Dana White and Tony Hinchcliffe break down Holly Holm’s upset over Ronda Rousey, calling it a historic shift with 1M+ PPV buys and $20M+ in Etihad revenue. They dissect the fight’s media frenzy—Donald Trump tweeting about Ronda, Joe Rogan mocking her wealth redistribution stance—and contrast Holly’s clinical precision to Ronda’s emotional weigh-in struggles. White defends UFC’s $5M/year drug testing, despite inconsistencies like Nick Diaz’s five-year suspension and Vanderlei Silva’s lifetime ban, while Rogan proposes negotiated pre-fight enhancers. The episode reveals MMA’s unregulated past, from Pride’s steroid contracts to Anderson Silva’s bizarre training camp, and hints at UFC 200’s potential rematch, proving how far the sport has grown from pay-per-view obscurity to global spectacle. [Automatically generated summary]
We should all be forced to settle in, don't make any rash decisions.
Right now we're dealing with this is a crazy time.
We just got done watching.
It might not be the biggest upset in combat sports history.
I know I said it after the fight.
I think Buster Douglas might have been a bigger upset because Buster Douglas was kind of a fuck-up.
He was kind of a guy who didn't really train hard, didn't take care of himself.
And he was a 42-1 underdog when he knocked out Mike Tyson.
Holly Holm was only a 12-1 underdog when she knocked out Ronda.
And Holly was, you know, very respected in the combat sports world.
Multiple time boxing and world kickboxing champion.
But still, on Twitter, when I was hyping this fight up and I was telling people about this fight, so many people were saying, you're trying to sell us bullshit.
You know Holly doesn't have a chance.
Freddie Roach said Ronda Rousey's going to destroy her.
It was all these articles saying you're just going to...
So...
It was an upset.
But it wasn't just that it was an upset.
It was the way she did it.
The way she did it.
She fought the perfect fight.
And when she head kicked Ronda, just the icing, the cherry on the cake, goodnight everybody, and hammer fisted her when she was out.
There was like a brief moment in the past where Christy Martin got big.
Remember the coal miner's daughter and she used to box on TV and she would have these kind of fights but one of the things about watching women fight was they didn't really knock each other out.
They'd sort of beat each other and they'd punch each other but When Holly head-kicked Ronda last night, it wasn't just that she beat her.
It was just that Ronda was such a superstar.
When such a superstar gets beaten like that, the whole world has to go, what?
It's like when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson.
It wasn't that a guy got knocked out.
Everybody knows guys can knock guys out.
We've seen Mike Tyson knock out a hundred guys.
It's not that.
It was that Mike Tyson got knocked out.
What?
What?
It didn't fit in our paradigm of how the world works.
The world works.
Ronda Rousey runs out, grabs girls, throws them on their head, arm bars them, or she knees them in the stomach, punches them in the face, takes them out.
To see that happen, the way it happened, to see Holly Holm fight the perfect fight.
And be so classy.
All through the media, everything she did, cool as a cucumber.
During the weigh-ins, Ronda's screaming at her in her face and everything.
Holly was stone-faced, never changed her expression.
It's almost the same feeling, not the same feeling, but almost the same feeling that I got on 9-11, watching those giant trade centers come down.
No, I'm serious.
When the Trade Centers got hit by planes, we were like, holy fuck.
But when you watched them actually come down, you're like, there's no way something that solid and that stabilized and strong and powerful is coming down right now.
And that's how I felt when the leg kick happened.
I felt like there was a delayed reaction from everybody.
People were like, oh yeah, she just got head kicked and she went down, but it's not over.
It's not really over.
And until the ref, until I heard Dean waved that hand, I still think it took 10, 20, 30 seconds before people really realized what was happening there.
Yeah, and she, you know, I don't know what was going on, but Rhonda was, you know, when you do that at the day of the weigh-ins, you're trying to get in her head, you're trying to rattle her, shake her up, and Holly was not rattled or shaken one bit at all, at all.
I did a radio tour the week we left for Australia.
I said, this girl's had 45 fights and had multiple world titles.
There's a sense of...
You know, experience and this just calm feeling, even though she's going in against Ronda Rousey, and Ronda is, you know, I guess now you could say she was really the female Tyson for the sport because of the way everybody's reacting to her loss.
Is that she didn't come into her own in the UFC until this fight.
Like, even though she looked great in other organizations and she knocked people out, when she fought in the UFC, the few fights she had in the UFC, she was still trying to find her footing.
Like in the Raquel Pennington fight.
She looked good, but she didn't look like a world beater.
It's like, we talk about this all the time, but being in the UFC is such an overwhelming experience for fighters that it takes them several fights.
Like, Kyle Noak.
Like, Kyle Noak has had, what, 10 fights in the UFC? I don't even know how many fights he's had in the UFC. But last night, came into his own.
Last night, when Kyle Noak fought Sabata, he came into his own.
He landed that, he looked fantastic, landed that front kick to body, and said to himself, When I was interviewing him, he's finally believing in himself.
Is that in this sport, and we say this all the time, there's so many different ways to win and lose and it's so hard to be perfect all the time in this sport.
To go undefeated and go on these long runs for 10 years like Jose Aldo or as long as Anderson Silva did or as long as Ronda Rousey did, it is hard to be perfect every time you go in there.
Because I don't care how good of an athlete you are, how long you've been competing, not everybody jumps out of bed every day and feels perfect and feels good.
The timing is on.
Your body feels right.
It's not possible for that to happen all the time.
It's why when people go on these undefeated runs in this sport, they are fucking great.
They are truly great.
And then you take all the things about physically not being perfect, then add the pressure and the workload that gets put on you when you become a UFC champion.
Ronda Rousey did it better than anybody's ever done it.
The amount of work...
And the time she put in, how hard she trained, the things that she would do.
She didn't become a huge superstar the way that she did for no reason.
She worked at it.
And you see Connor work at it.
And these guys that can go on these long runs are very unique individuals.
But when you see all these things, I tune into them and I see them, but I don't think of how many she's doing that I'm aware of them.
If you're aware of someone on The Tonight Show, if you're aware of someone in a Rolling Stone article, think about how many things they're doing that you're not aware of.
Think of how much shit Rhonda is doing all day long, constantly her phone's blowing up, media requests, constantly people asking her to do things.
You know, I remember when BJ Penn beat Matt Hughes and I was interviewing Matt in the Octagon and Matt was very candid and very honest and I really admire the way he approached it because no one's ever...
I never interviewed anybody before and they talked about it like that.
He said, honestly, losing is a relief.
He said it was just a tremendous amount of pressure being the champ and having all these people coming after me.
And honestly, it was a relief.
I'm like, wow, what a ballsy guy he is to admit that like that.
Now, when you look at the fight stylistically, that's one of the crazy things about fights.
You can get a guy like Floyd Mayweather that figures out how to box people and get to a 49-0 record.
But to figure out how to beat every different style of martial artist...
When you're talking about takedowns, leg kicks, all these different things, we talked about the one thing that we hadn't seen Ronda deal with was someone who knows how to kick.
And we really hadn't.
Kat Singana was the only possibility, and Kat just made a crazy mistake and rushed Ronda, got caught in a scramble, and got armbarred.
But what Holly Holm was able to do, it was the first time we ever saw anybody who knows how to kick.
Keep her on the outside, a lot of movement, a lot of kicking, and that's kind of missing in Ronda's game.
The kicking aspect, we really, I don't recall ever seeing her throw a kick.
They got into a clinch there at one point and they ended up going down on the ground and Rondo was trying to get an armbar on her and then Holly pulled out of it.
And I said to Bruce in the truck, I was like, let's do the whole fight again.
Let's do the whole fight and comment on it.
And, you know, with the knowledge of what had happened.
Because we're only dealing with, you know...
Seven minutes let's let's do this whole thing again, but we wound up playing the second round again and Rhonda came out for that second round already Flustered already she was so tired going back to that first round like her legs were wobbly she was breathing heavy and I like Edmund.
I talk to Edmund all the time.
I enjoy talking to him.
I always hug that guy when I see him.
I do not like what he did in the corner.
He wasn't honest with her.
He told her she did great.
He was a great round champ.
Maybe he was trying to psychologically pump her up, but that's not what you need.
She needed technical advice.
She needed someone to tell her what she's doing wrong and how to correct it.
He's more of a boxing coach than he is an overall MMA coach.
You know, it's an interesting situation because I love Rhonda as a person.
I consider her a good friend.
I really like her.
And I know you do too.
A person, I'm sad for her loss that this happened to her, but Holly Holm is a great person too.
They're two great competitors, and I think ultimately what happened yesterday, last night, is great for martial arts.
You know, and it's great for MMA, because even though it was terrible for Ronda, and I feel terrible for her, I feel great for Holly Holm.
It's very conflicted.
It's crazy.
I'm trying to figure out when I'm interviewing Holly inside the Octagon.
I'm going in there as a person who cares about Ronda.
It's tricky.
Because this is the biggest moment of Holly Holm's life, and I want to honor that.
And I want to go in there, and I am genuinely happy for her, while at the same time, genuinely sad for Rhonda.
But I can't acknowledge that.
I have to be happy for Holly.
And not only do I have to, when I'm interviewing someone inside the Octagon, I am trying my best to get them to express themselves.
I want Holly to say, I mean, this is the new bantamweight champion of the world, Holly Holm.
And she's got tears in her eyes, and her dad's there, and her husband's there, and Winkle John's there, and everybody's there, and it's this intense, intense moment, and I just want to get that out of her.
And while that was all happening, I was thinking to myself, what a good person she is.
Yeah.
Even though I love Rhonda and I care about Rhonda, what a good person Holly Holm is.
It's the crazy thing about this business that we're in.
It's not just Holly and Rhonda.
It's every person that goes in there and competes in the Octagon.
Both have these fucking dreams of winning and glory and world titles and money and all the things that go along with it.
And then every fucking weekend when we do a show, one guy or girl moves forward and one guy or girl moves backward.
It's a crazy thing.
And Holly Holm and her father, her husband, and all the crew that was around her could not have been better people, could not have handled the whole situation.
It just...
I couldn't agree with you more.
Such very, very good people.
I went to the hospital last night and I had Joanna Yonjacek there, I had Valerie Letourneau there, and I had Ronda Rousey there.
And I'm walking from room to room going, Jesus Christ, this is a crazy business we're in, man.
You know, it's just so crazy.
These girls, you know, even Joanna...
As, you know, as dominant as she was last night, she was hurt.
She broke her hand, you know?
She broke her hand.
Valerie Letourneau was, oh my God.
Her eye was massive.
I'm serious.
It was the craziest thing that I've ever seen, her eye, last night.
So, Donald Trump apparently was pissed because he came out and said that Ronda was endorsing him for president, and then Ronda came out and said she was not.
This fight broke every record we've ever had from the venue, To merchandise, to commercial pay-per-view, everything.
I mean everything.
The numbers that are rolling in are astronomical.
Holly Holm has, when we just took off, we took off at 12.30 in the afternoon on Sunday.
No, on Monday.
Right?
It's Monday.
We just took off at 12.30 in the afternoon on Monday in Australia, and Holly Holm was still trending worldwide, number one, and the NFL is going on right now.
And there were crazy games like Green Bay lost again.
The Patriots barely beat the Giants with his last-second field goal with six seconds left, and Brady drove down the field with a minute left.
Holly Holm is still number one trending worldwide.
When the ball goes across the line, everybody gets crazy.
But to see someone like Ronda Rousey, a movie star, you know, transcending the world of mixed martial arts, get fucking head kicked like that, and flatlined, and blood, and the hammer fist, like...
And when I think about Lady Gaga and Donald Trump, the first thing that I was thinking when we were talking about this was, you and I have been friends for a long time, and one of the first UFCs that I came to when we became friends was...
Right after September 11th in 2001, when Tito Ortiz fought Vladimir Matyushenko, and you guys went over the pay-per-view.
So what happened was there was a cut-off, a three-hour cut-off, and when the cut-off hit, the fight was still going on.
They had timed it wrong.
So you guys had to give a fuckload of money.
I wasn't even working for you back then.
I was just your friend.
We were hanging out, we were drinking, and you and Lorenzo and Frank were like, whoa.
But to go from that to, here we are in 2015, and a fucking guy who's running for president, Donald Trump, is tweeting about the results of the fight in a catty way.
I think Jeb Bush is probably the more likely candidate.
It's like, wait for the dust to settle.
But just the fact that a guy running for president is addressing mixed martial arts, which, you know, you and I have both talked about that when we first got involved in it.
Well, John Wayne Parr, who is a 10-time world Muay Thai champion, he's a good buddy of mine, he was at the fight yesterday, and he brought his daughter.
His daughter's a huge Ronda Rousey fan, and his daughter was so conflicted after that fight was over because she's a kickboxer herself.
And one of the things Holly said that was cool at the press conference last night, one of the guys said, did you ever doubt that you could do this?
She goes, yeah, I doubt it.
She goes, there were days at the gym when I had a bad day and I'd just walk out and go in my car and cry for 15, 20 minutes thinking I can't do this.
You know what I mean?
I look terrible in there today.
If this is the way I'm going to fight, I'm not gonna win.
She goes, then I'd go home, I'd eat, I'd relax, and I'd go back at six and work on everything that I wasn't good at two hours earlier, until I got it right, you know?
I was watching her during Ronda's entire entrance, which is, you know, sitting that close is something that you don't really get to see on TV. But I had my camera, my eyes, focused directly on Holly the entire time Rhonda was coming out, and she was.
She was doing five steps, bounce, go the other way, five steps, bounce.
When she was getting her mouthpiece put in, when Rhonda was stepping in the octagon, Holly was nothing but focused.
It was a different kind of focus because it was a girl who's experienced that kind of intense pressure situation before, that world title pressure.
Like, when Betch Cohea was in Brazil and she was facing Ronda, she had this look on her face before that fight like she was about to go fight a werewolf with a butter knife.
You know, she was just like, oh, put on a brave face.
She almost knew she was going to get fucked up.
It was almost like the enormity of the moment was just like, ooh!
Like, you can't breathe.
Like, you ever take a shower, a cold shower, and you get...
You can't breathe.
That's how it looked.
Like, she was just overwhelmed.
That wasn't the case with Holly.
It wasn't the case at all.
She was...
She knew it was intense pressure.
She knew it was a big moment, but she was prepared for it.
How many times have you guys had to deal with people saying, oh, these fucking cards are watered down, and I'm tired of this fucking bullshit, and how is this guy still fighting?
I said, stick to what it looks like you're good at, eating.
Let me handle this.
What was his complaint?
He was saying that now that women are fighting in the UFC, I must be really desperate.
Like we're going out of business and I must be really desperate.
What's funny is, these people on social media, he says to me, you know, he's obviously ripping on the UFC, so I hit him back and I say, where have you been living under a rock?
You don't know who Ronda Rousey is.
You didn't know there was a Ronda Rousey-Holly Holm fight.
And he says, yeah, apparently a lot of people live under a rock.
Nobody watches the UFC anymore.
Nobody, you know, something like that.
I said, listen, why don't you stick to what it looks like you're good at, eating?
Yeah, you know, there's different comedic muscles.
There's, like, puns, there's roasting, there's staying in the pocket doing long bits, like what you do.
You know, you'll talk about the same topic for ten minutes.
There's, like, different muscles.
You know, like, I don't move around a lot on stage, which is something that I sort of wish I could do.
I can't do impressions like you can either.
You know, there's just different muscles and stuff.
It's sort of like...
You know, to use an analogy, it's sort of like UFC fighters.
Like, some people are good at some things, and sometimes the audience wants those certain things.
And you gotta know which muscle to use against your opponent if your opponent's that audience, that venue, whether it's in Australia or Sweden or LA, you know?
Dude, I can't tell you how many guys get mad at me where I point out situations that they're not necessarily the best at or skills that they may need to look into to get mad at me.
Well, normally when fighters come off a fight like the Ronda fight, the Lawler-McDonald fight, you know, you don't even talk to them about fighting for the last Cormier fight with, yeah, you just wait.
And probably a month.
In about a month you call and say, hey, what's going on?
We have employees, you know, In a weird way, we're more like a media company, yet we promote fights.
It's really morphed into this weird thing, but a lot of the stuff, a lot of the things, and the growing pains of building this business, the relationships that you have to have with a lot of these guys, you know?
There's some guys on the undercards that I've never even met before, and then there's people that I'm really, really close to, and you were saying it earlier.
You learn to care about these people.
Know people that are involved in their lives and you become close.
You know, there's a parallel between you and me, too, in that there really wasn't a you before you, and there really wasn't that many people doing commentary before me.
Like, you're not like a normal promoter in the sense that...
I mean, you have Don King, who's like, only in America, but it's all...
You know, it's mostly showmanship and bullshit and...
You just somehow or another figured out how to just be Dana White.
Do you remember some sort of a conscious decision to not put on some sort of fake professional attitude?
I don't know man, I don't know really how to explain it, but I just go in there and we put on fights and we, you know, we try to put on the best fights.
That are available with the best talent that we have.
For instance, I believed that the Ronda Rousey-Holly Holm fight was the fight.
But you get all these fucking conspiracy weirdos that start talking about...
All anybody wants to say is, Oh, I want to see Dana White's face after Holly Holm beat her.
And I want to see what he...
Two women are going in there.
Rhonda and Holly are going in there.
Somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose.
I mean, anybody that's stupid enough to fucking think that I think, you know, somebody could win forever or somebody else couldn't win is ridiculous.
Or that Rhonda hasn't fought the best competition available.
Rhonda's fought all the best girls in the world at 135 pounds.
Well, I didn't think that Holly was going to get destroyed, but I thought that Amanda Nunez was a more dangerous fight based on her performance against Sarah McMahon.
Because she smashed Sarah McMahon, knocked her down, beat her up.
And I know she had beaten up Kat Zingano in the first round, although she got stopped later in the round.
I think Kat Zingano is still dangerous as fuck.
She just made a big rookie mistake.
She just charged, got caught in a scramble, and, you know, Ronda is so nasty at catching those arm bars.
And even in this fight, she had been tagged with all those fucking straight lefts, she had been rocked, and she still, when they went to the ground, she was immediately threatening with an arm bar.
Well, I think this is a pivotal time for Rhonda because she's a huge superstar.
She's a huge movie star.
She's a huge celebrity, but...
What got her to that position is being a great fighter.
And there's a balance there somewhere.
And you gotta find out where's the balance.
Is the balance spending all this time working on movies and all this other shit?
Or is the balance going back to fucking Rocky IV, going to that cabin in the woods and going running up the hills of the snow and focusing on just fighting?
And that might be what she needs to do now.
Or that's it.
Or figure out what it is.
She's got enough money now, I assume.
She probably, if she's frugal, doesn't have to work again for the rest of her life.
She doesn't, right?
So she has to decide what she wants to do.
Does she want to figure out what went wrong?
Figure out what she could have done better?
Get back to the drawing board?
Maybe work with some new coaches that are going to work with her on kicks and distancing, on footwork, or...
Maybe figure out some other ways to try to get Holly down other than the collar tie and clenching.
Fucking dog rips her ear off during the Cormier-Gustafsson fight.
My wife is hysterical, can't even understand a word she's saying, so I have to calm her down.
What the fuck is going on?
Tell me what's happening.
She tells me.
I said, okay.
I grab Doc D, one of the doctors for the UFC. He gets on the phone.
He calls Las Vegas.
The first thing he did, he's trying to set up a doctor.
I said, I don't want a doctor.
I want a plastic surgeon.
Get me a plastic surgeon.
He calls in this plastic surgeon.
They go to the hospital.
They had to wait like an hour and a half.
So you can imagine.
They're freaking out.
They've got to wait an hour and a half because they're waiting for the plastic.
But the plastic surgeon came and put her ear back on and then fixed the ear this way, sewed it back together.
My daughter's ear looks unbelievable.
Because you can't have a doctor do that kind of shit, because if you have a doctor do it, all he cares about is getting the fucking ear back on, not how it looks.
But cosmetically, it's like a doctor will come in and stitch Rhonda's lip, but then Rhonda's lip is gonna look weird.
So when we do fights in Vegas, There's a doctor named Dr. Hsu.
I don't know if you've ever met Dr. Hsu.
He's a tall Asian guy with glasses.
He is the man when it comes to...
He sews up these cuts because, as you know, in fighting, cuts are a big problem.
They have to be sewn up the right way, not only cosmetically, but if you're going to continue to fight, you have to sew them up so that they don't rip open all the time and get a lot of...
Scar tissue under there and things like that.
So we're very, very careful and stuff like that.
But if anything traumatic ever happens to your kids or your wife, you're looking for a plastic surgeon, not a doctor.
Yeah, I mean, it's got to be an incredibly difficult job to do to stitch up a cut like that and make sure that it heals in a nice, thin, clean line like that.
You know, my friend John Wayne Parr, he was at the fights last night.
It's really incredible though, like what you do, it's amazing.
I grew up, and Joe's about to kill me, I grew up a huge pro wrestling fan, and there's something about what Vince McMahon has been able to accomplish with the crazy circus that he's running and turn it into a huge company with tons of fans that watch every week.
But it's amazing to me that you have been able to accomplish that with reality.
Everything he did, he wrote it out himself and wrote scripts.
They have 20, 30 writers that he pays six figures a year, big time, more than six regular, middle six figures a year they all get paid to write that stuff every week.
And you have been able to grow this thing And I guess that's really like, it's mind-blowing.
But all the people that were in the fucking hotel had sleeping pills.
And it was in San Francisco and they had this narrow staircase.
And it's really hard to get down the staircase.
It's like really narrow.
And these people were walking.
Like, real slow down the stairs.
And half of them were fucking sleeping.
They were, like, waking up as they were walking.
They were all whacked out on sleeping pills.
Because a lot of people, when they stay in hotels or when they travel, they'll take a sleeping pill.
And it was dangerous.
It was dangerous to the point where I was ready to start a fucking stampede.
I was like, like, why are you fuckers not running?
Like, there's an alarm going off, an announcement saying the building's on fire, and you people are strolling down the stairs, and half of them look like zombies.
And, um...
I've had some friends that have done some shit when they were on sleeping pills, like Kevin James.
Kevin James takes sleeping pills to cook himself dinner and doesn't realize he cooked dinner and wake up in the morning like, what the fuck is this?
And then someone has to tell him that he cooked it.
I don't do sleeping pills either, but if I need to fall asleep on this flight, I might go a couple rows back and have Holly Holm kick me in the neck as hard as she can.
That's why when I think about fighting, these people are so special that very few people can actually do it.
You know how many people can actually become a top three fighter in the fucking world?
How many people can become a champion and then hold the belt for any amount of time?
Very few people.
They're very special, and I think that's why, as human beings, we're so in awe of professional fighters, you know?
I always say that, that, you know, fighting's in our fucking DNA, and we just, we look at fighters and we're like, holy shit, that fucking guy is the toughest dude in the world, or that girl is the toughest girl in the world, and why we...
Put them on such a big pedestal, they deserve to be.
But, at the same time, the craziest, loneliest fucking, you know, Ronda Rousey loses one fight and everybody turns on her and starts shitting her.
Because that's their own demons, their own insecurity, their knowledge that they could never do that in a million years.
So when someone does it and fails, all of their insecurities just come flying out of their stupid fucking mouth or their fingers.
That's what it is.
When I went on Instagram last night and Twitter and I was reading all that mean shit that people were typing about Rhonda, I knew what the fuck that is.
That's the weakest aspects of humanity.
If we could pluck those people out of our culture, the world would be a way better place.
And if the people listening to this, if you're one of those people, you need to fucking go for a walk.
Recognize who you are.
Because that's why you did that.
That woman put, both of those women, put everything that they are on the line.
And for you to insult them after they came up short, the reason why you're doing that is because you're a cunt.
You're a cunt of epic proportions.
And there's no way around that.
There's no, no, I might not be.
I might actually know something.
No, you don't know shit.
No, you're a cunt.
Because if you do know shit, you would just look at it and you would recognize the sacrifice And the drama of it all and the danger of it all, and you would have respect for them.
Like, half of what Ronda does is psychological, but half of it's marketing.
All that stuff is marketing.
You know, you talk all that crazy shit, that's where you get all the money.
The money comes from what Conor McGregor's doing.
Oh, I don't like what Conor McGregor's doing.
Mixed martial arts is supposed to be about respect.
Look, you got maybe ten years if you're lucky.
But realistically, the great fighters, you look at the great fighters, they have like an eight-year period that they can operate at this incredibly high RPM. And then your body starts giving out.
You can't take any shots anymore.
Your fucking knees are bad.
Your back goes bad.
Your neck's all fucked up.
At a certain point in time, it fails.
You have two...
Things you're trying to accomplish during that time.
You're trying to win.
You're trying to make as much money as you can.
And the best way to make as much money is get people to pay attention.
And the best way to get people to pay attention is to talk a gang of shit.
As weird as it is, and the fact that it's not real and this and that, you know, that's definitely something that, you know, they built their entire MO off of, you know?
I mean, how many days a year do they go on the road?
That was one of the reasons why Brock Lesnar decided that fighting in the fucking UFC at the highest level of the game with one, one previous MMA fight was easier than doing pro wrestling.
That goes to show you how hard that entertainment business is.
Yeah, so they're working on this thing over there where, you know how testosterone replacement therapy works?
You know, as we get older, our testosterone levels drop, and then they can, you know, give you an injection and put this testosterone back into your body, make you feel younger, sex life, all these other things.
Well, now...
What these guys are working on is these collagen shots.
So they give you these injections of collagen, and it replaces the collagen in your body.
Collagen is what keeps your skin young.
And as we all get older, it goes away.
They did this thing, I guess, that they've been testing on this 10-year-old rat.
They're just building up the infrastructure over there because when this thing comes out and when they announce this, it's going to be a trillion dollar business.
I can't give you the scientific explanation of it, but they basically came up with this thing where you get these injections and it makes you younger again.
It's almost like replacing the collagen in your body.
And your wrinkles go away.
They go away and your face looks like your face looked when you were younger.
So ladies out there that are banging your faces all up with all this crazy shit that they're doing, plastic surgery and all this stuff, I'd lay off it and wait for this stuff to come out.
One of the controversies in MMA over the last few years was that, for a while, the Nevada State Athletic Commission was allowing testosterone use exemptions.
So a few guys got it.
Vitor, maybe unfairly, takes the brunt of the criticism for that.
Because his results on testosterone were so fucking spectacular.
When you get an old guy like Vitor, who has all that experience and all that knowledge, and you give him testosterone, and his body performs like a young guy's body, but with all that knowledge and all that experience, you get what happened in the Henderson fight, the Bisping fight, and the Rockhold fight, where he just looks fucking sensational.
But now, you know...
Now they've pulled out.
They pull the testosterone use exemptions back, and these guys are trying to force to try to compete.
Mark Hunt, perfect example.
The first fight with Bigfoot Silva and Mark Hunt was this crazy fucking five-round war.
And after the fight, Bigfoot tests positive.
Not positive, because we knew he was on testosterone.
Out of all the fucking people, he's a guy that actually medically has to take it, and not because of his age, because he has some type of pituitary or something like that.
And I mentioned this, I don't think I mentioned this in this podcast, but maybe yesterday I said it.
If you look at the weigh-in between Rousey and Holm, exactly what Ronda did at the weigh-in is what she did in the fight.
The second she got off that scale, she ran over to Holm, who was standing her ground in her place, and rushed her.
I mean, she really bum-rushed her.
I think harder than Ronda's ever went for anybody.
Even her last fight when the lady said about her dad's suicide, you know, don't kill yourself or whatever, she seemed more mad than At Holly Holm, for what?
For drinking her drink and moving her hand towards her a little bit?
Like, she bum-rushed her during the weigh-in.
And she did exactly at that weigh-in, exactly what she did in the octagon.
It's the day that you get to see who's on weight, how do they stare down, does either guy flinch, does either one of them budge, does somebody trying to get the mental edge.
It's the fucking greatest day of the week except for Saturday.
To break it down even more, I've watched the last four weigh-ins of Johanna Janjacek, and this was the first time that Valerie Letourneau was the first person that also put her head down and matched up with Johanna.
And not only that, but a little bit more icing on that cake.
When Johanna and Letourneau were forehead to forehead, Johanna was talking and you asked her what she said, but if you watch that again, Valerie's talking too and they're just talking over each other.
They're both saying stuff.
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She wasn't listening to Johanna and Johanna wasn't listening to How crazy is what Joanna said?
The first time I saw her, I've said she's my favorite fighter.
And I make jokes about wanting to marry her and this and that.
Truth is, I have a girlfriend who hates all this Johanna mumble jumble when she reads it on my Twitter and is searching what people are saying about me.
Who's this Johanna Janjacek?
Would you really hook up with her?
This and that.
Truth is, you know, I make the jokes about Johanna because I say I need a woman that'll keep me in line.
She's really just my favorite fighter.
I love UFC. I've been watching it since Gracie was in the gi.
I mean, there was nothing amateurish about it, nothing clumsy or sloppy.
That was as skillful as you could ever hope for in a professional mixed martial arts fight.
And the way she took advantage of Ronda at the end of that, the exchange in the second round when Ronda was tired and she slipped and she caught her with that punch and then head kicked her, I mean, that's...
It's perfect.
It's perfect technique.
Everything was perfect.
So we have now in women's MMA, we have the two representatives now in the UFC. They're as skillful as anybody in MMA. It's true.
Well, you know, the perception was that Ronda was at the top of the heap and everybody else was just underskilled, but man, that My perception's been blown wide open by Holly Holm now.
Now the whole game changes.
It just opens it right...
It's like the same thing that happened when Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson.
And then Evander Holyfield came along and knocked out Buster Douglas.
I mean, the whole thing just...
It just throws the paradigm into a fucking turmoil.
And you know the thing about having someone like a Ronda Rousey or like a Joanna is that greatness beckons greatness.
When you have one person at the top that is just fantastic and spectacular and has these incredible results, All these people that are coming up, they have this insanely high level to aspire to, and that's what makes martial arts so great in 2015. It's not a coincidence that if you go back to 1993, and you look at the level of the fighters, and then you look at it in 2015, Head and shoulders above everybody.
It's barely the same sport.
And the reason being is that slowly but surely everybody aspired to the people who were at the top and the people coming up got better and better and better and better and that's how we have the level that we have today.
And you're seeing that mirrored now in the women's divisions.
And that's one of the most exciting things about the sport.
And it's That way, not only for the UFC, but for life, you know what I mean?
Like, sometimes I forget until, you know, I'll go once in a while, a month or two without working with you, or, you know, but like, there's only a few people left that I watch.
I do stand-up comedy every night, and I work really hard for the last nine years, basically training every night to get as good as I can get.
But when I see you, Joey Diaz, and Bill Burr, which are the only three people left that I'll even watch, It's a straight shot of adrenaline inspiration.
All of a sudden, I'm riding harder the next day.
I'm sleeping right.
I'm doing more things.
People, you know, it's important to use inspiration to your advantage for everything.
Human beings, we all need other people to inspire us.
We all do.
One of the most important aspects of MMA is competition.
These are not people that evolve in a vacuum.
They evolve looking at each other, mirroring each other.
And also now, one of the things that we've said many times is that martial arts have evolved more since 1993 when the UFC was founded than they have in the past 10,000 years.
That's 100% true.
But really, one of the reasons why it's true is because you can see the techniques.
You can actually watch them.
I remember when I was a kid, in 1986, I went to watch the World Cup in Colorado Springs, in Taekwondo, and I flew out there, and it was a giant turning point in my Taekwondo career, because I was really good, I was winning like, Good level tournaments, and I was doing well, but in 86 when I went to watch the best guys on the planet, I came back 20, 30, 40% better.
I was just way better.
I saw the top of the mountain, and I think when you get people that are sitting in the crowd You know, you get these young contenders that are sitting there and they watch someone like Holly Holm dismantle Ronda Rousey.
They watch someone like Chris Weidman knock out Anderson Silva.
They watch Jose Aldo or TJ Dillashaw.
They watch these fighters and they go back to that gym and they're a different fucking person.
They go back to that gym when they have the memory of that spectacular performance in their head and it just makes them rise up.
And I think also...
To people that don't have anything to do with fighting.
They'll watch that Holly Holm fight and they'll wake up in the morning and they'll go to their fucking yoga class inspired.
They'll go take spin classes.
They'll go run up hills.
They'll show up at work fucking fired up, ready to kick some ass and get some shit done.
I think it was more desperation than ego, but I think you're right in some ways, but I think really, instead of ego, I think pressure is a better thing to concentrate on.
Because I think both with Ronda and with Anderson, Anderson had the pressure of everybody saying he was the pound for pound greatest fighter of all time.
And he had all these murderers coming up through the ranks like Weidman, Yoel Romero, all these, Jacare, all these guys waiting in line to get a shot at him.
And the pressure of that is just overwhelming.
But unlike Anderson, or unlike Ronda rather, Anderson didn't have all these movie offers.
He's not constantly doing television shows.
I mean, he had some media obligations, especially particularly in Brazil where he's idolized, but Ron is on a totally different level.
Well, they're so out of control that they would fucking ban him for five years when they do that.
I mean, it's one thing to find a guy or to figure out some sort of a compromise, community service, whatever the fuck you've got to do, but you're taking away the guy's career.
I mean, I don't know whether or not the Nevada State Athletic Commission is going to repeal it, but I know that they did throw out his lifetime ban.
They haven't licensed him.
I mean, it's not like he can go back to work right now, but if they just...
Banned him or gave him a suspension that was the same amount of time that you would have gotten if you tested positive for steroids, especially Vandele, who had never tested positive before.
You know, and look, Vandele's no saint.
Who knows what the fuck he had done when he was in pride.
But the point is, when they were testing him, he followed the guidelines, at least as far as when they tested him.
They banned him for life.
One time he runs away from a drug test, they ban him for life.
That's fucking crazy.
That's crazy.
I mean, I think someone needs to pull those guys aside and go, look, what you do is very important.
It's very important to have you there.
It's very important to have a voice of authority.
It's very important to have penalties for people who violate the rules and cheat.
But it's also very important to have some common decency and some compassion.
You can't take a legend like Vanderlei Silva, a fucking mixed martial arts legend, and ban him for life.
I was going to tweet it every day for like a year, but I changed my mind.
I was like, now I'm helping anybody.
They'll just change their number or whatever.
But the point being is that they didn't take into consideration the two WADA tests, which is fucked up, and they banned him for five years and fined him $160,000.
I mean, you know, they say that smoking pot's one of those things where, like, if you're in college and you study for a test high, that you should take the test high, and, you know.
Well, there's been arguments like that when it comes to testosterone replacement and even some performance enhancers, that if the two fighters had made an agreement that they would both allow the other person to do whatever amount of whatever, that that should be ethical and allowed.
And then instead of saying, you know, oh, you're cheating, it's just like saying you allow someone to, I mean, we allow people to take multivitamins, we allow them to take creatine, we allow them to use, you know, cryotherapy chambers, and all these things that have shown to have a pretty significant impact on recovery.
Why not allow them, you know, to make an agreement?
I wonder what's going to happen, Dana, when you're talking about things like Dr. Welling coming out with this collagen stuff.
When they start coming out with gene therapy and all these different ways to make your body young again, and you get a guy like Vitor, who is an old guy with all this experience and all this knowledge, but that's the trade-off in life, is that as you get older, your body doesn't work as well.
So you might be a crafty old veteran, but you've got to conserve your energy more because your body's just not capable of the same kind of output.
But if you get a guy like Vitor and then you bring him to that doctor and he does some wanky shit to his body and all of a sudden he's got both.
He's got the knowledge and he's got the youthful body.
The whole sport gets very different and very strange.
But the difference between basketball and MMA is that in basketball you don't have a finish like you had last night with Holly Holm head kicking Ronda Rousey.
You have someone slam dunking on you.
That's like the, you know, that's the equivalent.
You know, someone shooting a three-pointer in your face.
But like you said, you have a guy who's really talented, has the knowledge, and how much longer could Jordan have played if this would have been around when he was here?
It is, and you've got to wonder, you know, this stuff they're doing with stem cells, they're regrowing cartilage.
People that have bone-on-bone arthritis, they inject them with stem cells and it regrows cartilage, it regrows meniscus tissue.
It's insane.
So all these people that have these chronic ailments and injuries, they're going to be able to get those things fixed, and all the detrimental effects of constant competition, they're slowly but surely going to be able to chip away at that stuff.
It's going to be fascinating to see how this Yeah, and it's going to be fascinating to see what kind of regulations, if any, are they going to be able to establish to keep up with that stuff.
Well, Nowitzki was telling me when he did my podcast that there's an issue that they're having now with they have testosterone that they've developed through animals.
The way they make Artificial testosterone or synthetic testosterone is they use wild yams.
I don't understand the process, but they use yams.
So when they use a carbon isotope test, they can tell that the testosterone that's in your body is not endogenous.
It's not created by your own body.
But with this animal shit, they can't tell.
So the testosterone they're getting from like, I don't know, wild boars or what the fuck they're using for the testosterone, it's the same as the testosterone that's being cooked up right now in little Tony's nuts.
He was telling me that there's this thing right now that, you know those strips that you put on your tongue like mouthwash and you know what I'm talking about?
There's actually, they have these strips that they're putting on their tongue and it gives you all the effects of You know, like a growth hormone or testosterone injections or whatever it is, and it's out of your system in 12 hours.
So if you take that before you go on a workout and you do your whole workout and everything, you get all the benefits of it, and then it's out of your system in 12 hours.
It's really interesting times because it's been pretty clearly established that at least the early days of the UFC and the early days of Pride, period, there was a lot of performance enhancing drug use.
There was a lot of it.
Off the record, I've talked to guys who did it, who were in Pride, who told me that everybody was doing it, and on the record, Ensign Inouye told me when he was on my podcast that they had, in the fucking contract they gave him, it said, we will not test for steroids.
In the contract.
But we know it when we watch.
You watch Vanderlei at 218 pounds and you see all these fucking guys who are competing over there.
We kind of knew they were juiced up.
It's going to be interesting to see the culture of the sport transition to, you know, as clean as you can get it.
And, you know, you guys have to take...
You guys have to be given credit for that because you stepped up and you did something that was very dangerous, very dangerous for the product, very dangerous for the reputation of the sport because as more of these people keep getting popped, and you're spending fucking millions of dollars to do this, and these guys are getting popped where you could just do what the NFL does, the NBA does, kind of turn a blind eye.
No one's begging you to do this or forcing you to do this.
When you look at what we're doing right now to clean the sport up, You know, we have contracts in place, how many fights we have to deliver, not just to television, but pay-per-view and, you know, all these things that we have.
We have contracts, we have obligations.
Yeah, we're going to spend $5 million a year in testing.
And in testing, it could completely cripple the entire business, but it's the right thing to do.
It's not like the NFL, where they have this giant infrastructure set up for...
They know, like, I mean, there's some variables when it comes to strength and conditioning training in many professional sports, but they have protocols that are pretty clearly established.
Whereas in MMA, there's a bunch of different ways to do it, and these guys that compete at a very high level that have really wacky camp environments, where you're like, you know, this is not really the most professional, they're hanging out with, like that fucking guy that Anderson hangs around with, the guy from Black House, a 60-year-old guy who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, You know what I mean?
I mean, like, what do you think that guy does?
Oh, nothing.
Just fucking fruits and vegetables, steak and chicken.
I mean, come on, man.
The fuck you guys juiced to the tits.
And no wonder, you know, Anderson tested positive.
Oh, then no way.
Is he hanging out with that guy?
Why would that guy tell him the positive benefits of steroids?
Basically, we're building new offices and building a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center for fighters.
And it's like the New England Patriots, right?
If something happens to Brady, they don't tell Brady, see you later, come back, go do your surgery and all your stuff and come back and let us know when you're ready to play again.
He's there.
They're making sure he's doing therapy.
He's got the best.
That's what we're going to start doing with the fighters in Vegas.
And like movement specific, like different guys who are strikers working on certain things, different guys who are grapplers working on certain things?
There's a lot of coaches, like Edmund is a good example.
He's obviously good at holding mitts and good at teaching Ron to the mechanics of throwing punches.
How much does he know about defending guillotines?
How much does he know about the transitions between boxing and grappling?
We really don't know.
And I think the same could be said as far as what are the requirements of your sport when it comes to strength and conditioning.
It's still kind of being learned.
And everybody does things differently.
For every guy like GSP that thinks you have to use gymnastics, there's certain guys like Fedor gave up on all weights and any strength and conditioning later in his career and just did fight training, you know?