Ep 325: UFC Fight Night Recap. Gambling Probe. Jake Paul vs. Gervonta Davis is Off. Latest News.

Episode 325: Steve Garcia gets a statement win at UFC Fight Night. Questionable officiating. Gambling probe. Jake Paul vs. Gervonta Davis is canceled and more.















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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to MMA after Hours. It's Michael
Carlisle and Micah frankl.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Micah, what's going on?

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Man?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
What isn't going on? I'm just like going to ask
the question. But Steve, besides Steve Garcia, can we have
anything good this weekend?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Like?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Like, what the heck? Everybody like? Do better?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
You mean like big boxing matches being called off, fighters
getting released amidst gambling investigations, questionable officiating.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Did you like that.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
There's a journalist and I don't even know if this
dude like is attached to an actual MMA site or what,
but there's an X account out there that has thrown
out that there is possibly a hundred UFC fights under
investigation and that there could be a much further depth

(01:04):
of this gambling incident that wasn't initially detected. Fucking crap right, Well,
dam why can't people just go do their jobs? Stop
play nice?

Speaker 1 (01:17):
This is why and look, investigations and people actually doing
things two different things.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
But this is why the sports leagues.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Faught so long to keep gambling out of their sports,
to keep it strictly to Vegas and not opening it up.
And we all wanted it myself included, But this is
what comes with it.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Meanwhile, you got the f and NCAA.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Who's gonna now They did put a brief hold on it,
but unless something is overturned, they're going to allow student
athletes to bet.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
On pro sports. Doesn't seem quite right now.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Look, I'm certainly not anti gambling, anti betting on sports,
but when you open it up, that's my point to
hold to all this. It creates issues that have to
be dealt with that you can't ignore it because all
of a sudden, the integrity of the sports starts to
be brought up. Whether it's hey, look whatever's going on here?

(02:15):
And I get it, if it was a bigger name fighter,
maybe UFC doesn't immediately release him or whatever. But this
is a big enough deal that that dude's gone from
the company.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
It seems to be a very big deal. And in
the allegations that that X account was throwing out, there's
an allegation that the UFC might have had an earshot
warning that there was something going on with this fight
and still decided to roll through with the fight.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Well, that's certainly possible. Allegation, allegation. I don't have a
problem with that, because you can go back and fix
that later. I do leave this fight got pulled from
most sports books before it happened, or they just refunded
the money after the fight. If you want to catch

(03:11):
the person, maybe you gotta let the fight play out,
see what it looks like.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I don't know that I believe every random X account,
but I mean it doesn't sound out of the realm
of possibility either.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Once you start hearing about the NBA stuff and it
gets deeper and deeper, we have this one incident happen,
and unfortunately, you're just gonna kind of go back and
look through a microscope. I already saw people on X commenting,
remember when ty to I Vasa knocked out Derek Lewis,
and Derek Lewis kind of halfway took a knee and

(03:46):
then fell down. I've already seen people examining that when
you think something was fishy, this is the unfortunate side
of one of these things coming up. Now everyone's like, well,
what fight did you think look fishy that they didn't
catch and it's it's just a whole lot of negativity
that is brought on by this financial purpose of betting,

(04:06):
but it was a good bet to bet on Steve
Garcia bringing violence this past weekend.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
There was no question and let's go there first, no
question about that fight.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
You're right, Look Steve Garcia, and I didn't feel that
good about him coming in.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
I should have shame on me because he made it
look really damn easy against David Onama gets the first
round TKO.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
And he shoots up the UFC rankings.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Now the rankings are what they are, but he went
from twelve to eight off of this victory, leap frogging Patrichio, Pitbull,
Jean Silva, Josh Emmett, and Brian Ortega. All of a sudden,
Steve Garcia finds himself at number eight in the UFC's
featherweight rankings.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
I think that the fast start. David Onama likes to
be in economical, almost analytical fighter. He likes to kind
of start slow. He does have power, but he's not
the go getter that Steve Garcia is. Steve Garcia was
probably had an intense warmup, I'm guessing, because he looked

(05:15):
ready to go as soon as the whistle blow. And
I've seen quite a few people speculate I haven't heard
it from Onama that quite possibly that first overhand left
clipped him in the temple. And I don't think Onama
was right after that strike landed got in the face.
We're playing speed chess, beautiful combination. He's attacking from all angles.

(05:35):
He's not throwing the same combination. He's building on the combination.
He's ending with headkicks for emphasis, even though if they
don't look hard. And then I don't know if you
took stock of this, but there was about three or
four left hooks to the body that will were at
a not live watch party, but I was with several
people watching it, and every time we're like, look he's

(05:56):
ending the combination. Boom, stick to the body, stick to
the body, wearing away on that gas tank. Early you
had Onama in retreat. The overhands were great, and then
that teep kick took the life out of him. The
ground and pound. I don't think anybody feels that's an
early stoppage. Onama didn't look happy about it, but the
facts are there was nothing in that position that was

(06:18):
gonna stop Garcia from wailing on Onama besides the ref
jumping in no.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Look I'm with you, other than Onama.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
I don't think anybody can complain about that stoppage, and
he really doesn't have too much to complain about there either,
saw nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Note, look, it was
just a dominating performance by Steve Garcia. And look at
eight in the rankings, He's still got at least a
couple of fights before we can seriously talk about title

(06:45):
contention and title shots and all that. But I tell
you this, you look at the runnies on, he certainly
got the attention of a lot of people in that division,
and I don't know that that many people are jumping.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Up and down to face him right now.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
The feather division is screwy? Is all fing in it?

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Because I don't want to get to a lot of
the dramatics. First, let's talk about the featherweight division in
these rankings real quick, because I'll tell you I would
have Steve Garcia at six because as I made a list,
he was the seventh featherweight I put on it, and
the first one was the champion. Let me let me
break it down for you guys real quick. You're like, what, what?

Speaker 1 (07:22):
What?

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Maybe Mosar Evilov earns a title shot against Alexander Volganowski.
That's not off the table. He's one of the names
they're talking about. He has not fought all year. We
are rapidly approaching twelve months since Movsar has got a
win and they can't get him in the cage. It's
just a little screwy to keep maintaining when you haven't

(07:44):
fought all year. Arnold Allen hasn't posted a win a
win everybody since July twenty twenty four. We're going on
about a year and a half and he's still sitting
at the top of the rankings. Brian Ortega hasn't posted
a win since February of twenty twenty four, five months

(08:05):
longer than Arnold Allen. Josh Emmett hasn't posted a victory
since twenty twenty three and a couple of days ago.
I haven't looked at the rankings again at the bottom
because I was just looking for where Steve was. Giga Chakotse,
who was hanging out at fifteen last week, hasn't posted
a win since twenty twenty three. He might be out

(08:27):
of the rankings by now, but those were names that
were in there last week.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Right, Well, it's just he's ahead of Ortega and it
was an Emmett you mentioned as well.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
He's ahead of both of them. Arnold Allen is above him.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Obviously Evulove is as well, but yeah, he's already leaped Fraga.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
A couple of those guys.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, I'm not just talking about for Steve's sake, I'm
talking about why are they ranked at this moment when
we're talking about two years of the calendar since hosting
a victory. I'm in for fresh matchups, I'm in for
new faces. I'm in for you got to earn your spot.
It took long enough seven fights for Steve Garcia to

(09:09):
get here. Yusef Slaa has had to go on a
tear to get here, and it's incredible just the force
field that has become impenetrable almost that it took to
get past those names for these guys. When we're saying, well,
what are these guys doing? Will they have name recognition? Well,
that's great and now we're getting the correction in the division.
But it's just absurd to think that people that haven't

(09:30):
won in two years, we're still hanging out in the
top fifteen. And you're like, well, if we did have
him fight so and so he probably went, so that's
why we're keeping him there. But he doesn't fight. They
don't fight, or they don't win. It's just a little
bit weird. It's great now that Steve has made it
up there. It's just more of an examination about the
rest of the division, where like Dan Egay still hanging

(09:53):
out in the top fifteen. I'm pretty sure four and
four in his last eight, and unfortunately, I only think
one of those names was even ranked. So love Dan Ege,
no disrespect, but the featherweight division is it's in a flux,
and there's resistance by the people who make the rankings
to acknowledge it.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, I think not all those names all falling in
the same category.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Look like.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'm one hundred percent with you on Brian Ortega. I
don't even know why he's still in the featherweight rankings.
Dude can't make weight. He has a lot of problems.
He should probably be looking in another division. I would
argue a little bit on an Egay, I would argue
a little bit on an Island. I get your point,
and maybe a Zulal or Garcia at this point could

(10:43):
and should be above some of those other people. But
as far as just cracking the top fifteen, like out
with the old end with the new there's got to
be more guys who I think you said it, you
gotta earn it or whatever you got to earn that
shot into the top fifteen.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
So Danny Gay can be four and four in his
last eight and still be thirteen in the rankings.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
I guess. So I guess though, like I said, four
and four, you're just saying no one took away his spots,
So we're gonna keep giving him a number. And then
for the rest of the guys, hasn't one has it won?
Has it won? I'm like, if they're either haven't won
or have a fight, they're holding on to their rankings
just because well they haven't lost it yet. Well, if

(11:29):
they're not active, what does that mean? And maybe Mosar
is a good point of that. He's a top fighter.
I'm not saying that, but how many months do we
go without his name being booked? Like if it's Lron
Murphy and we don't see Mossar till the end of
next year, he's gonna hang out in the top twenty
for twenty or the top five for twenty months without

(11:50):
being active. It's just a little strange.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
That's gonna be the bigger issue for a Garcia or
a usefs Law or whom ever. It's not even finally
getting past an Ortega or Animmt or whatever and staring
up at Arnold Allen. You got Evylov, and I hear you,
and I actually agree with you one hundred percent. If
you ain't gonna fight at some point in time, you

(12:14):
gotta lose that spot. But he's probably not losing it,
so you're gonna have to leap frog him at some point.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
You're gonna have to leap fraud.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Diego Lopez, Hira Rodriguez seems to live in the top three,
top four, Murphy al Jermaine Sterling. You know, it's the
bigger hurdle I think, is leap frogging those guys or
going through them and getting yourself or earning yourself a
title shot.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Horrible segue, because it's gonna come up later. Are you
a betting man? But if you were, ouch, who fights
Alexander Volkanovsky next? Because there's three dudes realistically calling out
for the title shot, and in my opinion, only one
can do it, and the other two don't necessarily have
to fight each other, but they should be booking fights.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think the UFC really would like it to be Evylov.
Who the fuck knows there?

Speaker 1 (13:13):
So you asked me if I were a betting man, Yeah,
I probably would not put my money on evy.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Lov Murphy, I guess, or Sterling. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
I got a feeling it's gonna be Evy Love, because
if it was gonna be Murphy, we'd already book it.
We'd already book it. Also, again, I saw that there
was a quote this week from the John Anick podcast
that John Annick has heard of the contrary that it
seems that from inside the company doesn't appear that Lrol

(13:45):
Murphy is now leading that race. So if you're telling
me there's someone leading a race, I almost feel like
it might be a Diego Lopez rematch. But i'd rather
see move sar Evylov. That's what I'm holding out hope for.
It's either Murphy or every Love, because I don't want
to burn a Lopez Vulc rematch so quickly. We've seen

(14:06):
it before. I don't know if there's really that necessity
great win over Gene Selva huge star, great presence, but
that'd be burning out his title opportunity in the division
really quickly.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
All right, let's let's approach this from a little bit
different way. Steve Garcia moves up to eight in the rankings.
If you're UFC, what are you doing with him next?

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Did you say he jumped over josh Emmett. Yeah, well
he had called out josh Emmett because Josh Emmittt had
a name, more name recognition and was ahead of him.
Right at this point, it's arn't allowin.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
That's that's what I was thinking.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
Yeah, Or if Murphy really is that far out of flavor,
maybe I could see that match up maybe and either
Garcia makes a huge jump or he.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Comes back down to earth a bit.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Arnold Allen, Diego Lopez, if he doesn't get the title,
fy Al Jermaine Sterling. There are all possibilities at this point.
It's a great position to be in for Garcia. I'm
guessing he's on a pay per view in his next fight.
I just don't got a good inkling of which way

(15:24):
it's gonna go. He made a great case. He's already
fought two, if not three, guys from Factory X, so
he was in no rush to call out yusuf Za
lal the theory of how many cracks do I really
want to give one team at me if the UFC
is not gonna force it, not to mention the lall
being in onamous corner just spent probably a good twelve

(15:46):
weeks mimicking Garcia. I'm sure he's like, I'm not in
a rush to play that game.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Actually, kind of like that Arnold Allen matchup for Steve Garcia.
Should that come to Fruitionaria, it gets a performance of
the night, also getting a performance of the night Waldo
Cortez Acosta in your co main event and much like
Steve Garcia, Oklosta made it look easy as.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Well as we record there was a man, I'm an asshole.
Helene had did an interview with Herb Dean. Herb Dean
said there was gonna be a commission meeting. I'm not
sure where, not sure if it's gonna be teleconference like
we're doing right now, and they're gonna discuss ipokes. What

(16:36):
a great fucking time to do it, because we have
got to understand what we are doing because I don't
know what we're doing. I don't know how we're handling it.
H I'm gonna guess that to the enjoyment of most fans,
this was the most satisfactory outcome that we could end
up with. But how we got there was the screwiest

(17:00):
fucking thing I have ever seen. And if Anti Dalia
and his team do not appeal this and it has
not overturned to a no contest, it is again in
an admonishment of how commissions do not want to acknowledge
their own mistakes. Sidebar real quick. Somehow the Jake Matthews
lost to Neil Magni was uphelded by the Australian Commission

(17:23):
or whoever was overseeing that fight. And we're good on
the early stoppage that the ref messed up. We're all
really just gonna play like that one didn't happen. The
wind stays for Magni. Uh, And now we're gonna go
to this one where I would be shocked shocked if
anything happened.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Do we want to give everybody a playback just in
case they didn't see what happened? Sure, Anti Dahlia and
Waldo Cortez a Coasta. They are striking a Costa back
against the cage. They're in the middle of a combination.
It looks like they're both trying to parry the punches.
Dahlia ring finger right into the eye of Waldough Cortes

(18:02):
a Costa. It looks like the ref is not acknowledging
this because a Costa kind of grabbing his eye immediately.
They are still exchanging. Then he's covering up getting punched,
and the ref jumps in for the stoppage at a
point where you're not calling a foul. You're looking at
an overwhelmed opponent, and you were saving him for more damage.

(18:25):
It looked like a TTO finished, and then he's saying,
it's not a TKO finish. We're in a reviewed to
see if there was an eyepoke, but that's not what
we were doing. Because they opened the cage door and
the floodgates open like a fight was over, and then
we get, after five minutes of a whole lot of stuff,

(18:47):
the restart of a fight.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
I've got no problems with what happened, the way it
looked and the way they executed it, I think to me, anyway,
Micah is the problem comes in.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Maybe the referee was like, man, there might have been
an ipoke. Maybe there wasn't.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Let's see what happens, and he's like, oh shit, there
was an ipoke. I gotta step in for a second.
We got to check this out. I can live with that.
It's not maybe the most efficient way to go about it,
but I can live with it.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
But you're right, it sure seemed like he was stopping
the fight.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
H You open up the cage door, everybody comes in,
you're kind of thinking the fight's over.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
And then no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not
over again what they were trying to do.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
I don't have that much of a problem with the
execution of it, though fell really flat.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
You know why the fight was over because a cut
man or any corner person may not work on a
fighter during a time out for a foul. The fighter
may not return to their corner or sit on a
stool during a foul. The corners are not permit to
enter the cage during a foul or a timeout. All

(20:04):
three rules were broken in that moment, and that is
why the commission should probably overturn this to a no
contest because more than the ring, more than the epoke
nothing was handled accordingly, not to mention. Even when the
fight is resumed, the overhand lands walthough Cortes a coast

(20:27):
to triumphant miraculous comeback victory, huge huts buff from him
to overcome the agony of the eye pain, which he
falls down then acknowledging he and he tells the doctor,
you can clearly hear it. I can only see twenty percent.
You know they're going to stop the fight. Wait, wait,
I can see thirty it's starting to clear up. It's
starting to clear up. Goes to the post fight interview.

(20:50):
It ain't clear enough for shit. I can't see a
fucking thing right now. I'm so glad that the Commission
puts in some kind of inspection and examination, covering the
healthy eye, putting up the fingers. No, they never did
any of that shit. They literally just ask fighters, are
you okay? Can you continue? Can you see? No kind

(21:10):
of actual inspection to ensure fighters safety. It's it's great
that he lied and got the victory, but I don't
understand what we're trying to do here by stopping a
fight for an eyepoke. If we're not worried about the eye,
and if the fighter can see to resume it, or

(21:30):
if we just want fights to continue, what are we doing.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Couple things with that?

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Unless the eyeballs hanging out or there's just like massive
visible damage, you kind of.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Have to take the fighter's word.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
The look we all like to see. Cover your eye?
How many fingers am I holding up? The truth of
the matter is Micah, And I think you probably know
this as well. That's complete and utter bullshit. As long
as you can see something, there's there's a decent chance
you can make out enough shapes to correctly guess the
number of fingers they're holding up.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Now, you're right.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
They didn't even apparently do that here, But even if
they had it, he could have bullshitted his way through it.
My bigger not issue, but fascination. Everybody shit all over
aspen all a couple of weeks ago. For I can't see,
I can't see, we can't.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Go on all right? Oh my god, what the hell?

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Ask me on?

Speaker 1 (22:24):
I didn't want to fight, and now we're gonna shit
on Waldo corteso Costa. For oh, I can see. Oh,
it's getting better, it's getting better. I'm fine, we're good,
we're good. And then oh, maybe he wasn't being honest.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
We find out after the fight, you know, all of us.
We can't have it both ways.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Either a fighter is a coward for saying I can't see,
or he's full of shit in a bullshitter for saying,
oh no, I'm good. It is getting better, is getting better.
It's gotta be one way or the other. It can't
be both, right.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
I thought I was the only one calling out Corteza
Costa for not being able to see. I've seen some others,
not a ton, but yeah, and I thought I was
one of the few that was like Tom Aspinall was right,
get your ass the fuck out of there. I feel
like I'm consistent. If you can't see, you shouldn't be fighting, right.
There's no commission that should have ever signed off on
letting Michael Bisbee get in the cage as many damn

(23:15):
times as they did.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
No, Look, I wasn't coming after you or saying you
were wrong, or saying I was just saying everybody in general.
I was just I was maybe and maybe I over
generalized it, but I was just in a generalized term.
We can't shot on Aspinall and then turn around and
shit on a coast to two because that's what we
wanted Aspinall to do, but he didn't, and we wanted
a coast to do what Aspinall.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
You know, I guess I should have just said to you,
am I being consistent instead of drawing out how I'm consistent. Sorry,
I just wanted to make sure I was consisted. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
No, no, no, no, you're you're good, You're good. No, it
was a wonky sitsue.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Oh, by the way, they're not overturning this one either,
and I told you not because it wasn't the fighter's fault.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Look that things were mishandled, no doubt about that, and that.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Has to be executed better.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
But much like the Magni decision in Australia, I told
you they weren't gonna overturn it, they ain't gonna overturn
this one either.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
That's and that brings up my bigger point. These decisions
of earning your toning in these fights need to be
taken out of the hands of the commission, and much
like the NFL has to go or MLB for contracts,
you need to find a third party arbitrator to analyze
these situations instead. Because commissions don't want to give themselves
a black eye and call out their own mistakes. But

(24:31):
this was an obnoxious amount of mistakes. And I understand
you only want to do right by the fouled fighter,
But the fighter that doesn't speak English either had many
reasons to believe that the fight was over from the
amount of rules that were not followed. So consistency should
be consistent. We want all fighters to have a fair

(24:54):
shake and to be treated equally, and the rules should
matter that it's just in asinine, it's a what are
we doing here? What are we doing here? If you
just want dudes to fight, well, don't worry about the
ipokes and keep letting them fight. If the guys are
not going to be able to see and continue to
fight anyway, what are we doing here?

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Now?

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Look, I want a ten minute time out, a thirty
minute time out. We can run a bunch of commercials,
a couple of UFC promos, send the guy to the
back at full eye care, bring him back out if
letting the fight continue is the only thing that matters.
If not, and the rules matter, the rules should matter,
and turning fights to no contests after the referee blunders

(25:36):
the Procedures should be easy. I mean, I don't want
to make this like law, but criminals get off all
the time because cops mess up the smallest procedure. I mean,
referees are overseeing the safety of both fighters. Procedures should matter.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
I think Waldo Corteza Coaster is about to get off.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Using your analogy.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Look, don't I don't think you wrong in anything you're saying, Mike.
I just and yes, there should be some sort of
repercussions for the referee there, for anyone who let people
in the cage and let fighters on stools and let
cut men up there. I'm with you. You're not taking
that victory away. You're just not right, wrong whatever, You're

(26:21):
just not. Should there be a better understanding, Should there
be better training? Should the referee have been more clear?
I think the answer to all those things is yes.
I don't think you're I just you're you're not overturning
that decision.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
You're just not.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, they don't want to look bad and they don't
want to acknowledge it. I get that cowards cowardice, total cowardice.
Much like the next guy we're gonna bring up.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Oh my goodness, Look, at you. You're on a roll today.
You're not impressed with Jeremiah Wells.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Oh shit, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no no.
I thought we were just gonna jump straight into the
gambling shit guy, I hang bt, I thought we were
just in the hot topics.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Okay, well that's fine, because look, great win for Wells.
But eh, whatever, real quick, real quick.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yeah, Tim Bogarombo started hot, got cold, got out wrestled.
Good win for Wells, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
No, look, it was a nice win.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
But when you talk about whether it's controversy, excitement, whatever,
all right, main event, co main event, and then the
other big story and maybe over even overshadowing those first
two is the fight we're about to talk about now
that that gets pulled from the sports books. At least
one fighter for the time being anyway, ain't with the

(27:39):
UFC anymore.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
And there's a big investigation now.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Islac Dougleigerian was submitted in the first round by Yadier
del Bali, And unfortunately for mister del Bali, it's not
like this one's gonna be overturn of funk. No, no, no,
Just because the guy through the fight does not mean
we're gonna overturn the win. Just because we knew he
was gonna throw the fight doesn't mean we were gonna

(28:04):
stop the fight. We wanted to make sure we could
catch him throwing the fight, and the suspicion of the
fight ending in the first round for del Vally, where
all the money came in at, proved to be true
as he gets a rear naked choke. Dugal garian a wrestler, wrestler,
wrestler as we know, went to get his wrestling on,

(28:26):
didn't look like himself. His back ends up being taken
and after kinda sorta fighting off of the position for
what was quite a while at least, he then succumbs
to a rear naked choke. And now we have the
controversy because the obscure better padding that was observed is

(28:47):
actually correct.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
This fight will get overturned, that this will wind up
a no contest. The neither fighter probably knew this at
the time, but my guess is before they walked out
to the octagon, officials knew, yeah, we're gonna see how
this plays out, and if what happens happens that we
think is gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
This is gonna wind up being an o contest.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
There was a lot going on here, the wonky betting
patterns that caused red flags with the sports books, the
fact that Dulgarian looked like I think I'm being kind
way to say this look like shit, and you start
connecting dots after the fight. I don't know how hard

(29:37):
they look into this, but it should not be hard
to connect any and all dots that you need to
connect to know that something wonky was going on here.
The sports books were right to raise red flags and
to pull this, and USC was probably right for discontinuing
their relationship with Dulgarian.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Do you want to hear something really interesting?

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Uh, unless you've got what I forgot. I bet I've
got something more interesting, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Dark Minnors wint Dark Minnor's loss to shy land Nerdarbekov
is still considered a win for NERD on the back
of that scrupulous fight was never overturned to a no
contract point after we knew Minner through the fight. Just
wanted to look back at the most recent incident or

(30:26):
example where someone through a fight and was caught by
the UFC and him and his coach have now been
all right. Taken out of this and there's a connection.
There's a connection.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Oh oh okay.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, and look, you're right, maybe this doesn't get overturned.
I think it has a much better chance of getting
overturned than the Coaster fight, where I thought you were
gonna go and maybe you were just gonna get there
or knew I was gonna do it. Theulgaria and trains
out of Factory X in Colorado, right right, you know
where he trained at before.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
That glory Mma and camp with James Krause and Molina Minner,
that full crew. They were actually the sister brother Jim
to Factory X. That's why a lot of them just
moved over to Colorado after the gym disbanded.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
And for those who need a quick refresher, the UFC
IS band fighters some associating with.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
James Krause back in twenty twenty two. Why did they
do that, Micah?

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Because he was gambling, giving away gambling advice, giving away
insider information for gambling, and possibly fixed that minror fight,
or at least encouraged his injured athlete to still fight
knowing the shit was going to go down in a
couple seconds, and then gave that to his discourse.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Right now, that in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean
that something had to have happened here. But when you've
got everything else and then you add this on top
of it, again, if you're trying to connect dots, it
makes it a whole lot easier to draw that line
from this dot to that dot, and that dot to
that dot, and back over here to this dot and

(32:03):
just go around to all the dots pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
You know. It just raises a lot of questions because
MMA and boxing gyms are different environments than and this
is going in a whole different direction. I'm sorry if
we didn't plan to get here. Different environments than NFL, MLB, NHL.
You want to go to your major sports leagues, they

(32:28):
work in exclusive environments for them. On the other side,
I just look at this incident and I wonder it'd
be hard to wonder did anybody from syndicate Katoor, Ray
Long Goes Jim You ever see al Jamine Sterling was
totally fucked up before the Sean O'Malley fight. Anybody see

(32:49):
that TJ. Dillashad didn't have an arm before walking into
his last title fight against Sterling. You never know how
the information will play out in an MMA gym accidentally
in the betting world compared to these other major betting scandals.
That's just something for people to think about, because betting

(33:12):
is gonna be affected by these things in a different
way in these sports because you're not in that inclusive
environment where it's easier to keep things secret. There's so
many people that are gonna see you. Now these obviously
there is not that circumstance because this one is dirty.
It just leads me to think it's hard to regulate
some of this stuff in MMA.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Well, not only that, Mike, this is a sports problem worldwide.
You've had five or six NFL players suspended for gambling
in the last two years. Major League Baseball, thank god
for the interpreter, because you had a major scandal involving

(33:53):
arguably the biggest star in the game in Shoheio Tani.
You've had it in college athletics very very recently. Now,
each sport's different and unique in their own way, and
certainly the MMA side of it comes with its own set,
so like you go about it a little differently. Obviously,
the the NBA scandal from just a.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
But while for our purposes we are focusing on the
MMA side of it, this ain't just an MMA problem
or a UFC problem, or a boxing problem or a
combat sports problem. This is a sports betting problem, every
damn sport. And the reason there were only a couple
of places for so many years you could bet on

(34:38):
sports is this very reason.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Again? And do go ahead do Gougarian this week also
talking about betting. I'm not sure if you caught it.
He did a podcast where he even said fighters should
get a part a percentage of bets that go in
on them if they're successful and victorious. Maybe betting was
on his mind a little bit too much.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, that's very possible. But here's the bigger issue.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
I don't know of a single way you can keep
this from happening.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Now.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Thankfully, there are a lot of safeguards in place, so
a lot of this stuff gets caught. But let's just
play Devil's advocate. So this one causes red flags. What
we know about the NBA situation. A couple of weeks ago,
I've mentioned several NFL players who have gotten caught gambling
and face the consequences for everyone that's caught.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
How many aren't called.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
That's what I was talking about. You know who knew
about what injury? I mean, you're looking at and sorry
to jump off topic again to the NBA, but you're
looking at a lot of the controversy. There was insider
information given away on who was or wasn't playing before
the betting lines were able to get adjusted. That the
biggest problem because they found out, like in some of

(36:02):
those scenarios beforehand, that that's the same as an injured fighter.
And we've seen that there are no safeguards to stop
injured fighters from getting past the commission. So it's even
harder to regulate who knew what, as I was pointing
out earlier in the gym family wise, because these fighters
do go in quite possibly with mangled limbs and a

(36:25):
lot of bravado.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
And that's exactly illustrates Micah how easily stuff like this
could happen.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
And how on some level it could seem innocent.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Now, in this particular case, I don't think this is
what happened, but generally speaking, you're in a gym where
a fighter trains and he's training for a big fight,
and you know he's injured. Hey, this guy's hurt. I
should go put some money on it. Hey, let me
tell my buddy about it.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
It doesn't I.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Can see how it wouldn't seem like that big of
a deal, but it obviously is. And the more people
tell other people about it and all, and all of
a sudden, everybody's got all this inside information again.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
And I'm not knocking.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
It, because I was as happy as anybody when sports
bettings started opening up. But this is why all these
sports leagues feel so long fought it tooth and nail
until they finally just gave in.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
And I'm not sure what we're supposed to do to
say it's not okay, Like there's insider information, and there's
a lot of people that have nothing riding on this
that you're gonna come in contact with again the ufc
PI unless you demand and force every athlete to go

(37:40):
there so they're only seeing each other. You don't have
this bring into Quite a few of the local gyms
I've been at. They have their own chiropractor, their own
recovery people that work in the building. But those people
have their own practice. So the amount of everyday people
that are walked loo in and out of that business

(38:02):
they go to strength and conditioning. They do group classes.
Half of the people in there are business people that
have early morning jobs or late jobs early mornings, you
know what I mean. So it's not like you're just
around the athletes. So it's a lot harder to control
this insider information because our athletes are exposed to so

(38:22):
many more people than you get on some of those
higher levels. It just seems like if a lot of
people bet a little amount, it wouldn't go traced. It's
the people that there were. And bringing this up because
I heard from the Google Guaran case there were five
staggeringly large bets that all came in around the same

(38:43):
time for the same number, and that's what flagged the
more than one hundred dollars drop in the market. And
if they didn't go so balls out, we might not
know about this.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Look, I don't want to sound defeatus, but there's no
way you're ever going to stop all of this. It
doesn't mean you shouldn't try, It doesn't mean you shouldn't
put your best foot forward. But even let's just go
to the extreme and we'll try to keep it on
UFC here. If you fight for UFC, if you train
a fighter that fights for UFC. If you work in

(39:18):
a gym that has UFC fighters, you can't bet. I'm
just saying, new rule, you can't bet, all right, But
that doesn't do anything to combat Hey, so and so,
my little hurt leg, go do with that what you will.
And you're sharing info with your buddies, you know it's

(39:38):
and look, we've all heard this before. There's a very
famous story when a previously undefeated champion.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Lost her belt in Australia.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
The winning fighters team before that fight, they were so
confident she was going to win, they went out and
put a bunch of money on her. Now, nothing illegal
about that, you were putting your money on your fighter
to win. But my point is you have to eliminate
all of that, whether it's betting on your fighters or
against your fighters.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
But again, even that doesn't solve the problem.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
So I'm not one hundred percent sure what the answer is, Micah.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Like you said, oh, you can't bet, surrogate betters. What
now we're going to extend it to your family members,
to everybody in your tree. And the funny part about
this to me and I understand the hardships of insider
trading but all of it's a gamble. That's what this
literally is is a gamble. None of this is a lock.

(40:40):
And when you put together a bet and you allow
people to bet on it, you yourself are gambling. So
I understand where we're going is that companies want to
eliminate any way that they can to lose money. As
they are the company that shifts the odds and moves
the odds constantly to entice betters, they are very upset

(41:04):
when when they are on the latter end of being
fucked with, even though because of the laws that they
have created, what happens to them is illegal.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Right and see, and that's the problem, and you just
touched it that there at the beginning of that, Mica.
Even if you did everything I just said and barred
people fighters and people associated fighters from gambling, all that
does is open up the insider trading even more because
once you do, hey so and so is hurt, or hey,
go put this bet down for me, whatever, it just

(41:35):
makes it easier the next time to give insider information
or have someone else bet for you. So you're even
doing that, you're not stopping, You're not. Maybe it helps,
maybe it doesn't, but you're not solving the problem, You're
just opening up new avenues for the problem to defester.
It's it's a serious issue that a lot of sports

(41:55):
leagues are dealing with right now. Obviously this came up
on the MMA front because of that fight on Saturday
and the fallout from that.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
But it's tough, man.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
It's tough. I don't see how you police this. It's
all a risk and from the company side, they try
to police it, and from the better side, you win
or you lose and you live with it.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Ye what else stood out to you on the fight night, Micah?

Speaker 3 (42:25):
On the fight night? What else stood out to me? Well,
we had so many talking points. This was the big things.
There was a lot of finishes that was fun to see.
Norma Dumont won her six in a row. I believe
that should mean something in the women's bandweight division because

(42:46):
we have no clue how that division is going to
play out either. I'm sure that the UFC will try
to prolong Dumont from getting a title shot for as
long as possible, but I just don't know what you're
doing with the women bandaweight division. If there is no hope,
if there is no way to climb or excel. There
are three fighters, maybe four, that were interested in and

(43:09):
they could literally cut everyone else and it wouldn't matter.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
That's very sobering, but I don't disagree.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
No, it's the reality that you've led me down where
I wanted to say that this mattered, and I've heard
a lot of other people saying it mattered, but you
would probably argue and be right, and I could hear
it in my head before I wanted to say this mattered,
that they will find some way to have Pennington, Penya
Harris and Nunez rematch each other for a very long time,

(43:37):
and none of these other women are going to be
able to crack that bubble. So it's very hard to
care about the division. If winning a shit on a
fights in a row, it's still not going to deem
you good enough to fight one of the upper echelon names.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Here's the problem if you're making these fights, if you're
a fan of these fights, those are the fights you
want to see, though, you know you want to see
some combination of Penia Harris and Penia Nuniaz, Pennington, Harris
and Pennington.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
You know that's what you want to see. Not being disrespectful.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
You don't want to see Yanna Santos, you don't want
to see Caitlin Vieira, you don't want to see Norman Dumont,
not while those other fighters are still at or near
the top of their game.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
And but you're one hundred percent right. You could go top.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Four and Nunyaz isn't in the rankings, but add her
to it and just cut everybody else and it wouldn't matter.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
We haven't heard a peepe from Juliana Penya talking about
fighting again recently, we haven't heard anything from Rockel Pennington.
And imagine Nunyaz, even while retired, never left this conversation.
So it's not even while they're here and they're performing,
it's just no one has cracked the bubble because they
don't even have to be active talking about fighting, getting

(44:56):
ready to fight. They are the feather where it's I
was complaining about and they're still here. Well do Norma
Dumont is like, bro, I'm the only one in this
forest swinging an axe. I'm the only one providing firewood
to the village, But you guys are still hireling these
lumberjacks of the past.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Well and again, that's what complicates the issue.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
If you're Payina, you're not going to take another fight,
No I got I won't winner of Harrison Nuniaz and
Harrison Nuniaz fight. Hell, maybe there's an immediate rematch after that,
which further prolongs that. Pennington, I'm sure feels the same way,
although she might not have quite as strong an argument
as Juliana Penia does about no, I'm only fighting for

(45:39):
the title or or fighting one of those three. But
so that just further logjams the things at the top
of that division. And again, not being disrespectful to anyone else,
but it makes the rest of that division very insignificant.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Yeah, because of the log jam, because of the unwilling
to fight other names, because of this unbreachable bubble that
the matchmakers have allowed that top Echenlan to create.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, it's it's crazy situation. Anything else from fight night.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Uh, if you're gonna choke a man unconscious, Yeah, because
none of us thought you acknowledged the tap. You probably
shouldn't say later that you felt the tap. You could
have just you know, let him go. I mean, there
is an argument to the Bowster could allied because the
ref wasn't on that side, so you had to put

(46:34):
him to sleep because the ref wasn't stopping the fight.
But it felt like the uh morally right thing to
do to not choke the man unconscious as everyone could
see him tapping like isn't there a commission member possibly
somewhere throwing in a towel screaming, this dude is tapping
like damn oh.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Look, the referee is in charge in there. I got it. Sucks.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
I got no problems with that at all. I'm not
letting him up because then the referee says, what are
you doing? And all of a sudden, guy starts recovering
and he comes back and kicks my ass.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
You know it's Look, but we.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Could call a time out and go to the replay.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
No, the referee can call a time out and go
to replay.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Well, I mean if i'm too if I'm choking you
out and I feel you tapping, I can't let go
and say go to the replay. You know, I look again,
it's flawed. Officiating needs to be better. But I would
I would have I would not have let go let
go either.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
And I wouldn't have admitted that I felt the top
that I acknowledged it that, yeah, I was there. I'd
have just said nope, I didn't see nothing. The referee
hadn't stopped the fight, Because what's the benefit of saying, oh, yeah,
I felt the man surrendering to me. I just knew
the ref wasn't on the right side, so I didn't
let it go. I think you just looked like an
asshole saying that, even though you're in a hard place,

(47:55):
you look like a fucking asshole. You're like, oh, you
could have just went with the Oh you didn't feel
the tap. Oh no, there was a tap. Oh I
saw the replay. He was tapping on the canvas. He
wasn't tapping on me. I didn't notice.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
He should have just said I was waiting for the
referee to break us up. Yeah, all right, he probably
comes off across like an asshole.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
But just because the fighters tapping, you don't let go
and we all know this, maybe yeah, he should have
he should have said it differently. I'm with you on that,
but I don't have a problem with what he did.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
I don't have a problem with what he did. I
don't have the problem with the referee. I got the
problem with what he said, because if we're going to
crucify Tom Aspinall for not fighting because he can't see,
I'm a crucify a guy for being like I felt,
someone surrendering me. I decided continuing to crush him was
the best thing for me. Em It doesn't, but.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
It was because him tapping doesn't mean shit until the
referee says he's tapping.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Let go. I'm with you. It's a bad look.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
I agree, and the referee maybe could have been in
a better position, maybe not. Maybe it was just unfortunate.
But out of all the things we've talked about so
far today, this is the thing I.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Have the least of an issue with.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Well, my issue and I get increasingly matters the show
goes on because you and I know, inevitably none of
this matters because it doesn't affect the gambling lines, and
it didn't sports books. That shit's gonna get investigated. The
rest of this doesn't fucking matter.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong on that.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
So a very eventful UFC fight night at the Apex
this past Saturday.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
We've got another one this Saturday at the Apex. We'll
talk about that in a couple of minutes. What you
got for fight announcements.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
For fight announcements for this week for the UFC, you
got a couple of hot nuggets. We get Miles John's
and Daniel Marcos are going to be fighting November eighth.
This one has seen Miles Johns go through two opponents,
Marcos go through one. These two guys were like two
ships lost in the sea and they finally found land

(50:06):
together to be able to fight again this year. I
think they're both really thankful just to be able to
fight after the amount of replacements and situations they just
went through. We also get Giga Chakatse versus Kevin Valjos
is going to be coming up on November thirteenth. That
is in addition to Luana Santos versus Melissa Cordon and

(50:29):
Lucinda Lucinda is out, Amanda Lamoys versus Gillian Robertson. All
three of those fights December thirteenth and under the radar,
all three of those might affect the rankings. We're talking
about featherweight, the women's abandon weight division or flyweight division

(50:51):
there and then the women's strawweight division, so all three
fights can have an effect on the title picture. Going forward.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Yep, it'll be interesting.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Did you want to get to the other controversy from
this past week.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Or yeah, we can and we don't have to spend
a lot of time on it, but we should bring
it up. MVP and Netflix have officially pulled the plug
on the Jake Paul Tank Davis event that was scheduled
to take place Overber fourteenth in Miami.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
That has been canceled. If you've been living under a.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Rock, Davis is facing a lawsuit over domestic violence accusations.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, micah I
said MVP and Netflilix pulled the plug on this fight.
I'm guessing this was Netflix that pulled the plug on
this fight. But not happening, MVP says Jake Paul and

(51:46):
still intends to fight on Netflix before the end of
the year, and they're hoping to rebook.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Something with that, but this event will not be happening.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
The event will not be happening. What was that reason
you gave again?

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Civil lawsuit by an ex girlfriend alleging domestic violence.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I literally don't know, don't want to look it up
and don't want to put the energy into it. How
many times, Gervonte Davis has had a lawsuit filed or
cuffs put around his wrists for allegations of domestic violence.
When you associate in the the gambling market, as we

(52:32):
had been talking about this show, you understand who you're
getting in bed with. You understand who you're working with.
Did Jake Paul like wake up yesterday?

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Did?

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Is he new to boxing? Like? Like? Supposedly, this guy's
been in the combat sports scene and Most Valuable Promotions
is a serious boxing promotion. From what I understand that
that's true. Right, Mmmm, I'm seeing they're acting like they
just figured out this dude's got issues.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
That's why I think this was a Netflix call and
not an MVP call. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
saying that they were waiting for a lawsuit to be filed.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
But like you said, you knew who you were working
with here.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Not to desensitize it either, but this isn't the most
surprising thing to happen.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
My guess would be.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
This fight wou've gone forward, but Netflix said no, We're
not going to do that.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
And again that's just me speculating. I could be wrong
as hell.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Maybe Jake Paul is actually a very moral guy and said,
no way, I'm fighting this fucker and helping him get
money to buy his way out of this lawsuit.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
That's entirely possible as well, if I were a betting man.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Maybe not the right analogy to use, based on what
we've talked on on this show, But if I were
a betting man, I would say, Netflix is the one
who pulled the plug here.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Oh, you're fine. It's not an insider information. You don't
know for sure, so you're more than able to throw
it out there. They'll take your money. You didn't have
insider information on it. They'd love to take your money.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Yeah, this is true.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
They would have went through with it if there wasn't
a new lawsuit filed. There was a recent allegation against
Tank and there's allegations that, you know, quite possibly there
was a financial transaction that led the witness allegedly to
no longer wanting to pursue the case that was in play,

(54:35):
and it seemed like that opened up the avenue and
now someone else has come forth. Jake Paul, I can't
find the quote now, but I did see it earlier
circling around social media. I'm pretty sure as from one
of the MMA sites where he equivalentd Gravante Davis to
a piece of human excrement. Yeah, if thou protests a

(54:58):
little bit too much, Again, you knew who you were
getting in bed with. Oh, he was a horrible business partner.
He was flippant, he was disingenuous from the project, he
was distant from the project. It seems like there's a
lot of hurt feelings about money. Again, everything seems to

(55:18):
have this kind of commonality in what we're talking about today,
that when the money falls out of the bottom from
a company, there's a lot of venom to be felt back.
There's nothing incorrect with Jake Paul Saidding categorizing Gravante Davis.
But this isn't an isolated incident. This is the exact

(55:39):
kind of your untrustworthy actions that leads Dana White to
not wanting to put John Jones on a White House
card because you look at that athlete as just a
business partner who is not going to be able to
fulfill all of his obligations. This isn't a surprise to
many people. I'm not sure where we go from this. Besides,

(56:04):
how much more could the bubble burst on the Jake
Paul experience, when you are already we're taking a guy
on that's sixty pounds lighter than you.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Well, if he does fight before the end of the year,
and that seems to be the plan, if they can
make it work, maybe we get someone closer to his size.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Whether it's his size, they won't have his experience. If
they have his size, they'll definitely be way older. You
will never get the desired boxing performance semblance from a
Jake Paul experience. He has a quote also at the

(56:48):
end of the statement that he made about Gravonte Davis
where it says anyone anywhere, anytime or any place one
of those classic kind of boxing fight or votes he
forgot to throw in there. As long as we choose you,
and you drive big enough crowd and you sell enough tickets,
then all those other first things actually apply. But the

(57:11):
second things matter much more. I have heard some possibilities
out there, and my guess is, yeah, we're gonna find it.
Won't be in ghanu Uh.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
We'll find out sooner rather than later, because there've already
been enough people who said they would do it and
Jake Paul's turned them down. So my guess is they
have someone in mind, and we're gonna find that out
sooner rather than later.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
I was gonna ask, of the names that are being
thrown out, there is there one that would intrigue you, because.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
I know no I know Nate Dias said he would
do it, and basically Jake Paul said thanks, but no
thanks Francis and Gan who said, don't insult me with
this shit not being said for the right dollar amount,
I could probably handle being insulted, but maybe not for Francis.
But I guess is we'll find out sooner rather than later,

(58:03):
and they will get this reschedule before the end of
the year, and it will be what it will.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Be, nothing more, nothing.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Less, nothing more, nothing less. Most intriguing thing that I
saw at MVP Promotions recently. I believe there's rumors that
the Holly Holme Stephanie Hahn fight that's been alleged that
could be taking place in Puerto Rico, in the home
base of MVP Promotions. There had been a lot of

(58:30):
speculation that that could have been happening in the Southwest,
as the two fighters do live more a mere four
hours apart, driving wise, that it could happen. A lot
closer here to home. MVP Promotions still doing a lot
to try to build women's boxing, and then they do
other stuff like this, Micah.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
We got UFC Fight Night this Saturday. Before we get
to that, what else have we got this week?

Speaker 3 (58:55):
This week? The LFA is back in Brazil. Real quick,
go over to Cage Minds. There was some BKFC this
past weekend, and I do have one more thing if
we have time before we get out of here, that
I did want to bring up to you from last weekend.
It actually does don on me now there was something important.
But this weekend we are back at the Apex for

(59:16):
UFC Vegas one to eleven Gabriel Bonfime versus Randy Brown.
What you have here is it's not full blown striker
versus grappler. I'd give more of like a seventy thirty
maybe sixty forty to bon theme in that area of
being a grappler to a striker. For Randy Brown, straight striker.

(59:37):
We've seen him start to put it together. His last
knockout victory so incredible. The commentary team screaming out, how
can this man not be ranked? Look at what he
just put together. You've seen me have many of conversations
with Randy Brown about his job, about his footwork, about
his striking background and acumen. Coming from that traditional martial

(59:58):
arts background. Takes on a Gabriel bonfime that if there's
one thing about the Bond theme, Brothers, they have a nasty,
nasty guillotine bonfime. He needs to have some smooth takedowns
to be successful in this fight. He kind of stalled
out against the cage a lot in his last fight.
He has to make this one a grappling oriented affair

(01:00:18):
to have success. I think you have more natural power,
more experience there on the feet. The high level experience
from how long he's been in the octagon sits in
the favor of Randy Brown. But he's a guy that
if he ends up on his back, he tends to
not get up a lot. He can get stalled out
in that position. So if Bonfiem has gotten his takedown
game together, I think he makes it a long night

(01:00:40):
for Brown. But the longer this one stays on the feet,
the more chance it is that Rude Boy puts together
a highlight reel finish.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
I think this will be a fun fight.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
I do like Bond theme here, just a little bit
your co main event Matt Schnell and Joseph Morales.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
It's been a long time since we've seen an Ultimate
Fighter winner kind of get that next level bump. And
I don't know if you'd agree with me on this
real quick. You're probably not gonna like the sidebar, but
does it feel like that the Ultimate Fighter might feel
like the lowest and not a replacement fighters the lowest entry,
but that the Ultimate Fighter of the avenues into the
UFC might get treated as the lowest avenue. Now, I

(01:01:22):
feel like Road to UFC winners and Contender Series winners
get a little more prestigious of a debut and a
kind of talking up highlight before they make the debut
than what we've seen from the last couple Tough winners.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Not only that, but you could very easily argue that
that's a quicker path a Contender Series road to UFC
than going through the Ultimate Fighter as well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
So yeah, I'm with you. The Ultimate Fighter.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Is I don't I'm not sure it ever goes away,
but it might be wearing out its usefulness.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
And this is probably the biggest spot that an Ultimate
Fighter win has had in a long time. Joseph Morales,
and this is his second time around. He was unsuccessful, hit
the regional tune, some stuff up, he came back. That
was an upset victory to pull off the tough finale win.
He is a solid guy who seems to have been
improving where match now. He has a lot of experience,

(01:02:17):
He has a good finishing ability. He can punch well.
His submission game is slick, but his punch resistance is
probably at the lower end of the elite level of
fighting at this point. So this one, anything is in
play because every time I've wanted a Riote off a match,
now it seems like he's able to pull one out
and you're just like, what, this is not what we calculated,

(01:02:39):
Like thought he was dead to rights coming back against
Jimmy Flick, had a great performance where I thought Jimmy
Flick had turned a corner. So this one has two
guys that are just rugged. They've grinded, they've they've chipped away.
I don't say it's gonna be a bar and burner,
but it really could be a coin toss on which
guy gets the finish. But I don't think we get
all the way to a decision here. Feature fight. This

(01:03:00):
one I think is going to be excited. One seventy
Muslim Solikov forty one years old, timeless, wonders, so much experience,
King of kung Fu, the guy with a highlight reel
knockout of Carlos Layal, massive upset there. I thought Layao
was just gonna run through him. He's taking on Euro's
medic Meditic. He was big, stupid, big cutn't too much

(01:03:20):
weight at one fifty five. At one seventy, It's been
mixed results. He can be an accurate sniper like striker,
but his defense can lack at points, and if that
chin gets tested, he can go to sleep. All that experience,
just the ability to trick you, lull you into sleep.
I really like Solokov in this one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I do too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Actually, bon Fime, we got two of them on the
car because Ismael bon Fime is also here taking on
Chris Padillo. Taco. It's not Tuesday, but he throws down
like crazy Padilla, probably more natural raw power. I think
he got more explosiveness and just strikes that will be

(01:04:01):
thrown out from bond theme and watch out for that
nasty guillotine. But I wouldn't be surprised if the power
playing out in beas factor and a guy that's just
really under the radar is a big difference. Ricky Simone,
Ioni Barcelos, two incredible grapplers. I think that you got
more athleticism and tenaciousness possibly coming out of Simone. But

(01:04:22):
last time I thought Barcelo wasn't tenacious enough. I believe
he grinded out Peyton call bit and no one remembers
that anyway, Tall bits ahead of him in the rankings
again real quick, that was like that never happened. Barcelos,
from my money, has bigger one shot power, but the younger,
more athletic Simone at this point has more upside. But

(01:04:44):
I can really see this playing out either way because
tend to underestimate Hyani Barcelos, marc o'tulo loooking to build
off of Norma Dumont his partner's victory. He is right
back in the octagon. Man, you think you could handle
two weeks straight in Vegas? Yeah, I've done it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
It was rough, but I've done it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Actually, But yeah, two talented middleweight Tulio taking on Chris
Leroy Duncan, more raw power, higher level of Jiu jitsu.
Coming out of Tulio CDL, he seemed like a top prospect.
He fell off. He's now got an acclimated to the octagon.
I want to worry about power, but he was just

(01:05:29):
able to handle Eric Anders in his last fight. Who's
going to be bigger, stronger than that linebacker in the clinch.
There's a lot of fluidity, a lot of spontaneous strikes,
and more of those dynamic strikes that will come out
of Leroy. But I think Marco Tulo is a pretty
sizable favorite coming into this one. People think that his fundamentals,

(01:05:50):
his physicality is just more applicable as I see the
feature prelum Hyder Amel Jamal Emmers. Emmers ultra athletic skills everywhere,
but he's just never really put it together. He's been inconsistent, hider,
a male, a little bit older of a guy I
believe in his thirties coming into the UFC, so somewhat overlooked,

(01:06:12):
but he has a multitude of skills and he's the
harder hitter in this fight. I like for him to rebound.
But Emers has been such a tenacious character that it's
hard to underestimate a veteran with more than three times
the pro experience as his opponent. Adrian Janyez is now
with Fortis MMA. He's going to bounce back against Christian Canyons,

(01:06:33):
who Canyonis hasn't stopped on the ground, but he gets
a boxer, so hopefully we get some excitement here playing
out on the feet. I say it, I say it,
I say it again. We need more heavyweights. Josh Hokit
is making his debut. He's not just coming out of
Jackson Winks. He is a formerly in camp with the
San Francisco forty nine ers. Interview with him up at

(01:06:56):
cageminds dot com. This isn't a fat heavyweight. This isn't
a letic heavyweight who has finished all of his opponents
on the regional scene and taking on a Max Geminis
in the in his debut Geminis ridiculous level of grappling
CGI IBJJF competitions. So Hokit, who has won all of

(01:07:17):
his fights with his wrestling, really going to be tested
here against a guy that knows how to play jiu jitsu.
Bring up the Penningtons earlier. We'll shout out Tisha's on
this one. Taking on a Denise Gomes. You always wonder
will the volume of Pennington and her athleticism continue as
she ages versus the raw power that comes from Denise Gomez.

(01:07:41):
This one is available for you. I Believe All the
Way again on ESPM plus four pm Eastern for your prelims,
seven pm for the main card this weekend. If you're
wondering if anything else is going on LFA Friday Night
on UFC Fight Pass, they are in Brazil with a
women's flyweight title fight Shannon Clark from Canada defense against

(01:08:04):
unbeaten Beatrice Kensulle. Good chance that the winner on that
short list of flyweights around the world that we could
see and drink the octagon And I'd be remissed this
week if we did not mention before we get out
of here, because we need more heavyweights. Gable Steveson is coming.
Uh he is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
And he's gonna be on the White House card.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
You wait and watch. That's how John Jones is getting
to the White House. He's going to quarter of Gable Stevenson.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
Oh, he will be there, but he will be with
his protege. What do you think of it's now being alleged.
I believe that John is Gable's manager.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
It seems about right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
It's not bad to have those connections, to have that
kind of poll. I just hope that there's someone else
negotiating the contracts.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
It's bad on so many levels, dude, and we don't
even have the time to get into it. From similar
past transgressions, saw those.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
Being talked about.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
This is horrible, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
I actually saw one MMA podcast that recounted his fight
and then said, sounds like a solid human being from
all my accounts, I was like, oh shit, you guys
don't google.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
Well, hell of a fighter and apparently can pack a punch,
and I look, maybe his status is a human being
doesn't matter, solid, not solid whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
I can't help but feel like this is not in
well for Stevenson. We'll see. I hope I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Does it matter if people are pieces of human excrement
in this industry? Just taking Jake Paul's words and articulating
them because we're selling intruction of the human body. Well,
I want to love the sport and say this is
the antithesis of the top level of competition of one

(01:10:09):
on one man versus man. We're destroying each other. Does
it matter how bad of humans they are.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
They're two p's in a pod and one can't protect
the other. That's the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Cageminds dot com, cage Minds Combat Sports News. That's YouTube
and Facebook, cage Minds, Underscore, csn X, TikTok oh, God,
possibly threads everywhere you got social media, and my fight
show a whole bunch of local guests coming on. Check
that out. Well, yeah, tonight you'll hear this drop and

(01:10:44):
then tonight I'll be on later like eight pm to
ten pm on social media talking to a whole bunch
of local people from a bunch of different varieties of
combat sports.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
You can get the show on x at MMA After Hours.
You can find me at Real Mike Carlisle.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
We will talk to you next week for another episode
of m m A After Hours.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
If you're on the After Hours podcast network.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Love combat Sports. I have a website for you, cageminds
dot com. That's c A G E. D M I
n d S dot com. Fight news from around the world,
in depth interviews, live event coverage covering combat sports for
over a decade. Established in April twenty eleven, that's cageminds

(01:11:34):
dot com.