UFC Fighter Michael Chandler | PBD Podcast | Ep. 190
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PBD Podcast Episode 190. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Michael Chandler & Adam Sosnick.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Why would you bet on Goliath when we got pet taved?
Value payment, giving values contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we can't no value to hated.
I didn't run, homie.
Look what I become.
I'm the one.
What?
No, no, no.
Eminem that he talks about purple pills.
Anyways, podcast is live.
We're talking about purple pills.
Special podcast here for you.
I've been very excited about this one here for a couple different reasons.
Our guest today, let me formally introduce him before we get right into it.
This man, when you see his face, you're going to think of something else, but you have to know one thing about this man.
He was on the honor roll every term in high school.
I don't know if you guys know this or not.
Every term in high school.
Badass wrestler, badass wrestler in Missouri State high school activities.
And he went and became Association State Championships as a senior in wrestling.
Aside from that, he goes to Bellator.
He knows how to email and turn a girlfriend into a wife.
We need to kind of figure that out for a couple of these guys here, Mike, if we can teach us some lessons, Michael.
He's thinking he's blue pill, red pill.
We're trying to make him a purple pill.
We don't have to do that.
Papa's referencing Eminem and I'm going to tell you this here.
Here's for me.
So a couple things when I watch you, man.
One, I think today, if I was to say, you know, like if I want to watch basketball, I want to watch Steph Curry play.
To me, he's exciting.
You know, if I want to, John Morant is exciting to me.
Certain people are exciting to me.
Certain people are not exciting to me.
Those guys are exciting, right?
Like you wanted to watch Michael play.
You wanted to watch certain people play.
Judge just hit her 60 seconds online home watching certain players play.
If this guy's, when you're fighting, I have to watch your fights.
I would say the most exciting fighter today, period.
I like watching you fight.
It doesn't matter if it was Justin or you against Charles.
Either one of them could have gone your way.
Charles could have even been stopped.
Some of the fights have been stopped in those types of situations.
But in my opinion, you can crucify me.
You can come after me.
I think he's the most exciting fighter right now to watch.
With that being said, Michael Chandler in the house.
Goodness, my fans.
Thank you.
Well, number one, thank you for having me.
And number two, thank you for those kind words because that is, it's the goal, right?
I was a small guy from a small town, and somehow I ended up here on the Patrick David show.
So here we are, man.
Let's go.
You know what I like when you're being interviewed?
And I kind of share this with the on Instagram where, you know, they're, hey, you know, the money fight's going to be Connor, but you got this.
And you're not, listen, man, my entire life, I've been chasing to be the champion.
Every training, everything I do 24-7, I'm doing this to be the champion.
Yes, I understand I'm going to make more money with the other one.
Let's just say because it's a money fight.
I have to be a champion.
Once I become a champion, then I'm going to go do the fight.
So it's so obvious.
You're so crystal clear on what your target is, what you're going after.
And for you, you know, you came in, you've been in Bellator.
So some of the audience that doesn't know, if you don't mind taking a moment and just kind of share your background on how you got into fighting, wrestling.
And then typically a wrestler is not a good stand-up, but you got a great stand-up.
Some fights, you don't even want to wrestle.
And you know how to wrestle.
So maybe tell everybody a little bit about your story.
Yeah, I just, you know, I was an undersized kid from High Ridge, Missouri.
Didn't have hair in my armpits until I was almost 18 years old, you know, so I always had to scrape and claw for everything that I had.
I obviously wasn't going to be the star quarterback or the, you know, the starting center on the basketball team.
So weight classes and the sport of wrestling seemed like the easiest path to find success.
So I started wrestling in high school.
I was the first one that really took it seriously and on my high school team wrestled 365 days a year, basically.
And I was the first one that had done that.
And since then, Northwest High School has turned into a year-round program where those guys are wrestling all year long.
In St. Louis.
In St. Louis, Missouri, they got my picture of me as an all-American up there, and those guys kind of strive and say, hey, and the coaches say, hey, if you want to be successful, if you want to be great, you can't just be a wandering generality.
Is it the same coaches or the new coach?
Same coaches.
One of them is retiring this year, Ron and Bob Wilhelm.
So one of them is retiring this year, and then one will continue to stay on.
And then I actually, I fell short.
I went to the state championships four different times in high school.
Qualified every single year, made it to the finals my senior year, but fell short every single year.
I wasn't, wasn't a state champion.
I placed one year.
So I still had that competitive, that competitive itch, and I got some smaller school offers d1 or d2 d3, Nai but something in me, for some reason, said, hey, if you're gonna go wrestle at the next level, you need to wrestle at the highest level.
Take that chance.
So I ended up walking on to the University Missouri UH, wrestling program.
I was the lowest guy on the totem pole.
Coach didn't talk to me for an entire year.
Everybody got three sets of workout gear.
I got one set of workout gear, which meant more laundry.
And you know uh you, you just felt like you were overlooked and I knew I had to put in the extra hours.
I put in the extra hours, ended up becoming a team captain and an All-american and then still had the competitive itch, but didn't want to continue to wrestle.
Um, I was very fortunate.
Tyron Woodley uh, Ben Askren.
I wrestled with both of those guys at Mizzo.
They started fighting and they were like my big brothers and I said well, i'm not ready to get a job, you know, and use my degree quite yet.
So let me go ahead and just uh, start fighting in the cage.
Your shirt I, you know, I have a list of questions that I want to ask you.
Right, like I?
I, the first question I had I was like I need to understand this and it's basically how these athletes fall through the cracks.
Right, you can do it and go to any sport, Nfl, Tyree Hill arguably the best wide receiver in the league went to what have you state?
Right, so i'm hearing your resume and ironically, you're wearing the shirt, walk on.
And essentially the concept of my question was, all these amazing athletes.
They show up out of nowhere and, like Pat, read your your resume very eloquently.
Right, honor roll, every year.
Football player, a wrestler, you're the team mvp, All City, St. Louis.
Right, but no scholarship, no big school wanted you on the on the team.
Right, you walked on like honestly, like Rudy Rüdiger style literally yeah, like 100, you know 100, and nothing.
Five foot nothing, whatever the hell it is.
Um, by the time, you're a senior in college, you're All American.
So a lot of people these days, you know, want to get rich quick or they want to kind of, you know, have success quick and essentially one of the things I always talk about is like yeah, you got to work your ass off bro, you got to pay your dues.
Like kind of got to go through some shit to kind of realize what it's like at the top.
So I kind of understand.
Is it mindset?
Is it just you know?
Stick to itness.
It's just like you're you know.
It's not the size of the the dog and the fight is the size of the fight and the dog.
What do you owe your success to, bro?
Honestly, I think, patience and and stick to itiveness to realize that yes, I wanted to be a state champion.
Yes, I wanted to be an All-american, I wanted to be a national champion.
I wanted to be able to beat Jordan Burrows.
That wasn't in the cards for me.
Now granted, it could have been in the cards for me if I was winning the battle between my ears.
I realized when I graduated college I took fifth as a senior um.
When I took, when I took those straps off the singlet for the last time I went back to we were at the Savvy Center, or Edward Jones or Savvy Center in St. Louis, immediately all that pressure came off of me.
And I thought, you know what?
I underperformed so badly over the last five years because I put so much pressure on myself.
And it wasn't that big of a deal.
I did everything right.
If coach said run through that brick wall, I would be the first one through that brick wall and I would break that wall down.
If he said do 100 reps, I'm doing 200.
If he said work four hours, I'm working six hours.
I was the guy who, I was that guy who came in and did everything.
So I was doing everything right physically and I was building up this body.
I was doing all the workouts.
I was putting in all the reps.
But what I was not doing was taking ownership and extreme ownership of my self-image because an individual will never be able to outperform a poor self-image.
And that was the story of me because once again, as I alluded to in the very beginning, I was a small guy from a small town who was taught to do small things.
And that's nothing against my upbringing, my town, the people that I was around.
I was just, I wasn't taught that outside those county lines, you can go out there and not just do something good, but you can do something great and do something extraordinary.
Was that true?
And I bought into that.
Is that how it was?
Is that kind of how it was where that's the mindset?
Yeah, somewhat, you know, and it wasn't necessarily.
It was inherent.
It wasn't even talked to me.
It wasn't as if my parents told me, you know, hey, you're not going to amount to anything.
I had amazing parents and amazingly supportive parents, but they didn't build in me enough to believe that I could go out there and do something great.
And if I fall fat on my face, at least I tried.
And that's why I thank God every day that I did somehow make that decision that I was going to walk on to Missouri because I could have taken the scholarship to Missouri Baptist or Central Missouri State, one of these smaller schools.
And best case scenario, I win a national title as a sophomore and then think, well, shoot, now I'm underachieving because I should have went Division I. I'd rather go Division I, ride the pine, ride the bench, quit after a couple of years, not make it, get injured, be a perennial backup every year and train and compete at the highest level than to become a national champion in a smaller small punk.
Big fish.
And here we are.
I'm just over, what, two years and two weeks into my UFC run now.
And I had that moment of clarity finally where I thought about the 40-year-old Michael who's laying next to my beautiful wife, Bree, and that pillow that I'm laying my head on feels like a 40-pound sandpaper cinder block because I can't sleep because I didn't take the chance.
I didn't walk on and walk out of Bellator, the smaller organization, to go on and give myself the opportunity to get on the biggest platform possible.
And I did, and it sure is working out well so far.
Pat, what's the story you always tell about, you know who the greatest general of all time is?
Yeah, that story.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Would you share that with him?
It's kind of the concept.
Yeah, I understand where you're going with it.
The whole guy dies, goes to heaven, you know, asking St. Peter, hey, who was the greatest general of all time?
He says it was you, but you never took the shot when we send a recruiter.
You always wanted to be the greatest general.
You were afraid you didn't make the decision.
You would have gone in.
You would have been the greatest, but you didn't.
So it's that whole thing that what if, you know, what if is the what if?
But going back to this, so your story, so you're saying Tyrone Woodley, I saw that.
And Askeron, when you're coming up, how old, are you wrestling with these guys?
Are you training with these guys?
And if yes, at what age did that start when you guys are training together?
So I came into Missoula as an 18-year-old, as a freshman.
Tyron was in his, going into his senior year.
So I had one year on the team with Tyron.
I had two or two years with Ben.
And they were both like my big brothers.
And I can tell you right now, Ben Askron might be the exact opposite of me when it comes to self-image.
That dude thinks that he can do anything.
And he is the most confident person I have ever been around in my entire life.
And I said it.
Yes.
And I spent so much time around him.
And I always felt out of place.
And there was even moments where I was mad at him or I would lash out at him because he was just like, it doesn't make sense to me.
I don't understand why you don't believe in yourself.
You're beating C.P. Schlater here by four points and all of a sudden you gave yourself permission to lose instead of giving yourself permission to win.
And I'm like, Ben, I don't understand why I can't win.
I'm just afraid to.
I'm afraid to give myself permission to win.
Whereas a guy like him, I don't know how he developed that, but I sure am studying up hard right now to be able to instill in my children more like his thinking than my thinking.
Not cocky.
You're saying pure confidence.
You're not saying he was cocky.
Ben was a little cocky.
He rubbed people the wrong way.
In UFC, I'm thinking how he was at 20.
Yeah, for sure.
And he had the fro and he would talk trash and that kind of stuff.
And I think, you know, not to go back to quotes, but even just the Nelson Mandela quote, you know, let your own light shine so the people around you will inadvertently let their light shine.
You know, don't be afraid to be the best because other people might feel insecure around you.
I think I also tried to operate in such humility that it was a detriment because I think humility is the most beautiful thing.
It's probably one of the greatest traits that you can possibly have.
But too much humility, it's going to be extremely hard to be extremely successful because you don't have to be able to do that.
You had limiting beliefs, I believe, what it's called.
I think, yeah, I think there's that intersection and kind of that fine line between limiting beliefs.
Were you raised in a church environment?
Were you raised in a Christian environment?
I was raised Catholic.
And then I was actually the one, I got saved really in a spirit-filled church when I was 16 and was the one who kind of started bringing my family to a non-denominational Christian church.
Got it.
So sometimes that brings the humility where you feel a little bit uncomfortable being shameless and promoting and being self-promotion.
You know, like, hey, let me tell you, here's what I'm going to be doing because it kind of comes from a, it is one of the values and principles in the non-denomination to not be doing that.
But in your world, you're in today, that skill set pays a lot to be, you know, a little bit shameless about promoting yourself.
And by the way, when you did it, that one time when you won and you came out and you said, hey, Connor, you got it.
It was like, boom, boom, boom.
The way you said it.
But going back, so when you're wrestling with Tyron or you're wrestling with Ben, are they at this level superior to you?
Or is it like by half?
Are you guys about the same?
When you're going up against them, are you developing confidence saying, I can hang with these guys?
Or at that level, the two-year difference between you and Ben, he was superior to you.
Yeah, Ben for sure.
And Tyron as well.
But Tyron was more, I became somewhat of Tyron's, Tyron's practice dummy because he knew we were around the same weight.
I was a 157-pounder.
He was a 165-pounder.
And he knew if he called me at 4 a.m., I'm there.
If he calls me at midnight, I'm there.
If he calls me on the weekend, I'm there.
So I became that guy because I was, once again, the walk-on.
And this is Tyron Woodley.
He was a St. Louis legend.
He was a couple times state champion from my home city as well.
Ben was in a league of his own.
He was a couple-time Hodge trophy winner, which is essentially the Heisman of wrestling.
But Ben and I traveled.
Ben was.
Yeah, Ben.
Ben is one of the best NCAA college wrestlers of all time.
When he came out, how many five win streaks did he have?
I don't remember what the number was.
Well, he didn't lose until he didn't lose until he came into the UFC.
Mazadal was his first loss, and he was like 21-0.
That was the one when Mazradal knocked him out in three seconds with the knee of the head.
It was six.
Six seconds.
My bad, my six.
My bad, brother.
Six seconds we're talking about.
So Ben was in a league of his own.
And those two guys wouldn't exactly give you much confidence because I always lost to them.
And they also had the big brother.
They had the big brother.
Did you ever beat them?
Did you ever beat him?
I took Tyron down one time.
I took Ben down one time.
I think maybe in five years of wow.
So you had the edge because you're 167.
Tyron is 175.
You're going up against somebody that's got eight pounds on you, which is teaching you how to go up against a guy a bigger size than you and a little bit older than you experience.
So that's kind of helping you out.
That's good positioning for you.
Yeah, for sure.
And even back to your point, the idea of the walk-on and what is the thread of success?
Because I talk to these young guys now.
I'm training with 22-year-old guys right now.
I got scar tissue older than a lot of these guys.
I'm 36 years old, you know?
And I just say, hey, man, don't think about you today.
Let's think about you 10 years from now.
You want to be where I'm at, 36 years old, still doing what I'm doing.
I made a career and I'm able to take care of my family.
So with that, going back to college, Tyron's a, you know, he's not even, to me, in the sport of wrestling, mixed martial arts, I don't think you're a true man until 30.
That's my true belief.
That's when I truly finally felt like a man.
And maybe I'm a late bloomer.
Tyron's, you know, 22.
At that time, I'm 18.
He's got the big brother on me.
So I wasn't going to beat him.
And he was much bigger and I was a scrawny little freshman.
But I started to obviously hold my own a little bit more here and there, but it just takes time as well.
It takes time in business.
Your first entrepreneurial event compared to your 50th, you're just a different person.
You're galvanized by the fires that you have put yourself through in business, in relationships.
And for me, it was obviously physical in the work or in the in the gym, in the strength and conditioning sessions, in the reps, in the drills.
And then eventually, you know, that body finally catches up to hopefully the mindset that you're doing.
You're saying 30.
Interesting, you're saying 38.
It was about 28, 30.
Yeah.
So in baseball, you know, what's his name?
Judge Judge breaks the record 60-20.
He didn't take the contract last year.
He's because he wants a $400 million one, but he's 30.
So you're going to sign the 10-year till 40.
I mean, Pujos, I guess, came back and cracked the 700.
Maybe they're going to give him a 10-year, $400 million contract.
Good for him.
But going back with you, did you, Tyron, and Ben at all do stand-up or was it purely wrestling?
In college?
In college?
Just, yeah, no.
I think Tyron.
So Tyron was the one who first started.
He was training with Eve Edwards down at the American Top Team, Luigi Fioravanti, Dean Thomas.
So Tyron actually, Tyron paved the way for us because me and Ben came out of college.
I graduated in May of 2009, fought my first pro fight in August of 2009 with almost zero training.
But Tyron had a slower road.
He had like seven or seven amateur fights because he just didn't have the connections because life isn't about what you know, it's who you know, right?
Tyron's trying to get in, get into mixed martial arts, but has no idea how to do it.
Finally, he meets these guys at American top team.
He's able to get pro fights.
And then he starts his pro career, obviously.
But then, so Tyron was the one who first started kind of throwing hands and hitting mitts and that kind of stuff.
And I started watching him and I thought, man, that would be cool.
And I started watching.
Up until this point, you're not throwing hands.
No, I'd never been in a street fight.
Nothing.
Why?
You've never been in a street fight till 2020?
No.
Stop it.
Michael Chandler, UFC legend.
Belfast.
You've never been in a street fight.
I'm not getting in trouble, man.
I'm not trying to get in trouble, dude.
How's that even possible?
He did say something in an interview where he said, hey, you know, what happened between you and Dustin?
We'll talk about that here in a minute.
When Dustin was saying stuff to you, and I said, listen, I'm not trying to get into a street fight.
I'm fighting in the ring and my wife is next to me.
I'm not doing anything.
But again, like when I hear you speak, I sit there and I say, this guy could be a hedge fund manager.
He can be an investment banker.
Like he's a smart, you're a smart guy that you could also do other things outside of just fighting.
So when you're saying you haven't done that, but then it's confusing because you get hit in the face and just go in back and back in.
Yet he's so good looking.
So you're 2020.
So when did you start developing your stand-up?
And then at what point would you say I started getting confident that I know I can really do some damage?
Because you do damage when you fight and it's not just wrestling.
Yeah, no, I so I mean, I graduated college at 22.
I started through my first kind of punches.
I mean, I probably maybe this summer before, because Tyron was still at Mizzou and training in Columbia, Missouri, I probably maybe hit mitts a couple times at 21 or 22, whatever.
But it was, I was solely in love with and solely focused, maniacal focus on becoming a national champion.
So I didn't, yes, I kind of knew I want to do what big brother Tyron was going to do and what Ben was going to do.
Maybe I want to try that.
I want to be UFC champion someday.
But I was focused on wrestling.
So wrestling, I knew I had to put in my 10,000 hours, you know?
So 21, 22, and then, you know, I stuck around Mizzou and coached for a year and kind of tried to start training a little bit.
I'd go down to Florida, come down here to train with Tyron a little bit, and then come back and coach.
And then I moved to Las Vegas.
And then that was where I first kind of started my mission.
And Mike, when it comes to mixed motion, so it was all wrestling.
When it comes to the hands, did you train like with a boxer or do you just go to just whatever discipline, jiu-jitsu, everybody else has using their hands and stuff like that?
What do you shift gears to?
So for me, I looked at it as, okay, what's the easiest path to victory?
And for me, I knew I was going to be stronger and tougher than most guys because just the microcosm of college wrestling is something that cannot even be stated to people who have never been through it.
So I knew I was going to be tougher than everybody I stood across the cage from.
I knew maybe I couldn't punch, kick, knee, elbow.
You find tougher.
What do you mean you just say that?
That's like, what do you mean you know you're going to be tougher than me?
It's tougher.
Aside from them catching me on the button and me getting knocked out or me getting my arm broken or me getting caught in some kind of submission, I'm not going to quit because I never quit in wrestling.
I'm not going, I'm going to be able to go harder, longer, and at a higher pace with my foot on the gas better than anybody else.
Your confidence is that Mizzou is at wrestling.
Where's that confidence coming from?
It's wrestling.
It's wrestling and it's wrestling at Mizzou.
I think Mizzou Tiger style wrestling was perfect for me.
Thank God I went there because other systems and other programs might not have been as great for me.
But Mizzou Wrestling, we had our list of things that we were going to do.
We were going to be first to the line.
We were going to go hard for seven minutes.
We were going to push people out of bounds.
We were going to run back to the center.
We were going to look you in the eye.
We were going to break you mentally before we score more points.
So that translates over to mixed martial arts and quite frankly, translates better than any other martial art or any other background.
And it's not because I can pick you up and put you down and control you.
It's not because I have a strong wrestler body.
It's because right here, I believe that I've been here.
You're the same size as me.
You got two arms and two legs.
You're a man with a heartbeat.
You put your pants on one leg at a time, just like me, except I wrestled at Mizzou and I did it for five years with some of the best guys in the world and lived that lifestyle.
And I truly, I was around a lot of guys who didn't take it as seriously as me.
Of course, they didn't reach their full potential because they wanted the college experience.
I didn't get the college experience and I would never trade it for a million years.
I enjoyed pouring myself into that wrestling room at the Hearn Center.
What do you mean by you didn't get the college experience?
As far as what we do and what we're supposed to do in college, you know, go girls, get wasted, do stupid shit.
Yeah, you know, and, you know, I mean, did I have fun?
Of course, every now and then.
But for the most part, it was, man, it was, it was wrestling.
You know how hard that is to do as a 19, 20-year-old kid?
You're in the Midwest, you're in college.
There's, you know, nickel beer nights in Mizzou.
Oh, yeah, I know, choreography.
Right, the whole deal.
And you're just like, nope, I got wrestling practice tomorrow.
How hard is that to freaking do when you're 19, 20 years old?
It actually, and once again, going back to, there's so many things, I get chills thinking about it.
There's so many things I look back and sometimes I despise that young Michael Chandler.
I'm like, why in the heck didn't you believe in yourself?
Like, you know, you had to walk onto the team, which means you had to pay for college.
My parents paid for that first year and then the second year until I finally got a scholarship.
But why did you not just believe in yourself?
You did everything right.
Why did you not just believe in yourself?
But then I flip that on its head and say, I'm so proud of that young man.
And I'm so happy that that was in my past because I was filled with so much gratitude as the walk-on, knowing what it was like to be the lowest guy on the totem pole, knowing what it was like to be overlooked.
And I'm not going to sit here and give you the, you know, the Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather thing where they're like, I wake up at 3 a.m. and I'm running in trash bags.
No, it wasn't that kind of stuff.
Sometimes every now and then I was a little bit crazy, but like, you know, but I was willing to put in more hours.
I was willing to do more.
And then, shoot, you just, it was the easiest life ever.
You go to class, you do your work, and you train every day a lot, you know?
So I just felt full of gratitude to be able to do it and to give anything less than my best was to sacrifice the gifts that my parents had laid out for me.
And even just the opportunity for Brian Smith to say, yeah, man, you can walk on.
I'm not going to look at you for a year.
I'm not going to talk to you for a year.
Good luck, buddy.
And then I became one of his favorite wrestlers.
I'll tell you something.
When you're asking that question, I think it's normal.
I think Kobe was shy and Kobe wasn't comfortable around girls.
And Kobe was determined about wanting to make it to the big leagues.
I think Michael was the same.
Michael was not good with girls.
He was shy.
He was quiet.
He was to himself.
He wasn't partying.
And he got a guy like Dean Smith in his life.
And it kind of changed.
The biggest difference is the way he's saying.
determined at that level to get to the next level.
That wasn't me.
I needed the army.
Like I had no clue what I wanted to do.
I was all over the place, right?
But when you're crystal clear early on on what you're trying to solve for, that's the edge that you got for him to become who he is today.
And I watch him.
I'm like, this is a very methodical, disciplined person with values, principles, certain things that you're doing.
So I'm not surprised with that part.
On the confidence side, sometimes that comes later for some.
Some get it earlier.
I wanted to talk about Ben.
Ben came earlier.
But going back to his question on stand-up, what's tougher for you?
Was it tougher to learn wrestling or was it tougher to do and learn stand-up?
Because it's two different things.
Which one would you say was tougher for you?
I think it was tougher to learn stand-up, honestly.
You know, I think for me, I started obviously at a very, I started at a younger age.
I started at wrestling at 14 years old.
I'm not a man yet.
I'm not thinking clearly.
I'm still building confidence.
I'm still trying to figure out what my body's, how to move my body at 14 years old.
I started striking as a seasoned young man at 22 years old who had just gone through that five-year battle tested of Mizzou wrestling.
So my body, my coordination, my speed, my quickness, my strength, I didn't do strength and conditioning for my first two years of mixed martial arts.
Number one, I couldn't afford it to hire a personal trainer or train with those guys.
And number two, I already knew I was going to be bigger, faster, and stronger than most of the guys that I was going to be competing against.
And I knew I'm very far behind on striking.
I'm very far behind on jiu-jitsu or jiu-jitsu defense.
So I wanted to focus on those things.
And that's kind of where the way Pat, I'd be remiss if I didn't let Vinny know we're not talking about stand-up comedy.
I know.
Okay, as a stand-up comedian.
Trust me.
I said stand-up on the 25-minute mark.
Vinny's like, yeah, we're doing it.
Stand-up once again.
In my head, I was thinking in my head, I'm like, so in that, because, you know, wrestling, once in a while, you might get hit.
Do you remember the first time you felt like the hit in the face?
You went, oh, that's what this is like.
Wow.
It's like the first time you get booed off stage.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, you want to throw up.
You're like, whoa.
And that happens in sparring because you honestly, it's hard to explain unless you've been there, but you don't feel the pain in fights.
You don't even really feel the thud.
You feel, you know, adrenaline is a heck of a drug, man.
You know, and it's just, it's coursing through your veins and you're focused.
And, you know, for me, for me, I was always just so offense focused that I think I was just, boom, okay, get hit.
Keep going.
Boom.
Okay, get hit.
Keep going.
And I go back and watch.
That's how you fight, though.
Like, sometimes I watch your fight.
I'm like, okay, you know how traditionally when a guy gets hit, he gets hit, he gets hit.
And let's just say he's more jujitsu guy, wrestler.
He is default to say, you know what?
This is just too much.
I'm a default to wrestle.
Let me get his leg in boom.
But no, you're like, no, you're stubborn.
You stand up.
You're like, I'm not going to go to what I know I'm better than you.
And I'm going to stand up because I think I'm also a better fighter than you.
And you see that when the style of fighting, Bellator to UFC.
We're just fans.
We watch.
We're not in that world.
What's the biggest difference you notice from Bellator to UFC?
You had a lot of great fights in Bellator, and then you go into UFC.
You've had five fights in UFC, and you're already one of the biggest stars in UFC.
Biggest difference between Bellator to UFC from your eyes?
I think it's a two-part from the promotion side of things.
It is night and day.
The UFC has a ton of employees.
They are overstaffed in every single area.
They have a travel department.
They have a PR department.
They have a social media department.
They have a health department.
They have all of these different departments.
It is ran like a finely tuned Fortune 500 company.
Bellator was awesome, and I love the people.
It just, it was understaffed, and it wasn't a finely tuned machine.
And then from the promotional side of things, people just care so much more about the UFC.
They've been around for so much longer.
They started in 1993.
You know, they are the worldwide leader in mixed martial arts by a long shot.
Nobody is even coming close to scratching the surface of what the UFC does.
When people think about fighting, they think about the UFC first.
And then, so I noticed that.
You know, I noticed, you know, just like in college wrestling, I always thought I was the hardest worker in the room.
And now in mixed martial arts, even when even when I'm training with these guys in the UFC, I was training harder than them, than them, longer than them, being more disciplined with my diet than them, being more disciplined with my weight cut, my lifestyle than them.
Yet they were getting all of the all of the platform, all of the cameras, all of the eyeballs, all of the followers, all of the everything.
And I was the guy who was somewhat outside of the UFC as a world-class talent, but wasn't getting the opportunity to be looked at that because I wasn't fighting the best guys in the world on the biggest promotion.
And now you just got to work long and hard and keep a good reputation until that reputation stays up there.
And then all of a sudden, the platform intersects at the exact right time.
And my platform is high and or the platform is high and the reputation was high.
And it worked out well.
What's the sports analysis?
Like, is it the NFL to like Arena League, XFL?
I don't, is it NBA versus college?
What's the bigger sports?
Not bigger sports, but.
Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, something like that.
I mean, any, any, and, and that's the thing, I, I, it's hard for me to talk about too, because I, I love being an employee of the UFC.
I love being a part of the UFC.
I have loved these last two years, but I do love those people at Bellator.
I love my path.
Once again, just like I talked about, I'm, I'm happy that I was that small guy from the small town.
It's kind of your narrative with the walk-on.
Yes.
And then, and then I'm happy that I started in Bellator and I came over at the exact right time with the exact right mentality.
Question for you.
So, what's the biggest difference between Steve?
How do you say his last name?
Is it Coker?
Steve Coker?
Scott Coker.
Scott Coker.
I'm sorry, Scott Coker and Dana White.
What's the difference between the two of them?
I think it's, I mean, Dana's, Dana's just, Dana's on a different level when it comes to the celebrity.
You know, like Dana's a huge, huge name.
Dana is the, when he speaks, people listen.
When he speaks, it is, it is mixed martial arts.
That's what people, you know, take because he's been doing it, doing it for so much longer.
You know, Dana's a little bit more brash.
Scott's a little bit more, a little bit more reserved.
So there's pros and cons to both of those, you know, from a, from a media and PR perspective.
I'm sure you could talk to the UFC about that.
But, you know, but I will say I think I think Scott Coker does take growing Bellator seriously, but not as serious as Dana.
I think Dana eats, sleeps, and breathes it.
It is his identity.
It is his lifestyle.
It is him.
The UFC is Dana White and Dana White is the UFC.
And that's a beautiful thing.
I got a crazy question for you and crazy idea for you.
Pat goes to crazy town, by the way.
I don't even have this in my thing.
I'm just thinking about it.
So I'm looking at what Bellator's top line revenue is right now.
Okay.
It's not a big number, 80 million, 100 million on what they're doing per year.
I mean, obviously, UFC is doing a lot more.
You know what would be crazy?
It would be very crazy.
You know how Dana says, look, you want to do this?
Go start your own league, see how hard it is.
And he's right.
It's very, very hard.
It's very, very hard.
Imagine if a person with the personality of Dana goes and buys Bellator and promotes Bellator and puts the marketing eyeballs.
And I know a couple guys that are big trolls that are very loud.
If some of them were to buy it, it would be a very interesting competition between two leagues.
Now, obviously, Dana's got a lead by a mile and a half.
It's not even close.
But if you were to get somebody with a big personality to get Bellator who does the eyeballs and the marketing, look, I mean, how many Dana Whites are out there?
Vince McMahon is one.
Dana White's one.
Who else you put at that level?
I don't know if Don Kink may be at his peak back in the days.
Let's just say you put a Don King at that level.
You know, I don't know who else you put on that level.
Promoter goes?
Listen, to be that, you have to.
Can you imagine like you're the boss of badass mother?
I mean, you're the boss of people that on any given day can whoop 99.999999% of people's tails anywhere in a street fight, right?
These guys are people.
So then imagine managing, leading, negotiating, saying, no, this is the way or the highway.
You don't do this.
I'm okay.
I'm doing.
That's not everybody's job.
Only a few people can do that job, right?
And you take wrestling versus UFC.
Wrestling gets big egos, but they don't know how to fight like UFC does.
UFC is big egos and they know how to fight and you're leading them and you're setting it straight.
There's not too many Dana Whites.
But if some people claim they can really do it better than UFC, there's a Bellator you can go by and do something with that.
Yeah, no, and it's, I mean, yeah, Dana's just, he, he wants to be, he wants to be bigger than the NFL.
He wants to be bigger than the MLB.
You know, he's, and he's, you know, decades behind, obviously, those guys, those, what, NFL started in what?
He wants to be bigger than MLB.
Yeah, yeah, he wants to be, I mean, 50%.
He hasn't told me that, but that's kind of the, you, you feel it.
That's, and that's, and that's the kind of, that's just the kind of mentality that, that you, you want in your, your boss, you know, like, that's, that's what I resonate with.
And that's in my meeting with my first phone call with him.
I just, you know, I said, hey, I want to be a good thing for your organization.
I promise you, you have never signed a guy that is more equally yoked with you.
You told him that.
Yes.
And he hung up on me.
What do you mean?
He hung up on me and called Hunter Campbell.
Yeah.
Who is his right-hand man?
Yeah.
You know, so then he called me back.
And then, you know, a couple of days later, we, you know, got a, got a contract figured out.
Mike, what was the moment?
What was the moment at Bella?
What was that moment where you're just like, you know what?
I'm, I'm shifting gears and I'm done.
I'm out.
Was it a fight?
Was it a moment?
Was like a mental thing?
Was it a relationship?
What was your like, I'm out?
It was definitely not a relationship.
The relationship was always great.
I loved Scott Coker and I loved Rich Chu and Mike Kogan, all the all those guys.
And that's just always been me.
I'm in this position because I tried to always think about making myself an indispensable asset to my current promotion.
So then if I ever did want to go somewhere else, it's chill as well as I have a higher value to then be taken somewhere else, which worked out well.
And now I've still got the same mentality with the UFC.
I want to be the UFC's favorite fighter, the easiest one to work with, the most entertaining, the one who brings the eyeballs, the one who's the easiest to work with, the one who treats the janitor at the UFC PI the same way that I would treat Hunter Campbell or Dana White because that stuff trinkles up the word question.
The word gets up.
When you have 170-something employees, the way that you treated that person is going to get to their higher up and their higher.
And it's, well, it's just being a nice person, too.
But you say that, but you say that.
Yeah.
And you think it's normal, but it's not.
When you get the camera, all the limelight, everything, It's not, you know, it's very, when somebody makes the first million, all of a sudden it comes too quickly.
Most people don't know how to handle that.
And when somebody gets a lot of limelight, most people don't know how to handle that.
You know, it's a tough thing, but for you to be able to do that, that's great.
The person I was thinking about to buy Bellator is a guy named, I don't know if you've heard of this guy.
What's the guy's name?
I want to say his name is Jake.
Last name is like Jake.
Is that his name?
Didn't something just come out about Jake Paul talking about MMA promotions or he said something.
Well, I heard something.
He said he's about to announce something.
Yeah, about MMA.
Not something that he was teasing about fighting in the MMA.
At one point, I was going to ask you about fight.
What I'm saying is to fight me and be the promoter.
Jake Paul T has moved to MMA, says he's working with a big organization for potential debates.
But this is what I'm saying.
Forget about the debut.
This is my thing.
You're putting 40 million here, 10 million, 20 million, this million.
Jake can go to an investment banker, raise $200 million.
If these guys are doing $100 million a year, say their profit margin is 20%, they're making 20%, say it's 10 times 200 million.
Say you have to buy him for 300 million, raise $300 million, go buy these guys, be the Dana.
You can do the fight and do that.
And then promote.
I mean, he's, and by the way, then Dana can say, I told you it's hard.
I told you this shit is hard.
This ain't easy, right?
Yeah, because they've been at each other's throat.
Well, Jake's been at Dana's throat, you know, for the whole, the whole fight or pay thing and all of that stuff.
And why?
Do you not think he has some weight there to carry with his, you know, essentially calling them out?
You don't think he has some credibility there?
As far as the calling him out for everything he's talking about with the fight or pay and the insurance and just, you know, I mean, I think if guys were unhappy with the way that they were getting paid, you'd see more guys because it's, you know, everybody's contract ends and the UFC does not hold you hostage.
They say go wherever you want to go.
Everybody stays in the UFC.
Because where else is the other option?
Bellator?
There is a great option.
Bellator is a great organization.
PFL is a great organization and they are building.
There's numerous other organizations out there, but you can't at one time say, these guys don't pay me enough.
And then you stick around.
You sign another six-fight deal.
You sign another eight-fight deal, another four-fight deal.
So, you know, I think just going back to that walk-on mentality, it all goes back to the gratitude as well.
I feel grateful to be a part of the UFC.
And I get called a bootlicker and I get called a brown-noser.
And that's fine.
I don't care.
I am who I am.
And that's how I've always conducted it.
And my career is working out pretty well.
You're a flag carrier.
But that's called flag carrier mentality.
It's you carry the flag for whatever team you represent.
Like, for example, you know, Antonio Brown, okay?
What an incredible talent, right?
You know, when you watch this guy play, just an incredible talent, what he was doing.
It's crazy.
Most people probably forgot this guy to play for Pittsburgh, right?
He was at the best receiver in the league when he played Pittsburgh.
This guy, people are thinking it's, you know, Brady.
No, this guy was at Pittsburgh.
Forget Raiders.
Forget it.
He was at Pittsburgh.
Killing it with maybe the best coach outside of, you know, one other coach in the NFL.
Yeah.
Tomlin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tomlin's a beast of a guy, man.
But, you know, Brown, he's doing what he's doing.
He's like, wow, look at this.
And then he posts a picture with him and, you know, Brady's wife two days ago.
And you're like, what?
Yeah.
But the point is, but the point is, the point, and then he makes a video with the coach and he puts it publicly while he's talking to the coach of the Raiders.
You know who I'm talking about, the coach that John Gruden.
That's not flag carrier men.
Some people think like that's like, that's what you need to be.
What organization wants to have person like that on their team that's that big of a distraction?
Well, there's a big difference between us and Ainem Soon.
He's a person that only cares about himself.
That's clear.
And versus a us mentality.
Clearly, what you're talking about in UFC is you call me a brown nose or a bootlicker, but I'm part of an organization or a team that I care about.
Exactly.
And flight mentality.
And I'm being authentic to who I am.
I've always been that way.
And even now, there is nothing that will ever benefit me from ever, you know, trashing bellatory.
And, well, truthfully, it is honest.
I do think they're all great, and it's still a great organization.
Am I happy that I went to the UFC?
Absolutely.
But that doesn't mean that I want to bash anybody else.
Some people call it class.
Yeah, that too.
That's what it is.
I'm saying it's going to pick him up.
I could tell your parents did a freaking amazing job.
I could tell you're spiritual.
You say you're going to church and stuff.
I cuss like a sailor.
He hasn't cussed one time.
No interviews, no nothing.
I respect the hell of you.
This is the picture that Antonio Brown posted, you're saying?
He posted this post.
Posted that.
Can you scroll down this?
Is this an Instagram post?
Yeah, he posted this on the show.
No, I'm saying, yeah, it's on TMZ.
Because mind you, you know, because Tom Brady and his wife, they just, TMZ are like, they're reporting that they hired divorce lawyers.
So that's not going to last.
But you know, that's between them.
They're going through what they're going through.
To do something like this while that announcement is being made and the way Brady handled you when you left and he said, look, you know, it was a great time running with this guy.
I think we have to pay a little bit more attention to people that are going through challenging time.
I wish him nothing but the best.
And he still gave him respect.
And you do this.
This is, you know, I posted this pic.
Yeah.
Posted that on Instagram.
He posted on Instagram.
And then he exposed himself in a pool in Mexico or somewhere.
He's off the charts right now.
Anyways, I don't want to talk about Antonio Brown.
I'm just making a point.
I'm going to make a point here with this.
Just going back to what you said, too.
I mean, there's, you know, that's what the UFC and Bellatory and all of these guys have to deal with.
I mean, at some point, you talk about athletes and then you talk about guys who are not just athletes, but they're also fighters.
I mean, it's not easy to handle all of that and manage all of that.
And then you're doing however many dozens and dozens.
I think the UFC is probably going to do 50-something shows this year.
It's crazy.
You know, and 13 or 14 pay-per-views.
And these are huge, huge.
I mean, did you see what happened a couple of weeks ago with the Diaz, Diaz, Hamzat, Ferguson, Ferguson, Holland, all the other things?
That comes out for the first time ever.
We're not doing the press conference because of what I saw in the back.
They shuffled the whole card around within 24 hours of the card.
With the weight.
and fought yeah you know it was a very very no listen i mean to me uh uh when covid happened you know and everything was going on this guy is the top commissioner of all sports is dana white Period.
Man, Fred is at the bottom.
You know, you look at Adam Silver is probably number three or number four.
You know, number two is probably going to be Roger Godell, even though he doesn't.
But there is nobody at this guy's level.
Dana is in a league of his own.
If everybody's number two, Dana's number one by a mile, then it comes everybody else.
People think it's an easy job to do what he does.
By the way, did you see what he looked like recently?
Can you post a picture of a when you saw that post?
What did you think?
Yeah, no, it's, I, it was, I was pumped up for years to live.
Well, not only the picture, but you're also like, well, it's kind of cool that you're, you know, you have, you have that come to Jesus moment where you're like, okay, I got 10 years to live if I don't start figuring some stuff out, you know?
And I mean, I mean, yeah, he's had health issues.
He's had, you know, all kinds of stuff that he probably doesn't even make public, but he's had some public health issues because, you know, as you would know, running any kind of company, it's a 24-hour job.
And, you know, he's done a very good job of overstaffing the organization.
And one of the greatest, I think one of the greatest leadership moments that he will ever have was on that Diaz card.
When the fight broke out at that press conference, he not once said, I'm dealing with a bunch of lunatics.
Dealing with a bunch of crazy fighters, hopped up on adrenaline and this and that.
He never said one bad thing about the fighters.
He said, next time we'll be more prepared.
We will have more staff.
We usually are over set up here.
We usually have more security guards.
We usually have more security detail.
He said it no less than 10 times in that interview.
And I almost made a post about it, but I don't want to be called a brown liquor or what do you call it?
Brown noser, brown noser, bootlicker, too much.
But it was a very pivotal moment, I think, when we will look back at his career when that happened and he did not take, he only took the blame.
And not just the UFC, he took the blame.
And that's why he is who he is.
Doesn't show hurt.
He does what he does, and people respect him.
But to look like this right now, look at those apps.
Apps are not easy to do at 50.
Okay.
How old is he?
How old is he?
I want to say 53.
I don't know exactly.
Probably right there.
I'm going to say something like that.
53, 54 is where he's at.
So, going back to the fight that you got coming up right now between you and Dustin, it's interesting because Dustin, 28 fights in UFC.
You've had five, right?
And you've come in and you fought everybody.
You came in, Dan Hooker, you have the fight.
Dustin goes 25 minutes with him.
You go 25 minutes with him.
Okay, so that's a comparison that we got to make in the market.
Then you go with Charles.
I think Charles comes after that, right?
Charles comes after that.
You almost won that one.
I mean, it was like this, right?
Then you're going with, you know, Justin, and that's fight of the night, fight of the year.
Everyone's called him the fight of the year.
It was insane of a fight.
It's one of those fights that you'll watch regularly because it doesn't get old when you watch that fight.
The kicks, the left leg, the story, you're kicking, he's kicking, you're kicking, he's kicking.
It's like, nobody wants to stop kicking.
It was like a two-minute thing.
You just go like, this is insane with these guys.
I couldn't walk for like six weeks.
My leg.
Oh, my God.
Don't throw kicks, kids.
They hurt.
They hurt.
No, I don't know if you've seen this with these kids because he's known, Justin's known that he's going to, he's relentless about throwing these kicks.
And it's constant.
Yeah, but he's also going back and forth, back and forth.
Anyways, then you have your, you know, last the last fight you have with Tony, you know, knockout of the year.
Speaking of kicks.
Even the kick heard around the world.
Yeah.
And it's just a slow motion of his face.
Yeah.
I mean, everyone's seen that when that took place.
And by the way, class act, you know, the way it was spoken.
And announced coming up to Dustin.
So this meetup with Dustin, you know, we've heard and we've seen everything between, you know, what's been said and what he said and what you said.
And Ariel is asking you about him.
And I'm not thinking about fighting him because at the time he was talking about retirement.
And, you know, and you said you've never used those words, retirement.
I'm not thinking about retirement.
He was.
So that's why I was thinking about fighting somebody else.
You know, and for him to approach you at a fight.
And then, you know, Cormier puts the two of you guys down.
It was a great conversation.
That whole 40-minute conversation was classic because he's trying to steer the pot.
And you can tell Dustin was upset and you're trying to just stay poised and calm, but he's saying what he's saying to you.
And, you know, shots are being fired.
And then now some people are saying, well, these guys are hugging.
They're friends.
What is it?
Is it act?
Do they hate each other?
Do they want is this going to be a real fight?
Or are we going to see like a too friendly of a fight?
So today, with what the market has seen and what's really going on, where are you at with this fight coming up?
It's the, you know, a fight everyone's looking forward to.
What are you thinking about with, is it really a fight that there's going to be animosity to fight or is it just two professionals getting in the ring to fight?
I think the overarching theme is it's two professionals getting and getting in there to fight.
You know, I think, you know, you talk about the hug, like that was, that was pre, that was pre-beef.
You know, that was, me and Dustin sat there for an hour before weigh-ins just kind of talking about everything.
He's trying my groove life ring on because he was wearing a silicone ring.
I'm like, hey, these are the best, but I'll send you some, blah, blah, blah.
We're talking about our kids.
We're talking about our wives.
We're talking about, you know, what we do.
And there was a lot of mutual respect.
And then right after that fight, that was when he, the illustrious, hey, if they want me to fight Chandler, I'd rather just go sell hot sauce.
So then there was kind of the, you know, the pushing me aside.
So I'm like, okay, wait a second.
Okay.
I thought we were cool.
What about the ring call?
Yeah.
20 minutes.
You know, and I didn't, you know, take that into, I don't know, I didn't really take it too personally because at that point I knew I probably wasn't going to fight Dustin next, or maybe I was.
Who knew at that point in time?
And then, you know, since then, I have done some interviews where I'm like, you know, I'm kind of, I've taken this.
I had debut of the year in 2021.
I had knockout of the year or the year, fight of the year in 2021.
I might have knockout of the year in 2022.
You know, so I'm continuing to rise and rise and rise.
And Dustin was talking about going to 170, talking about fighting Diaz, which we all know what that means.
It's not exactly like you're trying to stay on the trajectory to win the title.
He did say retirement.
So I did take the liberty to maybe, maybe it was a little bit disrespectful to say I'm not even thinking about Dustin.
And there was one moment where I actually did forget Dustin's name because I think I had pushed his name out of my top five of who I would fight because I thought he was moving up to 170 or whatnot.
So maybe it was a little bit subconscious on accident.
And he took, you know, he took offense to that.
So then, then, you know, the video of us at the fight, obviously, he wanted to say his piece, which I respect.
You know, he doesn't need to tweet me, you know, even though he has tweeted me and then I roasted him with an awesome tweet back, which he even said Chandler roasted me.
Diamond at the end.
Is that the one you're talking about?
No, it was actually, it was, it was actually, no, it was willing to get into it.
Michael, it was great.
It was great.
He called me Michael Chindler, you know, so I don't have a chin, right?
And I said, and I said, speaking of or speaking of chins, Michael Johnson fights tonight.
The last time Dustin Poirier fought Michael Johnson was this date in Hidalgo, Texas, and he knocked out Dustin Poirier.
And I used hashtag Chin history.
And he came back with, I don't even know what to say.
That's awesome.
Got you.
So there was even that kind of mutual respect.
That's the kind of stuff that's how I would respond as well.
If he did that to me, I'd be like, okay, what do I say here?
Let me ask you.
Let him keep going.
I'm curious what he's saying.
But I'm just not going to pump up the ego.
So there's that, I think there's a mutual respect.
I think him and I are very similar in a lot of ways.
I think our values are very similar.
I think we fight for our families.
We fight for our legacy.
And we take the sports.
You're going to do stand-up with this guy.
I've been known to do some stand-ups.
I mean, I think I can knock him out.
I think he can knock me out.
So I think we both have the confidence there on the feet.
I think my wrestling is better.
I think my grappling is better.
I was going to say, I mean, I always go in there with the game plan of mixing up and keeping him guessing.
I haven't done a great job of that in the UFC thus far, but it's bowed me well with the fans and my platform.
You know, one thing from Connor that, you know, when he was the first time he fought Diaz, and I don't know if you remember the first fight that he, of course, I'm sure you've seen the fight, but the first time he fought Diaz, he hit him and he went to him.
He hit him and he went to him.
He hit him and he went to him, right?
He's trying to say, I'm going to beat you at your game as well.
You know, kind of like, that's what I'm going to be doing.
Now, you know, people thought Francis Ngano's last fight, he was just going to do stand-up.
He didn't.
He beat him in ground as well, which was kind of like, damn, nobody expected him to do this.
So Connor lost the first fight, even though he was supposed to win the first fight, right?
He lost the first fight.
Second fight, I don't know if you, first time he knocks, he hits him, Nate drops.
Yep.
And, you know, he's not going to him.
And then you hear Joe and I rode like, oh, he's not going to him.
He's asking him to stand up.
Then he stands up.
Again, happens.
He did it three times to him.
Yep.
He did it.
He never went to him, which, you know, props to him for having that control during that moment to know, hey, this is not what I should do because that guy's better than me in this area.
Let's just say you're fighting Dustin and all of a sudden you're like, okay, this guy packs a punch, you know, and you pack a punch.
Both of you guys pack a punch.
But, you know, do you think the strategy, and you don't have to tell me anything?
I'm, you know, again, I'm what I'm saying with this part, but I'm only asking this because for me, if, you know, Khabib would show he can hang, you know, and then, but all of a sudden Khabib would go and say, no, man, this is not my fight.
I'm going to beat you at my fight.
How hard is it to set aside your own spirit of competition and fire to say, dude, I know if I wrestle you, I'm going to beat you, but I want to beat you at your fight to say, I kind of need this victory for me to be on a two-win streak, three-win streak, four-win streak.
Then I'm going to get to Charles back again.
Let's just say Charles doesn't have the title.
By that time, it's going to be another person.
I'm still going to get that championship fight.
Then I'm going to get the big pay there.
Let's just say Connor comes back because Dana wants the two of you guys to fight.
Are you going to take a Khabib route or are you going to take the entertainment route?
No, I'm definitely taking the win route.
I'm taking the, I will, I will, obviously every fight, every fight starts on the feet.
Yeah.
So we'll start on the feet, obviously.
You know, if the, you know, a lot of times too, you, there's that fine line between fight or flight and being able to actually make decisions on the fly.
Or maybe you're just flowing and you make a decision and all of a sudden you take a guy down.
You didn't even try to shoot.
It just happened.
Your body shot.
You grabbed a leg.
You picked him up and put him down.
You know, there's, it's such a, it's such an interesting mindset when you're actually in there because people will say it all the time, why did you do this or why did you do that?
And I'm like, I really didn't have control over it.
You know, maybe, maybe I should have done a little bit more work at visualization.
Maybe I should have done a little bit more work in my training of doing more dry runs and more situationals and more opportunities to make sure I make the right decisions.
But a lot of times you're not really 100% in control as much as the media and the fans and the onlookers think that you are.
But truthfully, yes, there will be a game plan and that game plan will be mixing it up.
We're fans.
No, it's good.
No, I appreciate it because it's a very good question because, yeah, you have to, I've done a very good job, I think, thus far of creating a brand of Michael Chandler as a very exciting fighter.
No, you're the one who's got to.
Well, thank you.
And listen, Cosmo.
Look, I'm not going to tell you he's not exciting.
I'm not going to tell you Alexander.
Israel?
No, no, no, no.
What's his name?
I have a hard time saying his last name.
Volkanovsky.
Volkanovsky, right?
That guy is, he's freaking.
But to me, you're the most exciting fighter, period.
That's my opinion.
You're the most exciting fighter.
When you fight, I can't sit down.
I have to stand up when I'm watching your fights.
I can't sit down and watch a fight.
I got to come watch a fight with you sometime.
No, what is it about my Gucci fight?
Well, I love the backlift.
That's absolutely fighting.
No, no, no, no.
But what is it during the fight that excites you so much?
For example, like, you know, you, I don't want to say this because it's your friend.
Oh, God.
Tyron.
You know, he was coming up in like four-time champions.
And then all of a sudden, he started like, you know, playing it too safe.
And even Dana got at one point.
It was like, what is this guy doing?
We've got to sell tickets here.
You know, this is not just about the points and scoring the points.
We need a little bit of both.
Like, get in there.
So he got a little too much to be too careful to get the victory.
And that's not good.
You saw it the other day.
Israel had a fight.
People were born.
I don't know if you remember the Israel fight where they were booming.
It's like, what was that all about?
Listen, I'm scoring the points.
And then the two girls that fought, the worst final fight ever.
That was on my card, I think.
Do you think so?
Which was, which actually works out really well.
I've been very fortunate to have some somewhat boring fights on my cards where fight of the night.
By default, sometimes.
By default.
Sometimes you're just at the right place at the right time.
I'm like, I'm back there doing my interviews and I'm like, damn, are people out there booing?
By the way, did you watch that fight?
Did you actually watch that fight or you didn't get it?
Because it's your card, so I don't know if you watched the fight.
No, usually that was right after me.
And I went and did probably 20, 30 minutes.
Oh, okay.
It was the most boring.
Let me tell you in five minutes, they didn't hit each other one time.
That's very weird, right?
So you have to sell tickets.
So as a Dana White, like you want guys like you, like Connor, like, you know, you're not going to do what Connor does.
So, you know, the difference between you and Connor is Connor's going to do laps around you and talking smack.
Right.
And not just you.
Anybody, including Mayweather.
Like, Connor, Connor is a top five smack talker in the world today.
I don't know who I put ahead of him.
Maybe you got him.
You got Trump.
You got Jake.
You got some of these guys that are fantastic.
Elon Musk is a troll.
Some of these guys.
Connor's on another level.
No, no, he's on a whole different level when he does it.
So you're like, you just.
I watched the press conference with Mayweather more than I watched the fight.
And I watched the press conference more times than I watched.
I watched the fight one time.
I watched the press conference.
That was fun.
But the part where I'm going with this is, you know, there's the balance of the eyeballs and then there is the journey to go get the championship to get that part.
Man, it's got to be.
And then, you know, when you're talking, when you're fighting, getting hit, you don't know if you're getting hit and all that other stuff.
And one of the fights that you had, you know, when you're fighting, because you'll go all out with everybody.
You're not going to stop.
But you're saying, what is the most exciting part?
From the first second to the last second, he's moving.
There is no, like, you know, there is no.
All gas, no breaks.
No, he's fighting from beginning to the end.
He's fighting.
And it's hard to see those kinds of fights.
Yeah, it's not always the, it's not always the best idea.
It's not always the easiest path to victory.
I think there was times where I thought, man, I wish I would have been a little bit more patient here.
Because I mean, there is, it is, I mean, when I fought in Bellator, I fought, I don't know how many title fights, but they were all scheduled for 25 minutes.
And 25 minutes inside of the cage is a long time.
15 minutes is a long time.
But in that 15 minutes, there's moments where you can take rest.
There's moments where you can take your foot off the gas.
I've never found those.
I'm always going forward.
I'm always getting in the fight because I always fought exactly how I wrestled.
I put my toe on the line.
The referee blew the whistle and I put my hands on you and I'm pushing you and I'm pulling you and I am attacking for seven minutes straight.
And I just have kept that mentality my entire career and it's worked out.
It doesn't always work out.
But I mean, all of my fights have always been like that.
All of my fights in Bellator, win, lose, or draw, they've always been, you know, pretty, pretty safe to say that's your style.
Like you embrace it.
So from a from a competitor standpoint, they're like, all right, I'm fighting Michael.
You know that he's going to do this.
He's coming at you.
So how does that put you, you know, sort of like they know what you're going to do already because that's your style.
He's attack, attack, attack, attack.
All right.
So if you're as well, though.
Who, Dustin?
He is as well.
He's also that way.
So that's why this is a very interesting matchup.
But, you know, it's an interesting matchup.
But if it goes to the, you know, ground, I mean, it's, it's going to be.
So I've seen you do some stuff with bodies when your body's slamming, dropping immediately.
Oh, my God.
Like, I was watching the Bellator once.
You're talking about you're just like, if I had to describe your fighting, it's like a wild, like a gorilla just jumping on your ass.
I forgot which fight it was.
It was Bellator and you were, it was a ball dude.
And you did, it was a stand-up guillotine.
The guy's head turned that color red.
I thought it was going to pop off.
It was a stand dude standing guillotine and then he just dropped.
Like you just don't let them breathe.
Which is that's the go forward and just don't stop, bro.
Don't let them breathe.
When you attack, you got to take the opportunity and you got to attack and you hold it until Pat, you remember you interviewed Dustin Poirier 13 months ago at the Vault.
Yeah.
So it was right on the heels of the McGregor pick, which is crazy.
He was the biggest name in UFC at that point.
You beat McGregor.
I mean, but do you remember where you asked him about how he prepares for a fight?
And then he puts the date on the calendar and he circles what he can control.
And then outside of the calendar, outside of the circle, was everything else.
The media, the noise, the shit talking, the, you know, you're never going to be this, whatever.
It was very impressive.
You remember this?
It was something that stuck with me about him.
It's like you can control what's in this circle.
Outside of that, nothing you can do.
What's your preparation look like?
What's your mindset look like coming into a fight?
You know, I can't say that I have any kind of chart like that, but I do.
I think for me, I've just been, I've been training for so long.
I do, every training camp is different, but every training camp is very much the same.
You know, we train two or three times a day, five, six days a week.
Right now, I've made it.
I made a choice.
When I came down here and started training in Florida, my family lives in Nashville, or we all live in Nashville, but I come here for eight, nine, 10 weeks at a time.
I was going to fly home every Friday and I was going to fly back every Sunday.
And if my, if my career, if it was a detriment to my career, I was willing to make that choice and that sacrifice.
And it's worked out fine.
So Monday through Thursday, I trained twice a day between practices.
I honestly try to fill my time up with things.
Even when I was scheduling this, I was like, hey, usually I'm between 2 and 1 and 5 p.m.
Usually works out well for me.
Today worked out well because I lifted it to trained at 10, lifted it to, and then we have this evening.
So I just try to spend a lot of time.
I always do my morning routine of prayer, visualization, reading a devotional, maybe listening to some music or even something on YouTube that's kind of getting me pumped up.
Not really pumped up, but more just edified, built up.
Because yeah, these training camps will beat you down to your knees if you let it.
And you have to pull away sometimes.
You have to fill up your cup.
Thank God, you know, for me, going home on the weekends, I'll take two days off sometimes and just be with my family.
That fills up my cup.
And then I can just go grind the grindstone for Monday through Friday again.
It sounds like you're a major system guy.
Yeah.
I mean, and I like to, I like to fill up, you know, right now I'm really trying to fill things, fill my day up with things, or else you just sit around and you think about the fight and you might think, well, that sounds good.
Yeah, think about the fight as much as you can.
And it's like, no, not really.
Because I can, one of the most important things, I think, in business, relationships, any endeavor in sport is being able to trust yourself.
Can you trust yourself?
I know without a shadow of a doubt, when that cage door closes and that referee says, Are you ready or you're ready?
Go.
I can trust myself to go out there and do and do what I need to do.
So everything else, going back to the chart, is just noise.
If I sit there for three hours and do I need to, you know, watch Mindless Netflix, okay, maybe, you know, maybe I, or maybe I do watch film.
Maybe I do watch some film with my coach.
But for the most part, I compartmentalize that two hours in the morning, that two hours in the evening, maybe a little bit of visualization.
Or today I had body work, an hour-long massage to build the body up.
Mike, that trust you talk about, which is very powerful.
I mean, when he said that, I'm like, okay, that doesn't sound like the Michael from 10 years ago.
It sounded like you didn't trust yourself or you didn't trust your mindset, right?
Am I trust?
I trusted myself to self-sabotage myself more than I trusted myself to.
Am I always going to win?
Do I trust myself to win?
No, because this is the sport of mixed martial arts.
I'm fighting another world-class man in four-ounce gloves, and anything can happen.
But do I trust myself to know that from the beginning of training camp to the end of training camp, did I leave no stone unturned in my preparation?
Did I do every single thing right that I needed to do?
And once you have that, you can go out there and compete and train and go when those lights turn on.
You can just trust yourself to be up to the will of whatever is going to happen that night.
Mike, when you have had all these fights you've had, I asked Dustin who's the hardest puncher that he went with.
He said Connor.
And then he said the toughest opponent, he said, Khabib, is who he said when we were talking.
Who have you faced that you would say was the toughest, best punch, and as well as the best ground grappler?
I mean, from a striking, just an absolute dog standpoint, it was Justin Gaetchy or even Eddie Alvarez or Eddie Alvarez.
I mean, we fought, last time we fought was like 2013 or 14 or something like that.
But I think the toughest and hardest fight from a strategic standpoint, it seemed like everything you tried to do, you couldn't hurt the guy was a guy, Benson Henderson.
Wow.
Benson Henderson, former UFC champion, came over to Bellator.
I fought him twice.
I passed out between the fourth and fifth round the first time I fought him.
That was the big suplex that happened.
And I beat the tar out of him for two, three rounds.
The guy didn't have a red mark.
He didn't have a scrape.
He didn't have a lot of money.
And I'm looking at him and he's just like throwing his big hair up.
And I'm just like, dude, are you a robot?
So, I mean, there's nothing worse than that.
That's actually, I've had a, I've, you know, I've had gone back and looked at, you know, watched that fight and just thought, man, I hit him with everything but the kitchen sink.
And the guy just flipped his hair back and looked like he knew, you know, he did a very, he had a very, very good poker face.
And even though you knew he had a poker face, that poker face still got to you.
And you're just like, ah, going at him.
And he was good on the ground.
He was gumby on the ground.
I slammed him on his head with probably one of the greatest suplexes in mixed martial arts history.
And he gets up like, dude, I'm good.
That hair was cushioned, bro.
But he wasn't kind of a savage offensive like Gagey was, where he's going to hit you with leg kicks.
He's going to hit you with knees.
He's going to throw a thousand punches.
He wasn't the same thing with Eddie Alvarez.
Same thing with even a Charles Oliveira, who's becoming more and more offensive with his Muay Thai.
So yeah, Benson Henderson was the most durable, toughest guy that I ever fought.
And then obviously the hardest puncher would be, I think, Justin Gage.
Justin Gage, man.
Justin Gage.
He's a scrapper, bro.
We're going to fight again.
We will fight again.
You going to fight Charles again?
I beat Dustin November 12th, and then I fight.
I think Charles is going to beat Islam.
And I fight Charles, yeah, March or April next year.
And I win the title.
And I put it right here.
How the hell is Charles an underdog?
I don't understand it.
And I've answered this question now three or four times, and I always get flack for it because everybody thinks I'm hating on Islam.
I'm not necessarily hating on Islam.
Islam is about as impressive as you can possibly be and look and get a title shot without ever having fought somebody inside the top five.
So I don't understand.
I think it's maybe the Dagestani Khabib connection mystique of him being Khabib's brother-ish.
Is this that guy that told you to shut up and stay in your lane?
Probably.
I mean, people probably, I remember that.
It was probably Islam.
Probably Islam, yeah.
So, Mike, I got a question.
So, like, as a stand-up comedian, I go on stage, like, it doesn't happen now, but you know, it happens from time to time when you're just not the crowd and it just doesn't connect.
You say one word, you're off the rails, and it's, it's a law.
You know what I mean?
Like, that stays with the comedian, bro.
It's depressing.
A lot of them do crazy stuff.
They drink.
They do drugs.
Some of them, which I know they commit suicide.
What, how do you, and it takes us a while to get back until I do another dope set.
Then I'm kind of getting back, but that thing still sits on my mind.
When it comes to taking a loss, how do you deal with a loss?
And how do you not let it affect you for how long?
How long until it's in your head, Mikey?
And then you're just like, I'm done.
You move forward.
Does it linger to your next fight?
Like, how do you, how do you deal with that?
That's actually a really, really awesome question because the best part about mixed martial arts is a lifestyle that we get to live where we only fight two to three times a year, maybe four times a year every now and again.
And if you built a great career and you have great fight purses and you have good sponsors and you're able to make a great living, you don't want to be in training camp the whole year.
You want to have some downtime.
But on the flip side of that, that very positive is also a very big negative because we talk about the sport of wrestling or stand-up comedy.
You might do two shows in a row and you might do a show five weeks in a row or five, you know.
So you take an L one night and people are booing you or they're throwing tomatoes at you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
You've seen people throw batteries at you.
And you just, you know, you feel like, hey, this isn't working out.
I am a loser, right?
100%.
But then you get an opportunity very soon to get back on stage and right that wrong.
Wrestling was the same thing.
If I lost a dual meet on Wednesday, we're going to wrestle again on Saturday.
I can get back in the win column and I can move forward.
So the problem or the hardest part about mixed martial arts is when you do take a loss, not only are you most likely in pain, maybe you got some stitches, maybe you got some swelling, maybe you're limping around, you know.
Then you see all the media and then you see people's reaction and that kind of stuff and you try not to let it get to you and you don't get the opportunity to write that wrong for three, four, five, six, even eight months.
So and and I and I actually I actually had a part of my story.
I went 688 days without winning a fight.
Wow.
I was the Bellator champion.
I lost to Eddie Alvarez.
I lost my first fight.
And in that moment, that small guy from the small town from who was taught to do small things, who I thought I had duct taped to the basement of my mind, crept back in and said, I told you you were an imposter.
I told you you weren't good.
I told you everything that they said about you was false.
Everything that you believed about yourself was false.
And that loss turned into another loss and then another loss.
And I lost three fights in a row.
And I had to do a lot of work to get back to believing in myself and believing that I was created and destined for great things.
So the great thing about this mixed martial arts life is we do get time off between fights, but it's, you know, when you take a loss, you know, there's sometimes you take a, you get an awesome win.
Like my Tony Ferguson fight, I was on top of the world.
I'm like, man, I'm kind of ready to get back, kind of ready to get back in there.
I would love to keep this momentum going, get to get toward a title shot.
And then there's some wins where you're like, okay, I'm going to rest on these coattails for just a second.
Let me come out because you got to remember, you're also talking to somewhat of a robot right now.
I'm in training camp and I got to do all these things that I have to do.
And you wouldn't get the same me.
Luckily, I'm able to compartmentalize it when I'm able to have an awesome platform like this.
And thank you for giving me this.
But I am somewhat of a robot and you want to pull yourself away from that.
My son doesn't, my sons don't want to, you know, my son's hat doesn't want to play in the backyard with a robot.
When I go home this weekend, I'm going to be a little bit different daddy than I normally am because I'm in training camp and I'm focused and I try to compartmentalize it and I don't do a great job of it at the same time.
Same thing with my wife.
Same thing with my new baby Ace.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
Michael, this is your second.
This is your second kid that you adopted, bro.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Good on you, bro.
That's amazing.
Yeah, he was born two and a half weeks before the Tony Ferguson.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
It's very powerful what you just said because.
All right.
So if you play in the NBA, you play in the NFL, the MLB, hockey, whatever, soccer, there's a game the next day, the next week, the next moment.
You go three, six, nine, 12 months without a W, without a fight.
Yeah.
That's, I mean, in wrestling or UFC and boxing, that's got a way on you more than any other sport.
Yeah.
It is, it is very, it is very tough.
And that's, I think that's the hardest part about it.
And also from a longevity standpoint, you do take a loss.
No matter what, we need even if I went in there and got caught in a submission, it was just a choke or something somewhat benign and didn't take a lot of damage in the first 30 seconds.
I still went the last eight, 10 weeks sparring two, three times a week, and I'm taking damage.
I'm taking damage right now before the fight even happens.
And I've gotten very, I think, very methodical and smart about how I train, who I train with, the training partners that I go with.
I'm not going to say, oh, hey, this is a brand new guy who's a world champion kickboxer from Amsterdam.
Let me go ahead and test myself.
I don't need to test.
I've done my tests.
People know I'm tough.
People know I swing and I'm fine.
I'd rather be training in a safe manner with a smile on my face in not in that fight or flight mode and be thinking about it.
And then when I get in there, once again, going back to I can trust myself and know that I can pull that guy out of me.
Well, if you need a sparring partner where you're in Florida, Vinny is available.
I know he wants to do stand-up as well.
If you want to practice your Rune Control, I'll just whatever.
Imagine just me.
It's like, no, just a little bit.
Oh, okay.
It's gone.
Yeah, but this is a, again, going back to it.
This is a big fight.
Yeah, this is a very big fight for many different reasons, you know, both from your end and his end.
It's different point to prove on both sides.
Solving for different things on both sides, you know, where he's going, where you're going.
It's going to be so interesting to see what strategy each of you takes going into this one.
I think fan base is excited.
Fan base is excited.
Good for Dana for putting this one together.
And from here, it could be very quickly.
By the way, how soon do you think Connor's going to come back?
How soon do you think Connor will fight?
I don't know.
I mean, I was in the you know, I was obviously in the running for that, you know, Connor coming back.
If he was going to come back, there was a lot of talk about me fighting him.
Obviously, I, you know, my God.
Oh, my God.
Connor McGregor.
You know, obviously, you know, I called him out and everybody was talking about it.
He even tweeted me.
I tweeted him back in a very, once again, respectful manner, which is great, you know.
But I think, you know, now he's doing the Roadhouse remake with Jake Jonhall.
You know, the movie or something?
Yeah, the movie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I actually got called about with Patrick Swayze.
Yeah, that movie remake.
What?
Is he playing Patrick Swayze?
No, no, no.
He's not.
Jake Jalen Hall is playing Patrick Swayze.
And I know.
No, I don't know.
Jake Jonah is a great actor.
He's no Patrick Swayze.
You're freaking kidding me.
I was going to say, can you imagine Connor McGregor being the Patrick Swayze?
And they're like, who the hell is the guy with the accent?
Where did he come from?
Yeah, I didn't think about that.
There's no Irish guys in the Irish accents.
Yeah, he's going to have to learn an American accent.
But then Mike and Elsa, because I've been following, you know, I follow Connor's life.
And I mean, since the injury, he looks like he's been, you know, getting back to shape and he's looking crazy.
But I mean, he's drinking and going out like a madman.
Bro, every time I see him, he's somewhere faded, drinking.
You know, I know he's promoting the property.
Justin called him out.
Justin recently called him out.
He says, look, you get to do everything.
I want to do everything.
Let's fight.
Let's face each other.
I'm good with that.
But, you know, he's put on too much size where he's at.
He's jacked.
He is jacked.
But listen, that guy right there, if he fought today, everybody's buying the pay-per-view.
You know, out of the top five biggest UFC fights, Vinny, do you know out of the top five most pay-per-views bot ever in the history of UFC?
You know who's in the top five?
How many of the fights are his?
All of them, probably.
Four out of five is Connor.
Really?
Four out of five or his.
Who's the other one?
Biggest pay-per-view.
You can pull this article up, pull it up.
Biggest, most viewed pay-per-view.
Most viewed.
I might say it would have been Jose Jose Aldo and him because that was just the lead up with the UFC embedded, bro.
It was, and that was the first time that you saw Connors trolling and talking crap.
No, guys, it may even be five for five.
I think it might be five for five.
Five for five is kind of five.
Was Aldo the first one?
Because that tour.
Okay, I'll just tell you right now.
Here's what I'll, matter of fact, it's not even five for five.
Check this out.
It's six for six.
Yeah.
Okay.
Highest one is him versus Khabib.
Number two is Poitier 2.
Number three is Diaz 2.
Number 3 is Poitier 3.
Number 4 is Sarone.
Number 5 is Diaz 1.
And then 7 is Usman Masvedal.
And then 8 is him Alvarez.
Eight is Mir Lesnar.
Nine is him Aldo.
So he's seven out of the top 10 fights.
You got pay-per-view ever.
This is insanity on what he, because Usman is not a smack.
It's not his way to do it.
When him and Kobe, that want to, remember Kobe sitting there after the fight and Usman comes in and he's saying stuff to him.
Kobe can do it.
He can talk smack.
Usman is, he's a professional.
He came and he took the fight in a different way this time, the last minute, 29, whatever the time was when he started backing up.
He could have won that fight.
He's probably so upset with that one.
But Usman still being who he is.
Masvedal can talk some smack and he'll sell tickets.
But McGregor.
So it's going to be interesting who he's going to fight when he comes back.
It depends on where his mindset is on what he wants to do.
I mean, Connor and the UFC as well, the UFC.
I mean, I think he needs to come back and get a win if he wants to continue to be Connor.
Does he need to be Connor anymore?
No.
I mean, obviously he sold his whiskey for, what, $165 million?
I mean, he's set for life, you know?
$165 million is not a lot of money, depending on how you live.
Well, I guess no, compared to that.
Compare how it is, guys.
No, no, no.
I'm not being funny and sarcastic.
Stop it.
Go ahead, sell me on that.
Tell me why 165 million is not that much.
It's not a lot of money if you go.
You want me to tell you?
Let's do the math.
I want to know how many people agree with whatever Pat's going to say.
Gosh, you're so funny.
$165 million.
How much taxes you paying on that?
Say 30%.
Because I'm going to be friendly.
So you still got 100 million plus left.
You got 120 left.
Okay.
You go buy 20 million auto homes left and right.
Okay.
You go buy yachts.
You go party hardcore.
You go travel private jet from here to Europe back.
That's a $500,000 flight.
If you're going from Europe to Vegas on a private, it's $500,000.
$300,000.
How many times can you do that right there?
Gas prices are going up.
You can go with, just with jet alone, that's $10 million in a year.
That's gone.
Believe me, $165 million is not a lot of money, depending on how you live.
I'm telling you right now, it's not a lot of money depending on how you're doing.
He's not life.
He lives a lavish life.
I know guys who have a million bucks that will have a million bucks 10 years from now based on how they live, and they'll stretch a million.
I know guys that got a few hundred that they act as if they're billionaires, and you're not yet.
What you're saying is mindset and basically your expenditures are.
I don't know if he's ever going to fight the way he fought Diaz 1.
I don't think so either.
I don't know if we're going to get a DS1 fight.
Do I think any fight he gets, we're still going to watch it?
Yes.
By the way, check this out.
Look how crazy this is.
Look at crazy.
No, no, no.
Just look at this.
How many do you see there with Khabib?
One.
What does that tell you?
What do you mean?
He doesn't have the five miles.
He only has one because the other guy he fought is McGregor.
Yeah.
So it's either you're extremely exciting or you're, you know, you're smack talker, you're, you know, but it's got to be one of the two.
Like, you know, for example, he sells because he's extremely exciting.
Connor sells because he's just talking.
But even Khabib is not on this list.
100% without Connor.
And they call him the GOAT and he's not even on this list.
Because people want to watch a exciting this whole thing with the cosmos.
How do you say I always screwed up?
Thumbs out.
Thumbs up.
I think the case is.
And I'm Middle Eastern and I screwed up.
I should be.
Because I can do thumbs out.
Okay.
So we were at his fight, and he's fighting a couple fights ago in Jacksonville.
Frick boom.
Good.
Oh, he went up against your guy, your buddy.
With Gilbert Burns.
What a fight, Byzantine.
That was a great idea.
By the way, no one thought it was going to be that great.
But this guy was like, wait a minute.
Gilbert's the man.
He was.
You were with Rogan.
Yeah, but no, but this fight was a fight, right?
He has, you know, he's a little bit, you know, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens here.
But if that guy comes up, comes back and fights.
Listen to me.
I would not illegally stream that fight if he fought him.
You wouldn't illegally stream.
If you fight McGregor, I'm paying for that shit.
Thank you.
You know what?
I appreciate it.
What a loyal brand.
What a lawyer, man.
You really find out who your friends are when they don't illegally stream your fights.
That's a friend.
He's about to say it's the first time he's not going to legally stream the freaking thing.
Listen, I'm being real.
I mean, I'm BSing, but I'm definitely paying for that.
And these stats, Pat, I mean, he took Connor took Ireland on his back.
And I've never seen a fighter because I, bro, I real talk.
My friend Jade could attest for this.
I was watching Connor when he was first starting off, and they were just whispering his name during bigger UFC fights.
And I followed him.
I saw him, bro.
He put Ireland on his back.
And that's a huge that the whole country shuts down when this look at Rousey.
Yeah.
Look at Rousey.
Mother Rouse with the Holmes.
That's when she kicked her, and she knocked her out, right?
And Lesnar's under how many times?
Three times?
Good for Lesnar.
Look at that.
Did you see Brock Lesnar in college?
Have you ever seen him in wrestling?
It was, it's a spectacle.
Like, it was, he was a monster.
Yeah, he was a monster.
Did you see that guy?
20, 21, 22.
Yeah.
Yeah, dude, just beast.
Like, just maniac.
He's that guy when you see him in the ring, you're just like, what is that?
Not who is, but what is that?
But you got to realize the difference between him, like this guy has been fighting in fist fights since he was a kid.
Like he enjoys a fight.
Yeah, 100%.
He's a, you know, you know, the stuff he says in his interviews, he's like, man, I've been fighting my entire life.
I like a street fight.
You know, I like to get into it.
You know, it's a different thing.
Look how Jackie is right there with his coaches.
Yeah, that one right there, Tyler.
They'll go up right there.
This cat is just.
Well, the greatest thing about Brock is that he was a legitimate college wrestler.
Exactly.
Obviously, you can go the WWE route.
Oh, it's scripted or it's this and it's that.
But this was him at Minnesota from Webster, South Dakota.
Dude, he won a national title with the Gophers.
That's nuts, bro.
The school he went to, was it a wrestling school or Minnesota?
Yeah, Minnesota is always usually top 10.
It's very cold.
Anywhere where it's very cold, it's wrestling.
Minnesota, these types of places, bro.
Ohio, they produce wrestlers.
Interesting.
Pennsylvania.
You said Penn State is number one.
Penn State's now the number one.
It used to be Iowa for a while.
Iowa's still always in the top five.
Oklahoma states usually in the top five.
Where's your people in Mizzou in that?
Mizzou were always in the top 10.
Usually.
We had a national champion this year, Keegan Mueller.
So, yeah, it's good.
And by the way, somebody's saying right now saying Diaz was in the three of those.
Yeah.
You know, three of the seven.
So someone's trying to say like Diaz was also Diaz is an exciting fighter as well because he'll fight.
He's a dog, but it's selling tickets.
So he comes back, he fights you.
You guys, that's going to be a fight, bro.
I would tell him.
That would be great.
That's going to be a good fight, man.
It'd be fun.
That's going to be a fun fight.
That's going to be a fun fight if those two go, if the two of you guys go together.
Have you had any interaction with Connor?
Like, have you guys spent time?
Have you guys talked or not necessarily?
No, well, so we shared.
Uh, we shared a card.
I was actually on, I was on the Poirier 2.
No, Poirier 1.
No, Poirier 2.
Yeah, because they fought three times.
So I was on the Poirier 2 UFC 257.
That was my debut in the UFC when I fought Dan Hooker.
So we shared, we shared a press conference.
When was that exactly?
That was January 23rd.
How long was that?
That fight was what?
You remember where we were for that?
Two and a half minutes.
We watched it in the house here in Boca.
We watched him fight in the UFC at your house.
You just moved into the house in Boca, January of 20.
Yeah.
We had just moved back.
You know what I said?
What'd you say?
This guy's one of the most exciting fighters in the world.
What I'm saying is this is the guy, like the UFC, you know, you want guys like this because people are, you know what I don't like about the NBA product today?
Here's what I don't like about the NBA product today.
These guys, let's just say, you know, like I want to take the kids to go to a game.
Do you know I'm not interested in taking because I want to buy like a court size because I want to take the guys to court size basketball game, right?
When the Lakers are coming down here to see if they want to play Miami or Golden State.
You know what my biggest concern is?
You know, they're resting that day.
They're just resting that day.
There's no such thing as fans in the NBA.
They don't care about the fans during the season, right?
Yeah.
NFL, it's fan-based.
Okay.
MLB, they rest a little bit, but it's still fan-based, right?
UFC is all fans.
Guys like Michael, this is exactly what the UFC wants.
You know, guys like Michael who come and put on a show and people like me are hoping the fight isn't in November.
It's this Saturday, but it's not this Saturday, right?
We got to wait five and a half weeks.
I still got some back.
I still got some training.
I got November 12th.
Answer weight cutting in Madison Square Gardens.
If you guys want to just listen, if you got early Christmas, whatever.
I'll go.
November 12th.
I'll watch it live.
See?
You know what I'm saying?
Guys, here's all I know.
$150 million.
I don't know $65.
You're so funny.
What do you think about with Zuckerberg getting involved in the UFC and what he's doing?
that when the video came out with zuck i don't i mean those that video is a real video he didn't look like a yeah sometimes people show their videos like they're boxing or training You're like, yeah, you shouldn't have put that up.
Like Stephen A. Smith one time put up a video of him boxing.
I hope he was just trolling.
No, actually he was actually fine.
And everybody on Twitter went after him.
But when Mark put it up, you're like, you know what?
Those kicks are real kicks.
Yeah, he just doesn't move too bad at all, man.
Zuck's got some hands and some kicks.
Who else does it?
Wiz Khalifa?
You ever seen Wiz Khalifa?
Wizard scrap?
Wiz Khalifa.
Or I don't know if he could scrap, but I mean, he could hit pads.
He trains out for more.
He's a tall, lanky dude.
Yeah, like, you know, when you just watch guys, you're used to seeing Zuckerberg in his Facebook attire or whatever.
And all of a sudden, he's throwing on gloves and hitting pads and throwing knees and kicks and low leg kicks.
You're like, what?
Yeah.
So how is he getting involved?
You mean just kind of watching or is there something?
Do you think he wants to do more with it?
Do you think there's additional?
I don't know.
I'd be interested to see what Dana's perspective would be on that, actually.
I don't know.
So what is the story?
He's been kind of invited to these private showings.
It's not a private showing.
It was at the UFC Apex, which is somewhat private because I think it only holds maybe 500 people or so.
And you can go, you can go.
I think you can buy a table and have a couple people with you and watch the fights.
It's by no means a private event, but it's definitely not a arena show.
But there was reports that came out because there was a girl named Mackenzie Dern, who I think was either the main event or the co-main event.
I think she was the main event who said that Zuckerberg rented out the whole Apex for the show, which I think turned out to be not true.
Oh, really?
Allegedly.
Let me tell you something, Michael.
Dana White, number one promoter out there in the world.
When you're talking about hype and showmanship and just pizzazz, I'm thinking Mark Zuckerberg.
That guy's got it.
He's got it.
He's definitely not a human robot.
What?
Confidence, swag.
You talk about Connor McZuckerberg.
Yeah, I just got canceled.
But you know what?
You know what?
To me, you know, he went on Joe, Joe Rogan, and the interview came out, you know, some stuff that he said with FPI and all this other stuff.
And then he's out there doing stuff.
I think a part of him is like, look, man, I'm worth $100 billion, but I'm living my life as well.
And I got interests and I'm doing what I'm doing.
And I don't know.
I like it.
I like seeing what he's doing.
I like the fact that he's out there doing what he's doing in the water.
I like the fact that you've seen him do it.
If he's not an alien, listen to me.
Have you ever seen the video where he smokes meats for an hour?
He's like, yeah, I'm smoking some meat, smoking some ribs, smoking.
It's an hour if you're talking about.
No, no, the weirdest.
The strangest thing I've ever heard.
The weirdest is him.
I guarantee one of YouTube.
You've probably seen it.
He's testifying in front of Congress about the privacy issues of Facebook and the memes of him being a robot because he's sitting like this, Mike, and I'm not joking.
If you can pull up, it's like almost a robot.
He goes, I have to drink this.
Now, it was the weirdest drinking of water I've ever seen in my life.
But he also had a mic drop moment.
Which one was it?
What was it?
When they said, so Mark, how do you guys make money?
Okay.
We sell ads.
And the guy's like, oh, okay.
And he goes to the next person.
You don't remember this whole mic when he says we sell ads.
Like, why do you think we make money?
Like, we have nothing else to sell.
Our model is selling ads.
And the guy had nothing back to say to him.
By the way, you know how much money he's lost this year?
His net worth has dropped $61 billion.
So what's he worth?
$1 billion and a half.
What do you think he's worth now?
Dude, sell him five bucks.
I think he may need some money.
He's still worth $100 billion or not?
He's still probably worth $40 billion.
He's probably worth $50.
Pat, I say this all the time.
$40 billion ain't as much as it used to be, bro.
Facebook stock has gone down that much or what?
Facebook stocks.
Well, a lot of the tech companies have taken.
This week, the great news when Elon Musk announced that he's buying him, all the tech stocks went to the roof.
Twitter blew up and it brought everybody else up.
Facebook went up.
Everybody went up this week, but Facebook's taking a hit.
I think they started a news site like Substack, and they just shut it down yesterday, or today they just shut down Substack.
And Meta, some stuff is going on with them that they're trying to re-strategize and what to do with the product.
But, you know, he's definitely got a few challenges ahead of him.
But, you know, his product, the product that he has is not the product that it once was.
The moment they changed the app, the advertising side, where it no longer kept track of how you did advertising before and it had to refresh because it's not keeping that advertiser.
That changed the game in a big way.
It messed with everybody's ability to track it.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, that was the whole model about it.
The whole thing that was very appealing was, you know, if I spend 100 grand, I can retarget the people.
Now I got to start from scratch again.
Yeah, unless that was a private, was there some kind of privacy issue deal going on?
That's what it was.
That was the whole thing.
Okay.
So they did it from the privacy side.
Crazy, you know, conspiracy question, just throwing it out there.
In the last 24 months, Zuckerberg, you know, Mr. Robot himself, before they changed Facebook to Meta, right?
The epitome of joining the meta.
You seen that commercial where he did it?
You can come into the metaverse and have an avatar.
It was the most robotic commercial thing ever.
You know, basically.
And then since then, everything with meta, NFTs, crypto has obviously shit the bed.
Do you think someone pulled him aside and was like, listen, bro, people legitimately think you're a cyborg or a robot.
Like straight up.
Still out.
Like they actually think that.
Start doing some UFC stuff.
Start cooking some meats.
Get out there and start surfing and maybe don't put so much sunscreen on your face.
Whatever.
Just go be a human.
Do you think someone actually said that to him?
I don't know.
I think, listen, I think when you make money and then you have F you money times 100, like, you know, FU money is what?
Anything above, let's just say $100 million got F you money.
You got to be above 165.
It's got to be at least 165.
We know that.
Whatever the number was.
You can't live off of that.
No, you could lose it.
Let me tell you a couple ways.
Let go real quick.
All right.
Listen.
Hey, have you seen the price of fuel?
You go from Europe.
I can't ever say that again.
Every single time.
That is so fun.
So you're saying when you got fucking money?
No, you know what I'm saying is I'm saying, did the guys, how old is the guy now?
Is he 38?
Is he 30?
Late 30s, early 40s.
He's 38 years old.
It's kind of like, I want to live a life.
This is what I want to do, bro.
Like, leave me alone, bro.
I just built a company.
I compete.
I got it big.
I'm rich.
Yes, I got money and I'm pretty powerful.
I still want to live a life.
I don't want to be just this billionaire.
I want to live my life.
I think there's a part of it that's just more the life.
If you constantly have to act for how the world views you, dude, that's a myth.
You're a slave to the world.
It's not a good life.
It doesn't matter how much money they give you.
If you constantly, like, by the way, you know what's been happening that you're seeing is I think Elon started this trend.
I fully believe Elon started this trend because if you think about Elon Bezos Zuck, which one of them enjoys life the most?
Elon.
Let melon.
But that wasn't the case for the longest time Because he wasn't He was so mechanical And he was so much about Then finally he's like Listen man I'm freaking Here's who I am I'm the real guy from Iron Man.
And he's in the movie.
Like, oh shit, that's funny.
That's funny.
It's kind of cool to see you here.
It's kind of great seeing you here.
Oh, so this guy's got a lighter side to me.
He's not just a genius, you know, going to the space type of guy.
And then he starts trolling and he's taking shots at our president, Joe Biden.
And then Bezos is like, well, why are people liking him more than me?
Maybe I can say something to Joe Biden.
Then Bezos did.
And then now Zuck is coming out.
So I think what's happened with all these guys is, you know, Elon's trying to say to these guys, you can be the richest man on the planet, but you still got to live your life and enjoy yourself because he's going to die eventually.
He ain't going to live forever.
So I think they're all kind of learning from each other.
Like whatever space you're in, you're going to look at another pace setter in your world to see what they're doing.
And the pays setter in this world is Musk today and you're kind of following his lead.
I do agree.
Here's a real question.
Here's a real question.
Say Dana's able to pull this fight off.
Jake, Paul, Bezos, and Zuck.
The biggest pay-per-view of all time.
For sure.
It tops that list five times six.
Yeah, that list is gone.
They sent one tweet.
Next thing you know, pay-per-view.
29.7 million buys.
Okay, so let me just ask you right up front.
Bezos against Musk.
Who wins?
Musk.
Musk.
Seriously.
I don't know.
I don't really know what.
I don't know what Bezos is.
Bezos is working out.
Bezos is working out.
I like Bezos.
I just like Musk better.
How tall is Musk, though?
Musk is 6.
He's tall too.
He's a tall dude, bro.
Jeff Bezos.
That eye really bothers me, though.
I got to tell you.
He's got a lazy eye.
Because you were saying this about Musk.
Bezos has been having a lot of fun lately.
That's what I'm saying.
He's just saying to you.
He's working out.
He's banging a new chick.
How much of this?
His ex-wife, who married the school teacher, she just divorced him.
Yeah.
I mean, how much money did she have?
You think she married a teacher without a green up in the middle of the day?
There was a question of they had a financial agreement.
And then she's looking in shape.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Bezos against Musk.
Yeah, he's got some girth to him.
Go to Musk.
Musk on the bolt when he had the same sunscreen as Michael.
You can't say when a guy's wearing his shorts, he's got some girths.
I guess he was.
That was an awkward moment.
Yes, he was wearing shorts.
Sorry.
I didn't know what to say.
He got size, dude.
He got some thick.
He's thick.
I feel like thick.
Yeah, because that's what pure comedy today's podcast went from UFC.
Musk is tight shape, dude.
Musk is not in as good a shape as Bezos.
That's what I heard.
Yeah.
Okay, so Bezos Musk, who wins?
You're saying Bezos?
I'm saying, as far as looking as who's got the shape, who's got the girth?
Bezos is in better shape than Musk.
I stand corrected on that.
I thought Elon was a little bit.
So then let's put Zuck against Jeff, who wins?
Bezos.
Well, it's hard because Zuck, we've actually seen throws itself.
Zuck's got youth.
Zuck's 38.
So Bezos is what, in his 50s?
I would go Zuck.
Okay, so I guess the Battle of the Billionaires' coming up.
I like the Battle of the Billionaires.
Zuckerberg would have like a little computer.
He's a robot, dude.
They would upload some fighting shit like Matrix and he'd beat the shit out of him.
Battle of the Billionaire.
Battle of the Billionaires.
Throw Warren Buffett in there.
How do you think Warren Buffett does it?
That would not be helpful.
Somebody in this conference.
No, no, no.
Somebody would be going to jail.
By the way, so you were ranking the top current 10 fighters in your division, right?
I saw you doing the top.
I think that you were doing that.
In your opinion, who's the top five GOATs of all time?
Like, you know, forget the weight, forget if they're retired, forget anything.
Who's top five for you?
This one's hard because I am very conflicted on John Jones because of the failed drug tests.
I feel like once you've failed a drug test, you somewhat pull yourself out of the GOAT talk.
But I feel like John Jones is the most dominant fighter of all time with the asterisk of he has failed some drug tests.
By the way, what drugs did he was hearing?
I don't know.
It was some kind of performance enhancement.
Performance and I mean, I think that and I mean, he's openly parties.
He's cocaine.
Well, and I'm not okay with that.
I don't condone that, but that's, but I also look at that separately.
That's different from the enhancers.
But you're helping in the I think the best torso.
We've lost control of this podcast.
The best fighter of all time is that whatever that guy is.
Shit talker.
That is hilarious.
But hang on, guys.
Keep going.
So John Jones.
Yeah, well, with an asterisk.
But I would put over him would be George St. Pierre because of the way he carried himself.
He did have some losses.
Like, John Jones is essentially undefeated.
He's never lost.
He lost one fight by DQ.
The elbow on the face.
Elbow.
Yeah.
So painful.
So he technically lost, but he technically really didn't.
We had GSP here, what, six months?
How long ago?
Yeah, GSP is, to me, the goat.
I think you put GSP out of Khabib.
I do.
Wow.
I like that, though.
I like that.
Well, I think just because I think GSP, I mean, maybe it was because I shared the same weight class at the same time as Habib, so I didn't look at him as much of a legend.
Like I do.
Like when I was coming up and I was in college, I was watching George St. Pierre versus Matt Hughes and all of these other guys.
And the sport has evolved, obviously, over the years.
Habib's strength of schedule compared to George St. Pierre's, I think they're pretty similar, but I would put George as number one.
I would put Habib as probably number two.
Anderson Silva, number three.
And then I'm a DC guy.
I love DC.
You know, DC essentially only really lost to John Jones, and I think he lost to who else?
Maybe one other fight?
Cormier.
Yeah, he just got into the Hall of Fame, too, right?
Yeah, I mean, that's great.
DC would be in my top five.
You got one more.
Yeah, one more.
Dang, I'm really not good.
He took John out.
Yeah, I mean, I got to take John out.
John Jones, GSD, Khabib, Cormier.
And you said Anderson Silva?
Anderson Silva.
Yeah, Silva.
But John Silva, John's not in there.
John's not going to be in the middle of the name.
That's what he's saying.
I'm not putting John in there.
I can't put John.
You got one more in mind.
Oh, doggone.
I don't know.
Honestly, Chail Peace on it.
I love it.
From the greatest fighters of all time from record and winning world titles and all that kind of stuff.
But when it comes to the full package of, hey, yeah, I mean, you could put like a Nate Diaz type of guy in there where it's like, hey, Diaz fights.
We're watching.
Who do you put as a showman?
Showman outside.
Connor's at the top, but who do you put on?
Showman.
Showman would be Chao would be number two.
Diaz is number three.
And Diaz is not a showman.
Diaz isn't even trying to be a showman.
He just looks like a showman to so many people because that is who he is.
I mean, which is so great.
Good for him.
He could just be authentically whoever he is, the yeoman and like smacking people and smoking, throwing water bottles at the counters doing what he's doing.
Yeah, you got to love those guys, though.
The Diaz brothers.
Yeah, by the way, who's better out of the two brothers?
Well, I don't.
I mean, Nick was great in his heyday, and Diaz became a huge, huge name, obviously, because of the Connor fights.
And then the last couple fights with Masvedal.
And Nate is now surpassed Nick, I believe.
But Nick was for a long time.
He was Nick's little brother.
That's all he was for a long time.
And the gang now leads Diaz.
The gang leader is, you know, it's the older brothers.
Yeah, it's not Nate.
Yeah, they called the Nick Diaz army.
Yeah, that's right.
Nick Diaz, you know, so like, then, and Nate still says that, which is cool.
I love that.
That is cool.
Let me tell you, I have two sons.
I love seeing their level of loyalty towards each other.
There's something very special when you see how loyal they are to each other.
It's like the Fat Joe thing you just posted.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, number two.
When he talks about DJ Khaled, yeah, the level of.
I know Hannah's to me like a number two.
Dude, when you're screaming like that, he got to prep us.
Malik passed out in the back.
I think he's dead.
He's in the back.
Okay, so the showman, we got the showman in place.
By the way, you know, one thing about UFC, which, you know, I'm curious to know what take you'll give on this one.
In the NBA, if you were to ask politically where people are at in the NBA, you know, it's like 99% when they say we're taking the voting day off to go vote is because everyone's voting one side, right?
It's not that free for you to take whatever position that you want and what you're doing, right?
MLB, I think it's pretty even, Steven.
People are to themselves.
Nobody cares.
I don't even think politics is an MLB, which is great because you watch baseball.
You just watch baseball.
You don't know nothing about people's political leanings where they're at.
NFL got more political.
Kaepernick, what he did.
Rihanna now is apparently not doing a halftime Super Bowl because of Kaepernick.
I don't know if you saw that or not.
Where she's saying she's doing it.
She's doing it or she's not doing it.
She's not doing it.
Why?
Just look at the story.
I saw she is or she's not.
Something came up saying she is.
Something came up she's not.
Maybe she is.
If she is now, great.
But she wasn't going to because there was something with Kaepernick that the conversation was that it's not going to happen.
Go to Kaepernick.
If you type in Kaepernick, you'll see how go to stories.
No, it's not.
Is it that one?
I just couldn't be a Celeriano once turned down Super Bowl halftime.
Oh, she once turned it down.
Okay, and now she's coming back to the World Board.
They said she's the first billionaire to ever perform at the halftime of the Super Bowl.
Great.
Awesome.
So it's great to see that taking place.
But UFC, you know, and you've been to CPAC.
I think you've been to, you've done some stuff.
If you did that in the NBA, dude, you may be traded to a Puerto Rican basketball league if you would do something like that.
Or you'd be playing in Italy or something if you did that.
How important do you think it is on the way Dana runs it where it's like, listen, to each his own?
I don't care where you stand.
Here's where I stand.
And I don't care whether you like me or not.
I think the other day was a talk on Tucker Carlson.
I want to say he spoke at the RNC.
And it's as if he's bulletproof and they can't go after him.
There's something about Dana that others can do what Dana does and they're being, you know, going through whatever they're going through.
But now when it comes down to Dana, do people behind closed doors say, look, man, you just don't mess with the guy because he's too connected?
Is it the respect?
Is it the way he handles himself?
Why do you think UFC is left alone when it comes down to politics?
I think because there is no politics in it for one right now, we are independent contractors.
We can talk about, have whatever.
We can talk about what we want, support who we want, talk about politics as much as we want.
Talk about, you know, obviously you need to, especially with the way today is, you need to watch yourself, what you say.
I mean, you can't be over the top with things, but I mean, we are all independent contractors, and a lot of us are, a lot of us come from very similar backgrounds when it comes to, you know, I mean, we, I don't think most of us ever thought about becoming, you know, now you might have these younger guys.
But I mean, when some of these guys in the NFL, they've been dreaming about this since they were 11 years old and they wanted the $60 million contract and the $30 million contract.
They want to be playing for the Seattle Seahawks.
I think a lot of us came from a place where it was like, well, I got into fighting, but I never really thought about making, getting on a $30 million contract, like kind of crazy money.
So I think we just all come from very similar backgrounds.
And we are, I don't know, we are individuals in an individual sport and we are all independent contractors as well.
Got it.
Individual and individual sports and you're all independent contractors.
So I think there is a little bit more of, you know, we have a team.
I have a great team here that I train with, but they're my team, but it's not like I'm playing for the Golden State Warriors.
It's not like I'm playing for a team, you know?
Yeah, but then I don't know if that answers your question.
Yeah, but then for me, it would be like, if you're on the team, you know, you would need to be more diplomatic, you know, where they're not, they're more vocal versus UFC.
It's kind of like, look, here's who we are.
We're just, you know, they did something with the flag, right?
Where at one point you couldn't bring the flag.
Something happened with the flag situation.
I don't know what that was.
That just happened year and a half ago, 14 months ago?
Well, it just happened during the Ukraine-Russia thing, you know.
So I think essentially they knew there was going to be some kind of backlash.
And I believe, hey, if a Russian guy comes in carrying a Russian flag during this wartime or a Ukrainian comes in carrying no flags whatsoever, which was sad for me because I love carrying the American flag.
I love that.
But once again, what am I going to do?
Yell at the equipment guy?
No, it's not his fault.
It was Dana's decision or it was WME's decision or it was whoever's to get those things early on to say, we're going to keep this out.
We're just going to fight.
But here's the thing.
He'll do that.
There's no flags.
And then he'll go on Tucker Carlson.
And like, hey, here's who I'm, here's where I stand.
Here's what I'm thinking.
What do you mean?
Remember when Colby Covington won in 2020 and Trump called him while he's getting an interview?
He looked like a kid in Christmas.
You guys, that was a, you didn't see this?
Yeah, Kobe's a big fan of the.
He calls himself.
Max Trump was like, dude, I watched the fight.
Was against, was it?
Who was against?
And he won.
It was an insane fight, Mike.
And Trump called him while he's live on an interview and was just like, talking about politics.
I mean, the president of the United States called you to congratulate.
Well, no, I mean, Dana brought Trump to a fight.
I mean, Trump went to a couple of fights.
Yeah, he was on the Air Force One together.
And DeSantis was at the UFC fight in Jacksonville, and he showed up to the fight.
But it's a bulletproof organization, you know.
And I think, again, to create that climate, it's not easy to do today.
It's a very tough climate to create, but he's created that climate where he allows us players to fighters to do what they want to do, yet at the same time, they still follow a protocol.
It seems like there is a protocol, and then you're still free.
The protocol is just don't mess up.
Don't mess up.
Don't get canceled.
Don't say, I mean, there's been guys who have said certain things and gotten in trouble for what they have said.
Yeah.
But they were out of line.
Just like if you're an artist, you can say something and get in trouble.
Just like if you're an athlete on one of these other things.
I think you look at the NFL and then you see the things that are printed on the NFL in the end zones and you see the wearing things on their helmets and whatnot.
I don't know if they were, then there's a certain pressure to, well, if I just wanted to be blank, do I get looked down upon?
To me, it's, I mean, if they, Dana would never do that.
He would never say, hey, I really like this cause, so I'm going to make everybody wear this certain thing.
You know, every now and every now and then, maybe something pink for breast cancer awareness or like something like that.
They do these different initiatives and all that kind of stuff.
But when it comes to politics and especially now, what is the climate?
It's just become so bonkers and it's the flavor of the week and it continues to change.
So, hey, you're going to implement something right now that's going to be different two weeks from now anyway, or going to be debunked or proven to be false or whatever.
And then now with the elections coming, all that crap that was happening back, it's going to start, it's revving up again, bro.
Trust me.
November's coming, but in two years when the actual election happens, or whoever's going to run Democrat, Republican, watch what's going to happen.
But I tell you what, I don't think UFC is going to be affected by it.
I don't think so either.
I don't think UFC is going to be affected by it.
UFC wasn't even affected by COVID.
That's what I'm saying, bro.
We were the only sport on television for six months.
You set the tone.
That's it.
He was, and by the way, you got market share.
That's the point because, you know, fans are sitting there saying, I need to see some kind of competition.
I need to see competition.
Show me something with competing.
And you're watching these basketball games.
You're like, all right.
So he goes down and scores a layup and then he comes coming back.
Okay.
Is there any fans screaming, booing?
No.
And they put these fake cutouts of fighters.
You could do videos.
I'm like, this is silly stuff.
Like, Adam, you're okay with this kind of stuff on what they're doing.
And then NFL's playing in open arenas and soccer.
Remember soccer?
You could hear every person speak.
Very awkward.
Hear every nuance.
You're the fuck because it was weird.
Were you going to say something?
Yeah, I think a big part of it is the fact that Dana's not a coward.
He doesn't bend the knee to whims of anybody.
What does Roger Goodell do?
The first thing he does is battle his knees and beg for forgiveness.
What does Adam Silver do?
The same thing.
You think Roger Goodell's players respect him?
You think LeBron James respects Adam Silver?
Of course not.
Dana's fighters respect him.
They're smart enough not to say anything stupid.
They're smart enough not to get him in trouble and to listen to what he has to say because they respect him.
And Dana stays alive.
And it's a bulletproof organization because he's not going to bend the knee no matter what he does or what he says.
He's not going to cower to these people.
You got to love it.
By the way, Vinny and I are both Assyrian.
What do you think about Beniel Dariush?
I think he's great.
Good fighter.
He fights October 22nd.
So he's on that main card of the Islam versus Charles Oliveira.
He's good.
He's talented.
He's on a couple fight win streak.
You know, I think it's between a lot of people would say between possibly me and him for that next title shot if we both come out with wins, or maybe we have to fight each other to get the next title shot.
Who knows?
But he's good.
I think that's a good fight.
That's a great fighter.
He's a Syrian.
Yeah, he's a Syrian from Iran.
And so, I'm like, what's his discipline?
Is he a wrestler?
What is he?
I'm trying to think what is Benny.
I know he's on the ground.
I mean, he's like jiu-jitsu.
He's good in jiu-jitsu, but he's good.
No, he's not a son.
He's a fighter, but he's going to.
If he gets a hold of you, it's like on the ground.
It's like Michael Wrestling.
It's like once you're on him, it's like that would be a sick fight.
That would be a sick fight, but you can throw blows.
When's the last time he fought, though?
I don't know if he.
His last time he fought was I was on the card.
It was May of last year, I believe.
He fought Tony Ferguson.
I fought Charles Olivera.
Let me ask you, scheduling-wise, why hasn't he fought for?
Is it more on?
He didn't get hurt.
He got hurt.
Okay.
He was supposed to fight Islam, I think, in like April-ish or sometime earlier this year.
Islam and that fight, he got hurt.
So that fight got scratched, and now Islam got the title shot.
So now he's Mateus Cameron, I think he's fighting.
There's another guy who's kind of surging in from the outside the top 10 or around number 10.
Your category, where you guys are at, there's a lot of beasts in your weight class right now.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
Final thoughts here on this before we wrap up.
Your friends with Woodley, your friends with Askren, you know, everybody would say, hey, both of them took a dive with the fight.
Yeah, the Jake Paul fight.
What are your thoughts on that?
I don't know.
I honestly haven't talked to either of them about it.
I don't think it's probably, it's probably a sore subject for both of them.
I don't think it was a dive.
I could be wrong, though.
I don't know.
Watching Jake, because now, you know, people were criticizing him first fight, second fight, third fight.
You're kind of like saying, this guy kind of knows what he's doing and he's training.
Do you think he's got a trajectory or do you think Silva's going to expose him and it's going to be like, no, this is it.
It's done with.
I think he has a trajectory.
I think he's very young in the sport.
I think it's still, you can be, you can be somewhat critical of the fact that, yes, he has not fought any high-level boxers whatsoever and also sing his praises that he does look pretty decent for a guy who is going out there and fighting.
He can move.
He can move.
He's got fast hands.
He's bigger than I, he's much bigger than I thought.
I didn't know how big I've never seen Jake Paul doesn't follow him until these last couple years and couple fights.
And you see him standing next to Anderson Silva towering over Tyron Woodley, towering over Ben.
He's a bigger guy than I thought.
So he's big.
He's 200 something pounds.
So I think I still think Anderson Silva beats him, but I also thought Tyron would beat him.
I thought Ben might be able to beat him.
And this is purely boxing.
They're not doing any MMA.
What's his name?
Anderson Silver is not a boxer, though, right?
He's boxed a couple times now.
He boxed Julio Caesar Chavez Jr.
Son.
Son.
The son.
Which, by the way, he was nasty.
Oh, no question.
Yeah, he has hands, bro.
Yeah.
No question.
He boxed Tito Ortiz.
I just would, because I get it.
They're fighting older people that are done.
And it's not even, they're not boxers.
The fact that they were hinting at going to the MMA, I would love to see them fight somebody in the MM.
Like, if they switched to UFA, like, not UFC, but you know what I mean?
Try to fight somebody that's going to put your hands on you.
They wouldn't last.
I don't think they would last 30 seconds in the fight with an MMA fighter.
Forget it.
That's everything.
Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling.
There's nowhere to run in that cage, bro.
I would agree with you, but I would add a caveat to it.
And here's what the caveat is.
Never bet against somebody with a big chip, man.
Like if there's a chip and the willingness to get in there and, you know, improve.
You know, so yeah, there's certain people that do really well with that chip.
There's certain people that love the fact that everyone's like thinking he's going to lose.
90% of people besides his coupled, you know, not coupled, his large contingent of YouTube followers or whatever.
All of us think he's not going to be good.
He's going to lose to this guy.
He's going to lose to that guy.
He loves that.
Both brothers are athletes.
Yeah.
You know, and some of the best people in the world in any business, they do well with you not thinking they can pull it off.
They're weird like that.
The average person is going to be like, yeah, maybe you do have a point.
You're right.
I don't think I can beat them.
Oh, shit, they're right.
I'm not going to win this fight.
And versus some are like, what did you say?
Oh, really?
Can you record that video and put it on my screen saver on my phone?
I want it to, every time it rings, I want it to be his voice saying what he just said right there.
And every time the phone rings, I don't think you can beat him.
Hey, mom, what's up?
Why are you pissed, son?
Because they said I can't beat them every time you come.
Honey, I just want to check on you.
Is everything good?
You know, so hilarious.
I think Jake is in that camp, and I think his brother's in that camp.
But we're going to see.
We're going to see what's going to happen there.
I think it's going to be a show.
So I talked to the CEO of Speed.
I talked to Speed, and we were having a conversation.
Yeah, and I told him, I said, listen, really impressive guy, young guy, what he's done, where he's at.
And now you're doing business.
You got this right here.
What is that?
Tell us about cram.
So the cram is the PB ⁇ J reinvented.
Sprouted, 100% sprouted or middle-grade.
Wow, absolutely.
Blackberry or strawberry?
I'm going blackberry.
Blackberry?
What's your favorite?
I like them both equally, but this one has 19 grams of protein.
That one has 13.
What's the flavor on that one?
The black one?
Yeah, it's cold.
Yeah, they're cold.
Oh, blackberry and this is black.
Well, there's a fresh strawberry.
Want to try this?
Yeah, so we just launched nationwide in sprouts.
Did you try one already or no?
So SMR.
And I know you guys, you got four kids, right?
So it's like, it's like the old uncrustable, except much better, more nutrient-dense 70%.
Oh, my good mineral complex.
And the fact that you don't have the crust on it, I don't like crust.
This is perfect.
And actually, is your peanut butter a little bit frozen still?
Oh, this is delicious.
You just launched this?
You literally just launched this.
Yeah, so we just launched in Sprouts.
So all organic.
Oh, this is amazing.
Oh, my God.
Did I say a peanut butter?
PB ⁇ J.
I like that it's cold on the inside, too.
Yep.
Well, dope.
Yeah, so they come frozen.
And then it's actually, I feel like they're kind of at that perfect moment where that peanut butter kind of tastes a little bit like peanut butter ice cream.
Yeah, dude.
But you can also take them and you can thaw them out.
You can throw them in your bag on the go.
This is delicious.
You also toast them so it's hot on the outside.
Dude, a little bit cold on the inside sometimes.
have not had a pb and j in years but yeah it's a strawberry or uh but mike and i'm and i'm being i'm being dead serious it it If it was like a competition and people are like, oh, which one is the protein one?
I cannot tell the difference from this from a regular PB ⁇ J that somebody did put in the freezer.
It doesn't taste like you added stuff in it to make it healthy, but this is off the chain, bro.
This is dope.
That's good.
I feel like no sugar added to the jelly.
I'm a father of two.
I want my kids to at least try to get some good nutrients in them when they can.
So these are a perfect little snack for on the go.
And then even, you know, in my other things that I'm doing.
Dustin Poirier's got the hot sauce.
You got the PB and J. PB ⁇ J, baby.
Wow.
I love it.
I ate the whole thing.
I got a fitness app launching.
I'm hungry.
I got speed fit.
A lot of stuff going on.
You're hustling.
You're out there hustling.
You know what I try to do?
Going back to the UFC, one of the biggest pain points for the UFC is that every single fighter only relies upon their UFC paycheck.
So they are, they are enslaved to that UFC paycheck, which then creates tension between them and the promoter.
Hey, fight me more, give me more money.
Where I want to be more of a self-starter and be a guy who can provide for my family outside of just mixed martial arts, just competing inside the octagon, because I'm going to hang those gloves up eventually.
Right.
That's the whole point: eventually you're going to have to transition.
Walk on, walk on fitness.
My fitness app will carry me on into that and cram and speed and some real estate stuff.
And you know, I love it.
And then one day, you know, when you get that $165 million fight, then I can almost make it.
Because let me tell you how fast it goes.
You know how fast it's going to go?
You're going to be.
Oh, you got to live off the cram.
All right.
What's going to happen?
They're going to fly.
Oh, yeah.
God, I was just trying to make a small little analogy here.
They're never going to let you live that down.
Dude, this is insane.
How I really like it.
Do you have the link or you don't have the link?
Put it in the chat and also put in the description.
That is amazing.
Guys, I dare you to go try it and order one.
And you'll see how at least the strawberry one I just had is amazing.
I'm going to take that with me to the house for the family to try it.
Dude, you're exactly who I thought this interview was going to be.
You're freaking awesome.
That's all I can tell you, man.
I'm a guy watching you from the outside, from the perspective of seeing how you're carrying yourself.
Also, a fan, you know, while you're fighting, rooting you on, just want to see that vision become a reality, that journey you're on of one day, you know, standing as the champion.
I think about that one clip with who's the Hispanic guy?
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day, and I'm like, man, what a, you know, that feeling to say one day this is going to become a reality that high to hold that up, not because of the checks or the payday, but the fact that it was part of your vision.
And I think as a fan, I'm looking forward to witnessing that day.
And matter of fact, when that fight is set up, I'll be courtside wearing a walk-on shirt just to represent you.
You know, when I say courtside, I mean ringside watching you too.
And then I'm flying back with you to Florida and we're right here.
Yes, even 1 million percent.
Five weeks from now.
Yeah.
November 12th, I believe is it is the day after Veterans Day.
We're all president.
We're all going to watch a fight at your house unless you're going there on a private jet or something like that.
We'll be there.
Why are you calling us out of this house situation?
We're going to be there.
Okay.
Let's watch it.
Mike Chandler doesn't put.
I'm just saying, let's watch it together.
Adam, we'll go half on the gas on the jet.
That's a fight I'm looking forward to.
Oh, my God.
Anyway, I'm excited.
So good to see you.
Thanks for coming out, man.
Really enjoyed it, gang.
Thank you guys.
I think the next one is tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.
