Joe Rogan launches JRE MMA Show #1, dissecting GSP’s 36-year-old return, Verdum’s submission dominance over top heavyweights, and McGregor’s controversial post-fight altercation with referee Mark Goddard. He critiques the UFC’s flawed scoring system, citing inconsistent judging like Canelo vs. Golovkin, and advocates for bare-knuckle rules to curb cheating. Rogan highlights Aldo’s resilience against Holloway, Bellator’s rising talent, and CTE risks in combat sports, questioning if any fighter could realistically meet MMA’s demands. The episode blends fight analysis with debates on sport integrity, pay-per-view prioritization, and athlete safety. [Automatically generated summary]
I thought about it a bit yesterday, and this morning I thought of it.
I was like, why don't you just do it?
I said, I need to do some sort of an MMA recap show, because there's always so much shit that's happening.
I miss a lot of it.
I don't get a chance to talk to a lot of it.
I love doing it with Brendan.
He's my favorite because we get so silly.
And because he loves MMA as much as I do.
I could talk to him forever about it.
So I'm sure I'll do some of those definitely in the future with him.
He's really good at breaking down fights too, man.
He's got a skeptical eye for things and he has a great, obviously he was a high-level professional heavyweight fighter, but he also has a real good understanding of where someone is at various stages of their career.
I think that's big because fighters have like these peaks and valleys and you never know where they're at.
Fighting is a hard, hard business, and the idea that you could stay at a super high level for a long period of time, that just doesn't seem to be the case.
It seems like everybody's body starts giving out after a certain period of time.
After a certain amount of time cage fighting, your body's just giving out.
Unless you're a guy like GSP that takes all this time off, which I think was brilliant now, in retrospect, he knew what we all didn't know.
He really was in fucking amazing shape.
He really was fighting...
I don't say amazing cardio shape, because that's one...
Legit criticism that Brendan had is that he looked like he was getting tired and was pretty early in the fight.
The guy was off for four years and he's stepping right in fighting Bisping, who's the middleweight champion.
That is not easy.
That's very hard.
Bisping keeps a fast pace.
He's got amazing cardio.
He's tough as shit.
Like, there was a tall order.
To see him come back like that, but I think he recognized that the grind was too heavy on him, but he wasn't done yet.
He was only 32. I think when he retired, 32?
Is that right?
Somewhere in that range?
Comes back at 36. I'm like, wow, what are the odds he's actually going to be better than he was before or look good?
He looked fucking amazing.
He looked like a bigger, better version of the welterweight champion, George St. Pierre.
It was weird.
It was weird to see.
I mean, I don't want to say that I doubted him because I did not doubt him because I'm very open-minded and I have a deep respect for George.
I think he's amazing.
He's just a great person, a great example of, in my opinion, how a champion should carry himself.
George has always been one of my favorite examples.
Because you see him and you're like, that guy is well-spoken, he's friendly, he's genuine, and he's super open-minded in terms of like...
His willingness to listen to coaches and formulate a good game plan and always be trying out new stuff.
He spent a lot of time working with those guys in Henzo Gracie's, the Donaher Death Squad.
There was a lot of images of them training together.
If he's training with Gary Tonin and some of these fucking animals, I mean, John Donaher is a wizard, and he's done just this amazing job with Eddie Cummins and These kids that he has in New York that are these leg lock masters.
I mean, it's just Gordon Ryan.
They're just animals.
These guys are killing people.
And for George to be in the mix with those guys, he's getting down with some serious fucking strangle experts.
So for just knowing that he's training with those guys, because Eddie Cummins has been killing tournaments, Gary Tonin's been killing tournaments, Ryan's been killing tournaments, all those kids, Nicky Ryan, his brother too, they're all animals.
So Donaher has this great group of really savage jiu-jitsu players, and George is diving into that mix.
Comes to LA, he's doing boxing with Freddie Roach.
You know, he's one of the best boxing coaches in the world, Manny Pacquiao's trainer.
So he's, like, getting down with, like, real boxing trainers.
He's getting down with real jiu-jitsu coaches, and he never stopped.
He never stopped, which is just amazing.
And it's amazing that he can just jump right back in.
Dominic Cruz sent me a text message right after it was over.
He said, I told you, ring rust is bullshit.
And unfortunately, Dominic just broke his arm.
I don't know the specifics of it, but that's a huge bummer.
He's got to be chomping at the bit now to get back in there.
Now that TJ just knocked out Cody Garbrandt, he must be chomping, chomping at the bit.
So a few of the fights that went down really recently this past weekend, Pettis and Poirier.
Holy shit, what a good fight that was.
That was crazy.
That's a crazy fight.
And Dustin Poirier at 155 pounds seems like a different person.
He's just so much healthier at 155 and...
He looked awesome in the Joe Duffy fight, too.
And this fight was a big, big win for him, though.
Former champion in Pettis, guy who was a champion of Strikeforce, too.
I mean, shit.
That's a big win, you know?
Anthony Pettis is a tough loss.
It seemed like he had broken a rib or something.
Like there was something going on.
Like when he got mounted, he had to tap.
You know, that's very unfortunate.
But Pettis just looked really good in his last fight.
That was one of Jeremy Stephens' finest performances.
I forgot who did it.
There's too many fights.
I have to erase my brain data.
I gotta erase some Dan Severin footage from the 90s.
I can't though, out of respect, but I have just too many fights floating around in my fucking head.
That fight was a good fight though.
The Pettis and Poirier fight is a fight between two guys that are like legit top 10 contenders.
Like either one of them with a couple of good wins could be fighting for the title.
And maybe for Poirier that was enough to get him in there and fight for the title.
But it's like you got just a shark pool there.
Tony Ferguson is the interim champ.
Who knows what the fuck is going to happen now with Conor.
Because Conor was involved in some sort of an altercation.
With referee Mark Goddard where he jumped into the cage while the fight had not been called yet apparently.
This is Mark Goddard's interpretation of it.
And I think Conor's, he made an apology, and I think what he was basically saying was that he was angry that the referee had not stopped the fight.
First he thought the referee had stopped the fight, and then he was angry that he had not because he gets like really concerned when someone's taking a beating too much.
And he felt like this guy really was out of it and taking a beating.
I think where the confusion was, and I hope I'm not fucking this up, we'll check.
The confusion was, I think, that Mark Goddard was saying, essentially, that he had not known whether or not the bell had gone off.
He knew the bell was close, but he did not know whether it had gone off.
It was too loud in there for him to hear it.
And he was concerned, I believe, that it went off.
And so that's when he stepped in because he thought the round was over.
He was not necessarily calling the fight yet.
Then when Conor McGregor jumped in, since he hadn't already called the fight, he was in a bad situation because the fight, technically speaking, was still going on.
And by the way, I felt the way he wrote this statement was really...
It was not just very professional.
It was very poised.
I was very impressed with it.
I don't want to read the whole thing.
But he essentially says...
The first round was progressing and then so when the guy got hurt he said he connected Charlie Ward connected with a left hand that slumped John Redman to his knees and at this exact point I could not and had not made my determination that John was either out of the contest or not in the position to intelligently defend himself.
The punch and the action that followed naturally resulted in a surge of crowd noise one that was so significant I had already made my determination that I could not audibly hear the bell sound for the end of the round.
I had made my decision to step in with the belief that the bell had indeed been sounded, which in actual fact it had not.
This is a critical fact to the ensuing proceeding.
So apparently there was a massive amount of confusion because of the noise And so it looked like a very reasonable stoppage.
See if you can find the video footage.
To me, because there's a bunch of video of the brawl itself and all the craziness that happened with it.
But it definitely seemed like, if I remember correctly, I've seen it, but last time I saw it was a couple days ago.
It looked like a really reasonable stoppage, like a smart stoppage.
Like, you see it and you go, yeah, that guy is, he's getting hurt.
They should stop this.
And then I think Conor just assumed when he stepped in, which you would, especially if it's that fucking loud, you assume there's no bell.
And Mark Goddard steps in.
See, Conor runs in and he tackles him to the ground.
And then, but there's already corner men in there.
And so these guys are hugging, and Mark Goddard is trying to get control of the octagon.
And so Connor comes at him and pushes him, and he's yelling at him.
This is just a terrible scene.
Terrible scene.
You know, and I'm sure Connor, if he could take it back, would take it back, because I'm sure he, you know, realized that this is a disaster.
And he even apologized.
You know, you can't do that.
You can't run in.
You've got to be sure that the referees stop the fight.
And, you know, I mean, they have to have control of the octagon.
Otherwise, anything can happen, right?
Anybody can get it in at any time.
Not just a friend, but somebody who wants to hurt you.
So they don't know what...
I mean, obviously they knew that Conor was probably coming in to congratulate his friend.
But you can't make them give up the rules.
Like, the rules are in place for a very good reason.
It's to protect the athletes.
People get super emotional about fights.
And there's many times I would believe that if they weren't, like, very...
Very stringent in how they allow the athletes to behave, like have a really stringent set of rules.
If they didn't do that, those guys would fight a lot.
I mean, it would be a lot of chaos.
People would climb into the ring and beat the shit out of each other.
We've obviously had a few incidents where corners argued with each other, but relatively speaking, when you think about how many fights take place, it's a very small number.
And it's one of the reasons why is because we have pretty clear rules.
You have to listen to the referee at all times.
It's real simple.
There's a time where the cage is shut and the referee is in there and that guy has control of that until he brings somebody in.
And he has to have control over it.
If he calls the fight, then he calls time and then he brings the doctors in or whatever he wants to do or he stops the fight.
It's got to entirely be his call.
And I see that Conor thought it was over.
And he's probably like completely caught in the moment.
He's fucking happy for his friend.
He dives on his friend.
They're celebrating.
He's thinking that there's going to be a bunch of people in there any second now.
Because the fight's over.
He's thinking they're going to open it up and Bruce Buffer's going to step in.
But no.
It would have been Bruce Buffer.
It was another organization, but you know what I'm saying.
Whoever their Bruce Buffer is.
But then, somewhere along the line, he realized the fight hadn't been stopped.
And then I think he got very upset, he said, because he has seen people take unnecessary punishment.
And he felt like that guy was done.
And he felt like to not stop the fight right then would be a terrible thing.
And I totally see his point of view.
That makes sense too.
That makes sense too.
You can't push officials.
You can't jump in when you're not supposed to be there.
So mistakes were made.
But I don't know what you do about something like that.
I don't know if they have standard punishments for shit like that.
But it'd be a shame if that instance...
Took a Conner fight away from the fans.
I'm not saying he shouldn't be punished.
I would just say if he was punished, it would be a shame.
Early in the year, he should have at least got a three or four game suspension, not just a $50,000 fine, which is a tenth of what he makes that day, probably.
I think that if you stop and think about how many fights there are and how few even bad situations there are in between fighters, I like to think that even though it's a super intense endeavor to be fist fighting another person, male or female, for the most part there are really friendly people that do it.
For the most part, they're very, you know, they're accomplished.
And they don't have any time for bullshit.
But lately, there's been this trend, and I think it's because Conor McGregor's been so successful with it, of shit-talking to like the nth degree.
Like, who can be the biggest shit-talker?
And Kobe Covington is just going for it, baby.
He's fucking going for it.
And I gotta tell you, I don't know how I feel.
Because part of me thinks it's entertaining as fuck.
When I read some of the shit that he says, and I see some of the shit he says, like, he is just going for it.
But it's working.
See, here's the thing, and this is one of the things that he said.
You gotta understand, like, a lot of this...
Is you're just trying to get your name out there.
You're trying to do something that makes a splash.
Even if it's a bad splash.
Even if it's like pissing off the entire country of Brazil.
He's making a splash, you know?
And I could see the point that like you shouldn't do it that way.
I get it.
I get people saying that.
What I don't get is people saying that they're not paying attention.
I'm paying attention.
I'm not encouraging it.
I'm just analyzing it from an outside perspective.
As a person who's a huge fan of the way Conor McGregor talks shit, I enjoy it.
I fucking enjoy it.
When Jeremy Stevens says something to me, he goes, who the fuck is that guy?
He's a magic man with that shit.
I think he's amazing.
His fucking timing, the things he says, he's a character.
He's a fucking character.
And he fucks people up.
There's no denying that.
Conor McGregor's a beast.
And I think probably not even in his prime.
I mean, I think...
His athletic prime might be a couple of years away.
I mean, who the fuck knows what that guy can accomplish?
But one thing that's clear is that he's changed the landscape when it comes to shit-talking.
Like, now everybody wants to be a shit-talker.
Now shit-talking is, like, it's mandatory for the gig.
You know, shit-talking has become some thing that, like, is like an art form in and of itself.
Some guys are just going for it.
So Colby apparently got into it with Fabricio Verdum.
Because one thing about Brazilians, if you talk some shit about Brazil, they will get really mad at you.
They're very proud.
They're very nationalistic.
They love Brazil.
And I don't know if that was what the argument was about, but Fabricio Verdum hit Colby Covington with a fucking boomerang.
See, the problem with that is, I don't think Fabrizio is trying to kill him, right?
But the problem with that is that's a weapon.
Like, that literally is what it is.
Like, it seems like it's goofy because it's something that we have when we're kids.
You know, it never really works.
Like, have you ever got a boomerang to come back to you?
Like, come on, man.
You can't just stay in the same spot and get that boomerang to come back to you.
I just found out about it right after the last podcast was over.
And they're talking crazy shit to each other.
We don't have to broadcast the shit talking.
I find it rude and vulgar.
It's weird, man.
It's like some people like it.
Some people like the trash talking, but these two guys are obviously in different weight classes, so they're never going to fight.
But some people like...
It's like tough guy conflict that fighters have with each other.
And some people hate it.
There's some people that think that some people are martial artists, you know, and they think that this is all like offensive, that you should conduct yourself like a martial artist.
And some people have said that, you know, a lot of people like agree with it and think that this is a better path for the sport for all of us.
But there's no denying the entertainment value of being a shithead.
I mean, it's entertaining, you know?
I don't want people to fight, but I am entertained often when they do.
I think we'd all be better off if they didn't fight.
But there's something about, like, Jon Jones going, I beat you after I did cocaine.
Like, there's something about that that, yeah, it's not like...
It doesn't feel like the embodiment of the true spirit of what we would think of as martial arts being a vehicle for developing your human potential and the path of the warrior samurai and the noble poet.
You know, we have all these like Kwai Chang Kane views of what martial arts are.
But one thing that martial arts are is a psychological warfare as well.
It's undeniable that it has a big impact.
And who you're fighting, you can get emotional if a guy fucks with your head too much.
You can get to a point where you're out of character and you take chances you shouldn't take.
You're nervous beyond your ability to control because you're so worried about losing to this person that you have this big emotional investment with.
That's real.
I mean, that's one of the things that Miyamoto Musashi used when he was a sword fighter.
In the Book of Five Rings, he would talk about all the different games that he would play.
People have documented it.
Like when Musashi would have these duels, he would show up like hours late.
And let this poor fuck just freak out, worrying about a sword fight that he was going to have.
The guy's sitting there for hours and hours, then finally Musashi would show up.
And the guy would be like a nervous wreck.
And he would just fuck him up and kill him.
And he had all these tactics that he used.
And that was just one of them.
Psychological warfare is something that's always been a part of the martial arts, but some people feel like the most noble path for both warriors is just be respectful and just have no emotions on the line with this in terms of hate for each other.
Instead, just respect each other like warriors and go after it.
And there's been some amazing fights where guys took on that mentality.
That's, you know, It's an interesting thing, the way people express themselves when they're doing what I think is the most difficult athletic endeavor.
The way people get to express themselves.
Do you decide to just put on a show?
Or do you decide to be the stoic warrior, you know, who doesn't talk much and takes care of business?
It's interesting, man.
Like, we were talking about Stipe Miocic before the podcast.
I was going back and forth with Stipe.
Stipe's a fireman.
He's the heavyweight champion of the world.
And he's also a fireman.
He's the baddest man on the planet.
He's the UFC heavyweight champion of the world.
He's smashing people.
And he's also a fireman.
You know?
Like, that guy doesn't get enough love.
Like, that's the heavyweight champion of the world.
It's crazy.
It's what a weird position that guy's in, you know?
And it couldn't be nicer.
But you gotta think, what if he was like a crazy shit talker?
What if Stipe Miocic was like Colby Covington, just talking mad shit, you know?
Instead, Stipe shows up to knock people out, and he looks like he's in line to, like, take the bus to get to work.
Like, he barely looks like he's about to fight.
He has, like, the most stoic, relaxed expression before he fucks people up.
Much like Fedor did.
He's got his own sort of version of that.
One of the more amazing things about Fedor's career was he would be in the middle of a firefight, just a full-on firefight, and he never let his expression shift.
You never saw Fedor gritting his teeth and making a mean face.
Fedor didn't waste any energy.
Maybe if he made one or two mean faces in his career, I might have missed it.
But most of the time, he would be in the middle of these fucking horrific wars in Pride with, like, just dead face.
You know, I mean, he, in hindsight, especially since Kane's been injured so many times, he, in hindsight, I think has to be recognized right next to Fabrizio Verdum as the two greatest heavyweights of all time, which Kane Velasquez is right in there in that mix, too.
And if he wasn't injured so much, I would think Kane is probably the most difficult one for all of them.
He just was, when he fought Verdum, not making excuses for him, but I think he really didn't have enough of an opportunity to adapt to the Mexico City altitude, like extreme altitude, and Verdum did a very wise thing.
He got up there way early, and he lived up there, even higher than Mexico City.
He lived up, he set up his training camp.
Like, way in advance.
So he totally acclimated.
So for the first time in Kane's career, somebody had a cardio advantage over him, which was crazy.
And then on top of that, Fabrizio Verdum is just the nastiest submission artist in the history of the sport.
He tapped out Fedor Emelianenko, he tapped out Minotauro Noguera, and he tapped out Kane Velasquez.
Those three guys have to be considered top three all-time.
So top three or five all-time guys, Minotauro's tapped three of them.
Excuse me.
Fabrizio Verdun was tapped three of them.
Minotauro tapped a bunch of them, too.
You know?
Minotauro, when he tapped Mark Coleman, that was gigantic for jiu-jitsu.
To show that a guy could tap somebody off of his back that was a UFC heavyweight champion and still a murderer like Mark the Hammer Coleman.
Watching Minotauro tap him was giant.
You just gotta think of how good Verdum is.
Verdum tapped Minotauro, he tapped Kane, and he tapped Fedor.
So, for Kobe to talk shit to him, like, Jesus, dude!
I want to see the rematch between Verdum and Stipe.
I hope they can make that.
If Verdum wins his fight, he decided to take this fight on short notice.
Fairly short notice.
Martin, how do you say it?
Martin Tibura.
Who's a very promising young guy.
And he was supposed to be fighting Mark Hunt, which is going to be a crazy strikers match, I would imagine.
But Mark Hunt got pulled from the card.
There's some concern about something that he said in an interview.
He said that the UFC wanted to remove him because of his lawsuit.
And the UFC was like, look, we've already paid you $1.6 million since the lawsuit was filed.
You fought for us and made a lot of money since then.
Like, we're not trying to stop you.
I believe that's what they said.
Pretty sure.
I don't want to...
I don't want to misquote that.
But the point is, like, they decided, for whatever the reason was, to remove Mark Hunt from the card, and Fabricio moved right into it.
And it's right after he just submitted Walt Harris.
So Fabricio's still in the mix, and, like, having that quick win like that over Harris, got a nice submission.
Beautiful.
Armbar transition from the back was just nasty.
He's just so high level on the ground.
I don't think people understand or appreciate it.
He could do that to almost anybody.
The thing is, like, his level of jiu-jitsu, he was a legitimate world champion in jiu-jitsu.
He won Abu Dhabi.
I mean, Fabricio Verdum is just a straight-up killer.
His jiu-jitsu is at such a high level still.
Like, most of the heavyweights that get on the ground with him are going to be in deep fucking water.
It's just the level of jujitsu that he has is so high.
The average MMA practitioner at a high level has a really good level of jiu-jitsu.
But Fabricio Verdum is a guy that taps those guys.
That's how good he is.
If he gets anybody that's anywhere near his size on the ground that's competing in the heavyweight division, there is a huge likelihood that he has a massive jiu-jitsu advantage.
And until you've rolled with a guy who has a massive jiu-jitsu advantage, you don't realize how big the difference between him being 5% better than you, him being 10% better, him being 15%.
Fabricio's probably 20-30% better than anybody else in the division when it goes to the ground.
So even if you're good and strong and you're athletic and you're quick, he puts the smush on you.
You stay smushed, man.
The Brandon Vera fight is a great example of that.
Brandon Vera is a bad motherfucker.
He's good at the ground.
He knows how to fight.
He knows how to submit.
He knows how to kickbox.
He was on fire at the time, but Fabricio put the smush down on him.
He got on top of him.
That mount was just inescapable, and he started smashing him.
Fabricio, super underrated jujitsu.
I think even though people know it's his strong suit, they know how badass he is, when you watch, like, the shit that he can do, there's not a whole lot of guys that are like that as a heavyweight.
There's not a whole lot of guys that have that kind of guard.
There's not a whole lot of guys that are just so dangerous from everywhere.
And his striking has gotten really good too.
You gotta think he knocked out Mark Hunt with a flying knee.
You know?
And that's how he won the title.
He's a beast.
Fabricio Verdum is a fucking beast.
He just got super emotional when he fought Stipe in Brazil.
And just really charged at him, almost uncharacteristically aggressive.
And Stipe just set it up and just dropped a bomb on him and knocked him out.
But Stipe could do that to any living human.
Any living human that chases Stipe Miocic around like that.
And Stipe can just stop and cork one on you as you're moving in.
The only one I think you might be able to take something like that was like a prime time Mark Hunt.
Like prime time Mark Hunt had like the greatest jaw of all time.
Crow Cop head kicked him.
Full on.
Left high kick to the head.
And Mark Hunt like barely wobbled a little.
He was like wobbled a little.
Like he might have went down to one knee for a second and bounced back up.
Like that would smash people.
Most people got hit with that Crow Cop left high kick and it was night night.
But there's a video of it.
I'm pretty sure Crow Cop was wearing shoes.
I think he was wearing shoes when he head kicked him.
He's wearing shoes.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
They let Mirko Krokop kickbox with shoes on.
Pride didn't give a fuck.
Look, see that?
He's throwing kicks with...
Look at that.
Boom.
Hits him in the head.
Look what happens.
Little wobble.
That's it.
That's insane.
You have to know how insane that is.
Folks, you don't know.
I mean, that is crazy.
Mirko Krokop puts everybody to sleep.
He didn't even make Mark Hunt sleepy.
That primetime Mark Hunt had the most ridiculous jaw of all time.
The most ridiculous ability to take a shot, I should say, of all time.
Because it wasn't just his jaw.
He just could take a shot.
Just insanely, insanely tough.
For Beast of Redoom, KO'd him.
So you have to realize...
You know, we're talking about a straight-up killer now.
And he's 40. It's interesting.
He says he feels great, though.
With guys like that, you almost wish they could get him on some TRT. You almost wish it was legal.
Like, only they could administer it, monitor the levels.
Because if Fabrizio Verdum could do TRT, if he could add, like, TRT Vitor-type physique...
Remember that?
Those are the glory years of chaos, the TRT Vitor years.
If you get a TRT Verdum, holy shit, son.
I mean, goddamn.
That would be insane.
I wonder...
Yeah, there's TRT Vitor.
And there's regular Vitor with the cross on his head.
And then there's the first Vitor, which was probably like some other shit Vitor.
Yeah, crazy.
But at his prime, man, like when he knocked out Luke Rockhold or when he knocked out Michael Bisping or Dan Henderson in one round, he was just terrifying.
He was just something different.
Just smashing people in a way that was kind of stunning.
Like, wow, Vitor has never been better.
He just understood more because he was older and experienced.
And then...
When they let him take tests, his body was performing like a young guy's body.
So he has this young guy's body, but this old guy's brain.
And he just has incredible confidence from all his wars.
I mean, he's been in there with so many just assassins and survived and lost and won.
You know, I mean, Vitor has been around forever.
So to see him on the TRT makes you go, God damn, let's just let him do the TRT, man.
You're not supposed to say that.
You're not supposed to say that, but here's one way that a company like Bellator or one of these other organizations could get ahead is if they allowed that.
I don't know how they do that.
I don't know if that has to be a State Athletic Commission thing, but if there was a way...
Where Bellator decided, listen, let's be honest here.
Fighters would be much healthier, be able to get through their training camp better, feel more physically strong if we just allow them to do just a little bit of TRT. We'll monitor it.
It just shows you how ridiculous people are online.
I guarantee you that's not true.
I guarantee you if he pulled out of that fight, it's because he's fucking injured.
Period.
End of discussion.
He's not a bitch.
He's not afraid of anybody.
And that's not taking anything away from Max Holloway, who's fucking awesome.
Max Holloway's a savage.
He's a killer.
Straight up killer.
And not even close to his prime.
Max Holloway is a long way away from his prime.
He's way better now than he was when he first got into the UFC. He's continued to get better with every fight.
Now he's the champion.
He just stopped Aldo.
And then when they offered him the rematch because Frankie Edgar got injured, they offered Aldo the rematch.
So Aldo took it.
Now it's going to be Max Holloway versus Aldo too, which is still a huge fucking fight.
And Aldo's...
When Aldo got accepted...
Max Holloway wrote on his Instagram, it is what it is.
Like, no big deal.
Well, what are we going to do?
Like, what?
You're about to fight the greatest featherweight of all time for the second time.
And he's like, it is what it is.
Like, that's how badass he is.
He just figured if I fucked you up once, I'm gonna fuck you up again.
Like, in his mind, this is not a good fight, which is hilarious.
That's what a beast Max Holloway is.
That he's facing Jose Aldo and he's like, it is what it is.
It's not what I was looking for.
Yeah.
It is what it is.
What a beast.
Max Holloway is a killer!
He's a fucking killer, that kid.
He's a killer.
It is what it is.
You're fighting Jose Aldo.
He's coming to get you because you knocked him out to win the belt.
He has a chance at revenge.
And he's like, it is what it is.
He's an animal, man.
A fucking kid is the real deal.
What's so exciting about him is that he's not even close to done.
You know, he has massive potential.
And he could easily move up to 155 if he wanted to.
Like, if they could...
If, say, Max Holloway wins this fight spectacularly and then starts talking a bunch of shit about Conor McGregor and then moves up to 155, I think Max Holloway could easily compete at 155 if he wanted to do some sort of unification bout.
Not a unification bout, but a champion versus champion bout.
I think for sure Max Holloway could be competitive at 155. And Max Holloway's only loss in his career was to Conor.
That's the only loss he has on his record.
That's what a badass he is.
And he was the only guy that went to decision.
Frankie Edgar released a statement.
After UFC 218 withdrawal, Max, I'll see you down the road.
You know, it can mean you got something wrong with your jaw, which is not good.
It could mean you got something wrong with your cheekbone, which is not good.
It could mean you got something wrong with your orbital, which is not good.
Or it could mean something that I don't understand.
So if he's not concerned about it, maybe it's something I don't understand.
Maybe it's not a broken something.
Maybe like something was like detached or something needed to be stitched back on.
Yikes!
You think about all the elbows people have taken.
All the shit that gets displaced all over your face.
Like John Wayne Parr has sort of documented all the stitches that he's ever taken.
Multiple time world Muay Thai champion.
Just a fucking straight up savage from Australia.
And John Wayne Parr who's still fighting.
He's fighting for Bellator now.
He's one of the Bellator on the Bellator kickboxing roster.
But he's had...
God, he's going to be pissed at me for not remembering.
But I think he's had more than 300 stitches in his face.
He's such an animal!
He's, like, documented them, too.
I think they did something where it shows John Wayne Parr, and it shows all the places, and they put stitches on all the places where he's had actual stitches.
They, like, you know, doctored him in.
Yeah, the picture's just straight crazy.
You're like, you are in a business that shreds your face.
Yeah, that's it right there.
That's all the different places in his body where he's been stitched up.
Which is just incredible.
I mean, you look at his face.
It's like a mask of stitches.
But he looks normal when you meet him.
They did a great job stitching him up.
I mean, he definitely looks like a guy you wouldn't fuck with.
You know, you want to fuck with a dude who has scars all over his face.
Probably not a good move.
But couldn't be a nicer guy.
That was a fight that he had where his cornerman took that big cut on the side of his head and started making mouth things with it and talking.
Hey, my name is Mr. Cut.
That's how morose these guys get.
But, you know, he's still after it.
And that guy's, you know, I mean, it comes to, like, the amount of facial damage that he's received.
It literally looks like he got attacked by a machete.
Like someone stuck a machete in his head.
Yeah, those are nasty.
I don't know how we got to that.
I don't know how we got on that.
We're talking about damage, you know?
I don't know if we said enough about the Goddard-McGregor thing, but it's always just very disappointing.
I wish he hadn't have done it, but I get how he thought the fight was over.
I get why when he thought the fight wasn't over, he was furious.
I get all of it.
It's just very uncomfortable.
And I think Goddard could not have handled himself better.
That guy is a fucking man.
I love the way he handled it.
I love the way he wrote about it.
The way he wrote about it was like so clear and so concise and it's...
The way he wrote about his job inside the cage, what he was trying to do, makes you realize what a great referee he really is.
How he's taking everything into consideration and following the rules, even in the middle of chaos.
Which you gotta do.
You gotta do.
It's a fucking tough job.
That is one of the toughest jobs in sports.
To be a referee in a professional MMA fight is one of the toughest jobs in sports.
There's so much craziness going on and it's so dangerous if someone loses.
The moment between someone getting hit and KO'd and being okay to taking five, six, seven, eight unanswered blows...
And not being okay.
There is a difference.
There's a big difference.
And a great referee is very, very important.
And it's so subjective.
It's so hard to decide when a guy's done.
And how do you know?
And do you take into consideration how tough the guy is?
Because Frankie Edgar can survive past the lands of doom where most people drown in their own fear.
He survives past that and comes back and can win.
There's guys like him.
And then there's some guys, and once they get hit and once they get hurt, their ability to recover is not the same.
And I don't know what it is.
I don't know if it's just the person who recovered, didn't fight someone who hits hard enough or in the correct places to do enough damage where they couldn't return, or if they're so damn tough, it doesn't matter who hits them or where they hit them, they figure out a way to make it back.
Who knows?
There's a lot of arguments on both sides.
But, man...
You've got to take into consideration, like, if you're watching, say, a Frankie Edgar-Grey Maynard fight, and you go, oh my god, this could be stopped at any moment.
It could be stopped, but it wasn't stopped, and Frankie came back to win.
He had a draw in one fight, won in the second fight.
And in the second fight, where he won by knockout, it was arguably even crazier, because Grey Maynard was fucking him up in the first round again.
Like, Grey Maynard was a beast, and he was huge for 155. But Frankie Edgar got through that storm.
Some guys wouldn't have, and some referees would have stopped that fight.
And I don't know who's right.
I want to be really honest about this.
I have no idea who's right.
I don't know what the right move is.
I don't know if the right move is to let a guy fight and let him recover and give him every chance he can to win that fight, even if it makes him take unnecessary damage.
Give him the benefit of the doubt or err on the side of caution and safety.
And different fighters would have a different opinion.
You know, there was this archaic idea for a long time that has pretty much since been abandoned.
But the idea was that if you tap from strikes, you're a bitch.
It was a real thing, you know, that people would stick in George St. Pierre's face because he tapped with strikes to Matt Serra.
Matt Serra just blasted him, and he was on top blasting him, and George knew he was going out.
So he had to tap.
Matt Serra was a KO artist, too.
He could hit fucking hard.
But when you tap to strikes, if you know that you're not going to recover, I think it's a smart move.
I think we have the wrong way of looking at it I know they do it just to talk shit.
I know you're testing someone's courage.
But I think between fighters, there should be a difference between the shit-talking that fighters engage in and then the way that other people analyze the actual sport itself.
Because I think if you analyze the actual sport itself, you can't see anything wrong with tapping of strikes.
If you're a pundit, you're a sideliner, you're an MMA fan, you're, in my opinion, If you really trust a guy's judgment as a champion, and as a high-level fighter like George St. Pierre, you can't be upset if he taps the strikes.
It's because he's getting fucked up and he knows it.
Like the Ioana Jacek.
She said she didn't tap the strikes.
She said she was moving her hand around.
It looked like a tap to me.
She was getting smashed, though.
She might not have even known she was tapping.
She might have been in a memory...
Short out circuit where she's getting blasted, blasted, blasted.
So if she even remembers tapping, who knows?
She's getting cracked, man.
I mean, she got clipped with that left hand.
And then Rose gets on top of her and starts dropping haymakers on her.
Just boom, boom, boom, boom.
And you see her reach over and tap right as the referee gets in and rescues her.
And she might not have meant to.
You've got to realize, when you're getting smashed in the face like that, everything is chaos.
It's fireworks and sparks.
And every situation is different.
In one situation, you might have a guy who's fully aware of what's happening and knows exactly what he's doing.
He's getting bombed on, but he can get through it.
Versus a person who gets hit and from the very first shot, they don't know what the fuck is happening.
They're just on Queer Street.
They're Gonsville.
They don't know where they are.
They're like, whoa!
And you can't see it from the outside.
The only person who knows is the person that's getting hit.
The only person who knows their ability to recover.
Now, how much of that is psychological?
How much of that is their fighting spirit?
How much of it is physiological?
Guesswork.
No one knows.
It's a combination of all those things for sure.
100%.
Because you can't just have the physical and you can't just have the mental.
If you have the mental and someone has the physical way better than you, you have to have all of it.
It's a big...
The idea that any person could be an MMA champ, it's like, ooh, I don't know.
Because everyone that's a champ is fucking super exceptional.
If it's not just physically, it's physically and mentally.
It's not an easy game.
It's a crazy fucking sport.
And who knows if Ioana tapped.
It looked like she tapped.
Who knows if she realized what was going on.
You know, did you see that thing about that football player that was diagnosed with CTE for the first time while he was alive?
We sort of glossed over it when we were talking to Dan Carlin.
This is the first time a living football player has been diagnosed with CTE. I was going to ask who it was, but it says they're unnamed.
Yeah, I wouldn't want people to know.
I guess.
Man, they're saying that even high school kids have it.
That high school kids who play a lot, bang heads a lot, you're going to get it.
Like, that is...
That is so hard to deal with.
You think about how many people play football, how many people box, how many people fight, how many people are going to walk out of that thing to Gondsville, and how many people are going to be really clever, like Mighty Mouse, and avoid the damage...
And just have a technical understanding of where to be and where not to be, what's coming next, how to keep somebody thinking, how to overload their mind with possibilities.
You know, it's like you've got two different styles.
You've got that style, the super technical upper echelon of MMA, where he gets super aggressive and picks up his pace towards the end of the fights and wind up finishing guys.
Just excellence.
Like that crazy...
The suplex to armbar thing that he did on Ray...
Goddammit, what's his name?
Ray Borg.
The Tasmexian devil.
I fuck that up all the time.
And when I do the weigh-ins, I call him the Tasmanian devil.
It just comes out of my mouth like an idiot.
But Ray Borg, who's a very good fighter and very tough and fast, man, when Mighty Mouse just put it on him, it was like, you're watching an artist.
You're watching someone who's just clearly head and shoulders technically above anyone in his division.
That's why this fight that TJ's asking for gets really interesting.
TJ Dillashaw versus Mighty Mouse is going to be one of the greatest fights of all time if they could pull it off.
If they actually wind up making that fight, holy shit will I be excited.
I'll be so excited because I think this will be the first time in a long time where Mighty Mouse has been challenged.
He got challenged by Ian.
Ian McCall had him in a really bad spot.
He's certainly been challenged by other fighters.
He certainly fought fighters early in his career.
We had like really good fights with him, Joseph Benavidez.
But at the stage that he's at now, he's like, he's so fucking, he's so advanced that I think it takes someone like a TJ Dillashaw, like a real super confident world champion killer to give him the fight that we need to see.
Because if TJ really can make 125, and he says he really can make 125, then holy shit what a fight that is.
Ooh, that's a good fight.
Because TJ will have a giant power advantage, right?
I mean, TJ's knocked out Hennenborough.
TJ's knocked out Cody Garbrandt in his last fight.
TJ avoided all the chaos that John Lineker brings into the cage.
TJ avoided all that.
He shut him down.
TJ right now is operating at a real high world championship level, and the only fight that he lost, he lost to Dominic Cruz by the narrowest of margins.
Some people don't even feel like he lost that fight.
There was an argument that if you look at the damaging blows, that he landed more damaging blows to Dominic, particularly if you factor in the leg kicks.
So it's arguable that that was at the very worst a draw.
That it was such a close fight to call.
That's arguable.
Or you could argue that Dominic won too.
But the point is he's a legit world championship caliber fighter.
Like TJ's a fucking killer.
He's a killer.
What he did to Hennon Burrow is insane.
And then what he just did to Cody coming off the deck and KOing Cody Garbrandt like that, that's fucking insane too.
He's in rare form.
So him versus Mighty Mouse is the fight.
That's the fight where you go, holy shit.
Which one of these guys...
Is arguably the best fighter in the world, because right now we think it's Mighty Mouse, but that thing always moves up and down.
Like, who's the best fighter that always moves around?
Like, when Jon Jones wins and knocks out Daniel Cormier, you go, damn, you almost want to give it to Jon.
Like, he's in a deeper shark pond, you know, there's more killers, he's fighting Cormier, who's just...
As good as they get, after beating Rumble, after holding the title and John KOs him, you go, God, man.
You almost have to give it to John.
But then John tests positive, so you're like, what the fuck, man?
So here's the heat, right?
It's John and DJ, right?
Demetrius is probably, in my ideas, number one.
And John is in this situation where he's probably going to get suspended or something.
But then you got probably TJ. If not George St. Pierre.
I was going to compare it to something that came out this week.
The way the college football runs their big playoff is they have a panel that takes into account all of the official rankings that are done, a couple computer rankings, but then at the end of the thing, it's still the seven or eight people are going to decide...
That this team is ranked over this team.
And it really comes down to money.
The matchups they want to see and what they can sell in ads.
People got mad at him for those two Wonderboy fights, but I... I suggest that they don't truly appreciate what those fights represented.
They represented extreme consequences for any mistake.
You're fighting a guy who's like one of the best counter-strikers on the planet Earth in Wonderboy.
He's one of the sneakiest, slipperiest...
He moves like a world champion karate guy who also has takedown defense.
And he's got a ton of experience in MMA now.
And he just fights weird.
He throws front leg roundhouse kicks to your face.
He jumps in and hits you with shots you don't see coming because he has that blitz karate style that he employs sometimes.
Very difficult to hit.
His hands are always down low.
And Tyron managed to not just beat him, and they were boring fights.
I'm not going to lie to you.
They were boring fights.
But they weren't boring to me while they were happening.
It was boring in terms of the overall result because it was a five-round decision where not a lot of exchanges took place.
But it wasn't boring when I was watching it.
And this is why...
It's because now that you know how it ended, you'll just sit through the fight and go, oh my god, this is boring.
But when you don't know what is going to happen, they don't know either.
And they're making these decisions and they're so evenly matched that they're canceling each other out.
And Tyron is doing a very smart thing by not engaging.
And he's not doing too much.
Because if he does too much, it leaves these openings, and he doesn't want to even remotely risk that he's going to put himself in a position where he gets open and Wonderboy catches him.
So he makes Wonderboy do all the leading, and then when the bombs get dropped on both occasions, Tyron Woodley was the one that hurt Wonderboy, which is crazy.
When you think that Wonderboy is one of the best kickboxers that's ever fought in MMA. He had some insane kickboxing record.
I want to quote it out of the top of my head.
I think it was 57-0.
He's 57-0 as a kickboxer.
This is a guy that Georges St-Pierre said was the best striker that he's ever sparred with.
That's how goddamn good Wonderboy is.
He's another level striker.
And those two fights between Tyron Woodley and Wonderboy essentially were striking exchanges for the most part.
Except for the first fight.
The first fight, Tyron did get him in a guillotine for a while.
And it looked like he was burning his arms out.
You couldn't believe that Wonderboy got out of it.
But the point is...
In the moments of the fight where one fighter was in trouble, it was always Wonderboy.
And that's enough in my eyes to give Tyron the decisions for sure.
Just that.
If we want to look at what is a fight.
I think the current system of like 10 points, 9 points...
It's too flawed.
We adopted this from boxing.
We should have a way more comprehensive system.
And I think it should be a system that's probably over 100 points, or up to 100 points, rather.
That you have points for significant moments in the fight.
Like, maybe...
Significant moments when someone gets dipped, that accounts for a certain amount of points.
Significant moments where a person almost gets submitted and figures out how to power out, that accounts for a certain amount of points.
Do they power out and wind up reversing the position?
Because that should be worth a certain amount of points.
You know, there should be an accumulative effect It shouldn't be just like, you won or you won.
It should be like, how do you know who won?
Like, can we look at the stats?
Can we look at the numbers?
And then, can we look at it from an expert point of view?
Because every punch does not have the same impact that other punches do.
Every kick does not have the same impact that other kicks do, and every submission doesn't have the same probability of succeeding.
So if you're watching all these things happen, You need real, world-class experts to assess what's happening at any stage of the fight.
The only people that should ever judge a fight are guys like Matt Hume, who used to judge for Pride.
Guys like Duke Rufus.
World-class guys.
Firas Zahabi.
You could get that level of martial artist to judge fights.
And I think you would have the opportunity to create a totally new system that's not boxing-based because the 10-point must system is just so flawed.
Have a new system and just only have high-level, world-class martial artists and nothing less do all the judging.
Because they'll understand what the difference is between someone just taking somebody down and someone taking somebody down and threatening them.
Someone who's on the bottom who's winning with elbows or was threatening with submissions.
Maybe they don't understand how close these submissions are.
Some people don't know a triangle's locked up until it's a fucking tap.
If you've never sparred a day in your life and you watch someone who's tapping someone with a wrist lock, you're not going to know what the fuck is happening.
You're just not, most likely.
Unless you're a real aficionado that's just never physically practiced it.
Most of the people that are referees, unfortunately, or I should say judges, there's a lot of them.
I don't want to say most of them.
A lot of them are real martial artists, 100%.
But there's quite a few that were sort of grandfathered in from boxing, and they don't necessarily know a whole lot about MMA. Now, this is not representative of the vast majority, but I see them every now and then, and some of them are very nice people.
And I say, hi, Mike, how you doing?
I mean, we're just talking disagreements on things and maybe different levels of appreciation for what's happening.
But every now and then you get a decision where everybody looks at everybody and goes, what in the fuck does that just say?
Like, everybody.
You, me, everybody.
Look over at Tony.
I'll look over at John Anik.
He'll look over at me.
I'll look over at Daniel Cormier.
He'll look over at me and we're like, what the fuck?
That shouldn't happen.
That shouldn't happen when all the experts...
Are in agreement that this is a bad decision.
Now, we're not talking about, like, debatable moments.
Like, there's fights where you look at it and you go, man, I could see the argument for this guy winning.
And then the other guy could say, well, I see the argument for that guy winning.
And I'll be like, damn, you got a point.
You know, like, Brendan and I will do that all the time.
He'll make an argument for why he thinks that Connor won the second fight easy, and I'll make an argument like, I don't know, man.
I don't know about all that.
I mean, we're not using the same system back then.
When someone got dropped, it's not a 10-8 thing, right?
It's not like they don't give away 10-8 rounds as quickly back then.
I'm pretty sure that was the old rules, was it not?
Goddammit, I should know that.
Anyway, point being, some people think Nate could have got a draw in that fight.
And I'm like, maybe.
Maybe.
It wasn't far enough away where you couldn't see that.
It was one of those where you're like, wow, maybe.
There's been a bunch of fights like that, and I could see the argument for Conor winning 100%.
He hit him quicker, faster, harder, won the first rounds bigger.
But, man, I don't know.
We're adding points.
If you're just doing this 10-9 thing, and occasionally 10-8, but now most of the states are adopting the full new MMA regulations.
And as they do that, we're going to get a much better range of rounds, like what a round scores as, which is a good step.
It's a good step in the right direction.
I just think it is an incredibly critical part of the sport, is who judges the decisions.
Again, it's not to disparage anybody who's currently doing it, but I think it is a position that should be held in the highest of esteem.
Right up there with referee.
I think this position is crucial for the future of the fighters.
It's crucial for the legitimacy of the sport itself.
Because when bad decisions happen, people get angry.
And they question whether or not the sport is legitimate.
And that's dangerous to the respect that the athletes face.
Like, here's a perfect example.
Canelo Alvarez versus Gennady Golovkin.
Everybody who's a boxing fan knows Gennady Golovkin won that fight.
Unless you're a huge Canelo fan and you're just absorbed in Canelo.
You love him.
If you watch that fight, Golovkin seemed to control way more of the fight than Canelo did.
It didn't mean that Canelo didn't win rounds.
It didn't mean Canelo didn't land good shots.
But he lost.
It seemed to me that he lost.
And they didn't give it to him.
Golovkin didn't get the decision.
It was a draw.
And people were watching it going, what the fuck?
And that's what Brendan called in advance.
Brendan Schaub called it in advance.
He's like, unless Golovkin wins by knockout, he's never winning a decision.
And I go, you really think so?
He's like, fuck yeah.
He nailed it.
He totally nailed it.
When they read the draw, I put my hands on my face like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.
I would imagine the referee probably watches it and they probably watch it with like Mark Ratner, one of the officials, you know, and they look at it and make an informed decision, you know, and I don't know what the parameters of that are.
I don't know who gets the call.
But I would imagine there's very little disagreement when someone's looking at film like that because they're not biased.
If you have John McCarthy and Herb Dean, they're looking at film.
I guarantee you they're going to agree on what it is.
And there's a lot of dispute about that kind of shit.
It's really important to have those guys that are completely on top of the rules.
There was one fight...
Where Tim Means fought Cowboy Oliveira and he hit him while he was down.
Do you remember that?
And we were trying to figure out whether or not it was legal.
And I believe it was Dan Mergliata.
And we even got Mark Ratner on the air, and Mark Ratner thought it was a legal knee, because he was down on one knee with one foot and no hands.
He's like, under the new rules, that would be legal.
And Big John McCarthy says, no, it's not.
If anything from your feet, other than the soles of your feet, are down on the ground, you're still a downed opponent.
I was like, oh.
So he had to explain it to me after the fight.
Because everybody always calls it three points of contact.
But Oliveira literally did not have a foot on the ground.
He just had his knee.
His foot was up in the air.
And his other foot was touching the ground.
And he got kneed in the face.
And we got kneed in the face.
They said it was an illegal knee.
And we were like, how is that the case?
Because there's only two points of contact.
There's the knee and the foot.
Like, you're not talking about knee, a foot, and a hand.
It's just two points of contact.
But apparently, it can't be anything other than the ball of your feet.
What it could be is, you have both balls of your feet down on the ground, but you have one hand down.
That's three points of contact.
And under the new rules, that would be legal.
Under the old rules, if you touch the ground at all, it's illegal.
Super confusing, right?
So in that one, it was really important to have a referee like Big John waiting right there.
To lift them up off the ground and slam knees into their body because they were touching with their hands.
You can do that.
That's legal.
It is a weird rule.
And it's a rule that we're going to have to figure out what makes sense.
Because the knees to the head to a downed opponent...
I feel like that almost makes sense.
Because that is a real, legitimate move.
And if someone can do that to you, why is that different?
Is it too easy?
Like, why is that different than being able to elbow someone in the face when they're on the ground?
Because it hits harder?
Is that what it is?
Okay.
So it's better.
So I can't use it because it's better.
So you can just elbow me all day long in the face, but you can't knee me in the head and put me out of my miseries.
I don't know who's right or who's wrong, but it's an effective martial arts technique, and they've eliminated it supposedly for the safety of the fighters.
But you've got to figure out, like, what's legal and what's not legal.
Like, here's another thing.
This is a fascinating fight that just took place between Matt Brown and Diego Sanchez.
Crazy wild fight as long as it lasted.
Matt Brown lands this fucking beautiful elbow.
He palms him away and just BOOM! Drops this beautiful elbow on him.
I mean it was just picture perfect.
And Diego goes limp like a sniper just shot him from the sixth floor depository.
I mean it was perfect.
It's like the perfect KO. But Diego was complaining that it was the back of the head.
But here's the thing.
Nobody gives a shit if it's the back of the head if you're standing up.
If you punch somebody in the back of the head, like when Matt Serra fought George, I'm pretty sure some of those shots he blasted them with, he hit them in the back of the head.
It might have even been the first one.
Because if you're swinging sometimes and your hand goes around, like your hand hits the back of the head all the time.
Head kicks, head kicks hit the back of the head all the time.
Like if you neck kick somebody...
Like if you go over, like say if someone's standing with their left shoulder to you, if you go over that left shoulder and drop down with that kick, that neck kick, shit, that a lot of times goes in the back of the head.
That's a lot of times where it's landing.
It's coming around.
You're coming over the shoulder.
You're literally slamming your foot, the instep, right into the back of that dude's head.
And that's a hard fucking impact from a leg.
Happens all the time.
It's totally legal.
It's weird.
Because if you get on the ground, they'll go, watch the back of the head!
Watch the back of the head!
Like, even from the mount.
I mean, even from the guard, rather.
If you're in someone's guard, you're punching them.
Watch the back of the head.
Everybody's watching the back of the head.
How about protect the back of your head?
No one says, watch your eyes!
Don't hit the eyes!
You don't say don't hit the eyes, but the back of the head's off limits?
It seems like a good spot to hit.
Like, what are we doing?
I mean, well, it's so dangerous.
Everything's dangerous.
This is fighting.
This is MMA. Look, shouldn't you know what works the best?
If you can elbow someone in the back of the head sometimes, how come you can't do it all the time?
I'm not saying that anybody should change that result.
The result was perfect.
Matt Brown by KO. I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is, open it up.
Let guys do whatever they want to do.
And no gloves.
I'm tired of saying this.
Take the gloves away.
No wraps.
No hand wraps.
That would save a lot.
You would not be able to get away with nearly as much.
Everybody would look like John Wayne Parr though.
You'd be all cut up.
But I just think it's more realistic.
It's just so weird to me.
You put pads on your knuckles, but you're allowed to elbow someone in the eyeball.
Like, what?
Oh, you're protecting your hands.
Well, that seems like cheating.
You should be, like, if you only hit someone with your hands so hard, that should be how hard you can hit them.
Shouldn't be able to fucking put them in a cast.
I mean, that's what you're doing.
You put them in, like, a soft, leather-covered cast.
That's why that Margarita fight was, you know, when Margarita got busted with Shane Mosley, when they found cement in his gloves?
They took it too far.
But that's what it is.
You're making it so you can hit someone harder.
It hurts almost as much.
It doesn't have the sharpness to it that someone has when they hit you with bare knuckle.
Bare knuckle has like a sharpness.
But the amount of power that someone can generate just...
I think someone from Sugar Shane Mosley's team watched him wrap his hands.
I think you're allowed to watch your opponent wrap their hands and he noticed something in the wraps and had it pulled out.
So then everybody decided that that's what he had been doing his whole career, which is why he had been smashing people.
Because he had been smashing a lot of people.
He just had more power.
More pop.
His loaded gloves.
Prior to the 2009 Sugar Shane Mosley-Antonio Margarita fight, Mosley's trainer, Nazeem Richardson, was in the Margarito dressing room so he could observe Margarito's hands getting wrapped prior to putting on boxing gloves.
As Margarito's trainers were wrapping their fighters' hands, Richardson noticed what appeared to be a plaster of Paris powder on the wraps.
The plaster of Paris hardens when it comes into contact with moisture.
And any fighter will sweat during the course of a fight.
Oh, shit.
As soon as Richardson saw the substance, he accused Margarito of fighting with loaded gloves.
Margarito's hands were rewrapped and Mosley hammered Margarito.
He did, too.
He beat the shit out of him that day.
I bet that dude felt guilty.
Knowing that you were going to try to fight a world champion like Sugar Shane, but you were trying to cheat.
Yeah, that's not good.
But I think that bare knuckle would be different.
I think it would be better for submissions for sure.
Way easier to secure chokes.
Your hands slip behind things.
Way easier when there's no gloves.
And it'd be way harder to hit somebody.
You would have a really hard time if someone ducked and you hit the top of their forehead.
You could easily break your hand.
Like, people break their hands all the time in that way.
What else did I want to talk about?
I think that might be it, dude.
We covered it all.
Aldo, Max Holloway, we covered that a little bit.
I want to see if Aldo still can compete at a world-class level and improve.
Because you know that he can compete at a world-class level.
You've seen the last few fights that he's had.
He still, I mean, other than the fight that he had with Conor, where Conor starched him, did he fight Frankie Edgar right after he fought Conor?
I believe he did.
I believe that's who he won the title from.
Is that who it was?
Yeah, and he outboxed him.
You know, he fought a guy in Max Holloway that's at the top of his game.
Top of his game for now and with more height to come.
But, I mean, he's just peaking.
He's just ramping it up right now.
Max is a fucking beast.
So it's interesting to see whether or not Aldo can recover.
And he doesn't have a full camp for this fight either.
You know, he had to take this fight on, I want to say, four weeks' notice.
See if that's true.
I don't want to lie.
But...
I think Max Holloway is one of the best up-and-coming fighters for sure in the world.
A world champion.
When I say up-and-coming, I mean up-and-coming in like the pound-for-pound sort of a way.
I mean, he's just got greatness written all over him.
If he just keeps up at this pace and he's got the attitude, he's got the skills, he's a straight killer.
But you can't look past an old warrior like Aldo.
Not saying that he is.
I bet he's not.
But everybody else can't look past it either.
Aldo's still fucking super dangerous.
He's going to be real motivated.
And a win by Aldo would be gigantic.
At this stage of the game, if Aldo could bounce back the way he bounced back from the McGregor fight and outbox Frankie, if he could bounce back in some way, figure out what he did wrong in that first fight, and solve the puzzle, woo!
That's big.
That's a big fight.
And the other fight, we talked about Tyron Woodley and Nate Diaz.
I think these systems competing with each other makes them greater.
I think the more opportunities that young fighters have to perform and fight in, the more you're going to see higher and higher level of ability and performance, level of fighting knowledge.
Just this more competition is higher level for the UFC, it's higher level for Bellator.
Everybody's going to accelerate.
This is a growing thing right now.
And as long as they're not competing with each other on the same night, as long as they don't do anything dumb and have fights on the same night, I think they complement each other.
I really do.
I think there's some fighters that will do better in Bellator.
I think there's some fighters that prefer to be in the UFC. It's all good, man.
It's all good, you know?
The UFC has...
Way more world-class fighters, but Bellator's got some tough motherfuckers, some real legit world-class fighters too now, and their roster's growing.
Like, Rory McDonald is one of the best fucking welterweights on the planet, and he's over there now.
I hope we get him back.
I really do.
I love commentating his fights.
Lorenz Larkin's over there now.
Lamas, like, there's a bunch of guys.
Diego Lima.
I think Douglas Lima is one of the best fucking welterweights on the planet, for sure.
His brother Diego, I think, is still fighting for the UFC. But there's a bunch of talent over there now, like real legit talent.
It's good.
It's good for everybody.
It's good for the sport.
Gives people opportunities, makes people raise their games up.
For the athletes, the more Michael Chandlers are out there, the boogeymen in the woods.
Michael Chandler is a boogeyman in the 155-pound division.
He's terrifying for everybody.
It doesn't matter what organization you fight for.
That guy's a straight-up killer.
So there's enough really dangerous world-class fighters over there in Bellator for it to be excitingly competitive for everybody.
I think it's good.
And I like that Goldie's got a gig, because I love him.
So, I think that's it.
I think we did more than an hour.
We're going to call it the hour.
But I'm a Bible mouth motherfucker, and I can't stop talking.
I don't feel the need to apologize for anything I said.