The Rounds | June 18th 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I expected, Oh, I think we might be live DJ.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Three two one contact. I think there was a show
on PBS. This is not a show on PBS. Hey, everybody,
it's around the number one podcast in the world according
to those who have Yeah, I'm TG DeSantis. That's my
uh broadcasting soulmate over there. B mac Brandon mccatherine, Hello,

(00:23):
the Mouth of the South. Matt Alkins he's here as well.
And normally I say, Keelan can he can do so
many things, but apparently Kielan can't, so he's not here.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, he cannot be here today.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Did he just wake up? It's like, I can't. I
just can't.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Uh No, to be honest with you, I've got him
uh working like a dog on some PGF stuff. It
was like, Oh, should I come up there? I said, nope,
you should stay focused on the task you have.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're we worry.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
We got this.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
A week out from the PGF Season eight draft.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, that's crazy. This is like the first season of
the PGF in a lot of ways, it's our first
real attempt at the full league.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
I'm nervous.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
You know. It's interesting for me because it's like the
tipping point after the season. I will have been there
for half of all the PGF seasons, which is exciting
for me.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Your first one was four or five?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Five? Yeah? Five?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh you didn't. Oh that's right, because you didn't think
it was a good idea for a long for a
long time.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, okay, so for the first three didn't think it
was a good idea. I was like, this is crazy.
Team sports don't work in combat sports. I think I
was going to try to be there for season two
or three, but I had jobs that wanted to pay
me real money. This was before your money was real,
and now now the money is real. I mean no, no,

(01:50):
it's real. People are paying money to own things and
all that.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
It looks pretty real to me.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Pretty crazy, dude, It's it's as real as it gets.
As but one promotion dubbed itself.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Matt Elkins, you were an integral part of this project
literally from day one. What in the world is happening
like anything like this coming?

Speaker 4 (02:18):
It seems like a fever dream of sorts. It doesn't
make much sense at all. There were no sports and
now jiu jitsu is a sport. And my sense from Decatur, Alabama,
the one and only Brandon mccatrne has brought jiu.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Jitsu to the forefront of sports.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
And now it's getting all kinds there's all kinds of
other competition happening, and the sport is growing man, And
we started a huge catalyst of that from a little
iron building or a little little shed in Decatur, Alabama.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, you want to talk about a secret location. When
I showed up to your place for PGFU season five,
I was blown away at how your gym basically is
like a pole barn. And then I couldn't find the
damn venue for the season. If I'd take an uber around,
we couldn't figure out how to get in. I got there,

(03:12):
it looked like a daycare, and then it turns out
there was a church. And PGF was born for me.
But I'm curious to be back, when was it really
born for you? Because obviously you start all of this
mid pandemic, you get it going it, you know, it
seems to me like it blew up very fast. But

(03:33):
this was a show that had a lot of baby
steps for you. I mean, the first how how many
of the first seasons were in your gym itself?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
The first three seasons were all in the gym. The
regular season matches were all in the gym. We did
the finale at the church.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Always got it, Okay. So the early early PGF footage
I love so much because like you have a weird
you have a weird smoke machine, and they're like walking
down the hallway and your gym and like that's your
UFC one moment, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, Like, so I knew the league was a good idea,
Like I'd been sitting on like how can we pull
this off for like a couple of years, And then
when the pandemic hit and everybody was just like buried
down in their houses and no sports and no competitions,
I was like, Okay, well this is a good time

(04:28):
to pull it off. I'm going to need some YouTube content.
The whole idea was this, Oh, if we had a
sports league, it would be infinite YouTube content. So me
and Keithen were like, Okay, now it's a good time
to try that idea. So we sat down and spent
a long time like fleshing it all out, like Okay,

(04:49):
when it's finished, what will it look like when it's successful,
and we're working backwards, like yeah, that's the way I
always do. That's the way I always do it. Like, Okay, ultimately,
when everything worked, because I know it's gonna work no
matter what it is. If I'm working on it, it's
gonna work. So whatever the final goal is, we'll get

(05:11):
there eventually. What are all the what are all the
things that have to be put in place now to
make that real? Like, for example, I just do this
with everything, Like, imagine the TJ, the version of TJ
that has hit all the goals that the current TJ

(05:34):
has set. You're making whatever it is, three million a year,
You're living wherever you want to live, You're doing the
job you want to do. Every day is laid out
the way you want it laid out. That version of TJ.
What do those guys' habits look like? And how did

(05:55):
he get there? What does he wake up and do
every day?

Speaker 2 (05:58):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
What is that version of TJ's warning schedule?

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Lol?

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Like you know what I'm saying, and whatever those answers are,
just start just start becoming those things right now.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
See here's the different if I.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
If I a commissioner of a league has to have
whatever skill set right, Okay, well, then I am the
commissioner of the league. So now I'm adding that skill set.
You know what I'm saying, Whatever that skill set.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Is, this is the difference between you and Ip mac Uh.
I'm too smart to realize.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
That is a difference between me and I don't think
you are.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
No, No, I'm too smart. Let let me explain. I'm
too smart to realize that that will never be real.
Therefore I don't put much thought into it. Maybe you're
too dumb to realize how hard it is to do
all of that stuff, and that's why you actually accomplish it.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
You can dream it, you can do it. Brother.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Oh, I don't think it has anything to do with
smart or dumb.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
I just here's the thing. I'll say this about any
promoter in the sport of combat sports, whether it's boxing, jujits. Okay,
you're a commissioner, you're still you have a promotion. You
call it a league. Uh, it's looking more and more
like a league. But when you get into the side
of putting on shows, signing athletes, doing all of that stuff,

(07:23):
if you're doing it to make money, just just give
me all your money and just don't even try, because
it'll just it'll just happen. Quicker. That way, you're gonna
inevitably fail. Most everyone fails when they try to get
into anything promoting.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
When they open a restaurant, when they start their digital
marketing agency, when they start jiu jitsu. People are quitters.
That's the real problem. Like, there have been plenty opportunity
for me to quit.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
With the last I think there's there's some truth to that,
for sure, But also doing something like this is going
to give you infinite opportunities to realize you're making a
horrible stake. However, if you persevere and all of a sudden,
if what you're actually doing is for the right reasons,
I think, then it actually comes to fruition and becomes

(08:11):
incredibly successful. Like key one, key point number one why
the PGF I thought wouldn't work was because it's a
team based combat sport. Didn't really believe that that could
be done at a high level effectively where it would
be entertaining, because I've seen that multiple times before. What

(08:31):
I didn't sort of correlate failure and success with is striking.
The reason team based combat sports don't work generally is
because it's either boxing or it's MMA. You can't have
a real long season.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Right, you're getting hit in the head.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Right, you don't have that issue. The second thing I
would say why I didn't think it was going to
work is because it's so far outside the box BMAC
like combats.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
That's that's wrong, that's incorrect. It's more inside the box,
and that's why it does work. Combat sports is the
thing that's outside the box. All sports work the same way.
Only combat sports run one night events. Only combat sports,
jiu jitsu, boxing, MMA, muay Thai. These are all ye

(09:23):
come to the event. Nothing else works that way. Nothing
else works that way. Jiu Jitsu has been constantly trying
to force ourselves into this model that only one or
two people have ever been able to succeed with. Ever.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
Yeah, we took a few notes from like wrestling dual matches.
Obviously there's no money in wrestling, but that is a
similar format, but it's way less popular as a as
a fan of grappling, wrestling, jiu jitsu, whatever. People want
to see individual matches culturally, but trying to produce a
dual format was the only hope to try to make

(10:01):
it into an actual season or in the early stages
that we talked about.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
So like the first season had two teams that kind
of didn't have.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
The first season didn't have well, they had.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
The two regions of the regions. I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, we're trying to like we were trying to take
some of those things from the dual aspect of wrestling,
but like I said, it's just never been done well
and it's definitely never made any money.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
What were the regions because I think of you only
speaking in Alabama, so like the regions to me would
be over there and down yonder.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
That sounds that was about how it worked.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, I think there were colored regions, you know, I'm
saying there was an orange region in a blue region
from the two teams.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, it was just orange and blue.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, are those are your two favorite colors?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
It's just the logo that we had. It's crazy though,
because like in the beginning, especially like yeah, plan out
general vision of where this thing is gonna go, but
like we have no place to start other than just

(11:11):
like the stuff we wrote down in the ideas or
what is the equipment we have? Well we don't really
have any of that. We got a couple of phones
we can use restream. Yeah, we should be able to
do it, just stream the whole thing. And then that
was how much thought went into it. It was never
like a, Oh, we're gonna build something like we're gonna
build careers for for everybody, you know. That really wasn't

(11:36):
the idea. The idea was like, what's the coolest thing
we can do for jiu jitsu? Right, what's the coolest
thing we can do? Yeah, And we would just you know,
especially in the beginning, like the first five seasons, but
especially the first three, I would just go, not do
it this way, and we would just flip it on
the fly. It's like quick changes, instant changes. Now it's

(11:57):
not really like that anymore. There's like more owners. Still
pretty fast moving shit. But like, you know, if I
want to pop a graphic up on the screen, like
I want to make sure that everybody's like cool with
the graphic, you know what I'm saying, right, Yeah, before
I would just be like, I don't care about the graphic,
just put the information out there and go see.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
That's what I also like about PGF. Like I've worked
with a lot of you know, production teams over the years,
b MAC as of you. When you start to work
with like the higher end production, I think less chances
are taking a lot. I don't think that there are
a lot of people that even have a conversation as

(12:35):
a team anymore, despite it being a lot more well
thought out and put together. The fact, like I remember
season five in Alabama, there was a debate about a
position or something like that. You're doing commentary with me,
and you just like, don't like what the referee is
doing because you don't think it's right. So you just

(12:57):
stop the whole show and go out there and do
your thing, and then you come back and I'm like,
that is not what you would ever see in traditional sports,
But I love it because you just you're like, look,
i'm running this show. I'm gonna remind everyone of that
right now, and I'm gonna make sure the right answer
is done. And I just I just like going with
your gut.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
You know what I versus Noah, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:20):
I believe it was the rub regard situation.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, I believe that's right. He didn't tap. They thought
he went out, they thought he went unconscious, And so
I ran out there and fixed it around there with
my shoes on and everything, which I loved.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Everyone loved that you rided.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
It I will say this, You've already become the world's
most beloved commissioner in all sports, and this thing is
hardly even blown up yet.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah. I mean we just started. We literally have one
team right now. I talked to a guy this morning
who's who wants he wants to buy a team, and
that would be the fourth one. Like I got two
and three look like they're going to happen by the
end of the calendar year.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
How many owners are you going to have? Is the goal?
Just four? Are you going to be able to have
more than you swap in teams from season to season?

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Brother? Brother? How many teams does the NFL have?

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Thirty two?

Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's right?

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yes, so happy, I got that right. I don't know
anything about the NFL.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
That's how many we're gonna have. I'll sell these four. Listen,
I'll sell these four. Uh huh TJ don't don't howl me. Okay,
I'm the master of all I survey. We're gonna sell
these first four, and then once they're done, we'll expand
and we'll go to eight, and then we'll bust up
to sixteen, and then we'll go to thirty two. Maybe

(14:49):
that's a twenty year project.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
You know what I mean, But how are you going
to have a season with like eight teams?

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Well, there's weight classes, that's one part of it.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Wait, so our certain teams can the only certain weights.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
No, No, listen, listen, Team TJ. You're you're a rich
guy now TJ, and you just bought Team TJ. Okay, Okay,
this season, Season eight is just the one. Fifty five's
the lightweights. So you would just trot out your five athletes. Okay, Okay,

(15:24):
Season twelve, now we got eight teams. Things really expanded,
right you would have a probably by that time, you
would have two different weight classes on your roster. Okay,
you know what I'm saying. Eventually you'll have all four
weight classes. So Team TJ would have twenty athletes from
four weight classes, and that would be your roster. They're

(15:47):
signed to Team TJ. Next season, when the draft comes around,
you're not drafting your whole team. You're drafting to replace
or to upgrade your team. So that's the way it'll
have to ultimately work. Officially, right now, we do the
draft auction, it's just got.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Four you're sticking with that. You're sticking right.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Now right now? Yeah, like that's not the long term
goal though. The long term goal is copy.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Paste and fl Okay, all right, as far as.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Like the structure of how everything works cot.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
So again, the draft is one week from today as
we are live here on June eighteenth. But I love
the draft. I love the draft so much. And I
remember doing the first draft in a bar somewhere in
the South. I don't even know what state it was.
I think it was still Alabama. It all runs together
to me, but what a what a unique experience that was,

(16:42):
And then we've seen that sort of morph and evolve.
I mean, like Kyle Kyle Bame telling everyone he's going
through horrible personal woe and that's why you shouldn't pay
that much for him.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
So yeah, I hated the way the draft played out
last time. Okay, well, because since we didn't use real
real cat we tried to just pay everybody a flat
rate and then bonus the winners, and so it didn't
matter how much you got drafted for. It was like
fake points and everybody was like, oh, don't pick me
because I want to be on a better They wanted

(17:18):
you to spend money on a good team, not on
one person, right, And it just turned the draft into
like this weird.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
Dork festes draft where nobody cared how much they went for.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
I might not, dude, I go for nine hundred bucks.
I feel disrespected, But okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
I just like the fact that the athlete goes up
there and gets to say their speak. Like think about
that in the NFL, Like if a running back went
up there and went like, yeah, I'm projected to go
forth running back overall. But this is why these scouts
suck and yat YadA, yat, Like Elijah Carlton going up
there going, uh, y'all didn't do your homework. You don't
know how to do this. You made some mistakes.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Like I love it.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I I that's drama that you don't normally get in
in sports.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Well, you know what's cool, man, is that like one
of the coolest parts of a jiu jitsu show in
the PGF has no jiu jitsu in it. Yeah, that's
like all of the all of the parts that make
you wanna watch PGF aren't really the jiu jitsu because
jiu jitsu most people find it to be boring. Now

(18:26):
we've gonna I think the best job in the industry
of making our matches and our rule set force excitement. However,
it's still two guys grappling, and not a lot of
people love that. But you know what, people do love stats, games, stories, stickers.

(18:50):
People love stickers. We won't have any stickers yet, but
we're gonna.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
All right. I don't I don't know what to say
to that, but I'm down for stickers.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
I do like, like, you know, the Fantasy I'm just
I don't know whyside stickers, but the Fantasy League Neon
glow sticks, uh, goldfish, like the like the huge carton.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Can I tell you what? I truly like those I love?
I love things that I didn't. It depends depends on
the brand. And uh, it's got to be a certain flavor.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
You look like that loves liquorice.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I'm not like Twizzlers, for sure.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
It is.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Get the red vines. Get that out of here. I
don't want anything to do with red vines. But throughout
the season, when you release the schedule, we can identify
a few matches that were always interested in. But then
after like day one or day two, we're like, who
is this purple belt that just tapped two black belts?

Speaker 3 (19:53):
You know what?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
I mean, and I don't take this the wrong way.
It matters who wins the PGF, But the thing that
I care about the most is who makes the most
of the opportunity to become someone that is must see
every time they compete moving forward, they might not you know,
make the playoffs even but if they have a quick

(20:13):
start and then you start to learn more about their personality,
because that's the other thing that the PGF does so well.
There's so many sideline interviews, there so many ways to
build up these personalities, not even talking about like the
documentary that comes out after the season. There are just
so many narratives to fall in love with that You're right,
b MAC. Like jiu jitsu, it's the main focal point,

(20:35):
but it gets lost in the background almost as quickly
as it is in the foreground in a lot.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, it's not a jiu jitsu show. Like they're not
even doing jiu jitsu out there. You think they're doing
jiu jitsu. They're using what they know about jiu jitsu
to win this game that we've set up, but it's
not actually jiu jitsu. Like good jiu jitsu would be
take your time, slow down, right, get a good PAS issue.
Don't rush, that would keep yourself safe. He's gonna try

(21:03):
to hit you keep yourself safe. That's not what good
DV is. Good jiu jitsu is not good TV.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Well, let's be honest here. Combat sports is a game.
It will always be a game. Of course, you're going
to play the game, and we're going to play the
game to win. Jiu jitsu. I think a lot of
times people focus on the fact like that's not real
jiu jitsu. It's because it's it's of all the combat sports,
it's the in my opinion, the only base singular discipline

(21:35):
that I think reigns supreme every day of the week. Like,
if you're going to take any single discipline person and
put them against another single disc, we're gonna talk about
a jiu jitsu guy winning more often than not. The
narrative of pushing jiu jitsu for some people is still
pushing it as the supreme martial art where it doesn't

(21:56):
matter anymore, especially when when when your point is to
entertaining content and some people go, well like is that
guy a better jiu jitsu player than that guy?

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, we're not even measuring that.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
You're really not I mean, how often does a quarterback
who's not very good lead their team to a super Bowl.
You're not gonna say that that's a better quarterback than
that guy, but for whatever reason that season it just worked.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Well. Never does one who's not very good, I mean's
not the best guy.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Okay, guys that are under sort of rated sometimes get there,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (22:35):
A Trent Dilfer if you will, right, Yeah, great name,
A stupid looking jerseys where they used to wear the worse.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
There's no way that Trent Dilfer is a real person.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
What a name.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
I don't like it, but yeah, what a name?

Speaker 3 (22:52):
I mean, it sounds like a fantastic call.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
It sounds like you're walking into the bank with a
fake check trying to cash it. What's your name, sir, Hi,
it's mel.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Uh call for Trent Dilfer.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
You're you're likely to just have someone on an upcoming
season of PGF and not like their name and call
them Trent DILFERD.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Be dude, I'll change a guy's name on the PGF
broadcast quick you will. Sam schwartz Fel walks up there
and he's like, Hey, why are you guys calling me Schwartz.
My name is Schwartzefel. I'm helping you.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Trust me, I mean Schwartz from now on, if you
can avoid some syllables.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Listen, dude, your name don't fit on the smooth comp box.
I don't know what to tell you. If you want
to use this as a platform to get people to
know you, they need to know how to spell it
when they're looking for it. That's why it's not Brandon
mccatherine on the Instagram.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
The problem is you got to tell me when you
do that sometimes, because I just keep confused because I
saw Sam on Facebook and it's like, sugget friend. I'm like,
I don't know any Swartz a ful, Oh, it's just
Sam Schwartz. I got it.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Ralph Michelson.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
I don't know Ralph personally.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
I mean that sounds like a second cousin of mine.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
M We're this is a good question. Egghead wants add
Egghead wants to know what's the league minimum salary or
the draft him ount this year? What's the budget for
each team each coach? Our team has fifteen thousand real
American dollars to spend in the draft. He's got to
get five people and whatever the athlete gets drafted for

(24:38):
that's his base salary for the season.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
So let me let me ask you this. Now that
you have a team that has owned is that team
responsible for that money?

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Uh? Yes, But I can't really tell you a lot
of the details about how it works.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
All right, I'm gonna needle you and probably get annoying
at some point, but well.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
There's probably not much I can tell.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
I mean, Jackson whatnot.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
The NFL doesn't like to tell anybody anything. Yeah, but
that's the thing. They'll be back. I think that you're
going to sort of redefine the space, not only just
in jiu jitsu, but just in combat sports and the
idea of what a league is and it isn't. And
I think a lot of those answers are going to

(25:23):
be sort of done with you guys in the back
end figuring it out, because that's the problem. When you're
a trailblazer, you gotta blaze the trail.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah, you know, nobody, nobody's ever done this stuff. I'm
learn how to do all of this first time. Uh.
And you know there's going to be like right now,
it's it's patched together because the where it's going is
the thirty two team structure, but that's not how you
You don't start there, you know what I mean. And
so we're building towards that, and so, you know, we're

(25:52):
really lucky that New Hope has been around for several seasons,
so they yeah, they they understand the assignment, and they
see the vision and they see where it is going,
and they see like how far we've come on the
structure of the plan so far, Like, oh, this is
not an idea. He's actively working on it and has
been making progress on it for years, and so it

(26:15):
was we're really lucky that they're the team that came
on first, that Kevin and his career the team that
came on first, because they understand, like, yeah, we're gonna
have to like patch this thing together as we get
to the full vision, and like it's gonna work a
little bit different when we got four teams, and it's
gonna look at work a little bit different once we
have eight, and then once we have sixteen, it'll probably

(26:38):
be pretty close to the final form, but like it's gonna, oh, well,
right now the draft is gonna look this way, but
when there's eight teams, we'll have to have the draft
this way so he understands he's here for the growth
of the project.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Right, do you want to answer that you're lucky? That
question from Egg there real quick on the chat.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, lead minimum draft price for a player one thousand
is the bare minimum. You're not allowed to draft for
less than a thousand, so you gotta save. The team
has to save at least one thousand for their last.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Big Okay, now I've seen this clip of you talking
about legacy and building something that's gonna last longer than you. Uh,
when did that start to enter in your mind? Because
you talk about you know.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
When I was about four years old.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
No no, no, no, no, I mean in regards to the PGF,
because you talk about like what this thing could be.
It was you know, YouTube content, et cetera, et cetera.
When did you like to start to go, oh damn,
this is like this is a thing that could define
my overall contribution to jiu jitsu.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
Oh. I would say it started to come into to
crystallize maybe around season three and then but like just
season one, let's do this. Yeah, this will be great
YouTube content and we can actually like start building the thing.
It'll be fine, we'll have a lot of competition around

(28:06):
all our guys will love it. It was for us.
Season one was for us right. Season two was like, wow,
how could we do that better and start growing it
for us? For us? And so season two we smashed
it into a week so we could get better and
learn faster and bring and bring better athletes in reduce

(28:28):
our costs, reduce our you know, we could scale with
a one week season, which I knew we were gonna
need to do if we're going to grow it. Season three, Wow,
it's picking up some momentum. This is crazy, still doing
it just for us, though still just for the YouTube
channel at the end of season three. By the end
of season three, in the off season, I was really tired.

(28:50):
I was like, man, I don't know if I can.
I took a long time between or for the PGF,
at least, it was a long time between season three
and season five before I was ready to go again.
I wasn't sure I was gonna do it because I
knew that it was gonna require a lot of effort
to take it to the next level and that it

(29:12):
wasn't gonna be just us anymore if we did that,
like Okay, we're gonna have to level it up. So
it took a long time to think about it. It's like, okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna just try to level it up
one time. Let's do one for everybody. So, okay, season four,
we're gonna do a quintet. We're gonna do it at
the church. I'm gonna buy some new equipment. I'm gonna

(29:35):
hire a couple of assistants and help. And so we
did season four, and then that was a lot of work,
and especially at the time because I didn't know what
I was doing, you know, m and season after season four,
I was like, I don't think I want to do
this again. This is like in order to actually do this,

(29:57):
I don't know if I can like to vote the
bandwidth to this. And Keilan was like, dude, one more,
let's do it as a showcase for Fight Pass. Let's
give this everything we got, just do it one more time.
I was like, okay, one more. So we scheduled season
five and we're like, okay, we're gonna literally put our

(30:19):
The best that we can do is gonna with no budget.
By the way, this is the best we can do
with zero dollars is gonna go to this and uh yeah,
you showed up. That's when I was like, I have
to have TJ. So I'm gonna do it. If I'm
gonna do it right, I have to be it has
to be TJ. So called you. Zoe came. I didn't

(30:43):
invite him. He he came with epic role I was.
I mean, I was hoping he would come, but and
then there was kind of just all and then Kevin
came for the first time from New for season five
and it all just started snowballing then and then after
season six, I was like, oh man, so I didn't
know what I was walking into after that first for

(31:05):
that first Vegas season.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
I really didn't, But neither did I.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
I'm like, I was, that's the most stressed out I've
ever been in my entire life.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well, what was crazy to be is I'm walking into
this weird building somewhere in Las Vegas and I'm like,
there's a lot of curtains. Where is this place? Wait?
This is kind of nice here, look at all these couches.
Did did I? Did I stumble into somewhere I'm not
supposed to be because like the whole mantra of PGF

(31:35):
and like it's it's just like upper class, which is
something I'm not used to be back. And I don't
know if this new week to week format is going
to make your life easier, but it seems in the
three seasons some ways, well, in the three seasons that
I've done PGF thus far, we get to about nine

(31:58):
two and I just lies, like, unless we're on the air,
I'm probably not going to talk to you. You're you're
doing all sorts of things. You're, you know, putting out
little fires, You're answering questions. I'm very curious because, like
you say, you know, early on you questioned it whether
or not you have the bandwidth to do certain things.

(32:20):
Is that bandwidth going to be overtaxed now? Are you?
Are you going to be able to breathe between weeks
or is it just going to prolong the I don't know,
you running twenty four hours a.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Day, I don't know. I have to tell you something.
This is a psychopath behavior what I'm about to tell you,
And I'm hesitant to even say it, but I will
say it. I for the last week have been experimenting
with something, Matt. You'll find this interesting.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, you should be. My wife. My wife is very concerned.
I've been This is so stupid.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
What are we doing.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
I've been sleeping every other night. I've done it. I've
only been to bed every other night for the last.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Week or so. When you do sleep, how long are
you sleeping?

Speaker 1 (33:13):
I slept four hours two nights or three nights ago,
and I slept about ten hours last night.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
This is how people end up using like hard drugs.
Be back, you gotta you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
I would be interested.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
No, no you would.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Oh no, I mean no, no, you wouldn't. Yeah, no,
don't do that.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
No.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Why why are they using hard drugs.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Because they're sleeping four hours every two days? Did drugs
help with that? Maybe I should get some certain kinds?

Speaker 4 (33:41):
I think, yeah, I'm just gonna blame that on the Zoomies.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
You know, Matt, you're like a guy who does drugs.
You can jump in on that.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
That's the most honest thing we've said in this broadcast today.
Allow me to say, I look like a man that
does a lot of things.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Drugs. Drugs are bad, Okay.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
I will say, b Mac, you're one of the few
people that say it and actually mean it, because a
lot of people will say it and they're just messes
of human beings. But you're the only person I've ever
kind of heard say I use my add as a superpower,
because a lot of people say that, and that's just

(34:27):
code for they do a lot of stuff and never
complete anything. You actually do a lot of stuff and
complete all of it.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
To guess what I've been doing while I've been staying up, Like,
I have this project that I have to work on,
but it's actually not related to any of my other projects.
And I've been building and training my own ai jiu
jitsu coach, So I've got it. I don't even want
to dork out on you guys, but I've been coding all.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Night, coding, coding a code.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Well, do any dabbling. He's been doing a little dabbling.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Dude, y'all want to see it? Do you want to
play with it?

Speaker 3 (35:11):
How about this? We're talking about his side quest.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
The other day, I'm at the gym training we finish up,
and he's just like, Hey, check out this new album
that I wrote on ai.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's so frustrating.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
What are you talking about? You just fit in a
whole album this weekend, Like.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
So you send me this album neon belly get it.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Wherever you listen to this, See, y'all just ruined it.
So I haven't even been telling people that was me.
I literally haven't even posted it. I just did it
to you, guys.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
This is what happens when we don't talk about what I.

Speaker 4 (35:41):
You're diabolical, diabolical, crazy person, and we love you for it.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
I know someone listening right now is like AI music
that's gonna suck. It doesn't suck good, it doesn't suck.
It makes me so upset because like, here's the thing.
The idea of like art being simulated by AI destroys
the whole narrative of.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Something that's not really how I made it. Though I didn't.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
I understand.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
I didn't just like prompt it, and.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
I get it, you know, I get it, and that's
why it's good. But like the idea that what I'm
listening at a very loud level in my car because
it's pretty great and it's driving and is moving and
doesn't sound crappy at all. Uh, I like it feels
to me at its core. If you tell me this
was done by AI, even if you wrote the song

(36:28):
I'm gonna be like, yeah, but I mean, this guy
singing is not even a person's No, you would never
know it, but you and you and I were talking
about it in Vegas and like we're literally talking about
tones of influence that it seems like the artists that
were listening to may have had when they were younger

(36:48):
and like maybe got into the offspring. And this guy
is sounding like Dexter Holland a little bit. Yeah, it's
it's I hate it and love it so much.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Well, I hate that y'all righted me out on the air.
So now that little experiment that I was running is
completely ruined.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
No, I mean, I'm just curious.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Well, yeah, because now people could find out that it
was me. I didn't really want anybody to know. I
just was like running it as a pseudo now just
to see if I never post it, what happens to, Like,
how do the sales go just on Natural Discovery and
I never tell anybody you'd be surprised.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Let me just say, you better figure it out soon
because you're gonna have to go on tour with Five
Finger Death Punch and you're not gonna have a band
that can even go out on stage.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Dude, did I ever tell you that I almost was
the backup singer for five Finger Death Punch on their
European tour. No, so I show up to Europe. Show
up in London on May the twenty third, is the
opening day of the tour, which happens to be my birthday.
This was last year I show up. I'm gonna be

(37:59):
there for two weeks. It's just cruising with the band,
no responsibilities, hanging out on the tour bus and the
four seas. It's gonna be a great time. One of
the something happened with one of the two backup singers,
and Zoe was like, dude, I'm putting you in there.
I was like, what do you mean, Like, I'm you're

(38:20):
going on stage. I don't know any of the songs.
How Amosch used to sing back up? I think you
can figure them out in the next couple of hours.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
And I said, nope, at least you were honest.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, I really wanted to do it.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
See, but TJ doesn't know that he's gonna play air
drums for Neon Belly when we go on tour.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I don't I don't have rhythm to even do air drums.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
It's just a seizure.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
That's why we're gonna hide you in the back behind
the drums. Brother, we put a little little fog machine
in there.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Show yeah, show this baby going to get.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
You some different shades probably, but that's all right.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, everybody,
if you're watching this, please go to Spotify or iTunes
and look up neon belly and e O in b E.
This is it on the bottom the screen, b E
L l y neon belly And.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Now everyone knows who Batman is, Bruce Bruce Wayne.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Can I tell you it took me like two weeks
to figure out it was a play on neon belly?

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Hm hmm, I'm not I'm not quick, No, certainly not.

Speaker 5 (39:36):
And why why is he on the show?

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Serious? That's why. That's that's the reason. The thing that
bothers me about all of that. You could say any
number of foods. I don't even really like chicken nuggets.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Strips, I don't even like drugs.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
That killed me. Can we just stick to spaghetti in
Mexico something that I enjoy?

Speaker 1 (40:17):
That's crazy, that's worse than the chicken nuggets and He's like,
can y'all make fun of me about something a little more?
It's real, that's really look at mad Screen is totally
frozen with him, Like.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
I still like the idea of making a TJ's Mexican
pasta sauce T shirt.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Mace. Let me answer this comment, Sergeant Caboos. First of all,
great name. Uh, this is the email address you need
to send it to. I get a lot of emails,
so if I don't answer you right away, I'll get
to it as quick as I can. But yeah, come through,
all right.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Can we talk about some other stuff? We gotta we
gotta hit some other topics besides PGF today.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Uh yeah, we Actually, you guys go ahead and do that.
I need like just a quick little bathroom break while
you guys play right here, so I'll be right back.
I'm dropping off the string.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
B Mac just turned it into p Mac, so he'll
be back here in a second. Let's talk about kind
of a somber story. Ben Askron needs a lung transplant.
And when I first saw this story, Matt, like, I

(41:32):
thought this was like some weird troll job, you know,
because like you don't think of a guy that fought
in the UFC within the last three four years, being
someone whose health could turn in such a grim outlook
that they would need a lung transplant. But I think

(41:52):
I have the story right. I've been following along. There's
been some narra. I mean, I woke up the other
day and saw Kyle Bihalow's post that said ben Askron
was dead. It turns out he's not dead. But it started,
I believe, as a basically like a staff infection that
ran his immunity down to the point where he caught pneumonia.

(42:16):
And it's it's just been rough, like his lungs are
no longer able to sustain himself. He's on a ventilator.
He's in Wisconsin, and like, I'm not a doctor, I
don't know what the prognosis is. We just get these updates.
But the fact that ben Askron is in need of
a lung transplant is just horrible, horrible stuff and just

(42:40):
shocking and sad.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, it's very sad.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Uh, It's a it's a good reminder that these these
guys are human, you know. Yeah, after having a professional
mm A career, I definitely pay attention and you can
tell the people, the fans that have never stepped foot
in there and never been the man in the arena,
so to speak. And you see that being like super
hard on these guys and kind of dehumanizing them a
little bit every once in a while, and for the

(43:05):
sake of a couple of Instagram likes on a comment
or something. And man, you know, this is a real
reminder these guys are real humans, They live real lives
and are affected by the same things and that we
all are susceptible to. And so, man, it's a tough
tough day for the Astrian family. Asturan's been beloved by

(43:27):
many different communities, the resting community, Hodge Trophy winner, jiu
jitsu community obviously did very well in won championships and
so on UFC fighter And so it's very sad to
see that my man is in the spot that he is.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
We all hope that Ben pulls through, of course well.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
And in the fact that it got to this point
largely because of staph infection is just crazy, Like it's nuts.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Man. I know Ben and Amy his wife personally. Ben,
I've trained with Ben. He came down and spent some
time with a syndicator back when I was a purple
belt actually and uh, he's just literally like one of
the coolest, nicest dudes in the industry. So it's not
it's man that staff can can do that. That's wild.

(44:14):
I think Matt's dead taking them off.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
He'll come back.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
We'll see.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
How because I mean, we hear about people dealing with
staff and you know, prior to and I can't say
this is just all staph infection, but prior to this story, Uh,
do you remember I don't know, ten fifteen years ago.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
The Kevin Randallman one. Yeah, well we had the big hole,
one of the classic pictures. He had the hole in
his arm.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
I'll never forget logging onto I think MMA weekly dot
com at the time, and it had the story there
and then there was the button that was like do
you want.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
To say, are you sure you want to see this?

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Like it's staph infection, It's gonna be fine. Whatever clicked it, dude, dude,
I I mean you could see his ribs like his
individual Yeah, and I think that because we're in a
sport where staph infection is not all that uncommon, you

(45:17):
hear about it from time to time. A lot of
that sort of what a staph infection could be. We
don't hear that every time we hear staff infects.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Well, it's just so that's good. Think about all the
things a car wreck could be too, you know what
I mean. It's like but.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
We immediately go, oh, are you okay when you hear
someone's been in an accident, when you hear someone had
staff infection, or like, oh, they'll be fine, I'll get
antibiotics in whatever. It's cool. Not in every situation. Like
King Mo he almost died, yeah, skin up.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Matt scaff had it really bad in his elbow. One
tom he had bursidis in his elbow and then he
got like a little pimple and then the staff got
into the the infection and the fluid and it went
like systemic and he had to go to the hospital
like suddenly in overnight. This has been years and years ago,
but it was crazy.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah. I was working with Pearl Gonzales like a month ago,
a month and a half ago, and she had done
jiu jitsu for the first time in a minute, and
she had a little little pimple on her shin and
we were calling boxing and that way, and she was
telling me, look, I think this might be staph infection.
The next day she found out it was staph infection,

(46:33):
and I mean she was talking about how like she
doesn't do a lot of antibiotics. She doesn't really like
take medicine. She's like, I'm just treating it with like
epsom salt. Yeah, she had to go to the she
had to go to the hospital.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Listen, brother, I believe in medicine. I believe. I don't
believe in taking it when you ain't supposed to write,
but I believe in it when it's time to kill
a staph infection. Just signed me up for twelve antibiotics.
I'll take them all, but I do I've never had
staff ever, Nope, all this time training, and it's not

(47:07):
like I'm a particularly clean person. Like I'll I'll go
out there and sweat and slobbern fart for two hours
and then be like, oh, I gotta go do this
thing in my office real quick, and it be an
hour before I get home, and then I'll be like, ooh,
I'm gonna grab some food. I just let the sweat

(47:28):
and the stink sit on me sometimes, and I don't
get staff. I think it's a lot of a lot
to do with like your natural skin flora because I
don't really get ringworm. I mean, I've had ringworm before
a couple of times, but I don't really get that,
like I should get it. I trained in a dirty
warehouse and I don't care. And I don't use defense

(47:50):
soap or any kind of I don't know, dude. I
just use swave on my hair and I borrow irish
soap on my arms, and I'm good to go. I
feel like that stuff kills it just as good or better.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
It's funny because I do feel like there are some
people in some gems that like are very diligent about
just bleaching.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Those guys get Those guys get it more than anybody.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
And I don't. My brain is not smart enough to
understand bacteria and things like. I don't know how that works,
but it feels like when you are overly concerned about it,
sometimes that's when it seems to creep up. The most dude.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Guy he comes into the gym and he's like angrily
showering afterwards and like missing spots and he takes like
a five minute shower or something like that. Like I
think that people just like I think people are just
in a rush and they're just not as careful. I mean,
I put that thing on as hot as it'll go,
and I'm in there twenty minutes. If I gotta be, brother,

(48:50):
just hanging out and.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
I don't get it either. I live on the mats.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Just spray me off with a water hose and I'll
be fine. That's how I feel about it. They just
spray me off with the water.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
In the very brief time that I trained, we trained
it at Guy's garage, who for four days, who his
dogs ran all over the mat and stuff. You could
train one time, you would take the quote unquote introductory
class and your souvenir was some some places will give
you a free uh gee, you got to go home

(49:24):
with ringworm. Okay, Yeah, yeah, I respect that. I got a.

Speaker 4 (49:31):
Shout out to that black belt out of Jib's Auto
in the back room.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Jib's Auto.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
TJ.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yes, why don't you train your jitsu because it hurts
and I'm allergic.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
You're allergic to what fitness ringworm? Me too, brother. I
don't want that.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
I don't know I need to. I need to. Let's
not let's not do that. Now. We have more things
to talk about.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
I just want to know why you want just go
to class.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Because it hurts and it takes effort, and I'd like
to put my effort towards other things.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Like what, dude, what else is there?

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Here's the problem? And I know you're right. If I
take the effort to go to jiu jitsu, I'm gonna
have more bandwidth, believe it or not to actually put
in the other things. I know this, Yeah, I just
don't want to.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Why are you this way?

Speaker 4 (50:29):
See at the Elkins household, we believe that any time
can be training. It just if I say so and
I grab you in a little wrist.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Lock, we're training. If I say I'm gonna pull up.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
I'm gonna pull up on you. We're gonna do a
little lesson TJ.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
That's called bullying.

Speaker 4 (50:48):
Yeah, well that's part of you got to tear them
down and build them up. Brother, That's what we do here.
That's the that's the gospel.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
You You you act like this isn't every time I'm
around b Mac like I love you, let me give
you a hug, And then I'm like, why are you
twisting a joint right now?

Speaker 1 (51:03):
At TJ, We've never grappled you know, that's true.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
We're not going to Yes, we are.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
We're gonna do it next time. Actually, next time I
see you. You better hope you don't show up for
the chef draft. Better hope you don't show up.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
I'm gonna get drafted for a one on one with you.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
I'm putting down on the castle floor.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Dude, b MA is gonna grab one leg and I'm
gonna have you on an arm bar.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
See you tried that. He tried this. He He's like, oh,
come hang out with me and Zoe at the castle
and I'm like, sure, great, and I get there in
about seven minutes after we get there, people are putting
on gee's and I got one for you. You won't, No,
I don't want Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
I brought him his own gee and rash guard. He
sat it down.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
It's the wrastle castle. You gotta can't wrestle. Sit on
the sideline or Hugo walks in.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
That's what I knew. I made the right decision to
sit in the corner and look at my laptop when
Victor Hugo walks in.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Victor Hugo literally outweighed me by one hundred pounds. One
hundred pounds. He's huge, bro. He was like too eighty
and I was walking at like one sixty eight or
one seventy that day. If I recall.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
Nick Rodriguez and the two of them standing next to you,
t I was like, Okay, Victor's huge, bro, that boy big.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Well he's so lean too. Like It's it's one thing
to be like a big guy, it's another to be
that big and be an athlete.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
And uh, I wouldn't say he's an athlete. I would
not call Victor a good athlete. I would call him good.
He's really good at ju jitsu.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
His body is a byproduct of training and but but like.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
He's he's not a natural athlete.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
He's not an athlete in the way that Nick Rodriguez is.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
That's for you tossed that boy of an American football
and you're gonna find out.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Yeah, yeah, I have him go out there and throw
baseball with you. You're gonna well, you're gonna get some discoveries.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
One of my favorite things in the world is to
watch combat sport athletes try to throw a ball.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
It's unbelievable, UNBELI.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
What seond did we have in the early pgs?

Speaker 4 (53:11):
We had the combine? When did the combine start season three.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
The combine started season four.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
No.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Three, four and five all had the combine.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
But there was one season in particular that I remember
watching some of these some of these jiu jitsu.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Try to throw the medicine ball, try to throw the
medicine ball. They were doing a shuttle run, and it.

Speaker 4 (53:35):
Was like they were on skis. Brother, they were just
like they could not find the floor with their feet.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
I was like, all right, truly, one of the most
unbelievable things is how we're trying to have a sport
and there are no athletes in it.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Well, is jiu jitsu the biggest example of athletes being
able to be not necessarily elite just on their own
God given talent.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Okay, right, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you where the
sport stands right now. This is just the truth. We
have no athletes in our sport, zero, not one. There's
not one athlete in our sport, no, not one. And
the first that every time a guy comes in and
he's like, oh, this guy's a pretty good athlete, he

(54:21):
shoots right to the top, Nikki rod, this guy's a
pretty good athlete. He wasn't a good enough athlete to
even wrestle in at D one. So but when it
comes in as a decent athlete and he dominates, Oh,
here's Caden Tyratolo. Yeah, they're pretty good athletes.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
What is it gonna What is it going to look like?

Speaker 4 (54:41):
Then?

Speaker 2 (54:42):
When a blue chip guy that could have played any
position in the NFL actually decides to do jiu jitsu,
and have we even.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Seen he's gonna be the world champion in two or
three years?

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Have we seen that athlete in uh mm a yet?

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Nope?

Speaker 4 (54:59):
Base athlete has definitely risen that you see in M
M A even at just like the amateur. And but
it's still obviously the the you know, the money disparity
is huge. So I don't know when it's gonna happen.
I guess when the money shows up. But I do
believe that we have yet to see a real deal.

(55:21):
I mean, John Jones would be the closest thing. The
Jones lineage would be the closest example.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
And he's the closest example. And look how dominant he is.
He's the worst athlete, worst athlete in his family. Okay,
let me have to address this. This is my friend J. C.
He's a he's a friend of mine. I love him
very much, so I take no joy in what I'm
about to say.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
You're gonna say it, aren't you.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
But j C, that's one of the dumbest things I've
ever seen in the comment section. Mason is not a
good athlete. He's not what did Mason d He might
be a fine athlete for jiu.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Jitsu, Okay, let me, let me, let me.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
But when I say athlete, I'm talking about people who
can make the pros and quote unquote real sport.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
That can make mainstream sports money.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
That could have taken any sport and went pro with it.
Yeah they'd wanted to.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Yeah, that is not Mason Vowler.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Dude, I'm sorry, and I love Mason. He's one of
my favorite jiu jitsu guys, absolutely one of my favorite
jiu jitsu guys, and he's just a kind fella. But
he ain't an athlete, not even close.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
What about just thinking about a couple of people we've
seen in the PGF stage who've done well in jiu jitsu.
Travis Thomas, a breakout kid. You know he Travis is
a good athlete, good athlete.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
He's a good athlete. But he still we're still talking about.
You know, I'm on this list as well. I'm not
a fantastic world class athlete.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Can I catch a ball? Can I throw a ball?
Am I gonna?

Speaker 4 (56:50):
Am? I gonna be an asset to any team in
hustle one under? Am I world class athlete?

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Absolutely not. I can do a backflip, bro, you know
what I'm saying. I'll do a backflip on a wake boold.
Some days.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
You know you won't get way guard.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
Come and get me, Come and get me, you will.
You can ask Isaac Stackhouse.

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Brother, I have never.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
How much that when I produced the beautiful bean footage
by the end of the summer for you, brother, you
owe me a public apology for But listen, my point
was doing all of those things. I'm not an athlete.
Travis is not going to the NFL. There's no athletes,
that's the point. There's zero of them.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
And all the guys that mentioned Ryan Ak and Ryan
Akin looks like an athlete. I love Ryan Akin. Throw
that boy. It's just not happened. And that's what we're
talking about.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Is there a story there? Did someone try to throw
Ryan Ak in a frisbee?

Speaker 1 (57:49):
No, it's just the point, say, is the man because
he comes up with.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
That one, because you don't when because everyone says they're
an athlete, I'm athletic, Bro, you're a five eight all right, fair,
it's not it's not how it works. Uh, your ego
you can say. I can say that I'm athlete, like
my egos. I can do a backfoot way.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
I'm not a I'm not an athlete, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
I guess technically we're all athletes.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
No, we're not.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
It's a spectrum. You're just at the very bottom of
the spectrum. TJ.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Just because you measure it does not mean it's measurable. Okay,
chicken nuggets. M hm. Say that again and explain, just
just because you measure something does not mean that what
you're trying to measure is actually measurable. And that is
my athletic ability. You may you may try to run

(58:45):
me through something and you can say, well, hey, you're
you're at least an athlete. You're just terrible. Like, no,
I'm not an athlete.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Like just like you can't make me run.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
No, you can't.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
With chicken nuggets.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
I think that's called chicken parmesan.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Here's an impression of TJ ordering that spaghetti in Mexico.
You're ready, Ola, do you have any spaghetti?

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Nope? Nope, I don't sound like that. And and what
b mac is failing to tell you is I actually
generally just tell him to order for me because I
don't like to try. Ola.

Speaker 4 (59:32):
It's like getting my old lady to order my my
vanilla frappuccino at Starbucks, Like please, baby, just you know.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Say the magic words to the Starbucks kid? Do you
have any spaghetti?

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Quelan can't get back to this program quick enough?

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Quelan would be all over a year right now.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
He'd at least try to keep it on the rail.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Uh No, This is why we don't need Qulan, and
I don't want to ever see him again.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
That's not true. You don't need Fall. You'd fall apart
without that kid, fall apart? Really, you want to talk
about the UFCBGJ wrote to the titles before we get
out of there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
I hadn't seen episode three yet. I saw the first two.
Would you guys think TJ you go first.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I'm amazed that they turned it around as quickly as
they did, because there's a lot of feel of the
Ultimate Fighter with it, and obviously that's going to be
where the comparison is. But I don't know actually how
many days they had to actually put all this in
the can and then come back and edit it. They're quick,
they're very quick episodes. It feels like if they had

(01:00:42):
more time, we would get a bit more narrative and
more personality building. I mean, I haven't seen the third
episode either, so.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
They're making them all like twenty four minutes, which tells
me that they're making it this so that it could
go to Netflix if they wanted, or it could go
to broadcast TV.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
It will go to broadcast TV. I believe you know
they're right now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Maybe the next season.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
No no, no, not this one, not no, no. I
think this is a proof of concept to wherever they
land with their right steal. Maybe it doesn't end up
on like an ESPN proper, but if they were on
an ESPN, uh, that content will live on ESPN Plus,
like it'll be decent stuff for them to add to

(01:01:30):
their overall content output. But I think you kind of
have to prove that narrative a little bit because kind
of like what you were talking about with PGF, like
jiu jitsu it's the whole narrative of this UFCBJJ. But
when you're going to put that on television in a
reality show, can't really just only be about the jiu jitsu.

(01:01:51):
So I think they're trying to take some elements of
the Ultimate Fighter and we're not getting the full bodied
experience of it because because of time constraints. But it
is kind of cool just to see the UFC's sort
of uh, you know, touch on jiu jitsu and and
what it would look like with that traditional Ultimate Fighter shine.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Obviously it's doing.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
It's it's awesome to have the usc UH start the
UFC start to pay attention to jiu jitsu and try
to give it a platform.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
I'm very excited by it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
I can just tell there's like a different energy amongst
athletes that are excited to potentially find a way to
the UFC through grappling and stuff like that. However, I
feel that the format when I'm watching the matches, it
feels like watching.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Three draws back to back to back in the.

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
PGF almost it's I don't love the round thing, the
round them it's but that's the story. Like when you
see a knockout finish in the UFC. It's super exciting
when you watch five rounds of mar Usman laying on him.
The most exciting part is when Joaquin Buckley stands up
and might knock Hiss out in the last couple of

(01:03:06):
minutes of the fight. And I don't that's not gonna
get the people go. And that's and so I don't
love the three round thing. Even in CJ. I wasn't
a huge fan of that, but I am excited that
the UFC is getting involved in. I think that they're
going to find a way to make it work good.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Well. I think the problem with the three round thing
is that people saw CJI and they only remember the CAD,
the CAD and Levi Jones Leary match, and they only
remember the Tacket versus Cade match. They remember those that
stood out and they were great. Yeah, but they're making

(01:03:45):
the mistake I think of saying, oh, the three round
format gave us those great matches. Look what that format
gave us. No, no, no, no. Caid Rotolo and Andrew
Tackett gave us that. And they would have given us
that if we would have handed them a dollar a
piece and said fight for this hamburger. You know what

(01:04:05):
I'm saying like.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
It's styles make fights.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Any rules said they could have they could have had belts,
they could have been in a towel fight. It's not
trying to pop each other. It would have been great
TV no matter what.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Speaking of great TV, one thing I loved about The
Ultimate Fighter was when you would get the fights. It
was like the precursor to what we got during the pandemic,
where you could hear everything because there's no commentary, there's
no crowd. It's a tough cell in my eyes, to
try to get someone who might be that casual fan
who's never really watched jiu jitsu to tune in for

(01:04:40):
a match without any sort of bells or whistles or commentary.
If it goes fifteen minutes is super technical. I understand
that format has never had commentators, but it might be
a more of an uphill climb to get people to
be interested in jiu jitsu when you have a technical

(01:05:01):
match with no one explaining really much of anything.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
B MAC. Did you look at the viewership of the videos?

Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Did you pay attention to how many views they were
getting versus like cji versus what you guys?

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Yeah, I mean, look, they're doing it on the UFC's
YouTube channel, so it's definitely twenty million.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
But it's got twenty million subscribers.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
They had three hundred thousand views on day one when
I checked it, and that was that same day or
it was the next morning. Maybe maybe I looked right
before episode two, but it was before episode two came
out at some point, and they had like three hundred
thousand views on day one, And then right before we
logged on here, episode three was airing and I saw
it had two and a half thousand concurrent viewers.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
We're looking at you episode three right now. What time
is it here? It's been up for an hour and
thirty seven minutes. They have one hundred and thirty three
thousand views. It's pretty great now.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Good man, listen, this is going to be This is
going to be good for jiu jitsu. I don't care
if you think it's a good format, or if you
like the coaches, or you think that the UFC is
doing the wrong thing, whatever your opinion is. If your
opinion is that this won't really help the sport grow,
you're crazy. Episode one extra eyeballs on the sport. Everybody

(01:06:20):
wins from the UFC getting involved. Now, maybe you don't
like the direction they're going to take it. All of
that's up. No, look, I'll hear all those arguments and
they probably maybe they're good arguments, maybe you're right, But
what you can't say is that the sport won't grow
from this. We won't get extra attention from that. We're
already getting extra attention from it. Sorry, I'm granting. If

(01:06:43):
the UFC BJJ explodes, all the other promotions grow as
a result of that. So in my opinion, In my opinion,
a rising tide lifts all ships, and if the UFC
is forcing the tide to rise, it's forcing the PGF
to grow too. This PGF clips and athletes on this show.

(01:07:03):
They're using PGF footage on this show.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Oh so, I mean one of those brackets looks like
a PGF playoff brack.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Good for us. And this is an interesting comment by
Egghead here. He said, Elijah Carlton was in PGF season
one and UFCBJJ one. That's crazy. He's been on the
roster for the formation of the two most and he
was on CJI. He was an alternate on CJI, so
he was at the formation of all of the most
important current jiu jitsu promotions on the planet because right now, honestly, honestly,

(01:07:36):
right now, who's who's still standing UFC, Craig Jones, PGF,
and there's the other promotions are still going. But who's
left standing is the big dogs? Like there's three, there's
three left I guess WNO kind of. I don't know.
I don't put it in the same category.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Four hundred and eighty three was a episode one right now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
That's good. I mean, it's good. I think that they'll
probably think that that's not that good. I think that
they were probably expecting a million.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
And you know cj I crushed the numbers on YouTube, so.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Yeah, well they're streaming though they're streaming two point six thousand.
When I was looking at it a second ago, two
point six thousand concurrent when we were on broadcast at CJI,
I looked at the dud. We had over twenty thousand
Concurrent ten X.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
And it was to a million before we went to
bed that night. That's crazy, is it?

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Though? I don't know, I don't I don't know. I mean,
you put a what do you think a UFC like
Fight Night would do on YouTube?

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Because in my less than less than a million in
my first day.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
In my brain, I still equate the numbers on YouTube
to like television ratings, and yeah, that's not the same,
especially because I think television ratings like, dude, if you're
breaking a million on television, if you're getting a one
share on TV, that's huge. That's absolutely bananas these days.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Yeah, because a TV viewer is a lot different behavior
wise than a YouTube viewer. A YouTube viewer, if they
stay for thirty seconds, that counts as the view Facebook,
a Facebook view, a Twitter view, an Instagram view is
two seconds. Two seconds. So people are like, I got
twenty million views, you got eight views, eight people saw

(01:09:38):
that it appeared on twenty million timelines. Yeah for two seconds.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Yeah that The number one stat in radio when I
worked in radio was your TSL. That's what you needed.
Time spent listening is the most important category. And we're
in a time now where I mean, b Mac, you've
helped me out with some social media and you're like,
if you're gonna put something on an Instagram reel, it
needs to be to the point within three seconds or
you've lost everybody. And I'm all like, hey, everybody, I'm

(01:10:06):
TJ to SI.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
I don't even do an intro on my videos. I
quit doing that years ago because with YouTube you can
see the retention graph. And so if you spend time
at the beginning telling people what's about to happen and
who you are, retention tanks, which means they push it
down in the algorithm and you don't get any views.
But if you deliver on the promise the title and

(01:10:27):
the thumbnail promise within the first seven seconds, retention's gonna
stay up.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
I can't even speak that fast.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Well, that's the whole point of what I'm saying. You
shouldn't even be speaking about who you are, what this
show is about, what you've been up to.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Odds are if you're seeing me, you know all of that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
The number one thing that I know is going to
tank a video. Hey Brandon, check out this video? What
should I do with it? And they go, hey, guys,
it's me Brandon, I'm gonna it's over. You already lost everybody.
The whole videos ruined, ruined, ruined, all.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Right, And I think that's part of the problem in
just modern society. And uh, why is that a problem?

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Look, TJ, what we can sit around and complain about
the way that we wish things were correct, or we
can adapt to the reality of the way things actually are.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Well, I'm gonna watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
And that's what we're doing.

Speaker 5 (01:11:26):
We don't say hey guys.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
At the front of our videos anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
It's twenty twenty five, baby, right, you can go to
Mexico and order spaghetti. It's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Put the chips and sausa down, son, let them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Eat, all right, put the big dog eat. I'm gonna
finish with a hot take. And I don't think it's
a hot take, but maybe it is.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Which, by the way, speaking of eating Godfather Jerkie chips,
we should throw them some love. Uh, they're our favorite.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
And salt, oh yeah, we'll get dude. You ever are
any salt on your Godfather Jerky chips?

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
And I mean if you do the black pepper, you
can literally get your salt and pepper.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
Well, if you're gonna be using some you know, experiments
and stuff with your salt and with your Godfather Jerki chips,
you better use that coupon code because you don't want
to be spending full price or run experiments.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
No, no, it's bad science. Yeah, it's just keep your
cost of materials low. There we go, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
And productivity high and hydration high exactly, and belly fool.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
I want some salt, Electrolytes. I'm a big sucker for
things that are flavored lime, and I need some more
lime in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
You like a big sucker for things that are flavored banana.
If you know what I'm saying, I don't even want
to give you my hot tache. Now did you like banana?
What's wrong with saying that? You said you like lime?
I said you probably like banana.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
Do you not like a banana?

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
And hot dogs? Big hot dog guy? More a corn
dog guy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
You seemed like, oh yeah, he looks like you eat
a corn dog.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
I like a good, good corn dog. The Minnesota stay Fair.
We got a thing called a Proano pup. It's a
corn dog, but the breading is like a wheat batter.
It's very good, very good. All right, So yeah, go
visit our friends, Assault Electrolytes and Godfather Jerky Chips used
to go b MAC, save money and be hydrated and

(01:13:37):
uh proteined up. There you go. Is it a fair
statement to say that a lot of hardcore M m
A fans and people have been around for a long
time watching mixed martial arts. Their general opinion of the
sport is that it used to be better.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Yeah, I think I think most people do think though.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
Why do you think that is? Because I believe I
know the answer and I know who to blame.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Well, let me first say I don't know if they're correct.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
They're not correct.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
Yeah, I don't know if that's correct. I think I
think we all believe that how things were when we
were the most excited about it is when it was
the best.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Correct. The same thing with progress.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
And music and baseball and basketball and movies, anything, movies anymore.
What do you mean they don't make good movies anymore?
The movies are better than they.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Ever anything that you have a nostalgia for, nostalgic. Well,
nostalgia is unfortunately a coping mechanism to sort of like
feel this doesn't bring me as much joy as it
used to. So I'm gonna touch nostalgia and say it
used to be better when at the end of the day,

(01:14:58):
there's never been a better time to be a I'm
at sports fan and right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Now totally agree.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
Yeah, Like people might say, well, ah, the big fights
aren't just plentiful or there's a big fight.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
There's at least one big fight pretty much every year.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
Can and this is a sport where you don't need
names or even the most well known promotion in the
world to have the fight of the year on that card.
My favorite fight to ever see in nick Martial arts.
It's not between two certain people, it's between two certain
types of people, and they were the least skilled of

(01:15:33):
the bunch. You get two hundred and seventy pound guys
from Iowa who are decent wrestlers and can't kickbox to
save their life. That's fight of the night. They're gonna
try to take each other down, they're gonna get sprawled
out on and they're gonna have the sloppiest Stephan Bonner
Forrest Griffin thing you've ever seen. It's gonna be amazing.
But that's gonna be fine.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
It's gonna be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Have it in a barn. Have it in a barn
in Iowa. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
I'm telling you, TJ. Hold on a second, what are
you trying to get to act like me and Matt
Elkins don't know what it's like to have a fight
in a barn Because Iowa We're from Alabama and MMA
just got legalized here twenty three minutes ago. Really twenty

(01:16:21):
three minutes and four seconds.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
I've called fights at al Fama. So now I'm wondering
if it was legal.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
It almost certainly was not depending on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
What year you did it, twenty nineteen pretty close. Well,
here's the thing. I think that because it was this
way in Minnesota, it wasn't illegal, but it was unregulated,
which just means that there was no real oversight in
the safety was up to the promoter's discretion for the

(01:16:53):
most part. Like my buddy Caleb started a riot, started
a riot in a barn.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
I respect that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
His opponent. His opponent didn't show up, so they just
found some lippy drunk guy in the crowd, threw him
in there. Caleb takes him down, gets his back. Caleb
had never had a TKO victory yet in his like
five fight career, so he just wanted to pound this
dude out. The referee tells him don't hit him. He

(01:17:22):
was like, what, I want to hit him. I want
to get a TKO. This is what I want. Caleb
takes your naked choke chokes him out. Dude goes out
with his eyes open, right in front of his girlfriend,
who thinks that, oh my god, you've killed him. She
starts freaking out. Security tries to like calm her down.
Security bumps into a dude. That dude punches the security guard,

(01:17:45):
and then the next thing I know, three hundred people
in Rochester, Minnesota are just fighting.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
This sounds like your own personal version of a Third
Rock from the Sign by Joe Diffy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
I don't know what that means. I like that TV
show though, look it up perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
We just call the cop says she saw it all
swear's a giant alien is landad at the mall.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Yes, sir, so I'm trying to get I'm trying to
go to that fight, that fight that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
You mentioned, TJ. I'm very interested in going to that
event personally.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Where a riot breaks out. Yes, yes, Oh it's on
DVD somewhere with me on commentary. It's the first show
I ever did commentary.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
For what let's actually teach you. I need you to
find that footage. We're gonna play some of it next week. Hey,
can can I just say that J. C. Hyatt just
bought and gifted five channel memberships to just random people
in the chat right here, and he didn't even buy
the cheapest version. So you know, you can become a

(01:18:49):
channel member here for ninety nine cents and you can
get access to a bunch of videos that are behind
the paywall. But then there's another level. It's like two
dollars a nine nine cents, we get a couple extra things.
J C bumped five people up. So let's let's see
who we got. Boom, we got Reckless eleven o seven

(01:19:09):
new member Matthew Borgaro, Steven Aiken.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):
What Bobby so Bobby, both of them.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
The consciousness of Cain. He's been around the channel for
a long time and Jamie Phillips dude hooked him up.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
That's pretty awesome. How do I get one of those?

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
You're no, that's not gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
Can't haide money?

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
All right? You want me to go further with my
hot take because I think I know who to blame
for everything.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Yeah, I guess whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Okay, So if you are someone who thinks that combat
sports used to be better back in the day, let
me tell you why you feel that way. It's because
you're checked out. You're not doing yourself a service, which
is to actually do the research to know who was fighting,
because if you look at what we have now that
we didn't have in two thousand and seven, when people

(01:20:05):
think that mixed martial arts was the greatest year, it
is a byproduct of you not knowing who's fighting on
these UFC prelims. And the reason that you used to
know is because to get to the UFC, it was
a long road, and you were able to establish yourself
on the way up, even in a time when there
was no UFC Fight Pass. There were very few regional

(01:20:28):
promotions that had any television coverage, and you became aware
of these athletes for two reasons. One, you were just
plugged in and people were talking about them, whether you
were someone in Wai watching Jason Mayhem Miller tear up
Icon Sport, which was not on television. I was so
excited to see Mayhem make his UFC debut against George

(01:20:49):
Saint Pierre, and I had never watched the man fight live,
but I had read things about it, I had seen DVDs.
I was plugged in. I knew more about a guy
that I had never really seen fight live than a
lot of fighters that I have called fights of these days.
And it's one on the fan because you're not going
to message boards, you're probably not getting into the reddit.

(01:21:10):
You're not looking at regional MMA. That is on you.
If you did, I guarantee you you would care more
when these guys get to the UFC two. Unfortunately, the
MMA media it doesn't do it either. I once did
play by play text based play by play for the
International Fight League on my laptop in the crowd in Moline, Illinois.

(01:21:34):
I was just doing it for shir Dog on the forum.
Now I can't get any play by play of like
pretty high level, you know, regional shows, stuff that's airing
on fight Pass. Not only can I not get a
play by play from a website, I can't even get
quick results, a quick result right up beyond that, I'm
gonna have to wait until Thursday or Friday of the

(01:21:54):
next week before I'm gonna get the results in the
fight Finder. A topology, and I don't know what the
issue is here. Where fifteen years ago, when technology was
worse than it is today, we were better at getting
results up to the people in real time than we
are now, where you can literally watch all of these
fights on your phone. I don't know why these websites

(01:22:15):
don't do it. I guess it costs time and money.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Address this comment that just popped up here. It's on topic.

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
Should the UFC do a better job of educating us
about the people on the prelim cards and not just
main event peeps, and if so, how might they be
able to do that effectively. I've said that the UFC
does one thing poorly, and it's the biggest thing that
they do poorly, and I don't know if they can
change it, and that is promoting everything because they have

(01:22:43):
so many different things going on. They're in Baku this
week and Azerbaijan International Fight Week is next week. If
I go to the average person and ask them who's
fighting in the main event casual finn, who's fighting?

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
I don't even know. I don't even know. I'm far
from a casual.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
And that's what's going to happen when you literally have
a show every week. So not only are they not
doing the best at promoting people in prelims, they're not
doing the best at promoting people in main event spots.
From me, when you have forty five plus events a year,
being a fight promotion, it's all about that promotion and

(01:23:22):
they're always going to be focused on the next bigger card,
even if it's two or three cards away, And unfortunately,
we suffer from the idea that if you're fighting on
the prelim portion of this Baku card or the prelim
portion of next week's International Fight League card, you're not
getting the shine. And I understand if you're a purist

(01:23:44):
when it comes to media and journalism, you'll agree with
me that it's not the media's job to promote a product. However,
it is important to lend the spotlight of the media
to personalities that people should care about, and I don't
think they get that shine. And unfortunately, I feel like

(01:24:05):
a lot of athletes themselves, they're not hungry for the
attention that they used to be. I mean, I drove
from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Evansville, Indiana to watch an all
women's card and I was hardly even a quote unquote
media member at the time. I interviewed everybody on the
card because they were all incredibly excited just to have

(01:24:27):
someone get well.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
And the show is small, so it is accessible to you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
It's still accessible now because these regional shows, while they
are no regional regionally, That's what I'm saying, but again,
the interest level of these athletes that are on the
prelims of the UFC is going to go higher if
someone no one doesn't. No one is talking about prospects
in the Midwest, no one is talking about prospects in Brazil.

(01:24:53):
No one is even really plugged into the UK or Europe.
Those things are happening, and maybe around those promotions, those
teams and stuff, they're talking about these guys and they're
elevating them. But the quote unquote hardcore MMA fan back
in the day, you used to watch everything. And I'm
not saying that you can watch everything. You can't even
really watch every UFC car But if you take one

(01:25:16):
weekend a month and just watch one regional show, I
don't even care if it's a whole thing. But but
that's the thing, though, be Mack. You might not do it,
but I also don't want to hear from you or
anybody else that doesn't do it that says the talent
level is not where it used to be. Fights don't
matter as much as they used to be. It's on you,

(01:25:37):
it's on the media. Be better MMA fans, combat sports fans.
You'll enjoy it more. Hopefully, enjoy this podcast. I did.
I enjoyed parts of it. I enjoyed parts.

Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
The best part was when I did the spaghetti impression.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Go to sleep. I'm gonna say, you're sleep deprived and
that's why. All Right, he's been back from finished.

Speaker 4 (01:26:03):
We'll be back from more from more spaghetti memes next week.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
Boys, Alright, that was a mistake. I shouldn't let you
finish them. Out of the South Matt Alcins on t J.
Just Santas, We'll see you next time for the rounds.
I love you, bars.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
Let me just hear this one part.

Speaker 4 (01:26:25):
Yeah,