't get any of this shit.
00:09:16.000Or if they do, it's like, you know, here's how to get out of if someone's choking you in this very, it's almost like a women's self-defense class is really the extent to which they learn.
00:10:12.000It's the same thing going through the military.
00:10:14.000If you don't succumb to the process, it will not redevelop your character.
00:10:20.000You have to willingly give yourself to that.
00:10:23.000Just giving cops jiu-jitsu training does not force that transformation.
00:10:28.000So while I think it would help in certain situations, it could exacerbate existing problems with whatever cop has deranged or bad training about the world.
00:10:37.000And now, oh wait, now you know Kimora's and you're a fucking asshole?
00:10:54.000In normal jujitsu, the way jujitsu transforms your life, it's not transforming your life in the stress of you being a police officer and all the things we talked about, PTSD, people shooting you, dealing with all the horrific things you see every day.
00:11:08.000Essentially, you're going through this struggle, and that struggle sort of steals you and makes you a better person.
00:11:14.000Yeah, if you went through that struggle along with the chaos of the police academy or of rather police duty, I would imagine best case scenario is it alleviates some stress.
00:11:28.000It helps you get past a lot of the bullshit that you would normally eat at you.
00:11:34.000And it also allows you to relieve some tension and...
00:11:38.000Yeah, I just – I don't know that I would – for cost reasons, I don't know that I would mandate that kind of training.
00:11:42.000I think I would offer particular forms of incentives to get it to the right kind of folks.
00:11:45.000I would mandate it just because you're going to have situations where people have hand-to-hand experiences.
00:11:50.000You should know how to distribute your weight.
00:11:53.000But I would say doing that by itself would not be sufficient.
00:11:56.000That along with other forms of reform – So that we're asking police to do the things that police are supposed to do and not the things they're not supposed to do.
00:12:03.000I think in conjunction, it's never one solution, right?
00:12:06.000Most problems in the world require a series of interventions.
00:12:09.000Do those in conjunction, you're probably going to get a better policing.
00:12:11.000When I was 19, I worked as a security guard at a concert place called Great Woods in Mansfield, Massachusetts.
00:12:34.000It happened really quickly where I saw security guys beat the shit out of me.
00:12:39.000The first day of the job, I saw this guy get beaten up with a walkie-talkie because he stole a golf cart.
00:12:44.000Like, 19-year-old, fresh-faced kid, like, what is going on here?
00:12:48.000And this guy, his name is Alley Cat, tackles this kid who had stolen one of their golf carts, and he's hitting him in the face with a walkie-talkie.
00:12:55.000And I'm like, what kind of job did I fucking sign up for?
00:12:58.000I mean, and it was only like, you know, 15 bucks an hour or something, I would imagine.
00:13:02.000I don't really remember, but I remember thinking real early on, like, this is a very strange how I've, like, very quickly developed this us-versus-them mentality.
00:13:13.000I've also noticed, you know, back when I was 24, I was working doors at various bars in New York City to make some money to make ends meet because New York City is crazy expensive.
00:16:11.000I don't know enough about hand-to-hand combat with weapons to say one way or the other, but I just know as it relates to martial arts...
00:16:18.000The fast forwarding that happened from 93 on relative to before it, it was this sort of slow process and then it hit overdrive.
00:16:26.000You know what's really very satisfying to me is that when I first got involved in the UFC in 1997, it was when I was on news radio and the people on news radio literally look at me like I was doing porn.
00:18:24.000And he was 19. And when he was 19, his hands were a blur of light.
00:18:29.000He was so fast and so aggressive and so different than any other Brazilian jiu-jitsu guy.
00:18:35.000Because we thought of Brazilian jiu-jitsu guys, and he was a black belt, but we thought of black belts as being someone who just wants to get a hold of you, drag you to the ground, strangle you, or get you in an armbar.
00:18:43.000And all of a sudden, you've got this guy who's wearing gloves, because nobody else is wearing gloves, or very few people, 10 Cabot wore gloves.
00:18:50.000And just lighting people up with punches.
00:18:54.000And so, just by chance and fortune, I was training at his school and got to be on the card and doing the post-fight interviews the very first time that he fought in the UFC. Wow.
00:21:01.000You only know what someone shows you for the most part.
00:21:03.000This is pre-internet, so you definitely only know that shit.
00:21:06.000And I had a family friend who was involved in a martial art that was South Korean called Tukong, which apparently was the official...
00:21:13.000So Taekwondo is, as I understand it, and someone's going to correct me on this, but as I understand it, what was explained to me was that Taekwondo is the official sport of South Korea, but Tukong was the official martial art or self-defense system of the military.
00:21:29.000Well, Taekyon, T-A-E-K-Y-O-N, is what we were taught, was like an earlier version of Taekwondo.
00:21:36.000I don't know anything about it, other than what this guy told us.
00:21:39.000General Chaeyoung Yi, he was the guy, I used to teach Taekwondo, and General Chaeyoung Yi was the guy who really formulated Taekwondo into a system, and my instructor, Jaehyun Kim, was one of Chaeyoung Yi's I remember
00:22:40.000I think it was three he had skipped and four he had come back and fought chemo.
00:22:43.000What was the one where he had, I forget the genesis, but there was enough in the video where he was just like lighting these people up in the way, he's like, how the fuck is this possible?
00:22:53.000And it's been politicized now and it takes on a different meaning, but that truly was red-pilled at that moment.
00:22:56.000Like, there was a eureka moment and the lights go on and you're like, wow, this really is the future.
00:23:00.000It's a bummer that red pill has been politicized.
00:23:02.000I know, because it's such a great term!
00:24:10.000Understand, for folks who don't know who Mark Breland is, former, I think, Olympic gold medalist, world champion, across two different weight divisions, if I'm not mistaken.
00:24:17.000He is the voice of sanity, or was, until he was dismissed in that corner.
00:24:21.000That was the guy that threw the towel for him, who, I mean...
00:24:25.000Breland should be thanked by Wilder and his camp until the end of time.
00:24:30.000His other trainer, I forget his last name, he was out there at the post-fight press conference being like, I don't know if I would have thrown that towel.
00:24:41.000Breland took it upon himself to, I don't know, save the guy's life, but certainly make the right call for halting the contest.
00:24:49.000He was thanked by being dismissed and now essentially dragged through the mud with utterly, I'm guessing, or utterly baseless accusations about poisoning his own fighter.
00:25:00.000That seems like the simplest explanation.
00:25:02.000Well, Tyson Fury changed his strategy.
00:25:05.000And also you have to realize that Tyson Fury in the first fight was coming off of a multiple year battle with depression, mental illness, drinking, got suicidal thoughts.
00:25:14.000He talked on my podcast about driving his Ferrari and almost slamming into a bridge.
00:25:19.000He's like, I was pedaled to the metal and I was thinking about slamming into this bridge.
00:25:23.000And they changed his mind and just slowly worked his way into shape, got healthy again, got his mind right again, and...
00:28:01.000I mean, every once in a while you come around to a guy who not only can train fighters to a high degree— But has an idea about what the game is missing and how to fill that gap.
00:28:12.000And they are big believers in fainting.
00:30:12.000My view on his power is that for straight rights, which is really what he basically throws, or maybe a little bit overhandy because it's a little bit looping, that's one of the best, if not the best, right hands in all of boxing.
00:30:23.000If you're talking about full-on power punchers, though, I don't know that he's got the full repertoire.
00:30:27.000Like, is his uppercut with his right hand as good as his straight?
00:31:06.000I never heard some shit like that, you know what I mean?
00:31:08.000Yeah, well, power's a weird thing, right?
00:31:10.000Like, you're the born with it, or you're not.
00:31:12.000I mean, I've seen so many guys who you'd look at, and they're big and strong, and you would say, wow, but that guy hits hard, and they can't crack an egg.
00:31:22.000There's always been a bunch of them in boxing.
00:31:24.000There's been a bunch of them, like, you see them in the gym, and then you see guys, like, do you remember Michael McDonald when he was a kid when he was coming up?
00:33:19.000Similar, that same slip in with the left uppercut.
00:33:21.000If you go and look closely, Gervonta is squared, and so he's leaning to either side, and so when the punch comes, he's able to slip this direction.
00:34:22.000He was right in the middle of saying, you know, if Gervonta Davis thinks that his power is going to put Santa Cruz down, and then he cracked him with it, so he stopped mid-sentence.
00:34:33.000Wouldn't have been his fault, because the point was, like, Santa Cruz opened up.
00:38:04.000Well, I should bring, you know, I don't know, maybe Mark doesn't have the kind of relationship with him that he can call him up.
00:38:08.000My understanding is his manager, Deontay's manager, was the one who brought in Breland years ago.
00:38:15.000I was like, we need somebody here who's like a high-level trainer, and brought him in, and it worked for our time anyway, but here we are.
00:38:23.000I talked to Roy Jones about him, and Roy Jones was saying if he trained him, what he would train him is he would concentrate on his left hand.
00:38:30.000He was like, where do you know you can put people to sleep with your right hand?
00:40:36.000And he ate a lot of leg kicks, too, man.
00:40:39.000He had a lot of leg kicks that would...
00:40:41.000I mean, I don't know how many of those you can eat from Justin.
00:40:44.000Maybe he had like five or six more in the tank until you're on E. But he closed the gap and then wound up finishing with a triangle off of his back.
00:41:20.000Is that the best back take you've ever seen in MMA? Because what he does is, when Gaethje is sprawling in this contest, he's not just sprawling.
00:41:27.000He is sprawling and turning so he doesn't get pushed into the fence.
00:41:30.000He was very diligent about that in the Alvarez and the Gaethje fights.
00:41:34.000So in this fight, when you see the level change that Khabib hits, You'll see automatically Gaethje turn because he doesn't want to get turned that direction.
00:41:41.000But what Khabib does is he actually scoots under him, pulls him up, and then with his head posts him over, gets the hands to plant.
00:41:48.000Well, once the hands are planted, the double is over.
00:43:05.000Like, who is the GOAT? I think if you look at Jon Jones' early career, right?
00:43:09.000Jon Jones wins the title in 2011, and...
00:43:13.000He, from then on, has fought more fights as championship fights than he has other fights.
00:43:18.000So he's the most accomplished, for sure.
00:43:20.000Wins the title, earliest, youngest guy to ever win the title in the UFC. Beats Mauricio Shogunhua, who's a legend.
00:43:27.000And then the way he dominates all these other fighters, up until you get to Alexander Gustafson, you can make the argument that he had a similar career.
00:43:38.000You can make the argument, like if you look at what he did, Jon didn't lose any rounds.
00:45:21.000In a sport filled with, it's not a scientific measurement per se, right, who gets cut the most or something, but in a sport built on unpredictability, on violence.
00:45:31.000St. Pierre went to wrestling to get away from all of that in large part, and then to never experience that, it is shocking beyond description.
00:47:11.000The John Joad situation is also, it's a contrast in personalities, right?
00:47:16.000Khabib, who's this really religious, very moral, ethical person who doesn't drink, he doesn't party, he doesn't do anything, he just trains, he's always in phenomenal shape, he takes every fight incredibly serious,
00:47:32.000he's never been out of shape, he's never been fat, he's never, I mean...
00:47:35.000He's missed weight a couple of times earlier in his career, but he got that dialed in.
00:48:26.000And he is so gifted that he can take time off and the game is so developed that people aren't going to make warp speed development in his absence.
00:48:34.000And so they got a little bit better every time he took a little bit of time off, like the Maidana first fight with the corkscrew punch.
00:48:38.000That was a little bit of a wild card there.
00:48:41.000But in general, he was able to maintain that dominance.
00:48:46.000Super fast, because people are still discovering best practices.
00:48:49.000In two years, people will not be doing the same kinds of things to the same degree they do now.
00:48:54.000The calf kick and its explosion is sort of an obvious example of that.
00:48:59.000John was doing things like not training between camps.
00:49:03.000I mean, that's something only elite boxers do because they've been doing this since they were five, six years old, and they can take the time to not necessarily do that.
00:49:10.000Whereas most MMA fighters are like, I'm an everyday martial artist.
00:49:16.000He would do nothing and then something and still go out there and beat world fucking champions in what at the time was the UFC's marquee division.
00:49:24.000That is out of this fucking world bonkers.
00:49:28.000I'm going to beat you as a part-time guy?
00:49:32.000You just couldn't wrap your head around it.
00:49:34.000I wonder if maybe there's some benefit, because it's not like you got totally out of shape, but I wonder if there's some benefit to that in that he's not getting beat up.
00:50:48.000But my answer to the question about, is it better to do what John did?
00:50:52.000My hunch is that there are probably some net benefits to it.
00:50:56.000On balance, there's going to be some downsides and some upsides.
00:50:59.000The downsides are going to be that this development that you might need as a martial artist will be somewhat impeded.
00:51:06.000However, there'll be some longevity issues you may not have to worry about by consequence.
00:51:10.000In fact, you look at him tearing his toe in the Chael Sonnen fight.
00:51:14.000Now, I fucked up my toe similarly, not to the extent where I was through the skin, but he has a buddy system with the wrap on the toe, and I had to use the exact same thing for a long time, because even now, if I step on my right foot just right, it sends fire through my toe.
00:53:11.000Not like in the fuck you kind of sense, but like, I'm going to fight you in a way where all these stories that they told me about you, it's like the buzzing of flies to me.
00:54:06.000Having two bad motherfuckers as brothers and constantly competing with each other, I think...
00:54:12.000But it doesn't also say something that, like, okay, Noguera exception aside, most of the brother tandems, or even the sister tandems, one is clearly better than the other, though.
00:54:42.000Well, sometimes that is what makes a really tough fighter, too.
00:54:46.000Like, Chris Weidman's story, him and his brother, his brother used to beat his ass, and his brother was bullying him, and Chris Weidman became a fucking savage, cause he was just so tough from dealing with his fucking brother.
00:54:56.000You know, like, Do you have any siblings?
00:55:04.000My brother was a super hardcore academic nerd, and so I don't have any...
00:55:09.000I have a brother, and you're telling me these stories, and it's like, that is so divorced from my reality from having a brother as a sibling, you know?
00:55:17.000Really, we're talking about a lack of observation.
00:57:07.000You ever seen this documentary, I think it's called The Season, but if I'm getting it wrong, I know your listeners are going to fucking kill me if I get it wrong.
00:57:15.000I forget the exact name, but they, you know Steve Mako, he's the ATT wrestling coach?
00:57:24.000One time, speaking to Jon Jones, Jon was fighting Glover in Baltimore, and Steve definitely did not want me to interview him, but he didn't say no.
00:57:31.000I was like, Steve, can I get a couple seconds with you or whatever?
00:57:33.000And I stuck a microphone in his face, and I'm like, so, you know, specifically, what kind of strategies around Glover have you trained here?
00:57:39.000He's like, you know, some particular strategies around Glover for Jon.
00:57:43.000Like, he would just literally repeat the exact words back to me.
00:57:46.000Four questions in, I'm like, you don't want to do this.
00:58:14.000Penn State is now the best program in the country and has been for some time because of Kale Sanderson and the recruiting and the great work that they've done.
00:58:21.000But in general, for a long time, Iowa is sort of one of these titans of college wrestling.
00:58:25.000And they ask Steve Mako, as a college student, why do you like wrestling?
00:58:55.000I had a very good relationship with him and his management for a long time, and I still have a decent relationship with his management.
00:59:02.000So the fight back with Cormier at 214, I think it was, whatever the number was, the rematch, he had a press conference, he had a shaved head, and he was in a mood.
00:59:12.000And I'd ask him some totally softball, innocuous question.
00:59:16.000And to the public, he goes, you know, Luke, I don't like you, so I'm not going to answer your question.
00:59:21.000And it was a shock to me because his coach, Brandon Gibson, I'm like very tight with, you know, and a bunch of other people.
01:00:19.000Because one of the things that I said, I speculated that maybe one of the reasons why he was behaving the way he was behaving was CTE. And I still kind of stand by that.
01:00:30.000I think one of the things that happens with CTE, and not that I think John should get out of the game, I'm not saying this at all, but I'm saying that there's an inevitable consequence of getting hit in the head.
01:00:43.000We've seen the video of John getting pulled over drunk driving and he says, I forget a lot of things, I get hit in the head for a living.
01:00:49.000There's an inevitable consequence of getting punched in the head where fighters experience some sort of negative effect of it.
01:00:59.000And some of them become very impulsive.
01:01:01.000It's just one of the side effects of head trauma.
01:01:05.000And even head trauma that's like acceptable.
01:01:14.000It's harder for them to control their impulses.
01:01:16.000Well, in the case of John, as it relates to my interaction with him, And I hold no ill will, believe it or not, because, frankly, I almost prefer that.
01:01:26.000You know, because here's what ends up happening.
01:01:28.000If you get too friendly, then you could hold back.
01:03:16.000Like when a fighter loses, I almost feel like they put themselves out there more than any other athlete and they deserve more respect than any other athlete.
01:04:14.000If you're looking at the world and your job is to the best approximation that you can, tell the truth about it, how do you tell the truth about the world and say that the fighters...
01:05:33.000I don't think the fighters are necessarily the best stewards of understanding what's in their rights and interests.
01:05:39.000It's my personal opinion, but anti-doping to me is, to me, I won't call it a fraud, but I think it's a tragic mistake in the way that we are doing it.
01:06:14.000But again, to me, I never understood it from just a pragmatic standpoint, because this was a way to offset complaints about fighter pay, because you have now Venom at the time, or name any brand or whatever the fuck that was sponsored.
01:06:25.000Ryu, whatever brand that's come and gone, was a way to offset fighter pay.
01:06:30.000And by the way, the media, I think, doesn't treat them fairly in the sense that, and I'm a member of the MMA media, and I have been for almost 15 years, You are expected to be either friend or foe with them.
01:07:31.000There is a Nate Quarry, Kyle Kingsbury, Kung Lee lawsuit, and many others as well.
01:07:38.000They are basically suing the UFC for...
01:07:41.000To put it in layman's terms, the bad effects of monopoly.
01:07:45.000And they believe they're entitled to compensation and other forms of change in the industry as a consequence.
01:07:51.000We are going to get a result, I think on the 19th of this month, from the judge in the case that if he allows it to go forward, he will have to certify them as a class.
01:08:00.000And all indications are he's going to, which means that trial will proceed.
01:08:03.000Now, it still has a long way to go, but that is a major institutional hurdle on behalf of the plaintiffs.
01:09:00.000It's hard to focus on the lawsuit because if the judge denies them class certification or it gets thrown out at any moment, then the whole thing goes away and it's a long-term projection.
01:09:09.000We're not anywhere close to any kind of end on this for the next five years or something.
01:09:16.000Basically that the UFC is not a monopoly, it's a monopsony, which instead of sort of one seller, it's one buyer.
01:09:22.000It's a different kind of monopoly and that it has resulted in depressed wages, it's resulted in unfair contracts, It's resulted in any number of harms related to the fighter and their ability to negotiate.
01:09:33.000I mean, most of that is not arguable, right?
01:09:35.000You cannot argue that the UFC and the fighter go to contract negotiations with equal amounts of leverage.
01:10:03.000But basically, the idea behind the Ali Act is that it provides a series of protections for the boxer against the promoter and or the industry in the form of disclosures.
01:10:12.000So, for example, by virtue of the Ali Act, they have to disclose to the fighter, to the boxer, like Teofimo Lopez just won, right?
01:10:18.000Top rank has to disclose to him who's making what.
01:10:20.000Margins on the costs, sales on pay-per-view, or it was on TV, but to the extent that it's relevant.
01:10:27.000So they have to disclose that kind of thing.
01:10:29.000The Ali Act prevents any promoter from having the title.
01:10:36.000You can have a problem with the alphabet soup, but that really is the crux of the issue, is to the extent that the promoter holds the title, they hold everything.
01:10:55.000Anyway, I'm not suggesting that the Ali Act is the cure to everything.
01:10:58.000But yeah, see, because the other thing is, like, promoters and then the sanctioning body, like, then the fighters are paying the sanctioning body, and they're paying the promoter, and the sanctioning bodies are, you know, they're trying to get mandatories that nobody gives a fuck about, and if you don't, you know what I mean?
01:11:11.000And even WBA. I covered boxing for a long time, and then I stopped because the nature of my job changed, and I didn't have the opportunity to really...
01:11:20.000I was just so engrossed in the MMA world.
01:11:23.000I'd missed a lot of time, and I remember I was catching up with my co-host for the show I do on Showtime, Morning Combat, and my co-host was like, okay, so...
01:11:32.000This guy has the WBA regular title, and then this one has the WBA franchise title, and then this one has the WBA Latino title?
01:14:43.000So you can make an argument that there are sections of the boxing world that don't take care of the middle class as well as the UFC, and that is very, very true.
01:14:51.000Again, I'm not here to paint UFC as criminals.
01:15:04.000It's going to be so hard for fighters to do that because another fighter will come in and say, I'll take that fight.
01:15:09.000Hence the lawsuit being a bit of a game changer because it could, again, this is very much speculating, it could change the procedure for how this goes forward.
01:15:20.000There's a couple of outcomes where it could result in a union or a trade association and then that sort of fixes the problem.
01:15:30.000There's fighters that get to a position where they are world-class, where they're challenging for a title, and they never quite make enough money where you feel like it was worth it.
01:16:21.000This is what I try to explain to people.
01:16:23.000It's like, there used to be this debate because you hear these fighters come out and be like, you know, I got this bonus one time and it wasn't expected and it was huge.
01:17:27.000The last thing I would say is I appreciate the stories of locker room bonuses and helping people out at Christmas.
01:17:33.000But the fundamental question is, if you're a fighter, do you get half of the UFC's money from ESPN? What kind of cut do you get from pay-per-view?
01:17:42.000And how much leverage do you have to negotiate that?
01:17:44.000That is all that matters anymore, and we know what the documents say.
01:17:47.000The UFC is obviously a different kind of an organization than, say, boxing, where you just have a promoter, and the promoter promotes the fights they promote, and they don't have obligations to 500 fighters they have on the roster.
01:17:58.000There's obviously much higher overhead for the UFC. The UFC runs multiple performance centers all over the world.
01:18:33.000They have something that doesn't exist anywhere else where you can go through the system, become a champion, and be a multi-multi-millionaire.
01:19:29.000But I'm just saying, on some level, it's like with USADA, which we've kind of lost track on, like, when I get up and I think about, before I hit publish or whatever, what do I owe these people?
01:20:47.000They have their own broadcast network with Fight Pass, whatever.
01:20:49.000They have this total, not total, but they have near vertical integration across the industry.
01:20:53.000And so, in many ways, that is a great way to keep fights going.
01:20:56.000But it's like, you hear Eddie Hearn, who runs Matchroom Boxing, and he always sort of laments, He's like, there's got to be a better model that, you know, the UFC model really has figured it out.
01:21:05.000But you don't get that if the fighters have rights.
01:21:39.000Have you talked to someone who has parsed out the numbers, has looked at the expenses, like what it costs to run the UFC? Sure.
01:21:47.000John Nash has done this extensively through all the court documents.
01:21:51.000He'd be better to talk about the overhead and how significantly that impacts.
01:21:54.000I'd be speaking a little bit out of turn.
01:21:56.000This is a significant factor because it doesn't really exist in boxing in relationship to promoters.
01:22:01.000They don't really have the staff or the promotion machine.
01:22:04.000They don't have the amount of overhead.
01:22:06.000And you have to ask yourself a question.
01:22:07.000In defense of the UFC, they're going to have this...
01:22:09.000Again, let's imagine the pandemic doesn't exist for a moment.
01:22:12.000They either have, or it's already opened, the Institute in China.
01:22:16.000So they are forcing that market to begin to recruit and develop and recruit and develop.
01:22:23.000And I don't know if it'll be successful, but no one in boxing has that kind of hand in the pot to begin to make things happen in the way that UFC could for the betterment of MMA. That's a real thing I give them absolute credit for.
01:22:34.000It's just you have to decide what you want.
01:23:08.000I'm not the guy who gets to decide what the checks are, but...
01:23:13.000I think they should be paid as much as they can be paid.
01:23:15.000I mean, I think it's the fucking hardest job outside of being a cop or a soldier or a firefighter or a first responder or a fucking surgeon in the emergency room.
01:23:25.000It's one of the hardest goddamn jobs on the planet Earth.
01:24:18.000And when you get to a guy who's a superstar, like a Conor McGregor or a Kameed Nurmagomedov, Israel Adesanya or Jon Jones, they're going to make a shitload of money.
01:24:29.000The argument is, do the guys below them, do the journeymen, journeywomen, do they make enough?
01:24:40.000Raquel Pennington, does she make enough?
01:24:41.000I would disagree a little bit, if I may.
01:24:43.000Let's talk about Jon Jones for a second.
01:24:45.000Again, not my best friend, but I take his side on this one, which is, do you remember when Jon was beefing with UFC about going to heavyweight?
01:25:02.000The problem with asking for Deontay Wilder money when there's not a stadium, obviously you realize that stadiums bring in a significant amount of revenue.
01:26:51.000I'm not asking for the guys to get 50. I don't think 50 is realistic for the reasons you mentioned.
01:26:56.000What the UFC has done spectacularly well is create a fighter middle class where guys can make six figures a year.
01:27:03.000I don't know how many of them, but there's a portion of them where they can make six figures.
01:27:06.000They at least have some accident insurance, and there's ways to leverage that, and there's a whole lot of them relative to what there is in boxing.
01:27:13.000But when you talk about the argument about who's most underpaid, the people point to the guy who's making 10 and 10 because he's a sob story.
01:27:20.000But if you're asking who has generated the most versus what they were paid, yes, for the reasons you articulated, John shouldn't be getting whatever Deontay got for the second Fury fight.
01:27:33.000No, it would be a little bit less than that.
01:30:15.000I'm just going to give you what I know.
01:30:17.000Yeah, but that seems like a weird one.
01:30:18.000I mean, I'm with you on all this, but that's a weird one if you don't have the fact...
01:30:24.000If I have not seen the documents myself...
01:30:26.000Well, here's what I can say for certain.
01:30:27.000They get a stipend for each individual pay-per-view, and then on top of that, if it sells past a certain point, they get a percentage of everyone past a certain threshold.
01:31:39.000Well, the Jon Jones thing, wasn't he contractually obligated to fight?
01:31:45.000Like, he had a contract for X amount of money per fight, and he wanted substantially more to fight at heavyweight because he said the risk was higher.
01:31:54.000And that was where the negotiation broke down.
01:32:24.000You know, that would be the argument whether steep A is a big enough challenge for John to generate X amount of pay-per-view buys, which would justify the revenue.
01:33:11.000I understand the position, and like I said, I'm always for fighters getting paid more money, but I just don't know if that would ever work.
01:33:26.000Now that is, I couldn't, I'm with you.
01:33:28.000It's like their reluctance, because I know for a long time, you know, privately fighters would be like to me, they'd be like, y'all never talk about this shit.
01:35:19.000Maybe two cards ago, they had this dude from Kazakhstan.
01:35:22.000You know people, I don't care where you're from, Tennessee or Kazakhstan, if you wear dead animals on your head, shit, dude, you mean business, right?
01:38:02.000There's a lot of Jamaican immigrants, certainly in the UK, and growing up hardscrabble and getting fucked up and being in fights and shit, and then finally arriving at this moment.
01:38:14.000And he lost the momentum from all of this.
01:38:16.000Well, you know, the good news is he's still in his prime, and once all this shit blows over, there's still a lot of big fights to be had at 170, and there's also the opportunity that comes with guys inevitably getting injured and fights falling out, and the Chemayev fight, if you can shut down the hype train, that will put him right in the driver's seat.
01:38:33.000Chemayev, I mean, it's really quick that this guy has all the hype on him, and the Mearshart fight just fucking put a candle on that cake, didn't it?
01:38:40.000You ever watch the regional tape on this kid?
01:38:52.000So there was this dude he fought, he made most of his fights in Brave, which is the promotion out of Bahrain, and he fought this dude who was a world champion in Sambo.
01:39:48.000I think it was 170. When the guy's doing the one arm frozen up in the air or a leg, anytime there's something frozen in the air, you know, it's a bad knockout.
01:39:55.000My go-to on this is what we call testifying in church.
01:40:00.000When they throw the hands up, when they come back and they head fucking slams like the testifying in church.
01:40:04.000The head banging off the ground is always scary.
01:40:06.000You see that Muay Thai ref who caught the head?
01:40:50.000Even Vangeli Silva is starting to be the complaining about headaches thing.
01:40:54.000I don't speak Portuguese, but the people that I'm friends with that do speak it, say the way he communicates in Portuguese is all fucked up now.
01:41:44.000First of all, he got KO'd because he was pointing that he lost his mouthpiece.
01:41:48.000He was trying to get the judge to give him his fucking mouthpiece, and he let his guard down, and Anderson hit him with a flying knee.
01:41:53.000Caught him right on the chin, and it looked like the fight was over.
01:41:55.000Anderson walked away like the fight was over, and could have ended the fight, but thought the referee was going to step in and stop, but didn't.
01:42:21.000I don't think folks understand, to get, when you, if you lose enough at something, and not that they've lost a tremendous amount, I mean, he's a Hall of Famer and a champion, but I'm just saying, at the elite level, when you lose like that, There it is.
01:42:31.000It is a psychological barrier to overcome it.
01:42:35.000People think it's all, we just get back up and...
01:43:30.000And the fact that he KO'd Rockhold with that beautiful left over the top like that, and that him and Jason Perillo saw that as a flaw in Rockhold's defense.
01:43:39.000But I mean, that was an amazing performance.
01:43:42.000Clearly the performance of his life because it won him the title.
01:43:45.000But I say you go to the Kong Lee fight.
01:43:47.000The Kong Lee fight, he beat the fucking brakes off of Kong Lee.
01:43:50.000And that was when Kong Lee was Kong Lee.
01:44:31.000When Vitor stopped him, Vitor was on just full whatever the fuck he was on.
01:44:38.000There was a moment, for people who don't understand this, there was a moment of madness in MMA where you were allowed to take testosterone.
01:44:46.000And all you had to do was show low testosterone.
01:44:49.000If you've been doing steroids, you show low testosterone.
01:44:53.000You get off the steroids, and then your endocrine system's all fucked up, so you go to a doctor, the doctor blood tests you, and says, yep, you have low testosterone.
01:45:00.000You need TRT. So testosterone replacement therapy is on the menu.
01:45:05.000And then all of a sudden, you go from Vitor Belfort, who got frontkicked in the face by Anderson Silva, who had, if you go, pull that up, because it's one of Anderson's most spectacular knockouts.
01:45:16.000And the first time ever I saw someone get KO'd by a frontkick to the face.
01:45:21.000Because I remember I had a conversation with Eddie Bravo once in my gym where I had like one of those little rubber dummies that looks like a person.
01:45:27.000And he goes, could you throw a front kick to the face?
01:45:48.000Yeah, I mean, what in the fucking holy shit?
01:45:52.000You go, 2012 was the year he was like super saucy.
01:45:55.000Go to Vitor Belfort versus Michael Bisping, if you could find that.
01:46:00.000Because there was a time where they let Vitor take whatever he wanted, and the problem with that is they did a test once, and when they did a test on him, like look at that picture where they're touching gloves.
01:46:25.000That wasn't the unofficial weigh-ins where you weighed in and rehydrated and then you got to step on those, you know, and I would say the official weight for Vitor Belfort, 185, but really he'd be 195 plus when he would stand in front of the camera.
01:47:30.000Because, well, that was a fight at 205, right?
01:47:32.000That was a fight that really tested Jon Jones' mettle.
01:47:34.000And that's a fight where a lot of people forget...
01:47:37.000John Jones had a fully hyperextended arm bar on him.
01:47:40.000I mean, his arm was fucked, and most people would have tapped.
01:47:43.000I mean, that arm was gonzo, to the point where John decided to coach the ultimate fighter because he knew he wasn't going to be able to train for a long time because his arm was so fucked from the Vitor fight.
01:47:54.000Vitor, in his guard, threw up an arm bar and had it fully hyperextended.
01:47:58.000And I think Vitor might have let it go or something.
01:48:01.000I mean, I don't know what happened there.
01:48:02.000Either John just gutted it out and Vitor got tired, but his arm was fucked.
01:48:08.000Where if you're watching it, you're cringing because you're waiting for that Frank Mir, Tim Sylvia snap.
01:52:17.000So I think we have to go back over all the different things you were breaking down because I let you go on this long run about the UFC. No, no, no.
02:01:51.000And watch how many times when, you know, they're getting the mouthpiece put in and the Vaseline put on at the At the beginning, watch how many times the commentator says, folks don't understand how good he is.
02:02:03.000This is one of the most well-rounded fighters in all the UFC. And they do it in this kind of way to almost plead with the audience to understand the fighter as they do.
02:02:15.000The thing is, if you and Brian Stan are doing it and you're not coordinating it, something is happening here.
02:02:19.000Well, I remember when he knocked out Eve Edwards with a head kick, when Eve Edwards is one of the best 155-pounders in the world, after Eve Edwards had beaten Josh Thompson, who's another guy who doesn't get nearly the respect that he deserves.
02:02:31.000The first guy to ever knock out Nate Diaz, right?
02:02:34.000I mean, Josh Thompson at one point in time was the fucking man, right?
02:02:38.000And so he knocks out Eve Edwards in Bodog.
02:03:46.000Because Dana and him were going back and forth.
02:03:50.000And yeah, because Calvin Iyer, when he had the Bodog thing, had a big billboard for Bodog fight, but it was him.
02:03:57.000Like, Calvin Iyer, like, in Vegas, like, looking slick with a nice, tailored, expensive suit, and he was talking shit about Dana White, and Dana White's like, you can't even get into this country.
02:04:07.000Like, you're a fucking fugitive for the law.
02:04:09.000If you come into this country, they'll arrest you.
02:04:10.000Like, I don't remember what it was, but I think it was one of those things where he was doing this online gambling thing, and they were like, this is illegal, and he's like, fuck you, I'll do it in Belize or some shit.
02:04:38.000There was some weird shit that went down, which, look, I'm a big fan of personal freedom, and I'm a big fan of people being able to gamble wherever the fuck they want.
02:04:46.000I'm not a big fan of people regulating things.
02:04:49.000Unless you can prove that someone's getting robbed, unless you can prove they're stealing money from people, I think they should be able to gamble.
02:04:55.000I think that was one of the things that happened with that Bodog organization, but they threw around a lot of money and put together...
02:06:43.000The Kane fight that they had was in an ice rink, in the middle of an ice rink, and they actually built a studio slash stage presence for it in the middle of an ice rink in wherever the fuck it was, St. Petersburg, and then a ring to make it look like they were somewhere else.
02:06:57.000Meanwhile, they're in the middle of a fucking ice rink.
02:07:57.000Sometimes you want to look at a guy like you look at Anderson, right?
02:08:00.000And you look at the Jared Kananier fight, or you look at...
02:08:04.000The second Chris Weidman fight, it's really interesting.
02:08:07.000You look at Anderson's career, and I actually went over it last night because I knew I was going to talk to you today, and I was thinking, you know, there's one point in time where I was convinced that Anderson was a GOAT, and I think he was at his time.
02:08:17.000I think in his prime, he was the GOAT at the time.
02:08:22.000And you go from the Chris Weidman fight, where he's the baddest motherfucker on earth.
02:08:27.000Chris Weidman KOs him, and then he loses every fight afterwards.
02:08:53.000The Kote fight wasn't that good either.
02:08:54.000Patrick Cote was very cautious, because Patrick Cote knew that Anderson Silva was a counterfighter, and Patrick had a powerful fucking right hand.
02:09:02.000And Patrick was like, I'll let you come to me, bitch.
02:09:04.000And then Patrick, with a weird thing, like he hopped on his knee to throw a kick, and his knee just blew out.
02:09:10.000And he fell and held his knee, and that was a really...
02:09:13.000But the Damien Maia fight, people forget that.
02:09:46.000And then Anderson Silva comes out like a demon, and he was like screaming at Damien Maia.
02:09:53.000Damien Maia was probably the nicest, most respectful person.
02:09:55.000I don't know what their beef was about.
02:09:58.000Still to this day, I don't understand what it was.
02:10:01.000But for whatever it was, Anderson had in his head, he was angry at Damien Maia and fought very emotionally and tried to take him out and didn't.
02:10:09.000I also think in that fourth, maybe it was the fifth round, Damien hurt him.
02:10:12.000There's a big punch that lands, and you watch the body language and the sort of tactical approach begin to change almost instantly after he gets drilled with one.
02:10:20.000Now, maybe, I'm not saying he's the best striker, I'm just saying at that moment...
02:12:06.000But Anderson, when he was in his prime, there was moments, like the Forrest Griffin fight, where you walked away and just go, who's better than that fucking guy?
02:12:15.000But obviously, it was a tailor-made kind of style for Anderson.
02:12:20.000Forrest was like a blood and guts, come forward, doesn't hide anything, just really charges...
02:12:26.000And Anderson would just, like, see everything.
02:12:45.000Yeah, it was slightly different, but I saw it and I was like, dude, this is a game where you stay around long enough and the elderly get eaten.
02:12:52.000Well, it was also like when you're watching Anderson move, he's doing things that he would have never done when he was younger.
02:12:58.000It's almost like he's trying to get the sparks flying, like crank the engine over, but it doesn't want to.
02:13:03.000He's moving forward in a way that you're like, ah!
02:13:07.000You would never see the Anderson Silva that fucked up Rich Franklin twice.
02:13:11.000You would never see him fight like that.
02:13:13.000The Anderson self that stopped Chris Lieben, he would never fight like that.
02:13:16.000You know, that Anderson was a clever tactician.
02:13:19.000That Anderson was a technical fighter.
02:13:22.000Whereas, like, he fought really aggressive in the first round.
02:13:26.000But, you know, go back to Vitor being on TRT. You give Anderson TRT, you'll see a different fighter.
02:13:31.000But if you want to make him fight on the natch, you're 45, man.
02:13:36.000This is 45. It's 45. It's like, unless you're Bernard Hopkins...
02:13:41.000Unless you're a guy that's so fucking good at boxing, where you're clever and you don't waste any energy, and you're so disciplined and so technical and so defensive-oriented that you can take these, like, world championship-caliber young guys and drag them into seven,
02:13:58.000eight, nine rounds and then set traps for them and eventually capitalize on them.
02:14:01.000There's very few guys that get to the point, like, Bernard got into his feet.
02:14:07.000When he changed his nickname to The Alien, I didn't think it was a better nickname, but it was maybe a more appropriate one.
02:14:13.000But then when he fought Joe Smith and he got knocked out through the ropes and fell and landed on his head, I was like, oh, Jesus Christ.
02:14:20.000But the difference you highlight, I think it's really important between Hopkins and Silva, which is that It would not be accurate to say that Silva lived on his chin.
02:14:49.000Okay, but there was all these moments where he would kind of let it go, and he just, at 45, you just do not have the capacity for that at all.
02:15:37.000But if I had to ask how many fighters currently competing in the Ultimate Fighting Championship have pro MMA wins that predate 9-11, Robbie Lawler, him, and Overeem were the ones that come to mind.
02:16:22.000Dude, Silva's maybe best fight, and this is debatable because of the Chael Sonnen comeback, but you asked me, like, my favorite Anderson Silva fight?
02:16:35.000By the way, everyone knows Lee Murray as, like, oh, the guy who robbed the bank, because it's such an incredible story, and I recognize that.
02:23:20.000I applaud 1FC for their weight cutting measures.
02:23:23.000I think what they've done, their whole hydration thing, I think it's the most important thing in MMA. I think we need to do that across the board, but I think there needs to be more options for fighters.
02:23:33.000I think there should be more weight classes.
02:23:48.000Now, I want to be very clear about what I'm about to tell you.
02:23:50.000I am not declaring to you that what they are telling us about their weight cutting system is wrong, because like you, I've talked to Ben Askren, I've talked to Gary Tonin, and they really enjoyed it.
02:23:59.000What I'm telling you is, I'm a little bit skeptical of the veracity of the claims that aren't independently verified.
02:24:06.000They have only recently begun to stream their weigh-ins and even then you can't see what's on the scale.
02:24:11.000You have no idea about if someone is missing weight and there could be any number of factors related to whether or not they actually made it.
02:24:18.000I'm just telling you, personally as a guy in media, I do not take promoter's word for it.
02:24:23.000And so this is not me declaring to you that their weigh-ins are Fugazi.
02:24:26.000This is me declaring to you, until we get independent verification of them, I would pause a little bit on some of their claims.
02:25:20.000The thing is, I wish there was a policy.
02:25:26.000There's an argument that could be made when it comes to things like Tour de France, that you could argue that it's safer to do it with the steroids than it is without.
02:26:55.000The history of anti-doping, where it comes from, how it developed, and what the status is today, you can only come away with a couple of conclusions.
02:27:03.000One, anti-doping globally is a dramatic failure.
02:27:09.000The major problem that I have is I'm not expecting everyone to agree with what I say about anti-doping.
02:27:14.000Many of my views are outside of the Overton window.
02:27:17.000But the debate around anti-doping is so incomplete and so dishonest that it's hard to get in a word edgewise.
02:27:25.000It's hard to get people to understand that you're just repeating 1980s drug war nonsense without even really realizing that's what you're doing.
02:27:34.000If you actually examine the facts of the case, What is the conclusion you've come to?
02:29:09.000I think if you're an athlete and you say, listen, man, I'm really good and I don't want to take drugs to compete, I think that's perfectly reasonable.
02:29:17.000I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
02:29:18.000But when you begin to drill down how you solve that problem, no one really wants to get to what the heart of the issue is.
02:29:41.000To what extent have false media narratives, exaggerated claims, totally ridiculous things, have had to been year over year pulled back by virtue of...
02:29:53.000Evidence that has weighed in or whatever the case.
02:29:56.000Reefer Madness is sort of the common example.
02:30:30.000The argument about steroids, especially as it relates to combative sports, if you wanted to make the claim that if you and I were fighting and were, let's say, reasonably equal, and I took it and you didn't, it tilts the competitive balance and that makes it unfair, I would agree.
02:31:09.000Right, but that was a key selling ingredient when USADA was sold to the public about why it was necessary.
02:31:14.000I think the argument is that if someone is on it and the other person isn't, a la Vitor versus Michael Bisping, that Michael Bisping winds up blind in one eye from a high kick by Vitor.
02:31:24.000Right, so let's remove that example for one second because it's such a powerful example.
02:31:28.000It's like the Ben Johnson of examples.
02:31:44.000Show me the evidence that MMA has become safer as a virtue because what everyone had said at the time was, this is not like hitting a baseball.
02:31:51.000This is not like dunking a basketball.
02:31:52.000We need to protect the health and safety of athletes.
02:31:54.000The Vitor Belfort incident doesn't even come close to the Cyborg versus MVP incident where he cracked his skull, which was ostensibly totally done naturally.
02:32:07.000You can smoke marble reds, you can smoke menthols, you can smoke lights.
02:32:12.000At the end of the day, you're putting yourself at risk at a pretty significant degree.
02:32:16.000It does not matter what kind of filter you put on the cigarette.
02:32:19.000And you can make the argument that if you are taking EPO and if you are taking testosterone, you'd have more energy to get away from shots as much as you would have energy to land them.
02:32:49.000And let's see how many, to a man, decide this is something that they want.
02:32:53.000I bet you you get the numbers drop off fairly significantly.
02:32:55.000Do you think there's a way to skirt the system right now, even with USADA? Do you think there's some therapeutic, some shit that people aren't...
02:33:27.000Well, especially baseball, because that's the only good thing about that stupid fucking sport.
02:33:30.000It's not my favorite sport in the world.
02:33:32.000One of those meatheads hits a ball into another dimension.
02:33:34.000Right, but when I watch any other sport where I know it's drug-addled, it does not reduce my enjoyment of it.
02:33:40.000You're supposed to have this moralistic, puritanical idea about drugs.
02:33:44.000I do not, because I understand this is complex, but the basic idea is this.
02:33:50.000All the claims that folks want to make about MMA as it relates to safety, there is no indication that if you say USADA is working, it's any safer.
02:33:58.000You're asking about how it's being used now.
02:34:00.000It's a little hard to say because, again, USADA claims a lot of victories without providing any evidence about them.
02:34:07.000Can you imagine somebody you hired to do some kind of service for you?
02:34:12.000Claiming all the victories they claim, and then when you ask to see the receipts, they don't have any.
02:34:17.000I know Jeff Nowitzki came on your show, and I'm sure he means well, but saying that the testosterone has been lowered, I actually asked Paul DeMio about it.
02:34:25.000In any way, there's no way to draw any conclusion about usage.
02:34:28.000There's a guy, by the way, who has a YouTube channel, More Plates, More Dates.
02:34:31.000He's been a long-time steroid user and PED user.
02:34:33.000He has gone through several UFC fighters.
02:34:35.000He has shown, there was a recent study that was done, you can still take I think?
02:34:54.000What we know from academic research is that is there a reason to believe that relative to what commissions we're doing, that the introduction of USADA has overall depressed usage?
02:35:10.000Everyone doesn't respond to physique changes equally.
02:35:13.000In other words, you could have genetics that make major pronouncements and change related to physique change, and I could take the exact same thing you're taking and not have the same result.
02:35:22.000But the point is this, is that as it relates to these considerations, what ends up happening is you might depress overall usage, but what you do is you end up empowering the folks at the higher end.
02:35:32.000I mean, since 1960, the growth in pharmaceuticals, which the anti-doping world basically just plays catch-up on all the time, I mean, they didn't catch Marion Jones, right?
02:35:41.000The way they got her was somebody mailed some shit anonymously, then they developed a test for it, and all of a sudden, eureka.
02:35:45.000But the amount of independent stuff they can find to catch everyone is...
02:36:40.000If you look at the health outcomes from American football relative to fighting, it is much worse across the board in American football.
02:36:48.000And that is a sport where you can get caught taking something and they'll suspend you for four fucking games.
02:36:54.000You are watching in the NFL, and I don't want to name names because I don't want to be sued, but you see a lot of guys in their 40s or late 30s continuing to do shit that they're not supposed to be able to do, or they look like fucking He-Man.
02:37:03.000It's because it is very easy to take something in the NFL and avoid detection, and the fans simply do not care.
02:37:09.000The idea that they're really concerned about the health and safety, given the outcomes and given the nature of the sport, simply does not match the reality at all.
02:37:22.000One, if you have a system where the athletes have a say, and they work with the organization, and they carve out a system where it may not be as rigorous as possible, because by the way, there's a study out of the University of Adelaide.
02:37:36.000It's basically theater for low information fans.
02:37:38.000It does something, but not really all that much.
02:37:40.000The real big fucking fish that USADA gets or any other anti-doping agency is a function of investigations through snitching, which MMA fans don't like.
02:37:48.000I'm like, folks, that's how the sausage is made.
02:38:24.000Random is the idea is that it would happen frequently enough...
02:38:28.000That there would be no method of, or at least very few methods of wooding detection.
02:38:33.000The idea, though, is that there are sufficient things you can take to gain real clear advantages that even randomized testing simply could not account for.
02:38:42.000Again, it would be some kind of proprietary drug that a rich person could make that there'd be no test for, as a clear example.
02:38:59.000One is, like, what's a suitable model?
02:39:01.000Well, NBA, MLB, to a lesser extent, but MLB, and then NFL. We already exist in a world where basically a pretty significant chunk of those guys are taking something, and nobody seems to care, and it works out well for everyone.
02:39:13.000What people claim they don't like is sort of the scandalization of it all.
02:39:17.000What is the Billy Corbin documentary on Alex Rodriguez?
02:39:38.000Sorry, I know I'm ranting, but the last thing is this.
02:39:41.000There's a couple different methods you can pick.
02:39:42.000You can just decide that the existing professional sports leagues, in my judgment, have totally figured it out, which is that you get a union to organize, basic protections.
02:39:49.000You put kind of a lid on the lobster, and you just let it cook there without sort of really being super inside the details about it, which means you will allow for some, but you basically get to a point where there's not Too many violations, you're not giving too much of an advantage, and you just let it rock because the general for-profit sports world tends to prefer that.
02:40:08.000Yeah, but then we're agreeing to deception.
02:40:50.000And they said, you tested positive for, it was an Osterian at the time, and you tested at such a level, we're going to ban you for two years.
02:40:56.000Two years later, they come up with a test that makes them give more refined results.
02:41:00.000And they come back and they say, if you had tested at this level, you'd have been totally exonerated.
02:41:04.000They took that fucking guy's career from him.
02:41:07.000And they never apologized and they never acknowledged that basically they had too much belief in their scientific instrumentation to ever say sorry.
02:41:22.000There's one system which is basically let a union decide and the union decides with the sports organization.
02:41:29.000The other one is basically what the strength of fitness world has done, which is that you have some competitions where you just don't test, and you have some where you do.
02:41:39.000And that's not a perfect solution either, right?
02:41:41.000Because you can still take it and try to take the one that's sort of...
02:41:44.000Yeah, but again, we're agreeing to deception.
02:41:46.000This is why I'm with you most of the way.
02:42:08.000But to legislate this, to mandate this...
02:42:11.000You're saying there's some kind of harm to it.
02:42:14.000If you have an organization like the UFC, that's this multi-billion dollar organization, they're never going to come up with rules or say, hey guys, we know you're going to lie, so we're going to allow you to lie, and we're going to talk to your unions, and we're going to set it up so you can lie.
02:45:06.000If it's that easy and it's that ubiquitous and it's that easy to hide, you've not created enough stumbling blocks and obstacles along the way to deter some usage.
02:45:14.000The whole point is to deter the low-hanging fruit.
02:45:16.000That's what you really want to sort of iron.
02:45:18.000But doesn't that set it up so that the rich guys and the guys that are the big camps that are funded by major sponsors, they're the ones that are going to have the best athletes?
02:45:38.000They can't afford a lawyer to challenge it.
02:45:39.000So you are of the opinion, and we don't need to name camps, but the top camps employ scientists or doctors or someone who knows how to get around the system.
02:46:59.000So I think you have to look at two situations.
02:47:00.000One, do you want a professional sports world like we have, where people claim they care very much about health outcomes, but they really don't, where people are obviously using in the NFL? Which, by the way, I mean, how do you get through an NFL season without growth hormone?
02:48:52.000Like, I've never seen a person like this.
02:48:55.000He's like, I've been doing, I've been a doctor for decades.
02:48:59.000He goes, his tendons in his eyes are three times larger than a normal person's.
02:49:05.000And he goes, and that fracture's already healing.
02:49:08.000Yeah, and so Dana was telling me about this, and he was saying that, you know, Cubans had this crazy athletic program, and they were doing all kinds of experiments with people, and he thinks that they did some experiments with athletes to create super athletes.
02:51:35.000Imagine these next level athletes, which unfortunately, a lot of those guys wind up going to sports like basketball or baseball because there's more money.
02:51:45.000There's more money in those sports and you don't get kicked in the face.
02:51:47.000You know, and then the football guys, like, there's more money in football.
02:51:51.000Like, you can make a fucking insane amount of money in football.
02:51:54.000Like, I was just reading about some guy whose contract was like $400 million, like some crazy shit.
02:52:33.000I disagree with you halfway, which is to say, to the extent you get this kind of athlete, you're probably going to get, on average, better results.
02:52:38.000The one caveat, look at this motherfucker.
02:53:22.000And the difference between being able to perform in a sport and being able to fight another man who's trying to separate you from consciousness is a very different thing.
02:53:30.000It's like some guys just can't rise to the occasion in a fight.
02:53:33.000This is the big thing he did last week while he went viral.
02:55:06.000The other half is, and I think people overlook this, You have to have something constitutionally where you're willing to hurt another person.
02:55:25.000There's creativity that's involved in fighting that may not be involved in a lot of other sports that are just pure strength and speed and athleticism and a knowledge of moves and understanding of positions.
02:55:34.000But there's a different thing that's going on where you're trying to create an opening.
02:55:38.000When you're trying to create an opening fighting, You know, there's things that people can do in fighting that...
02:55:44.000Also, you have to commit to that at a very young age if you want to be elite.
02:55:49.000Like, you can be a guy like Greg Hardy, who has a reasonably successful career as a heavyweight, just because he's a tough motherfucker who hits really hard and he's a very good athlete.
02:55:58.000But are you ever going to be Francis Ngannou?
02:56:01.000Are you ever going to be Stipe Miocic?
02:56:04.000It's like there's a level that you reach where you only reach that level if you've been training it most of your life.
02:56:13.000And particularly for striking, for some reason.
02:56:15.000There's exceptions to that rule where some people can figure it out, but not in boxing.
02:56:20.000In boxing, it's very rare that someone even picks it up after their teenage years and reaches an elite world championship level.
02:56:28.000There's something about the timing and the understanding of...
02:56:31.000It's like, to someone who's looking out on the outside, it's a guy trying to punch another guy, the guy's trying to punch you, you're trying to punch him.
02:57:57.000There's a thing about knowing how to solve a puzzle, knowing how to figure a man out, getting a hold of a man's neck and putting him to sleep.
02:58:33.000Someone with bad ideas and piss-poor strategy and execution, you could fucking ruin...
02:58:39.000You can run into a guy like Duke Rufus, and he can create a world champion out of you.
02:58:43.000There's so many factors that play into it, but if you can get a guy who has that mentality, has a fighter's mentality, a person who wants to risk it all...
02:58:54.000You know, and not have the protection of other players, not have the, you know, the caveat, well, you know, the team, we didn't put together defensively, and we'll be back next Sunday.
02:59:03.000Bitch, there's no next Sunday when you get head kicked, right?
02:59:06.000You know, like, you're not fighting again for a long time, you're suspended for 90 days, you're not even supposed to be sparring, you know, and then when you come back, you're probably still going to be a little bit fucked up from that fight.
02:59:16.000There's a thing about fighting that separates us from all the other sports.
02:59:20.000I hate to say it again, but I call it high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.
02:59:38.000One of the things that meant so much to me when I first started doing commentary...
02:59:42.000Was expressing what I know about the ground game so that a person who's never trained at all can understand it.
02:59:48.000So when people are going through positions, and a guy gets to a position, and I know they're close to a finish, or I know they've reached a pivotal point, I would get excited and explain it.
03:00:00.000I wanted to explain it so descriptively, like, now he's got to get the arm.
03:00:04.000And once he gets that arm past his leg, now he's fucked.
03:00:07.000And being able to do that to people so they could piece it together and watch it at home.
03:00:11.000Like, oh, when Khabib mounted him and sat on top of him and put his leg around him.
03:00:16.000Oh, that's how he's heading up the triangle.
03:00:21.000I wanted to be able to show people what I feel when I see a guy do a mounted triangle in a fucking world championship MMA fight and then find out the guy had a fucking broken foot when he did it.
03:00:54.000Well, I would say, for me, I often view the combative arts like a language, which is why learning them five, six, seven, that's actually teach someone a second language, right?
03:01:03.000If you teach them at two, they don't actually pick it up.
03:01:05.000You have to wait a few years, and then they begin to get it, and then they learn to speak.
03:01:09.000You can't force it on them when they're young.
03:01:16.000But the point being is you wait until they're 5, 6, 7, and they begin to begin to get absorbing.
03:01:20.000And then once it becomes the language and the fluency and everything begins, by the time they're 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, my God, the fluency is sort of incredible at that point.
03:01:41.000It's not the same kind of situation where...
03:01:43.000And this is why, again, everyone's going to focus on a different aspect of fighting that really appeals to them.
03:01:47.000The problem-solving is interesting, and that's why Adesanya faking and fainting, because he keeps him at a distance so he can watch everything.
03:01:53.000I hate to have favorite fighters, but right now he's my favorite guy to watch.
03:02:18.000If you just watch it, even in slow motion, I can't make heads or tails of it.
03:02:22.000I don't understand what the point of it is.
03:02:24.000So because of him, now when I break down fights, I actually start.
03:02:28.000I go round by round and I make notes every time any kind of strike lands or misses.
03:02:34.000And then I begin to go back and I piece together a narrative based on what, if there is a narrative, sometimes there's not, but more often than not there is, about what is happening.
03:02:42.000And I had to do it from this stance and then that stance because he was switching stances.
03:02:46.000Close distance, far distance, inside distance.
03:02:49.000He is so meticulous and so thoughtful but so effortless that I had to peel everything apart before I could even begin to comprehend it.
03:02:58.000People go and look at that fight and go, oh, well, he only won 29-28.
03:03:28.000Yeah, particularly that one where you broke down how he pointed the fake, like he faked, pointed out that Paulo fell for it, and then kicked his leg right afterwards.
03:03:51.000You got torn apart for two rounds where you landed two body kicks and one leg kick for two rounds and you got dismantled and dropped to the left hook and then beaten down and dry humped.
03:05:08.000Look, you know, that guy moving up to 205 is going to be some growing pains, but now he's the champion, and he knows that he can nuke a guy like Dominic Reyes, who went five hard rounds with Jon Jones, and in your eyes, won the fight against Jones.
03:05:22.000It's the only time I've ever scored against Jones.
03:05:39.000And it's not like Reyes wasn't in the fight, but when he started hitting that left kick to the body and left that gigantic brute, you'll realize this dude hit so hard.
03:06:21.000If you have Fight Pass, Fight Pass, I can't say enough good things about Fight Pass.
03:06:25.000I think they need to update their interface, but in terms of the service it does for someone like me, because you think you see a fight in your head one way, then you go back and you watch it, and you're like, oh my god.
03:06:32.000I totally forgot half this shit, you know?
03:06:34.000So it's a great way to remind yourself.
03:06:36.000But if you go back and you look, he had a certain kind of wrestling dominance from the Shogun to the Rashad, really even up through most portions of his career that has begun to wane.
03:06:45.000His takedown ability has gone from about the mid-50s, a little higher than that.
03:06:55.000I mean, if you think about it, Dominic Reyes didn't make his pro debut until 2014. Now, Jon Jones was the fucking man already by then, right?
03:07:02.000I mean, long since been the man by 2014. So how could it be that a guy can be training that long and at least make it that competitive on paper?
03:07:08.000It's because best practices have gotten much, much better.
03:07:11.000So what Dominic Reyes wanted to do was create motion.
03:07:14.000The idea was to get John moving because if he's stationary or he's barreling down on you, he's much harder to hit.
03:07:20.000But to the extent you can get the guy moving, he's open to the body and to the legs.
03:07:24.000Now that's a hard way to win because really the head contest is what wins and loses fights more often than not.
03:07:28.000Whether or not that's fair, it's hard to win a fight on body shots unless you drop them.
03:08:18.000We've not had a full-on confirmation, but Stylebender did an interview with Submission Radio.
03:08:23.000Those are a couple guys out of Australia, and he was talking like it was a done deal.
03:08:27.000So they haven't formally announced it, but I would expect it.
03:08:30.000I'm very interested to see that because Blachowicz has that power style and Stylebender is, in my opinion, the most sophisticated striker the sport's ever seen.
03:12:18.000And I think him moving into the LFA, and if he gets through a few fights there, I have zero idea what his ground game is, zero idea what his wrestling, zero idea what his takedown defense is.
03:16:06.000One thing about the Dutch is kind of funny.
03:16:08.000I don't know if you've picked up on this.
03:16:09.000The Dutch will fight their teammates without a whole lot of consternation, especially in kickboxing, where it'll be like, wait, you're from Mike's gym, and you're from Mike's gym.
03:18:47.000Yeah, some people can come back and some people are never the same.
03:18:51.000Before we wrap this up, there was a few other things you were saying about the UFC. I know that this has been so much fun.
03:18:57.000We've been going on all these different rants.
03:18:59.000But there was a few things specifically that I think we'd be doing a disservice if we didn't cover.
03:19:04.000One of them, you think, is USADA, which I can agree with you.
03:19:07.000Can I make one final point about that to wrap up on this?
03:19:10.000The one thing I want folks to understand is if you look at the history of anti-doping, and again, the scholarship on this is quite clear, pre-USADA-UFC, I mean, long into the 20th century, and then Really beginning around 1968. The way in which anti-doping has moved itself forward is through, there's been reports in the media that drive further forms of hysteria,
03:19:27.000and then that forces the institutions to act.
03:19:30.000And so you have to understand, you can't talk about A, anti-doping without media hysteria around drugs.
03:19:37.000And B, a lot of times when you see these developments in anti-doping protocol, it's institutions protecting themselves.
03:19:45.000Like when the UFC really went to USADA, was it on behalf of the athletes?
03:20:34.000Listen, if you're going to have a system where folks are going to use, then the way to screen that is through health outcomes.
03:20:41.000So you're looking at forms of screening, not so much for what they're taking, but how their blood enzymes look and digestive organs and what kind of damage they're taking and blah, blah, blah.
03:20:51.000To me, TRT is one of these things where it's like, we're going to make it super easy and we're going to...
03:21:02.000Like I said, the readiness of it is too easy for me.
03:21:04.000Is part of the issue that testing is random and that testing is, you know, you might get tested four times a year, you might get tested ten times a year.
03:21:16.000What if there was a way where every fighter had something, almost like an app, and somehow or another you put it on you and it screens you?
03:21:27.000There's something that you could do where it can't be faked.
03:21:32.000Maybe you check in on your computer, like a FaceTime thing, and it does something.
03:21:37.000If there was a way, obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about, but if there was some sort of technology that allowed them to see every day, twice a day, check you in the morning, check you at night, okay, Luke, it looks like you're good.
03:21:52.000It's like every employee that I know who's not an athlete gets to have time off except an athlete.
03:21:57.000We ask certain things of athletes that we don't ask of anyone else in the world.
03:22:00.000And the reason why is supposed to be to combat these harms.
03:22:04.000But if you can't prove to me that these harms are existing or that you're meaningfully doing anything about it, then why are we engaging in these privacy invasions?
03:22:10.000What kind of about wasting time with Conor McGregor when he's in a fucking yacht somewhere.
03:22:15.000They show up in a buggy like, hey man, give me a piss test.
03:23:44.000It just seems like a first step to just look at your dick while you pee is pretty crazy.
03:23:49.000If you moralize doping, which they have done, if you moralize it, which is not a moral issue, it's a strategic issue, if you moralize it, you've decided that it's an evil worth combating to the point now, well, this is Rodchenkov Act is being floated through Congress.
03:24:30.000But they're eventually going to realize what they've always realized, which is that the punishment, the sociological research on this is pretty clear.
03:24:35.000It's really not the punishment that really concerns them.
03:24:38.000It's their, to what extent they'll be caught.
03:24:42.000But if you're rich and you can avoid it or you're willing to take risks because that's inherently in the job that you're in, you don't really think about these kinds of things.
03:24:48.000And by the way, you might have good methods of evasion.
03:24:51.000So they're going to put people in jail.
03:24:53.000And I think, honestly, they're going to put a lot of people in jail.
03:24:56.000I think almost like we need a separate podcast just about this, and I feel like it almost should be a roundtable discussion with someone like you as a proponent of this, someone like me.
03:25:05.000I kind of see your point and I agree with you.
03:25:08.000And maybe some doctors and maybe someone from USADA that would argue against it.
03:25:12.000I think that would be an interesting discussion.
03:25:14.000Because my arguments against USADA are the Josh Barnett arguments, the Tom Lawler arguments.
03:25:21.000The arguments where you're ruining guys' careers and there's no repercussion.
03:25:42.000Show me the results of what you have done.
03:25:44.000And they will be like, oh, but probabilistically we should rely on this.
03:25:47.000I have never seen an institution in my life more than anti-doping institutions who just are begging you and frankly demanding of you to take their word for it.
03:26:34.000The only thing you could say is you've caught people, and you've stopped people, and you could look at physique changes and say, you know...
03:28:04.000In putting together this sort of portfolio of punishments beyond the sort of Olympic cycle, I think I said this already, there's no evidence that indicates that the severity of it forces the behavior change.
03:28:22.000It's only the sort of surveillance of it all as a function of...
03:29:05.000Why do we have one standard for the Olympics?
03:29:07.000We've got one standard for a private client for an underfunded organization, which is about $20 million is their budget for USADA, and results in this sort of different world punishment.
03:29:17.000John is the future because the research shows that the more severe punishment you get, The more that you have to take precautions to not fuck someone over, right?
03:29:26.000Because if you're going to ban a guy for eight years, you're going to ban a guy for life, man, you better be damn sure you're doing it.
03:29:31.000But that has opened the door to fighters like John who have money and a legal team, and of course there may be the science on his side as well, but it shows that you can take that opportunity and you can say, aha, you were trying to ban me for four years.
03:29:45.000And they can poke holes through all of it.
03:29:48.000When your punishment is a year, it doesn't really matter what mitigating circumstance you can show.
03:29:51.000Well, his case is so weird, too, because it showed positive and then negative and then negative and positive, but in such trace amounts, there's no way he could have tested it and then had it go out of his system in time.
03:30:02.000The argument is that he had the long-term metabolite, but not the short and medium-term metabolite.
03:30:06.000Yeah, so it's showing this weird pulsating effect where it comes and goes, particularly during weight cuts.
03:30:11.000Right, which is apparently what Alexi Torakiti had, and he got fucked.