Ladies and gentlemen I’m thinking to myself how I want to begin this live post-fight show calling UFC 29. The champion has a name! Say it Mike Hick! Say it! Accept it! I’m laughing, I’m thinking, there’s so many emotions going on, but ladies and gentlemen, the victory horns are sounding. The belt is not where it is on this photo. The belt actually belongs to the man to Israel Adesani is right because folks, mark this date, Sean F-ing Strickland is the middleweight champion of the world and this was no flash knockdown this was no banana peel this was no luck this was no fluke Sean Strickland dominates Israel Adesanya 49 46 on all three judges scorecards he thumps Israel Adesanya he knocks him down almost finishes him loses the second round it’s 1-1 heading into round three and then Shawn Strickland wins the next three rounds he’s yelling at Israel Adesanya at the end of the fight and we realized with like two minutes left in the fifth round nothing Israel Adesanya is gonna do on this day on this night in that building is gonna be enough to stop the momentum the train of one Shawn Strickland who is the middleweight champion of the world. Wow. Welcome to the program. Everybody. I am Mike heck. I knew something weird was going to happen. I felt it. If you watch the watch party and now we are living in this world, time to react to it. And who better to join me in this reaction than my bald brother and the wise words, wordsmith Shaheen, all shoddy. Hello Shaheen. I’m just in your cackle. I tried so hard to not not step over your intro. That’s dude, we’re we’re we’ve entered idiocracy. Like this is this is crazy. This is this is beautiful. Like MMA is the stupidest sport in the world and I love it so much. I love it so very much. I have no idea what’s going on. And the man that was he’s been wanting to live in this world. He was hoping he was trying to will it into existence. Almost even got around to saying and predicting and betting on Sean Strickland winning the title. You just couldn’t do it. But sometimes gambling and winning bets, it just is not the same feeling as you get when you watch Sean Strickland become the middleweight champion. Is it Jed Mishu? I mean, can you even put a price tag on how you’re feeling right now? No, I want to be sure. This is a joyous day. This is the funniest thing that’s ever happened in the sport of mixed martial arts and when he said it coming in, I was like, you know, this has been, 2023 has been just a hilarious year. All of the funniest outcomes keep happening. I was like, what if, what if we’d really be living in the upside down if Sean Strickland won? But like, wouldn’t it be, I think I wrote in a round table this week of, Wouldn’t it be the most MMA thing in the world for the UFC, who finally got like a true contender for Israel, you had the Alex Brera rivalry and that’s now over and somehow you risk it all. You put DDP in there against Robert Whitaker in a bout that everybody said, except for me, was dumb and risky. And then he wins and he’s number one with a bullet. And then they’re like, What if what if we just this safe is so safe is Izzy could never lose this and we can still have this wonderful matchup afterwards and then it’s the most MMA thing in the world for Izzy to just fall into an ass whooping. Oh guys it’s just incredible. Guys what is going on? I am torn. I’m torn between loving so much of this and knowing that when the high of this wears off off. The new greatest regret in my life. It won’t be something I said a girlfriend I broke up with. The fact that I had a rat tail for way too much of my youth. The greatest regret I will have in my life is that I did not choose to believe in Sean Strickland on this night because I would live forever if I had just picked Sean Strickland to win this fight. My consolation prize. We still live here, guys. We still have this nonsense. It’s the best. How long did you have a rat tail? A long time. We don’t know. That’s going to derail us. And we need to keep our eyes. For no, no, no. Over under over under five years over over whatever your number is going to say. The answer is going to be over. Over under 10 years. I had it into high school, Sean. Wow. This isn’t even news. I dropped this on morning combat the other week of my life. This is just hilarious. What are you? What are they? What a stretch for Sean, Sean O’Malley, Sean Strickland. My guy over here, Sean O’Malley, it’s just that the balls, the Sean’s were all crushing it. Do you have to change how you spell Sean now? Do you? There’s one true Sean. I mean, my name is not actually Sean, so I guess I can just like alter it. I think you can just do it. Yes. Yeah. I think I got out of respect now. Yeah. It’s not a respect for the guys. Shaheen, it is 221 AM Eastern Time on Sunday morning, and we are living in a world where not only is Sean Strickland, the middleweight champion, he is barring something absolutely insane. This man is going to be the consensus fighter of the year. Like all of this just happened tonight. So I guess we saw the knockdown the first round. We saw Izzy come back in round two. Holy shit, I didn’t think of that mic! Oh my god, I didn’t even think of that! He’s the clear frontrunner! He, like, it’s him in a big gap! Whoa, he’s it! He’s it, there’s nothing… You can… There will be people who make the case for John… If John beats Deepay, but no, he’s it! You’re absolutely right, this is incredible! It’s him and it’s just a big gap, he’s 3-0, like this is… That’s the world we’re living in! I mean, he has three, you know, but one of those three is Abus Magomedov. So like. Still, dude, it doesn’t matter. Oh, he did. Dude, he’s the dude. I didn’t even think of that. Oh, my God. One of us is going to have to write about Sean Strickland, the freaking 2023 fighter. It’ll probably be me. I usually do the fighter of the year ones. It’s the best. Oh In the same year that is he’s gonna win knockout of the year for the Pereira like Exercised his demons all is right with the world and friggin six months later. He gets freaking bagged up by Shawn Strickler Sport is not real she he’d when did you what when did you? start to accept the fact that Shawn Strickland was gonna be the middleweight champion because Shawn gets the big knockdown in round one, all three judges gave Izzy round two and we’re even heading into the third round and we’re thinking, all right, this is when the tides are gonna turn, like Izzy didn’t really respect Shawn’s power, now he respects it, wins the second round, didn’t do a whole hell of a lot in that second round and we’re just wondering when he’s gonna wake up. And then round three happens and then round four happens and at worst heading into round five, even though it was pretty doubtful, at worst, it was 2-2. But it was most likely 3-1 on most people’s eyes. But when, do you remember the moment when you thought to yourself, dude, this is happening. Like, Sean Strickland’s gonna win the belt. He’s got it tonight. When did you realize it? I don’t know, even when the fight ended, it felt to me like they were gonna mess up the decision or something, right, like it felt like we just weren’t gonna live in a world where this was the actual outcome And then it would have just been the biggest robbery of all time. And we would have just been going on and on about that is he would have tried to move on the whole dude. I, what the, what the hell’s going on? This is crazy, man. This is crazy, right? Like, so let’s try to put this into context because I mean, we’ve been, we’ve talked a lot throughout this week. And I mean, we weren’t the only ones who were very dismissive of an outcome like this, right? Like we, there’s plenty of receipts right now on the internet for us, for everyone else who works within the space, It’s probably for every fan who tweets about this or Instagrams about this or anything. Anybody who puts content into the world, telling your thoughts about MMA, there’s probably some receipts of you being wrong right now. It’s just, it’s a very bizarre scene. And earlier this week we were at, we did a round table and the question was essentially like, would this be the biggest upset of all time? And as I was sitting there thinking about it, I came around to the idea that, you know, like it would be a big upset, maybe top 10 upsets in UFC history, but it wouldn’t be top three. To me, top three at that moment in time was Michael Bisbing over Rockhold, number three, Peña over Nunes at number two, and then obviously Sarah GSP at number one. And all of those conversations, the context of the upset was like, well, something like that almost happened at the end of round one, right, like a Sean Strickland goes out there, knocks out Israel Adesanya with some crazy just shot, is just this big, almost like something, that one-off thing that you could call a fluke, that people would be calling a fluke, a Matt Sarah-esque type of performance. That’s not what this was though, right? Like that’s not what this was whatsoever. And now as I sit here and I think about this all over again of like, how does this rank within the history of UFC Upsets? Whereas how do we put this in context within the history of this sport? I feel like I’m really coming around to, I was wrong initially because I just didn’t fathom the actual reality in front of us of Sean Strickland going out there and dominating Israel Adesanya in a thorough one-sided beat down in a fight that featured zero wrestling whatsoever, zero takedown attempts, and was contested solely on the feet for 25 straight minutes, and Sean Strickland just straight up outstruck is Radha Sanya. He confused him, he out-pressured him, he out-landed him, and he by far landed the more meaningful shots, and just frankly won in every aspect you could win in the fight. That hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility that could happen, Mike. So as we’re sitting here, I don’t know, man, it feels like it’s certainly a top five upset of all time. If I can’t give me a few more days to think it over, I might end up displacing something in that top three and putting it in top three because this is just frankly ridiculous in only the way that MMA can be. We have now a couple of years stretch of just a continued amount of really crazy, unexpected results that we have seen over and over and over again. And it should teach you that, you should never be too sure about these types of things. But then we continually get surprised over and over like we are right now. And it’s just, I mean, man, I don’t know. For a long time, the two best middleweights in the world were Israel Adesanya and Robert Whitaker, and then a giant gap. And then you could go tell whoever you wanted for three, four, five. Right now, I think there’s a very legitimate case that the two best middleweights in the world, at least in terms of wins and resume currently, are Sean Strickland and Drikus Duplessis, which is just a bizarre thing that came out of my mouth that is real. So, you know, take for that what you will. What a night, man. What a night. Yeah, it is, you know, it’s fun and it’s, I guess funny as this all is. One of the things that especially led me to feeling so confident in Izzy was not just the stylistic matchup, but it’s the fact that, look, Shodden’s just one speed. He’s gonna push forward. He’s gonna throw up a million punches. And that’s just who he is. This fight, the pressure was there. He was in Izzy’s face the entire time, but he was very patient. I think Izzy was expecting him to be a lot more aggressive and then the game plan they came up with was brilliant and Sean actually played it out to a T. Like he was very patient. When 90 seconds left in each round went, you could hear Eric Nixxick start screaming, all right, go, go, go, go, go. And that’s why we saw the big knockdown in the first round. We saw him have the big moments at the end of the rounds. So that was a huge thing for me. Sean’s gonna have, they’re gonna have a good game plan. Eric Nixik, especially with this win, is on the Mount Rushmore of head coaches and MMA in my opinion. There’s no argument anymore after this. But what was your biggest takeaway from Sean’s performance overall? Because the pressure was there, but the patience, his ability to just let Izzy try to come to him somehow and then counter off of Izzy, it’s pretty wild, man. It was super impressive. Yeah, I mean, there’s just so much to talk about in this fight. The biggest takeaway from the fight outside of just how fucking funny it is, man. Look, we’re going to have to circle back to this in a bit. I think this is the top three funniest fight I’ve ever watched in my life. But the biggest takeaway I had as I’m watching Sean Strickland teach Israel dissing you how to box. And there are many takeaways. I think the biggest one will be positive. This is a positive takeaway because I got some negative ones here as well. The positive one is this. Sean Strickland fought to the game plan, which even heading in, he and his coach were like, yeah, not necessarily always something Sean’s going to do in there. And mostly that he was exceptional defensively. Defense doesn’t win championships in MMA, but Hampshire won this one. You heard Izzy say it to his corner between the fourth and the fifth round, like, hey, I can’t find my jab. I can’t hit him. And Izzy’s game is a lot of getting low kicks going, getting the jabs going, setting those as rhythm based weapons to get into the quote unquote flow state or whatever. And he just couldn’t do it. There was none of that working for him and Strickland wasn’t just launching himself onto counter shots like Whittaker did in their first fight. So he, I cannot believe this, but going into this fight, it was like, I, I think a direct quote that I repeated in several programs was I do not see how Sean Strickland can consistently generate offense. And in fact, the exact inverse is true, Izzy couldn’t consistently generate offense. Strickland just never let him get going in any way and then when Izzy would get frustrated because he wasn’t getting things to happen or would try and swing a little harder, find a counter shot, Strickland would counter the counters. He was just miles ahead of him the whole way through. I don’t know, man. No one knows anything. This is the best and we have a million other things to talk about in this fight. So we don’t need to talk about Sean Strickland’s defense, but it was really, really damn good. And I, that’s it. I don’t know what else to say, man. This is nuts. I just really quickly, I wanna add on what you just said there, Mike. We need to give all the credit in the world to Eric Nixik. Because I know like, we don’t talk about coaches a lot when it comes to these types of conversations. This man has been one of the best coaches in MMA for a while now. But this, like tonight, to be able to pull off they pulled off like this is his master class right like this is a master stroke like this is this is Mona Lisa yeah man like this is incredible man to be able to pull this off like you call you say he’s on the mountain rush more of MMA coaches I wholeheartedly agree with you man like he is one of the best coaches in the entire space and to consistently be able to pull off the type of results he does if this like you know we’re living in crazy land at this point we’re living in fairy tale land who knows what even happens and i’m pretty sure this is simulation at this point If Francis Nganu goes out there next month, Eric Nixon can just I want to be clear. I’m picking it right now. Eric Nixon is just really Zeus. Like, that’s all he is. He’s just throwing up thunderbolts and doing whatever he wants. Like, he’s the second coming of Zeus. And I’m never going to doubt him again, because what the fuck were we even doing? Nothing makes sense to think about the difference in those two champions, right? Like, I’m a moron and I’m pretty confident that I could coach Francis and Ghanu to win the heavyweight title. Like you just roll them out there. You know, it’s, it’s like John Wooden. You don’t need to coach them. You just, Hey, Kareem, just go score a hundred points. We’re going to be okay. Like you could do that with Francis. I don’t, there are two people alive. Maybe who could have turned Sean Strickland into UFC champion. What the hell is going on Shaheen when you said at the way, you know back I don’t you’re getting talked into this is the second biggest upset of all time I know that there are gonna be a lot of people who are in on you just paying you or whatever No, it’s Sarah GSP and it’s this right here because this dude was a minus 220 favorite over a bus maga man off and now he is the champion the world against probably the second greatest middleweight of all time. I just, I can’t get there yet. I can’t get there yet because ultimately, and we’ll talk about this soon because I’d imagine we’re talking about what comes next, but like Israel Adesanya, however you want to frame it, I agree. Second greatest middleweight of all time. He’s still someone who has lost two out of his last three. So I can’t get there to the second biggest upset of all time, but it’s God damn, it’s Shaheen again, I’m so I gave him I didn’t give him enough credit. I guess I want to be clear he when I say that he was a minus 250 favorite he’s actually a minus 150 favorite over Abis Magomedov and checking the watch that was six weeks ago six weeks ago he was a minus 150 favorite over a random body and he just beat Issy! It’s the biggest upset I’ve ever seen that’s not St. Pierre and Sarah. So I’m gonna frame this a little bit differently Shaheen because the title of our preview show was is Sean Strickland upsetting Israel Adesanya the most chaotic result in UFC history? Now that you’ve seen it and now we see what this division could look like and we’ll talk about the what’s next and where this could all go but with like the winners, the losers, the contenders that were coming up, the contenders that are still coming up, is this the most chaotic result that you can remember in UFC history following a pay-per-view? That’s a tough question. I would say no just because people forget Matt Serra won a title shot against Rue St. Pierre off a reality show. Like that was chaos. That’s chaos incarnate, what Matt Serra did way back when. It’s a different, it’s a different landscape though, right? Like this, you’re certainly like, this is a much more mainstream version of it. This, this division felt like it was set up to actually start getting really crazy after this fight, right? Like on the, on the previous show, I called this a bridge fight because it felt like all the best stuff was about to happen. We were about to get the DDP fight. We were about to get the Hamsat Shamiah fight. When it comes to chaos, I mean, this is right up there. I think Bizbing also just randomly grading the greatest ending to a career of all time ever out of nowhere is probably up there as well. And then fighting Dan Henderson was like ranked number 14th or 11th or whatever afterwards. Stop three. It’s top three for sure when it comes to chaos. I mean, what the hell are we just talking about? We said it all. I just we said it 1000 times is Sean Strickland is the UFC heavyweight middleweight champion like I don’t I’m confused how to speak about this. So Jed Dana White shows up at the press conference and he reacts to it says is he looked really slow he looked dry look dried up just didn’t have it. And he because of this he wants the rematch. I feel like the rematch isn’t necessary here like DC even said it like we shouldn’t run it back like I get it like is he’s second greatest middleweight or whatever. But we got guys coming up we got hums at your mic getting ready to fight we got trickiest who’s right there, who, by the way, you can make a strong argument that outside of Zeralla Asana, Drix Duplisi might have been the biggest loser tonight out of all of this. He still may get the Izzy fight, but it won’t be for the belt. What, like this, I, this is all just absolutely insane, but we can’t do the rematch. I mean, you shouldn’t do the rematch. The rematch, right, Jed? Like the rematch is a bad idea. Mike, you know my feelings on this. I’ve been extremely clear for my entire life. You just never do an immediate rematch because unless there are two exceptions to this one legitimate controversy a robbery has occurred or like the premature stop it like an actual premature stoppage or whatever something like that I accept an immediate rematches and two I accept even though I’m still not like all the way an immediate rematch in a trilogy bout like you guys split them run it right back otherwise don’t lose because winning and losing fights matters and And if you are a guy like Sean Strickland and you just beat, uh, whether it’s a new or a long reigning champion, you shouldn’t have to do it twice. There’s no reason the rest of the sport does not dictate or demand multiple attempts to do something to prove it’s worth won the fights. You shouldn’t do this back. I’m going to divert us because we got to talk about this guys. It’s part of this whole thing. And um, it’s part of why I think it ties in here as part of why I would strongly say there’s there’s no need for a rematch. Casey and I were talking about this in the post pressure presser while we were waiting for him to show up. He broke Izzy. He didn’t just beat him. Like we’re talking about Atlanta when Izzy fought Kelvin Gaslam and Shaheen, you and I were both there, Casey was there, watched it and this difference between that fight and this is stark. Heading into that fifth round, Izzy is standing there saying, I’m willing to die to himself to go get into battle. And at the end of this fight, after losing three of the four rounds and most of the fifth round, with 30 seconds left, Sean Strickland, who he is apparently very mad at for things that were said about his dog or whatever, is shouting at him and backing him on, screaming obscenities in his face. And Izzy is backing away. He didn’t want no part of that business at the end of that fight Like he wasn’t I got 30 seconds to keep my belt and this dude’s hands are down. I should try he’s just backing up and looking like he just lost which he did I I didn’t see Kelvin Gaston to do that and somehow Sean Strickland did if you break a motherfucker You shouldn’t have to fight him again. That dude needs to prove to me He deserves another fight because that’s not how that goes, man Yeah, I have no interest in seeing it. I have no interest in seeing it at this point, man. I mean, I’ll watch it, but it’s just Israel has lost two of his last three championship bouts, right? Like, and this wasn’t UFC 281. Like this wasn’t some Hail Mary fifth round comeback. This isn’t some long running story between him and Alex. And Alex was this weird anomaly who hadn’t really fought a lot in MMA. Like this is the farthest thing from that. Sean dominated, is he? This This is a pillar to post, like even Sean Strickland in his wildest dreams, and he even sort of admitted it of like how much he doubted himself. Like he couldn’t have dreamed up how thorough and just disgustingly convincing this was in terms of just being a one-sided fight. Like there is, I have no interest in seeing this again. This middleweight division is really good right now. Hamzat Shamiah, Pellacosta is about to happen. The winner of that’s probably gonna be up there. DDP is up there, like, I don’t know, man. I’m sure they’re gonna run it back because Izzy’s a popular champion. He’s one of the big, he’s one of the faces of the company. but to me like I would move on from this, right? Like how many shots to the belt you give a guy who’s again, one and two in his last three. Here’s the thing Sheen, cause I think you just said it. I won’t say cooler heads are gonna prevail, but look if Hamzat runs through Paulo Costa, Dana is gonna come into that post fight like, I know I don’t book fights, but I think we just gotta give him a title shot. And that’s because Hamzat is also a dude they can get behind in a major way. So I think if Hamsa beats Paolo, then he will certainly jump in front of Izzy and sucks to be you DDP. You might be the best middleweight in the world, but we’re probably never going to find out at this rate. Dude, if Paolo beats Hamsa, he’s getting a title shot. Like he’s going to say the same thing because it’s going to be absolutely insane. And you know what else is kind of crazy about the Shaheen? Because we are on the rankings panel. We talk about how things can happen, DDP might have suffered from this, but you know who didn’t, you know, who somehow just found himself in another win win situation. Alex Pereira, because of all of this, because if Alex Pereira goes and fights Yuri and loses at light heavyweight, he could still go back down to 185 and fight Sean Strickland because he already bolted him. So he still found a way to win tonight. They’re, they’re homies now, buddy. Pereira taught him how to win. You don’t think they would fight each other for the belt? They would fight. Actually, I actually don’t think prayer would anymore one really I just don’t know that he can make that weight anymore No, also, I’m I’m looking this up. I feel like he tweeted something about that Let me confirm that I didn’t just he said he said he wouldn’t fight him Seems like my plans to go down one more time to middleweight ran out Like that’s right after thing because he’s homies with with dude now Right, but if he goes out and loses to Yuri and they say hey Alex shot wants to fight you to try to avenge the loss. What do you think he’s going to say now? I think Sean wants to fight him to try and avenge his loss. I think Sean would definitely take that fight just to prove that he could stand and strike with him because that’s just the kind of guy Sean Strickland is. Here’s the thing. Sean Strickland is a little dumb, but he’s not a moron. I think he remembers how that fight went and I’m not confident that fight goes. I’m very confident that fight goes exactly the same in perpetuity. So they’re never going to fight. Pereira is fine. Pereira doesn’t need it. He’s about to be the free and light heavyweight champion. Shane, I think we’ve learned something else as well tonight. Something that newer fans need to kind of learn lessons from something that long time fans need to learn lessons from, because when we have these types of situations, we had it with Kamara Usman. Now we have with Israel Adesanya, there’s lessons that need to be learned. And Jed talks about this all the time when it comes to how impressive it is to continuously defend your title. So I’m going to back away and just let you do your thing right now. What is the biggest lesson that MMA fans can learn from what happened tonight when it comes to the history of the sport and the greats that have come before this generation of champions? Look, Mike, I know what you’re trying to do here and so I will oblige you because I don’t ask for much. I really don’t. I love you guys out there. I love you guys who support us and watch us on this podcast network, this video network who support MMA fighting, who have for so long. My baby boy just had his first birthday like a few weeks ago. It was great. We celebrated. He ate a bunch of cake. He was all shickered up. It was just a great time. None of you guys got me anything for it and you don’t need to. That’s fine. anything for it. What you can get me. Call it an early Christmas gift. Why would I get you something for your son’s birthday? Hold on, Jed. Let me get there. You didn’t get him anything either. And he was very offended. He talked to me about it. You can get me for a late gift for him, early Christmas gift for me, whatever you want to do. Can this night, can just whatever we just saw, whatever the hell just happened today, I still am not quite sure what just happened today. Can this This be the coffin nail forever and ever and ever on this do this stupid, stupid thing that we have seemingly done over the last five years, where every time a single champion defenses belt twice or three times or four times or maybe even five times, there is this rush to anoint him as the greatest human being who has ever laced up four ounce gloves and fought in that division. It happens every single time. I’m old enough to remember when Tyron Woodley was the welterweight goat. Remember when Kamaru Usman was the welter egg goat? That happened too. Where’s all that now? Like this is just something we tend to do in this space recently. I don’t know why it is only a symptom of the last like five years ish it seems. And now we was happening with Israel Adesanya after the Alex Pereira win where like he lost to this guy. Then he came back and got revenge and great for him. That’s awesome. And all of a sudden he was the greatest middleweight of all time. To call someone the goat in a division where Anderson freaking Silva existed and went 16 and O to start his UFC career and carved out one of the most incredible combat sports legacies we’ve ever seen. It’s just disrespectful, not only to history, but it’s disrespectful to the athletes who are currently still doing things. Cause it puts weird, like undue tribute upon their laps that inevitably gets taken away very quickly when they do lose a fight like this, when they don’t show up in the way that they need to. And we get a result like this. We seemingly do it every single time. All I ask is that maybe this is the moment where we can all look at each other and be like, hey, maybe this is a dumb thing that we keep doing and we should stop doing. We don’t know how these stories are going to end when we’re in the middle of them. And this is a great example of this. And Jed, I mean, we’ve talked about this a lot on different dams of like, there were moments in time during a lot of people’s careers where if they have just walked away at that moment in time, we would consider them far differently than how we do now. Jose Aldo, Fado, or whatever. They don’t need, yeah. Again, Izzy’s great, man. Izzy is probably the second best middleweight. He’s at least the second most decorated middleweight to ever do it. That’s awesome. He’s like 13 and three in the UFC. That’s tremendous. He’s more accomplished than like 99.9% of fighters who will ever lace up gloves to do this. That’s cool. That’s great. That’s awesome. We don’t need to try to make it more than it is. That’s all. That’s all that I ask. Just again, early Christmas gift, late first birthday gift for my baby boy. Can we just take some time? Put some stuff in context and wait for things to play out before we rush to judgment Well said very well said Real quick before we kind of transition to the rest of this car because other things that happen on this card I mean we get to we can just go to the apes do Where does Izzy go from here Jed? Like where does he go from here? like I feel like the MCs gonna try to push this rematch but like like where does he go from here? Like can he come back from this? Like he came back from the Pereira loss, right? But can he come back from this two losses in 10 months? Like dude’s had a, he’s got a lot of mileage on him. He’s had a lot of fights and he’s still very good. Like he could, if they ran it back, like Izzy could beat Sean Strickland. Like it’s, there’s, it’s definitely there. I mean, we all are so confident about it the first time. So where does he go from here? If you were advising Israel Adesanya, what would you tell him? 205. That’s what I would tell him. He’s gonna come back and fight for a title and maybe he wins it. I think the single biggest thing I missed coming into this fight, and again, a lot of speculation I’m about to make here, but feel okay about it, at least on that watch, and maybe I’ll be proven wrong. I think I really just did not pay any amount of respect to the mileage on Izzy, he’s not that old like 34 or whatever but he’s got 15 years of fight years on him and I’ve talked with AK Lee about this uh the last like this last couple of months for a reason if you start to get to 12 years like that’s when you start to see mileage accrue on on fighters if they’ve fought 12 years and Izzy’s got 15 combined with kickboxing and hard years like he’s got a lot of fights under his belt across multiple disciplines and all that training. And it just adds up. And Casey and I were talking about this on the, on the post-pressor again, too early to say definitively, but the big telltale sign for me, whenever you see it, like, Oh, I can tell a fighter is starting to get old. It’s happened with all the great says they can’t pull the trigger. You know, they still have the skills and the ability and the power, but they can’t pull the trigger as much. And I mean that I would quantify the single biggest issue that Izzy had tonight was pulling the trigger on offense and granted a lot of that is Sean Strickland taking those opportunities away but when Father Time is beating you it’s because things are going down just a little bit and your split second reactions are a little bit lesser and so you see the opening and you can’t find the jab to steal a quote directly from Izzy in that fight so I would say that there is an extremely high likelihood uh, that Israel Disneya is now over the hill, um, and that for the remainder of his career will not be the best. He could still win this fight. They rematched it in the post fight, uh, uh, Eugene Barman was like, I’d fight him next week and we think we could win it. Um, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not, but he can’t ever, he’s never going to put together like a sustained run. And the biggest thing about this fight, the biggest takeaway, I think in a week or two weeks or a year when we look back on this fight to speaking a bit to Shaheen’s point about sort of this premature you know inauguration I guess of these fighters as the goats or whatever is uh Izzy can’t overcome this this is a forever black spot on his resume you can uh tell yourself a story about Alex Pereira well guy already had two wins over him in kickboxing he’s just sort of of his nemesis but is he won the rematch and so we’re there losing to Sean Strickland a guy who you were a massive favorite over and um genuinely nobody thought could possibly beat you and losing in that manner and getting broken by him that that one doesn’t come off the resume forever and so at the end of it it will historically stick with him and so for me he can’t ever be the the greatest middle weight of all time. Can’t do it. That’s gone. There’s no window of opportunity for that. Go up to light heavyweight. See if you can etch your name in history in a different way. If you can win another belt. You do have a knockout win over a dude who’s about to fight for a title. Maybe you can make that happen and add a second chapter to where your career is at. If I were to tell him that, I’d be like, dude, you fought everybody of middle weight, just going up. Wait a second. I’m surprised to hear you say 205, because I mean this is just historically someone who doesn’t, is not even like coming in heavy for middle weight, right? Like he’s always coming in like 184, we saw when he waited until five, he was like 203 maybe, something like that. Like he’s a tall guy. I don’t think he’s like 170. Sure, but he’s a tall guy, but he’s also just so lanky and skinny with his frame, right? doesn’t have the frame that Alex Pereira has where we saw Alex go up and it made sense immediately when you saw it of like, oh yeah, this dude clearly is like a 205 pounder who miraculously could make 185. Izzy doesn’t have that vibe to me. And even when he fought up there, he just didn’t seem to be nearly as comfortable up there with the size that those guys had. Like you see, you put Izzy up against like a supersize Europe or husk. I don’t think that goes well for Izzy. Yeah. But that’s the thing is he always said when he was like, you know, after the, after the on fires, like, well, you know, I’m going to do a couple more things here and then I’m going to take the time, build up, put on weight and go up. Do that. Like actually go up instead of just take a vacation up there and not cut weight. Like go, go up, make the move forever and see what happens. I don’t think he wins the belt, but like, I just, if he goes back and reclaims the middleweight title, why, for what? Like what’s, what do you mean? I mean, There’s well to get vengeance to be become a champion again to get the big paydays again like there’s a lot more nuance in this than just like us sort of wanting to see something new play that string out for him as a fighter he gets vengeance i’m with you on that cool um then he’s gonna fight ddp and if he loses that then is he gonna do a rematch again like you do another rematch there um because straight up he the israel disney who’s fighting tonight gets whopped by DDP. Like gets whopped by him. So like what, like what you’re just playing in a sandbox that you’ve done most of the things in. He’s 90% at the level. I guess he can stick around and try and, you know, 400% it, but there’s a whole new level he can go to. He doesn’t need to get all the coins. He can go try this new one while he still has time to do it. And while there’s still some energy, cause he gets whopped up by DDP at middle weight, then there ain’t nothing for him to go to like every way to over I disagree I think you’re playing this out too far in the future because ultimately if you’re Izzy and you’re like the way the question was framed right was if you’re his manager or his coach what would you advise him to do you advise him to take the clearest path back to the belt back to the giant paydays which would be fighting Sean Strickland again right like I don’t want to see it but if you does anyone think that if they fought 10 times that Izzy’s losing all 10 like obviously that is the cleanest path back to the belt for him. We’re having a good time here. But like, here’s the thing, if you just got knocked out, I would say he wins. He got fricking just gunned up for 25. I get it. And this goes back to why we all, you in particular, you and I always say the hardest thing to do in this sport is not to become a two division champion. It’s to defend this belt over and over and over again, because sometimes you’re going to have bad nights. And if you’re able to win on the bad nights, that’s the mark of a true all time great. I don’t know. It seemed like Izzy probably had a bad night. It also seemed like Sean Strickland had the night of his life and came in with a killer game plan and had a style that genuinely frustrated and confused Izzy. All of those things can be true. That doesn’t mean if they fight again that all those things will be true all over again, right? Like if you’re Izzy and I’m advising you, or I’m sorry, if I’m advising Izzy, like I’d much rather have him go fight Sean Strickland for the belt than go fight a giant like Yuri Prohaska for the belt. I just think one is more likely chance for success than the other. But again, I don’t know. I mean, I do think there is something to be said that is he’s probably in the tail end of all of this, right? He’s probably in the tail end of the prime earning years window wise for all of this. So to maximize that if you’re able to beat Sean, and get the belt back, I’m sure the UFC will do the Pereira thing and just move on and be like, I won one week guy we wanted one, let’s move on and then you can, you know, lose the DDP or homes out of whoever and then we figure it out from there. But to me, I don’t know, but I just don’t see 205 being like a really good place for him in the way that it is seemingly for Pereira. Yeah, I don’t, again, I don’t think that he’d win the title, but one, if I was actually advising him, I’d tell him retire, just, you made money. Yeah, but that’s dumb too. So you’re long-term health, like no one’s gonna do that. That’s really dumb, because he’s the second highest earner in the UFC right now behind Conor McGregor who doesn’t fight. I don’t think that’s dumb at all. You can’t put a price on your long-term physical health. Yeah, but it is the prize fighting game and he’s certainly made money, but he could make a lot more money and you work your entire career to get to this point where you are making this much money that he is making. That’s not realistic to ask him to retire. Oh, I think it’s not realistic. I’m just saying if I was actually advising him, that would 100% be a good advice. I do feel like a break is needed though. The dude has fought every three months for a long ass time. DC like lay out a graphic of like all the events he’s headlined over the last like four years and it’s a long list you actually have to click on the image to see all of them and here’s it like what’s crazy about it is like sometimes in this sport and it’s like this in pro wrestling too and we look even we saw this with Colby right Colby fights Maz et al everything happens in Miami and and then Colby just disappears for a year. And then he comes back and it’s like, oh, Colby’s back, woohoo. And maybe that didn’t last long for everybody. But still, we can’t miss you if you don’t leave. So if Izzy just like takes nine months off and just kind of does his own thing and like gets his mind right and then returns for like international fight week in July or August or like next September or something, and then like fights whoever the champion is or fight Shawn Strickland in some fight whether Sean’s the champion or not. Maybe that’s what he needs. I think just getting up, the thing that concerned me the most from what Eugene said was, and I get where he’s coming from, you’re the coach, you wanna put your guy over, but him saying, oh, we’ll fight him next weekend. We’re ready. No, I know, that’s the wrong thing to say. We’re gonna go home, we’re gonna chill out, we’re gonna get our mind right, we’re gonna rewatch the fight, we’re gonna figure everything out, we’re gonna take a break from MMA for a little while, And then we’re gonna come back in 2024, and then we’re gonna be a snowball that just goes downhill. You thought Izzy was great three years ago, you thought Izzy was great at UFC 287, wait till you see this guy when he has nine months of rest, when he just disappears from the sport for a little while. And then he comes back and like, some of the bad jujus worn off and like, people just genuinely kind of miss him, you know what I mean? Like we just, we haven’t really gotten that chance with Izzy like we’ve had with a lot of other fighters in the sport. So that’d be my suggestion. And then like, if he wants to do 205 on that break, if he wants to go back and do 185 on that break, cool. But in the meantime, there’s fun things to happen to this division. DDP can get his title shot. Hamzat or Costa can get their title shot. Sean Strickland winning is chaotic because it opens the door for so many different things. And it’s insane. All of this- Robert Whitaker is suddenly back in the picture. Robert Whitaker is now back in the title picture because of- I will say, from an observer’s standpoint, from our standpoint, is what is the most interesting to me, Shaheen Alshadi, that what you laid out is the most interesting scenario of everything, which is just Izzy taking nine months off, taking a year off and letting this figure itself out, right? Because I think there’s a world that doesn’t feel too far-fetched where Sean Strickland moves forward. He fights DDP, DDP seems very good, hitting his peak right now, DDP wins. And then maybe Izzy comes back and we have Izzy DDP for the title in a way that we never actually thought it would come together, right? And the dynamic has completely shifted Izzy is the hunter chasing the hunted in Africa. And you could do a whole different setup with similar sort of storyline, vibes, narrative, all of it, but it is different entirely. So like that, that to me feels so much more interesting than just trying to wash away this stink just like we did with Nunes and Peña, right? Where it’s just like, ah, did that really happen? Didn’t really happen, did it? And we’re just going to move on. Like I always hate the, hey, you got to beat this champion twice to be able to move on with your career type of thing. The same thing we’re doing with Alexa Grasso right now. Alexa Grasso beat Valentina very decisively. She submitted her. She made Valentina choose to exit that fight. She shouldn’t have to do it twice just because we think of Valentina in some way. That division shouldn’t move on and then if that fight comes up again, we’ll have some time to let it marinate rather than if Valentina just wins next week, because then like what, does any of it matter? Did it matter that Alexa won? Like that whole thing is so dumb to me. Oh, so that, I agree with you, Mike. I think that’s the, at least in my opinion, as an observer, that is by far the most interesting outcome. Shaheen, I’m gonna do something I rarely do on air. I was wrong. You’re gonna admit you’re wrong? Yeah. Hand up. Yeah. I disagreed with a lot and I still think that a lot of what I said was true, but ultimately you laid out the correct and only good path, which is a world where DDP wins the belt and he defends his belt against Izzy in Africa, like next fall. Like how fun is that, right? Like that’s way better. That’s the new funniest outcome that could, we just had the funniest outcome. That’s the world we just never visualized. And now that’s the new funniest outcome, is we get UFC Africa, it’s DDP who makes it happen and defends against Izzy. And DDP tries to talk. So whatever gets us to that. And then DDP is like, nah, I’m not gonna fight him. He talks his way out of fighting Izzy instead of Izzy, like no selling DDP. I mean, just the world we could be living in 10 months from now, if DDP wins the belt, it’s just fascinating stuff. But golly, man, Sean Strickland’s a bit away, but go ahead, Shane. But it’s a potential outcome that we also haven’t even considered. Paulo Costa is one of the most entertaining men in the entire sport right now. If he just goes out there in colds, out Shamayev and like around and just knocks out this dude that we’ve been proclaiming as a two division champion and then Paolo Costa goes in there and beat Sean Strickland and suddenly Paolo Costa is the the UFC middleweight champion. New York Ricks personal barber Paolo Costa is out here with the belt. That’s a great like that’s super fun. There are so many opportunities now for this division to have so much fun. I’m just here for it. We can’t miss you if you don’t leave. hit the refresh button. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sure there’s a million questions and a million talking points from the people. I have a million questions. Let’s slightly pivot and then we’ll go to the piece. I’m sure we’re going to talk about all the other lingering things. I’ll add the NHL, Jen. Michelle, I’ll start with you. Clearly, Sean Strickland is the top guy here. If we do the three-star scale, like the end of the of a hockey game bring out the top three stars Sean Strickland’s number one who’s two and three from this card for you I guess you got to go Volkov just because being the second man to ever pull off an Ezekiel that’s right I said second don’t bring me your rimco part don’t no rimco isn’t a gi it’s not it takes away the the fun of calling it an Ezekiel choke if If there’s a gi there, it’s easy. Like I can choke anyone with the gi. It’s not hard. He’s doing it just with, with the feeling and the strength of his arms. Like that’s so second man ever behind Alexa leading to score in Ezekiel. Uh, so I’ll give them that one. And then, I mean, I feel like the answer probably has to be Justin Taffa, even though no one cares, no one cares. No, because I don’t give a shit about the rest of the things that happened on this card, but Justin Taffa landed some of the meanest freaking coffin nails of all time. So I’m not doing the one you want. I refuse because I don’t care about any of the rest of these people. So give me Justin Taffa because those coffin nails were nasty. Shane, who’s two and three? I mean, I agree with two. It’s obviously Volkov, right? Like that’s the most meaningful result on on this card outside of the main event. But give me Tyson Pedro, that knockout and then that celebration was cold, man. That was super, like, that was sick. I rewatched that thing like four or five times. The knockout was just nice in and of itself, but then the celebration was just, mwah, like that was perfection. I don’t know if he practiced that or whatever, but I dug that a lot, give me that. You would do that to AK? you would disrespect AK by picking the man who beat his boy. Look, I know that this is a great moment of sadness for all of us and that we so badly wanted the Pleasure Man to be a good fighter so that every three or four months, we could just unload all of the Pleasure Man innuendos and double entendres that we have stacked up here, just on Twitter and Instagram and have a great time and it would be the whole thing. But yeah, I’m sorry, that’s just not the world we live in. that man got deaded in a real crazy way. I think you probably think the combination of names you both threw out there are probably the correct answer, but shout out to Carl Solberg too, like a complete performance. Gets a rare, oh, we think we’re getting a unanimous decision, but then we get a replay submission win with like less than 10 seconds left in the fight. Shouts to Herb and Mark. That’s, those are the, you’re the ones. That was great. That was great. Honestly, it was incredibly well done. It’s perfect. Dude. We are so quick. We have no bad refereeing. I’m so glad you mentioned that, Mike, because we are so quick, all of us, everyone, everyone watching this, all three of us, Casey as well. We’re so quick to jump on these people, these officials when they mess up, because it’s just fun for us, right? How could this incompetent person mess up so well? We don’t do this enough when actually good officiating happens to give credit and kudos to it. So that’s a great call. Audit and her team because that was perfect. Like the way they handled that was excellent. That was a great example to now moving forward that you can show people like how replay that replay review can be used in a moment like in a flash in a very correct way. Also honorable mention she probably deserves to be on this list too. Laura Sanko tremendous job tonight. Tremendous job. Even certain points like schooling DC on scoring which I thought was great. I thought the trio was really good tonight. And DC and Sanko did a great job, did a great job. So good job. DC was the best he’s been in a long time. Completely great. He didn’t have a… He wasn’t getting sidetracked. Yeah, to do not fighting stuff. Just get down, get down a rabbit hole of bad. So yeah, good work all around. Yep. Casey, come on in. Because boy, oh boy. Casey, before we get to the questions, I got at least one that I need to fire out here. I’ve been sitting on this for a hot minute, boys. Yes or no, if world gets crazy, Sean Strickland defends his UFC middleweight title against Islam Makachev. Who are you taking to win that fight? What? I know where you’re going with this because we had this debate with Habib and Izzy. Do you think Isla Mogatjian could win the middleweight title from Sean Strickland? Because I would confidently say Leon Edwards can. I would pick Sean Strickland in that fight because size matters at elite levels. I think he’s a little too much size, I think he’s a little too much size, it’ll be competitive. How about that? Prime Habib? I would probably pick him to beat Sean Strickland. Yeah, I mean, I want to pick the beam to be a lot of though and I said it at the time so Yeah, okay, I just wanted to I wanted to gauge if I was getting too excited about the people who can beat Sean Strickland because Here’s why middle weights a great way Casey you were you were you were slacking us about how it’s like the worst class like historically and whatever Maybe it’s the best weight class because there have been several different champions where the list of people who could beat them is extensive I remember I used to have a lot of power on the way belt with no MMA experience this one the belt with one eye and old I remember Dan Henderson almost won the belt from bisming with even more old exactly I remember bisming was champion I was like I think I can put together a list of 25 fighters the middleweight to welterweight who I would pick pretty comfortably to be Michael Miss Megan, I’m gonna have a lot of fun doing something similar to Sean Strickland in the coming months. Oh my god. What a weight class. Wow. What a world. I got a question. Okay, go ahead. Right here. Right here. Since we’re talking about who’s going to be Sean Strickland really quick. Oh, oh, no, no, I like this. Go forward and then I’ll go mine. If Bo nickel were to fight Sean Strickland next, what would the odds be Jed? Minus three 50. I think coming off this win, uh, people, yeah, for bow. Yeah. I think coming off this, there’s going to be a lot more trepidation about, um, setting Sean as this big and underdog, even in fights like Pereira might be a massive favorite, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be a huge one against him moving forward. My question might guess as the creator and purveyor and really overlord of the middle weightiest middleweight gambit title, whatever you want to call it. Does this result tonight change what it means to be a middleweight middleweight? Sheesh. This is a platonic ideal. Right? Like I feel like this is this is fully full circling moment type of thing for whatever this is. But Sean did knock Izzy down and like beat him up. That’s typically not middle weighty middle weights. Typically, it’s like we go up against the fence and we just kind of knee each other in the body for 15 minutes. That’s middle weighty middle weight. Brendan Allen has graduated from that. Kristoff Jotko is the goat middle weighty middle weight. I don’t know. We have to really go deep into Sean has six decisions in his last eight wins, though. Sean, look, Sean was repping middle weightiness for a long time. I feel like Marvin Vittori just might be the middle weightiest middleweight for the whole time. Marvin Vittori has been the middle weightiest middleweight forever. Yeah. I think he might just be the end boss. But now Sean might be the end boss. I don’t know, it’s a great conversation right now. Sean, he might have won a second title tonight. You might be a two division champ or a double division champ. Incredible. A far more imagine John Strickland versus Yuri Prahashka. No, no, I cannot. I cannot imagine. I don’t know if it’s a champ. Maybe let’s go. Oh, my gosh. Oh, sorry. My head. I love look. I love it. I love nights like this so much. I love it so much. This is the dumbest, greatest sport in the world. We all, we all spend so many hours a year talking and writing and thinking and watching this stupid, stupid sport and it amounts to nothing because all of us know nothing. It’s tremendous. No, it amounts to everything though, Shaheen, because this is the night when it all comes together and makes sense. Like the other end of it, you could have like a really great night, like 290 or whatever. I’m like, yeah, this is why I follow the sport. This is the other half of it when I’m like deep in the weeds of actually this car was a perfect example. We got two homophobic slurs for literally no reason. Just out and into the ether and it’s like, oh, this is what I’ve chosen to do with my life. So unnecessary. It was so close. The cop almost nailed that promo. I was like, oh man, cop did it. Just at the end, just as a little turd bomb at the end to be like, what have I ruined all of this? Like right here on this wall, there’s a law degree. And I sometimes look at it and I’m like, I could be doing that with my life instead of covering people dropping the F-bomb, whatever. But then this happens and I’m like, I wouldn’t trade this for the fucking world. This is, I can’t get this anywhere else. I fucking love this sport, man. There’s no equipment to it. We could end the year, ladies and gentlemen. We could end the year. It is a possibility where Sean O’Malley, Sean Strickland and Colby Covington are undisputed UFC champions. That could very well happen before the end of 2023. It’s just, there’s no parallel, man. There’s no, they don’t play the entire NBA season. And then, you know, we’re going into nuggets heat and then randomly they’re like, yeah, you know what? Actually Denver’s not gonna be in this one. Minnesota, come on, Minnesota, you’re in the finals now. I don’t know why, but Minnesota, come on. And then all of a sudden, Carl Anthony Towns is holding the trophy loft as the champion. Like, there’s just there’s no parallel. I love it so much. We play one game for all the marbles. Yolo. It’s it’s the best. Oh, God. I’m so excited to keep thinking about this fight. Dude, I almost want to have an a second post fight show like four days from now where for no reason where we’re close between. It’s called between the links. You can you can come on this week. Yeah, I think I think we might have to have just do that and do a whole show about like the digestible version of all this because I Would assume that a lot of the parties involved are gonna be on the MMA are so we’ll get to react to like their reactions to all of this and Yeah, it’s gonna be fun It’s gonna be fun. I Can’t do we have questions despite? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that. We’re just sitting here trying to bask in it It’s so good. Yeah, I’m just, I’m just, dude, this is some of the most, this is maybe the most fun I’ve had all year. And this was like objectively the worst pay-per-view on paper all year. Yeah. Like it’s making a smile like this. Like, you know, I feel like I’m going to have like the most, it’s going to be the most peaceful sleep I’ve had post pay-per-view maybe all year. And it’s just like a weird feeling. I didn’t think I would feel this way, but it’s just going to be like, okay, this is just the world we live in. And it’s the funniest year if if if that fight gets stopped in the first round just say One more shot like a legitimate stoppage. Not nearly as fun. Not near the conversations. Oh, no, it’s still really fun It’s not as fun, but it’s funny. That’s fun It’s like but then we’re having though is he got caught he got lazy But we’re not saying that now because he lost for 25 minutes or whatever And and to your point Jed and Casey, I don’t look broken at the end of it Dude, that’s a real thing that we watched. That’s what gets me. That one kind of shook me a bit. The way Izzy just said, nah, I lost. I’m not going to just, those last things, I’m not just going to swing my arms around and do anything crazy. He did it. He just… He was done. Didn’t want it. That is… Such a stark contrast because I have never seen a man look more confident than him walking to the cage. This is the most confident I’ve ever seen a human being look. And on the other side of that, Sean did not look confident, right? Like maybe he has projection, but I was watching his walk out like, Oh dude, like it looks like dude, did you read in my live blog, uh, for it, I, I made paraphrasing slightly. So I’m in front of like, yeah, I’ve had that look before. It was when I was walking to get my ass beat, um, and you’re, you’re resolved to do it, Yeah. You don’t know why you, this is where your life is. That’s why I was like, yeah, you know, he’s about to get his ass beat, but here it goes. And then 20, what, nine minutes later and knew. Yeah. There was a look in Sean’s eyes too. When he walked out there, I was like, this is not the Sean Strickland that walked out to fight Nasser Dean or a boost or even Pereira. This is a focus like feeling the weight of the world on his shoulder. or Sean Strickland turning pressure into diamonds. There’s just a different look. Made the vibes even stronger. I have a really important question for you, Jed. Something that just occurred to me. And it might be the most important question I ask all year, frankly. Hell yeah. So lately we’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the critically acclaimed Michelin star system. I feel like it’s been received very well. I think everyone’s really enjoying it. It’s really well put together. I’m looking forward to seeing how this evolves moving forward, you gave this card, deservedly so, zero Mushulin stars ahead of this fight. And you said if you weren’t in Sydney, you would not even go to this fight. That is essentially what the zero stars means. Is it possible to amend that retroactively or is that not how this works? No, no, yeah, you have to. I mean, look, the Mushulin star system, obviously based on the Michelin Guide star system, you know, they go to a restaurant, they go to a restaurant a couple of times then they give it a grade and stars get added and get taken away, is that improved? With the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn’t say three stars, I wouldn’t catch a flight to be there for this funny, funny outcome, but certainly at least one star with the benefit of hindsight of being like, because look, the rest of this, I simply couldn’t care less about. And I think it speaks to the fact that we’ve barely talked about it, is not just the fact that the main event was monumental, it’s that none of the rest of this matters. Maybe Alexander Fulkoff beating Taito Iwasa matters, like to some extent, and Manel Kopp beat a dude he’s supposed to beat, and hey, Felipe De Santos looks like a legit prospect, cool. The rest of this is whatever. And so that was the thought going in. It’s still a thought going out. I would have had to spend the whole evening watching a lot of stuff that is meaningless, but the main event really, really would make it at least worth one star, just to have physically been there because this is a top five funniest fight I’ve ever watched. I’m going to watch this fight so many times. Like, look, the undisputed funniest fight of all time, as far as I’m concerned, and maybe this is Macabre, don’t care. It’s Kimbo versus Dada. I have genuinely never had more fun watching a fight. It is an actual like top five fight for enjoyment that I’ve ever had. I have never had more fun watching a fight. I have had the same level of fun, never more. Funniest fight I’ve ever seen. Number two, I think also unequivocally is Rhonda Holly because if for nothing else, the Mike Goldberg takes a lot of energy being a rock star is an A plus quote in MMA history. Those are the, the A and B for funniest fights of all time. This is right up there. I just, I’m live blogging this thing. And after the second round, when it’s like, Oh, is he, he’s getting safe. This is the rest of this fight. He’s going to have a boring kick you from real far away decision. And, and, you know, that sucks, but Hey, you almost got finished. I respect it. And then suddenly in the third round, uh, after, you know, Eric Nixxik was like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Like, you can’t just let him off the hook like this. You gotta go out there and fight this guy, get after him. And Sean’s like yelling in his corner, I know, I know! And then goes and he just starts beating his ass. I am cackling laughing, watching Izzy just be befuddled by a dude who’s not eating every jab and his kids double jabbing in his face. It’s fucking funny. This fight is so funny, man. It’s so funny. Oh, man. All right. Let’s take a few questions. This is the best night. I’m still in shock at the fight. Honestly, it’s what three hours ago and I’m still just kind of the best. I still have a whole post fight call on the right and I’m just going to be sitting there with a smile on my face riding it like three in the morning. I love my job. my jobs to like to to 90 and this in the same year. What a fucking year, man. should she could have shanko losing your rematch next week? That next week? Two weeks? That’s next week, right? Oh, my goodness. That’s next week. Oh, jeez. Okay. steep it steep a me out. It just might be John Jones at this point. Like that might just happen. Dude, God, can you imagine? I got bankrupted this year and I don’t even care because funny. Interesting question here. What is Sean Strickland’s legacy now? I mean, it’s a legitimate. He’s a legitimate world champion, man. That’s the Bisming thing. You can’t take it away from him forever. That dude is a champion. Michael Bisming won the title in a very legitimate fashion against a very legitimate champion. And we forever look at him differently. That’s Sean Strickland now. Like, regardless of whether you like him or hate him, like, that’s the reality. Dude is a champ and he beat the real champ in a very legitimate, like very decisive way. Is he a future UFC Hall of Famer? If he can string together two title defenses, I think they are, right? This probably gets him in. I don’t think this gets him in the Hall of Fame. No, this is the no, we’re not talking about like the Hall of Fame of mixed martial arts. We’re talking about the Hall of Fame of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I don’t think the guy who says yes to every opportunity and fights a million times. I do not think the USP is in a rush to one defense. I think he’s, he may not be there yet, but he’s, he’s in the, he’s already in the conversation. If they run this back. So here, I’ll paint this out for you. If they run this back and then he beats Izzy again in a very decisive way again, and then say he loses the DDP and whatever kind of fashion he would lose the DDP. And then he, for the rest of his career, he’s just the guy who that he was before where he’s taking the short notice fights. He’s beaten who he should be and he’s losing to who he should lose, then I think he will be a Hall of Famer. But he’s got to win the rematch, he has to win the rematch. There are three appropriate answers to this question, they’re not different, they all tie into the same. The first one is Shaheen, you expertly laid this out answering a different thing. Dude, he’s 32, we don’t have a fucking clue what his legacy is right now. He has so much of his career left. So like it’s way too premature. The second one is, as you pointed out, he’s a champion. Here’s a list of just some of the middleweights who never got to be UFC champion. You’re a man. Chakrae Souza, Gagard Musasi, Chael Sonnen, Damian Maia. John Strickland is now quote unquote, better or more accomplished than those men. I would pick to beat John Strickland on their best day. I would still pick all those gentlemen. You just you just said Yeah, it’s it’s insane. I mean like I mean an opportunity, baby And I the other thing uh is loosely tied to this I guess but um, shawn strickland and this was brought up by somebody the post fight presser Now that he’s a champion that man is never fighting at the apex again. Shawn strickland is strictly a pay-per-view and and road show fight night main event guy for here on after, which really, we got to think about the UFC because they’re losing out on the dude. You think he’s fighting at the Apex again? I would bet so much money that he fights again at the Apex and headlines an Apex event before his career is over, absolutely. Oh, I don’t know. I mean, maybe just cause he always fights at the Apex. Yeah, he’s just going to accept some short notice stuff that just like he does. I don’t know that this will change him in that respect. I’m not a champion, I’m talking about like a post-ring. I’m talking about like a post-championship. I think he’d even do it now with Sean Strickland if they’re like, hey man, somebody fell off of MSG, can you turn around and defend your belt against random body? Like, you’d probably do it, it’s Sean. I cannot wait, and I mean, in a bad way, I don’t even know actually when I say this, when Sean Strickland goes on the press tour and just does what the morning shows. Is that gonna happen or is UFC just gonna hide him, do you think? They should get him out there. I don’t know that it’ll happen. I mean, he’s gonna have to be buttoned down. Sean’s gonna be a guest judge on American Idol, like all sorts of different fun things we could do with him. He’ll be on Celebrity Family Feud, all these different things we could throw him on. I mean, the sky’s the limit. I think there are certain places you can put him that will make sense. I think they’ll pick and choose the spots They send him like they’re not sending him to the today show or something. Yeah It’s not very hard to find to find his old Tweets and old images, you know, and they’re gonna go Yeah, I just I’m really I’m really I’m really curious serious. Oh dude, as long as he’s not doing a 30 minute interview, he’s going to be fine. If you give him five minutes, he’s, I always thought that line was like that part of this was overblown. Like he’s, if you give him time to get down into the well of dumb things, but even just five minutes, he’ll just say that he’ll, he’ll go to the old standbys of I’m just a white dress piece of shit. And like, look at me now. And you know, that’s stuff. Get on Jimmy Kimmel champion UFC. Yeah, you’re again, I work as if it’s a level of esteem. This is true. This is true. This is true. I do apologize for that. Don’t act like you wouldn’t watch him on the view. Give him like 10 minutes. Oh my god. I want to be explaining how women shouldn’t vote to them. Oh, well, that’s going to be wherever that interview goes. That’s going to be fun. Shaheen, I want to use the dollars to watch that. I would love to use that. I hope we’re going to do it. Yeah, we will do a live react to that. We’ll do a watch party for Sean Strickland’s media rounds. I would love it. Shaheen, I’m sure you didn’t see this Cause we’re doing this Kaposa tweeted at you and at MMA fighting, I believe with a question, but since we haven’t really answered questions per Kaposa, the wonderful Krabaka underscore hitman on Twitter, follow him. And if, honestly, if you’re watching this, if you’re watching the show and don’t already follow him, I, I’m assuming I don’t, I don’t understand how that happened. Uh, Shaheen directly for you answer me. How does Sean Strickland do against Robert Whitaker? Sir, Robert Knuckles versus Seanathan Strickland. I mean, I’d probably pick Robert Whitaker, right? I don’t know. Probably like be pretty confident picking Rob, but maybe Rob’s wash. Maybe Sean’s better than I think. I don’t, I, I’m picking Rob, but I don’t think great about it. I don’t think any of us have given this credence for obvious reasons. What if Sean Strickland is actually the best middleweight in the world? Like what if he, what if he runs off? What if he actually just like runs off like three or four title defenses a year? He’s the guy. He’s the new Anderson Silver. Like we he ends up being better than Anderson by the end of it. I mean, look, he’s lost twice. He’s lost twice in the weight class, right? Dude, he lost twice in the past, like, 18 months. One of them, I think there’s a very clear argument that you could make if you wanted to, that he beat Jared Cannon here. It was a close fight, whatever, you know. The other one was Alex Pereira, who will. Can’t really argue with most people. I think it’s in the planet. Yeah, I don’t know. Sean Strickland, new middleweight goat. I go against what I said. Dude, shouts to Sean Strickland. You just said, so I started a middleweight goat after that hole. That’s I love it. We do, Casey, that’s what we do in America. We’re back here. We’re basically make calls and make the call. Sean Strickland is now responsible for like two of the funniest 10 things that have ever happened inside a cage. This fight and getting booped by Pereira. I still watch that clip just when I’m sad sometimes. And like, that’s what’d be funny. Look at this man walk into a right like a frigging left hook. That’s the best. I will say just because like, I know we’re laughing a bunch and we’re making we’re having a good time tonight. It takes like incredible humility for a human being to get colded in such a crazy, like memorable way that Sean Strickland got called in by Alex Pereira, like the way that we will see that replay forever for the rest of our lives. And then go to Alex Pereira and be like, hey bro, like that was pretty bad. Do you want to train together? Cause I’d really love to train with you. Like that takes an incredible level of humility to do that. Yeah, for sure. We just watched arguably the, like the best kickboxer that’s ever set foot in MMA, get beat up by a dude who exclusively threw a jab in the right hand. He didn’t throw like a bunch of hooks. There’s no uppercuts. There was a bunch of front kicks as like distance setters. Yeah. But not one level change, I don’t think. Just Oh my God. I see the comment. You’re excited about you guys. Guys. Let’s go. Let’s go. So this is coming from Kaz Marius over here in the comment section. I think we have a new front runner for funniest possible outcome that can come out of this. All right. Let’s let’s see it. Casey, could you pull this up or should I? Hold on. This one. There it is. There it is. The actual funniest next fight is if they let Anderson Silva come back and and Anderson Silva somehow gets his belt back in a proper retirement fight. Who are you picking? Sean Strickland or Anderson Silva? I’m picking Sean Strickland. Yeah, I mean, I’m picking Sean too, but you know, weirder things have happened, Mike Heck. I mean, look, nothing’s out of the realm of possibility. Nothing’s impossible anymore. And I think that’s like one of the big takeaways is that, you know, when you’re feeling down and you feel like maybe there’s other people better than you out there, Just look to Sean Strickland. Just tap into Sean Strickland. Just figure it out. Because Sean can do it, you can do it too. And what I’ve learned as someone who tries to predict MMA is when it comes to pay-per-views and actually wagering on things, I’m taking the George Costanza approach and just doing the opposite of everything I thought was right. That’s it. Mike, for a while I tried to get a Costanza gimmick bet going and it did not work out well. So you have to pick your spots. You have to pick your spots. Picking those spots is tough. I’m just saying, be forewarned. I tried the Costanza gimmick. Didn’t get very far. I’m taking a future shot on steep a like tomorrow at this place. Because I am. I’m going to a thousand percent bet Francis to be. It won’t happen. But like, but like, what if? At this point, I think Eric Nixik is possible of anything. Like, I’m not putting anything past that, man. He’s going to beat Tyson Fury with just, like, a jab. Can you imagine? He doesn’t even knock them out. He just kind of, like, game. He just weirdly outboxes him for, like, 10 or 12 rounds or however long this is. Nothing is impossible anymore. It’s true. Nothing is impossible anymore. In a world where Sean Strickland, can you imagine? I mean, it’s ridiculous to say, because if you asked me this a month ago, I would have laughed at you. Can you imagine telling, like going to yourself right after the poet on loss and being like, that dude’s going to be champ. Oh, the guy who just knocked out Sean Strickland. Actually, yes, him too. But no, the guy he knocked out, that’s going to be your undisputed middleweight champ within not only not 14 months, 14 months later, that happened less like barely less than a year ago. Going into 2023, Sean Strickland had lost two in a row and one of them was the Pereira loss. Like that was what he was entering the year off of a two fight losing streak. Dude. If you see a mountain you’ve always wanted to climb, go climb it tomorrow. Like just do it. Go run a marathon. Mountain climbing is actually dangerous and I don’t want your death on my conscience. I mean like trail mountain climbing. Not like cliffs. Not cliffs but just like, I don’t want to walk up this hill for seven hours. Just go walk it. Hell, run it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do anything you put your mind to. Kevin Garnett. Anything is possible. Oh, this is a good question. Yeah, we’ll end with this. Which Sean’s reign is shorter, Sean O’Malley’s or Sean Strickland’s Shaheen? I mean, if okay, so in this world, I’m just assuming because this is sort of what we’ve been fed that Sean O’Malley’s next opponent is Marlon Vera and Sean Strickland’s next opponent is Israel Adesanya. In that world, I think Sean Strickland has a better chance to beat Izzy again than Sean O’Malley does to beat Marlon Vera again, because I think Marlon Vera is a really tough matchup for O’Malley, and we’ve already seen that. But I don’t know, man. This is a tough question. I’ll go with Strickland, but I don’t feel great about it. I’m saying O’Malley. First, If Joe Selva was still in charge a thousand percent these two Sean’s would be fighting on the next card together They would do the double Sean pay-per-view event. Yep They still may but that’s Joe Selva was in charge a hundred percent. That’s happening. I will say O’Malley Because I think Strickland Based on that fight so it’s got a really good chance of beating Izzy again Because he just beat that ass for 20 of the 25 minutes they fought So I think you got to give him the credit of that win. I think O’Malley It is going to get it Be fairly badly by Cheeto Vera. I don’t think Cheeto Vera is the best bandway in the world I think he is a uniquely poor matchup for for Sean O’Malley and that’s Awkward for him I’m gonna say Strickland solely because he’s gonna fight like six times before O’Malley fights twice So there’s just more, I’m playing the law of averages, the more Sean fights, he’s going to fight way more than Sean O’Malley is. Like if Sean beats Cheeto, we probably won’t see him for like another year. Okay. That’s fair. Because I do think there’s a very real possibility we see Sean in either December or January range. Yeah. Dude, you can’t find him. Sean Strickland. Oh, O’Malley. Okay. Yeah. Sean Strickland. You got fighter of the year locked up, dude. Don’t fight him. No, no, no. Yeah, Strickland is going to headline back to back pay reviews at some point, because he’s just like, all right, I’ll fight. Sure, I’ll do it. That’s just the kind of guy he is. And Sean O’Malley is just like, nah, I need to find somebody who’s going to make me a trillion dollars. Because they’re just in two different worlds, two different businesses. If Sean Strickland does not fight again, in 2023, is there any other fighter on the schedule with fights scheduled who could steal fighter of the year from him with any result? John Jones Grosso Grosso wins now I would give it to Strickland Strickland still getting my vote what about Sean O’Malley twice beating the goat beating the goat twice I don’t I don’t ever do it beat more than what the same person I hated the year we gave it to max DJ yeah because he beat Aldo twice like no it’s the same dude it’s not the same fight technically but there’s too much overlap i think john jones is the only person i think even john jones goes out there and destroys a very old stepe i’m still getting evidence so it’s strictly oh no it’s strictly no matter what it’s it’s i agree i will but everyone immediately got onto the john jones train as soon as he came back and beat serial gone who may or may not be good so he beat stepe and now he’s you know cementing himself as the greatest fighter of all time people there’s a really good narrative there for John I think O’Malley’s got the best maybe especially hearing you guys say like you don’t you don’t think he’s gonna be Cheeto if he beats Aljo and Cheeto in a four-month span wins the belt and defends it I think I think he’s on the list yeah I think that that’s your three your three-man list and if Grasso wins bride defaults you probably will be in well to beaten Charles twice would be so here’s the thing uh Islam will actually be the one who deserves it if he beats Volkanovsky and then Charles this year. Like that’s, he will actually deserve it. That’s true. I forgot about the whole, those two wins are much better than any wins the other people have. But I don’t just the way this thing works. It’s, it’s a lot of narrative and I don’t think it’ll be, I would probably actually would vote for Islam just for that. But because again, Sean’s three and O and one of the greatest upsets of all time. Oh, that’s true. One of those wins is is ABUS and the other is Nasser Deen Imavav. It’s like at two or five. Yeah. It’s like, I mean, yeah, sure. But you can sell me that zero gone and steeping are more meaningful wins, you know, and certainly Volkanovsky and all the fair. But at this point, if I’m Islam, dude, be on notice cause wonky shit’s happening in 2023, man. Yep. Golly, I got a lot of concerns about my belief that Islam should just beat the brakes off of Charles over there, given everything that’s happened the last like four months. Oh, my gosh. Wow, gentlemen. Yeah, I mean, I’m never going to be good again, Casey. realistically, we could do this for another two hours and we would just sit here. Yeah, it’s the same exact stuff. Listen five in about five hours and 20 minutes from right now We’re gonna be but me and AK are gonna be on this year Network matchmaking after this crazy card So 9 a.m. Eastern on to the next one As we leave I want to put this out there. Just think about this in the future Sean Strickland and his infinite cardio versus nose job DDP What will that fight look like in the third round? golly I hope we get to see it I hope you get to see it too I hope we get to see it too what a world I think we’ve talked a lot of things out I think we’ve no we haven’t made sense of a lot I’m confused yeah I think we need a few days to decipher all this and then we’ll have an educated response to it, and maybe we never will. But just remember this day, people. This is not a dream. This is real. John Strickland is the middle way champion of the world. And with that, for Jed, for Casey, for Shaheen, I am Mike Heck. Good night, everybody. Get some sleep. I love you all so much. You’re in charge of the people at home and the people on this broadcast with me. Believe in yourself. you