On To the Next One LIVE | What's Next For Sean Strickland, Israel Adesnaya After UFC 293?

. Well, hello there everybody. We are live welcome to a special brand new edition of on to the next one the matchmaking hats are back on following a I’m going with chaotic a chaotic UFC 293 events and ladies and gentlemen it is real we’re not joking MMA is supposedly a real thing Sean Strickland is the UFC middleweight champion after dominating Israel Adesanya over five rounds, winning four of the five rounds. Sean Strickland gets it done. One of the craziest results that we could ever think of and golly man, Sean Strickland is the middleweight champion of the world and we are here to discuss what this all means from a matchmaking perspective. I am Mike Heck and joining me, as you can see to my right, The co-host, the co-matchmaker, the Prince of Positivity. He’s my best friend and he’s probably on his little sleep, maybe even less than I am right now, but we’re here to battle through this all. He is the legend, Alexander Kaley. AK, good morning. What is going on? He did the damn thing. I mean, he did the damn thing, you know. I think we had braced ourselves appropriately, Mike. I know it was gonna come as a shock no matter what, But if anyone just glances at MAfighting.com headlines from the last seven, eight, nine days, every headline of involving the story was something they have to have, can Sean Strickland do this? If Sean Strickland does this, how crazy will that be? Where will this rank? We were already proofing our brains, I think, to the possibility of a Sean Strickland win. None of us, I think, predicted it would go down this way. Even if you thought he would win decision, because I had said in my predictions, there’s two ways this could go. like if by some chance he lands that lucky shot because he’s not known for having knockout power. So I didn’t even think that was super likely. So I didn’t see it that way, but again, it’s a fight. These guys hit hard. It could always happen. We almost saw it in the first round. And my other thought was, well, if he does like a constant pressure, maybe like Juliana Pena thing and breaks Izzy down, but he just outstruck him. Lucky just outstruck him. You can say Izzy wasn’t at his best, fine. It probably wasn’t. It probably was not the best version of Izzy, but that doesn’t matter. This might not have been the best version of Shawn Strickland we’ve seen either, frankly. He he might not have had to be this best. He was he was as good as he needed to be. He outstruck him four or five rounds. This was not a again, it was not a Pena Nunes like I’m just going to outpace you and, you know, break down your cardio and hope you have an off night. He outstruck him. None of us predicted that. None of us thought he would win the fight that way. So a huge victory for Shawn Strickland. I’ve said in the past how I feel about the man personally. I’m not a fan. I’ll probably keep saying it throughout the show and saying it every time the man’s name comes up in the future But there’s no question in my mind if we’re if we’re giving you know Could have really to that title that he’s the number one 185 pound fighter in the world right now So as the preview show is going on Friday I was beginning to feel a little bit vibey about it and if you watch the watch party last night I was feeling the vibes more and more more. That’s something very bizarre and chaotic and strange is going to happen. And I don’t know, it was weird. I called somehow I called for an Ezekiel choke in the co main events and it happened. And then somehow, I kind of put this all out into the universe. And Sean came out with this focus, just a different look on his face. For the first time, it’s like he almost like felt the pressure and he’s ready to turn into the diamonds. It’s just a different look from him. And then from there I was like oh my god like this could really happen and then the first round is playing out and not much is happening Izzy’s just kind of cruising along he’s Sean’s not really throwing much he’s defending pretty well Izzy’s landing shots here and there and then AK when everything started to become real let me play this clip from last night let’s play this clip from last night final minute of the first round we’re talking about how Sean is like all right he’s not getting the doors blown off him he’s hanging in there he’s not making any real mistakes is he doesn’t even New Yorker saying is he doesn’t really respect Sean’s power right now he’s just is he’s just kind of dancing around Sean no no respect for the man no fear and then all of a sudden this happened doors blown off oh no no this is insane ten seconds to go on the round. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. He’s right. Holy cow. Holy wow. Whoa. Sean Strickland knocks down Israel Adesanya almost gets him out of there. Izzy bounces back in round two and kind of evens things up. Sean clearly wins round three. Round four was probably a Strickland round. Like I haven’t gone back and rewatch it but watching it live was it was pretty close. I think I even scored it for Izzy just because not much happened. But I think the right call was Strickland winning the fourth round. And then the fifth round, you could just tell that Sean Strickland, not just without striking him, he broke Israel out of Sonia. Like he broke the man. That man who is maybe one of the most confident strikers we have ever seen in the sport was broken. Sean just demoralized him. And even in the end, like the last 20 seconds of the fight, He’s screaming at Izzy, come on man, come on, let’s go. He’s yelling obscenities at him. He’s trying to get Izzy to fight back and Izzy just wouldn’t do it. This is incredible, AK. This is incredible. Sean Strickland just goes out there and beats him. And now, from a matchmaking perspective, look, here’s what we’re gonna do, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, pull that up. Was it gonna be the most shocking outcome for the, just for the, yeah, it was. That doesn’t mean like, just because I said it was shocking doesn’t mean like the vibes weren’t there. You know what I mean? I even said on the previous show, I’m like, can you imagine if Sean Strickland goes out there and Cody Garbrandt some and just styles on him and he did. This is incredible. Nobody saw this coming. If you did, you’re full of shit. You’re full of shit if you predicted this. I’m sorry. By the way. Yeah, if you bet on Sean Strickland, like that’s one thing, but that’s a value thing. That’s not because you were totally confident that that was gonna happen last night and you know it. Which by the way, I did. As a hedge, as a hedge, I had, I wanna go to a comment on YouTube. Joe Doe says that Izzy was going to seal a six-leg parley for me. I was going to hedge with a small Benistrick in both the fight and said, eh, Izzy will win, why bother, LOL. I almost had that same thought, but as a rookie gambler, I do listen to my mentor slash devil on my shoulder, Jed Mishu, who says, always hedge. My bet was, again, you know, a small wager, small wager. My bet was hack per-assed, Pedro, top cop, and then Izzy. So pretty confident about all those. I think the only one I was sweating a little was, oh, a cop, the cop fight, we’ll talk about that in a bit. But then when it got to that main event, I really, I did kind of get that weird feeling, Mike. And also the value on Strickland at that point was still almost like plus 500. So I was like, whatever, you know what, let’s be smart. Let’s cover it up. If I win my parlay, okay, I shave a few dollars off it, whatever, but yeah, it worked out. So always hedge people. And in a sense, I did bet on Sean Strickland But again, only for practical purposes, I had no confidence that he was gonna win that fight at all. Not me. And then to top it off, like a lot of the betting sites, like DraftKings ended up boosting Izzy to plus 100 up to a \$25 bet. So like anyone who put any money on Izzy on DraftKings was like, okay, I’ll just go ahead and take that too. Wow, this is all insane. So now things get real interesting because a lot of the questions heading into the fight was, Well, what’s gonna happen if Israel wins? Cause he was a, that was the likely outcome in everybody’s mind. He was the massive betting favorite. Stylistically, this favorite is he in a lot of different ways. Sean just showed up and stuck to a game plan, which he just never has done really. He just went in there and listened to everything for 25 minutes and just did a fantastic job. So. He did say after that their plan was to wrestle. He did say after like, he said at the post-fight press conference that they wanted to wrestle more. They worked on wrestling a lot. But he said, once he got in there, he was like, we just, I think he, and I think also after the first round, I think they called an audible. They’re like, yeah. Oh, that’s just after you’ve rocked him. You know, they’re like, yeah, stay on the feet. Don’t bother. Cause he did say that they had discussed a lot about possibly wrestling, but I think it was the right move not to. I mean, I think, I don’t need to say, I think we just saw what happened. He beat Izzy over five rounds. He’s the middleweight champion in the world. Yeah. He didn’t get too aggressive. Like usually Sean comes in and just, just throws a million punches and he didn’t. He didn’t. He let Izzy try to be the offensive guy and Izzy wasn’t ready for it. Everything was just brilliant about it. It was just a brilliant performance, brilliant coaching. Eric Nixic got me all fired up when he was shouting instructions in the corner of Sean Strickland, like everything was just, it was just unbelievable. So now the questions change. It’s not what’s next for Izzy and we’ll get there as well. Sean Strickland, the middleweight champion, the questions heading in about Izzy was, is it going to be Drikus Duplassi? Is it going to be Hamza Chamayev if he beats Paul Acosta? But now, everything has changed, AK. Shawn Strickland’s on the champion. All of a sudden, DDP’s in play. Hamza Chamayev’s in play. Israel Adesani’s in play. Paulo Costa’s in play. And even Robert Whitaker is back in play with this title change. I mean, he’s not gonna get it, but he’s back in the mix. So this is all just absolutely insane. Dana White said at the post-fight press conference, I wanna do the rematch, Izzy looked slow, wasn’t himself, all of that stuff. What do we do now? Sean Strickland, middleweight champion, are we running this back? Are we going a different direction? If you had a guess here, and this is what the show’s all about, who’s Sean Strickland fighting in his first middleweight title defense? I’m going trick or stuplicy. I just could not be less interested in an Izzy Strickland rematch right now. We didn’t want this fight in the first place. We didn’t want this fight in the first place. Yes, Strickland pulling off the upset makes it slightly more intriguing, but this wasn’t a fluke. This wasn’t a fluke win. He beat him. He beat him fair and square. I might not like it, but he beat him fair and square. Who can dispute this? Can you make a case? Is he had an off night? Yeah, we’ll probably be saying this for a while. Coach Eugene said that while of course giving Strickland, he said Adesanya had an off night because Strickland made him have an off night. So he kind of, you know, he kind of gave, you know, protected his fighter a little bit while also still giving props to the new champion. So and I feel the same way. I feel the same way. Maybe it wasn’t off night for Izzy, but that was, you know, that wasn’t entirely because of him. It’s because the guy who was in his face punching him. So I don’t really want to see it again. If it happens, it happens. But everything about this fight was except for the result, which again was certainly headline worthy. I didn’t think the pre fight hype was that exciting. I didn’t think their beefing was that interesting. I don’t know if people enjoyed the trash talk. I didn’t even think it was a bad and a so bad as funny way. I just thought it was boring. I thought both guys were really boring in the way they approach the fight. Maybe that’s just me. If you want more of whatever that was, the press conference, then have at it. But DDP is the clear cut number one contender. I don’t know what else he has to do to earn a shot. Really, that should have been his fight anyway, except that the scheduling didn’t work out as he wanted to fight in Australia. And so it had to go down that way. But I think denying DDP a title shot would be incredibly dumb. So I think that’s the way we have to go. I like the matchup with him and Strickland. I think Strickland, I don’t know how long he holds on to the title, it’s going to be the underdog in pretty much every matchup, including this one. But I don’t think, after seeing what happened on Saturday, I don’t think that we can just comfortably say DDP rolls over Strickland at all. So I get where you’re coming from, but Sean Strickland and everything that comes from Sean Strickland winning the title is pure and utter chaos. So honestly, I think besides Zidrela Adesanya, I think the guy who probably lost out the most on this is Drikus Duplisi because he’s kind of fallen off the radar and everything going on. Jared Candanier has a win over Sean Strickland. He wins the backup. certainly not picking Jared Cannon here to get this title shot. However, there is the big fight coming up at UFC 294 between Hamza Chamayev and Paul Acosta. Whoever wins that fight is going to be Shawn Strickland’s next opponent. That is what’s going to happen, in my personal opinion. Either Paul Acosta is going to slay the dragon, the unbeatable Hamza Chamayev, or Hamza Chamayev is just going to absolutely run over Paul Acosta. And there’s just no way in a sport like this, where it’s always, what have you done for me lately? The most recent moment is the most important moment. There’s no way Dana White’s not going to that press conference and not saying that whoever wins that fight is going to be next in line. And it just creates all these different opportunities. Now, DDP not taking this fight, whether or not it was a quick turnaround or not, Dana even said it. You know how I feel about people not taking fights and taking these opportunities when they come. So I kind of feel like DDP, one, just because of that, and two, just not even being in Sydney. I thought that was a huge misstep on his part not being there. He’s kind of out of the he’s kind of out of the picture So I kind of feel like they’re just gonna chuck them in there with Jared can in the air Which is unfortunate for DDP because he really doesn’t need to do this But again, we say this all the time, especially for the newer fans. This isn’t a meritocracy this is about putting the weirdest craziest fights together and strickland against Shamaev or strictly its costa is a way bigger fight than strickland versus DDP right now and And honestly, I feel like that’s what’s going to happen. And Sean Circo is not gonna be one of those guys that’s gonna play a political game. He’s gonna be like, all right, you want me to fight that dude? I’ll fight that dude. You want me to fight both these guys at the same time? Okay, I’ll fight both these guys at the same time. So man, Paul Acosta is in a much better position now. Hamza Chamayev is in a great position right now. And I feel like DDP just kind of takes a step back in all of this, whether it’s fair or not. So that’s where I’m going with this. And now, the more interesting question, AK, what’s next for Israel Adesanya? Because if we’re going with the Shamayev Costa winner, and look, there is a very conceivable real world where the UFC just says, I don’t care what any of you say, we’re just going with the winner of this fight, like we’re just gonna run it back. What’s next for Adesanya? Does he just, do we just throw him in there at DDP as kind of like the number one contender for it? Because you could certainly do that. Like if you need a pay-per-view headliner, if you’re going back to, if you’re going to Africa, or if you’re going to South Africa, or even if you’re going back to Australia, you could throw that in there, going to New Zealand, you could throw that in there as a main event for pay-per-view and people are gonna watch it. Where do we go with Israel outside? Because neither of us are picking the rematch here. No, neither of us picking the rematch, that’s correct. You kind of mentioned, this isn’t my pick, but I do have, I wanna ask you a couple of questions. One being, firstly, before we completely move on to Edison, you mentioned Jared Cannoneer, it’s weird because he kind of does deserve a shot at Strickland, right? Based on him weighing in, which according to Dana White, immediately makes you the number one contender, according to the Colby Covington rule. And two, he beat Sean Strickland not long ago. We’re talking last December, like this is still within 12 months. And it was a close fight. The UFC can always pass over Jared for that reason, saying, well, you know, we look back at that footage, could have gone either way. It wasn’t like you can dominate him. But I thought that was a, you know, that’s a win. That’s a win in the books for Jared. Again, and not too long ago for Jared, just two fights ago for Sean, I guess it’s now three fights ago, three or four fights ago, he’s so active. So that was a smart thing, restricting the dude, it kind of puts Jared in the rear of your mirror. But is there any chance you think he gets the is there any chance you think he gets to tell a shot? Yeah. The only way I see this happening is if we’re booking the schedule for the rest of the year and every plan they had for December falls through. Yeah, yeah. And it’s like, all right, well, Sean will just fight and Hamza is not going to be ready or Paul is not going to be ready. Izzy is not going to be ready. Jared, are you ready? Maybe you could do that. But other than that, I just I don’t see it. I don’t see it. Canon airs doesn’t seem super high on their priority list. Like he got that main event win over Marvin Vittori kind of beat the hell out of Marvin Vittori. And that was he fought Marvin Vittori, right? Can you Yeah, just yeah, that’s I’m just trying to remember. I’m just in the days right now. And there are talks about maybe doing Canon air versus Homs on instead. So I mean, the way Canon air has said it is like, either I’m fighting for the belt or I’m in a number one contender fight. So to me Cannon air fighting DDP or fighting anybody is fine with him as long as it’s written somewhere At least he’s told via handshake and verbal agreement that he’s next in line, which doesn’t really mean much in the sport. So Yeah outside of like we need something fast to fill a spot. I don’t think that’s fine. I don’t think it happens And then regarding a Disney and DDP, are you interested in that as like the co-main event on a pay-per-view somewhere because there’s still a lot of heat there. It was never about the title really. We wouldn’t get five rounds, which would suck because I do think that’s a fight that could be an entertaining five rounder. And you also lose that title entry. But if Izzy, I don’t know the next time he’s getting a title shot or if he can even win it back. even win it back. That’s a huge, you know, then you then you can’t just shelve that fight forever. So did you like, again, you sort of mentioned it, but is that one do you think that that they should do him and just just do him and DDP? Just book it as soon as you can. So, I mean, I might as well just kind of go into what I’m thinking here. So because we talked about this in the post fight show, like what are we going to do with Israel Adesanya now and Eugene Barrowman is like, oh, we’ll fight him next weekend and beat him. And Jed said no he should just take some time move to 205 and Shaheen was like oh no we could do this. My whole thing is it’s such a weird contrast in MMA because to become a star you have to be active and in the limelight and fight as often as possible but once you get to a certain point you become the champion it’s like Izzy has just been go go go go go go go go go go go for the last three or so years. Like this dude’s fighting like every three, four months, like clockwork. And we talk about it in pro wrestling, and we talk about it in MMA here. Sometimes you just got to leave for a little while so that people can remember who you are. Like even a guy like Colby Covington, who you either love the man or you hate him, but even the people who don’t like Colby, when he showed up after a year of just having his head in in the sand after everything that happened with Masada. Dude just shows up in London and weighs in and it created like such a buzz. Like Colby didn’t even have to say a word. He just showed up and they’re like, oh shit, it’s Colby Covington. And at least for a little while until he started doing interviews and then some people had that feeling about Colby again. It was like, man, we can’t miss you unless you leave. And I kind of feel in this situation, like Izzy just needs to take some time, man. Like go get your head right. If you wanna go to 205, go to 205. And what would be super interesting is if during this hiatus between now and let’s just say, like Izzy comes back in July or whatever, what if DDP is the champion? Like what if DDP gets his title shot and wins the belt? All of a sudden Izzy’s comeback fight could be against Strikas Duplassi, chasing the title against him. Like that is just a whole interesting ball game in that sense as well. So creates a very interesting storyline there. And then DDP all of a sudden has like a little bit leverage, you can be like, no, you weren’t you weren’t gonna give me a title shot. Maybe I won’t give you a title shot. And then we have a play a political game with Izzy being the chaser. So like, that creates a different thing. But honestly, to me, I don’t even have an official pick for Israel Adesanya. I don’t even have a pick. My pick is take a break till like, the summer of next year, like maybe is these comeback fight is like the main event of International Fight Week in 2024. Whoever the champion is at the time is he comes back and fights them. Like I think I think that’s fair. I I think that’s fair, but I don’t want to see him. Like, I think for him in his career, he needs to take a little breather because they built this card around Izzy. Like, this was the, oh, Izzy’s gonna headline this big event in Australia. He was getting booed, man. He was getting booed. People are kind of getting tired of the man. So, not that it’s fair, but people are getting kind of tired. Like, they need a little breather from Izzy right now. to mention and I don’t want to agree with anything Sean Strickland ever says but he made a decent point you know that there’s that meme the worst person in the world made a good point uh he made a decent point at the post fight about uh listen his whole thing calling uh is he the china man or whatever was stupid but it conceptually it wasn’t horrible as maybe just the execution was bad but post fight his whole thing was like why are you fighting at home or close to home you know New Zealand Australia not the same thing but you know fighting close to home a place where you you have fought, where you have trained. Yeah, again, there’s a lot of New Zealand fans in the building. Why are you doing that and then doing everything in your power to look like you’re representing another country? And again, it doesn’t do with China. It could have been like he could have been wearing USA shorts and I would have been like, why is Izzy wearing USA shorts? So I know what Izzy was going for. He’s going for like, I’m a world champion. I’m a man of many nations. You know, I’ve lived in China. I’ve trained there as well. I fought there. So I’m a man of New Zealand, a man of Nigeria, a man of Australia, a man of China. I get it. I’m a true world champion. MMA fans are not that nuanced, really. So I think in that sense, Strickland was right. Like, he may have not made fans, not lost fans, but definitely confused them a little bit with like, okay, so he’s wearing red shorts, he’s representing China, but he made this whole hall blue about fighting in Sydney. The branding was strange. On this, I feel like Strickland’s correct. The branding was strange. I didn’t make people turn on Izzy, but maybe the performance, maybe the loss, maybe just fatigue, some Izzy fatigue might all contribute to this being a really a pretty flat and stock-down week for Israel at Disney. Yeah. I mean, ultimately they’re going to try to do a rematch, but I think for his image, the branding, all of it, I think you just, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break, man. No one’s saying like, like take three years off, but take like nine months off. Like that’d be like the longest stretch between an Israel and a Sonia fight in a long ass time, man. Like he lost the belt to Pereira and then like just five months. He just took five months off and everyone was like, why is he getting back here after getting knocked out? He’s just, he’s 34. So like he’s still got time, but he has mileage on him. He’s got a lot of fights, a lot of fight weeks, a lot of build, like he’s gotta be mentally drained, man. Like he’s just gotta be. It was almost like there was a sigh of relief there. When he showed up, the press guy was like, not the way I expected him. I’m gonna hand it off to Eugene. I’m gonna go hang out with my family. He’s posted videos, dancing to Diana King’s Shy Guy on the bus, like all this stuff going on. I think there’s maybe a part of it that’s just like, all right, let’s just get out of here for a little while. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And I think when he comes back, there’s gonna be like a little different excitement for him. So I think it’s pivotal for him right now. I think too, I’m with you that he should take time off. However, I don’t know if I want him to take that much time off as far as next summer, though that would be what’s best for him. And I do have an opponent in mind, like my best friend, someone who doesn’t fight very often either, and someone who is another rematch for him that we’ve all wanted to see for a long time, but again, we’ve wanted to see it, I guess, for the title again, but that’s all out the window now. We don’t know when or if Izzy fights for that title again. So give me Calvin Gaslim too, whenever he’s ready to fight. Ooh, what do you mean? Oh, you’re saying don’t make the move to 170. you’re saying don’t move to welterweight kelvin gaslum stay here wait did he ever he hasn’t officially made the move right he was supposed to drop down to 170 did he fight at 170 again well he’s he’s booked he was booked against shopcott and then he got injured and i still kind of feel like they’re gonna go back to that he didn’t but he didn’t actually he didn’t squeeze in a fight before that at 170 he hasn’t actually made the drop back down yet no he hasn’t made the drop back down yet no i think no i think it’s maybe he does maybe he does maybe he does and he fights Shotka maybe and loses. If we’re talking about Izzy taking time off, maybe the time will work out that whenever Izzy’s ready to fight again, Calvin’s like, hey, I’m available. It wouldn’t be a five-rounder. If they did sign it, I’d love it to be a five-round co-main, but it’s a hard sell for the fighters if they don’t get paid more. It’s a hard sell for the UFC who just doesn’t like to book non-title, non-main event five-round fights. And I don’t think this would be, I don’t think Izzy’s fighting in the Apex or anything like that. So unless they can make it the main event on you know a fight night card that’s outside of Las Vegas then maybe it could happen but otherwise it would have to be a co-main so you’re only getting three rounds but I think it’s possible and I really struggled Mike I think you’re right him just waiting for a big opportunity is probably best but I want to have a name out there so if I have to pick one let’s do let’s do Gastlum too I just I really want to see it before their careers are over yeah I mean look this is Jed like says no wrong way to to eat these Reese’s all this is super interesting and in compelling stuff. So, man, that’s the fall of the main event. Let’s go to the Cole main event. Alexander Volkov did what kind of a lot of people expected him to do against Tye Tuvasa. I know Tye Tuvasa was the darling dog. I had a bet for Tye Tuvasa by knockout. And we kind of realized with the great Paca Porter on the watch party, probably about two minutes into the fight, we kind of knew where this was going. Tye just couldn’t get to him. Volkov was landing. Tye was getting busted up. And then the fight ends up getting to the ground. Gets an Ezekiel choke. I believe he’s the second fighter in modern UFC history. Like there’s the third overall, but as Jed said on the post-fight show, the first one was because there was a guillain, so it’s like a little bit of a different feel. But man, Bulkoff gets the Ezekiel choke. He’s in a weird position though, man. Like heavyweight, we got John Jones and we got Stipe getting ready to fight. We got Sergey Pavlovich, Mr. Backup Fighter himself, who’s going to be the backup for 295. Zero Gone’s coming off a nice win. Tommy Aspinall’s in play. Jelton Almay is getting ready to fight Curtis Blades. And Volkov’s fought and lost to a handful of the guys that we’ve just mentioned here. Where does he go after this? Like, what did this win do for him overall right now? It can’t do a lot. He just kind of holds his spot. I actually, I did move him up one spot. I had, I think, two bosses, seven and Volkov eight, or at least that’s what it was in our consensus, NBA fighting global rankings. So when we update those, either after Noche UFC or after UFC 294, you will see Volkov move ahead of Tuibasa. But other than that, it can’t move him that much farther in the actual contenders line for reasons you mentioned. Guys are booked, guys are ranked ahead of him, he’s fought everybody. So there’s some rematch potential in there. But Mike, I think we, and I’m wondering if you went the same way, I think we just go the obvious route here and and book him against another guy who fought in the card and won, right? We just go Justin Taffa. I guess that’s the way to go. I don’t know if that’s not a great matchup for Taffa or if Taffa hasn’t earned a top ten fight yet, but it’s heavyweight. It’s heavyweight. It doesn’t take a lot to get up there. Taffas look pretty good so far. Going from Austin Lane to Alexander Volkov would be a considerable step up in competition to be kind to Austin Lane. It would be a considerable step up in competition, but I really had no other way to go with it. And I think they would want to see what they have with him and they would kind of throw him to the wolves with Volkov. And if you look with Volkov’s record, like he has had to take some weird fights. There was the Greg Hardy fights. I couldn’t remember. The other football player turned enemy player. That was, I mean, not the original opponent, but still they will put Volkov in there with some weirdos. And Justin Taffa is a talented weirdo. I think he can get that fight. And again, just based on the lack of options for Volkoff right now, that’s where I’m gonna go. I’ll go just on top of Volkoff. So this is kind of a weird one. So, again, this is one of those things where we have to wait a couple of months to see what my pick is actually gonna be. So my first choice is if Curtis Blades meets Jelton Almeida, we do Volkoff versus Jelton Almeida. Like, there are way worse heavyweight main events you have to see this put together. If Jeltsin Almeida does win, then we do Sergey Spivak. It’s just kind of there. To go from Tai to Ivas in the co-main event spot and landing an Ezekiel choke to getting an essential unranked opponent is tough, man. That’s tough. So yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at here. He’s just in a weird spot. Like now if Tai had won this fight and like knocked him out, Tai is in that because of how popular he is and how beloved he is, He’s in that conversation with all those other guys, with the Aspinalls and all that, because it’s just one of those stories that UFC could get behind, getting tied to Ibas in a title fight. Like, even if he just gets in there and loses, like, at least he got to the dance, man. But Volkov just used his size, used his length very well, and he’s just in kind of a weird place right now. So let’s see what happens. Any interest in the Blades rematch? We could do that. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Louis rematch, Derrick, like, the newly resigned Derrick Lewis, we could do that. I mean, there’s, there’s options we can do here, but I kind of feel like Volkov is, I’m not going to say gatekeeper, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but he’s probably like a top five litmus test for the future of this division for the foreseeable future until things just really break apart. Like if Jones and CPE both retire and we get like Pavlovich’s champion, then we can mix things up a little bit and do some different things. But yeah, until we get through the fall and through November and the the heavyweight title fight and Almeida Blades, it’s really hard to say like where Volkov’s gonna go. So with an Almeida win, it’s speed back. With an Almeida loss, we do Volkov Almeida and we just go from there. Do we, like, I don’t even think we need to queue the band for Menel Cop. Menel Cop’s fighting Kai Garfraz, right? Like that’s it, that’s the fight. Nothing else makes sense. A lot of heat there, imagine if we all want to see. Can I tell people beforehand, I almost didn’t want to do Menel Cop. I would message you, you know, we had an update I said, do we have to do this guy? Because I think like a lot of people, or maybe not a lot of people judging by, you know, if you’re judging by Twitter trolls, um, you know, Menell cops post by speech, him and Charlie Radke, they used a homophobic slur and it was completely unnecessary. Uh, I was glad to see Radke apologized, Radke and his, and his team probably apologized. That’s fine. That’s, that’s good to see. Um, but yeah, it was, it was a really terrible way to cap off a couple of like good moments. You know, Charlie Radke, his UFC debut, not the best fight I mean it wasn’t a great fight but good for him for getting a win is his debut hopefully the last we see of Blood Diamond nothing personal against Blood Diamond I just don’t think he’s a UOC level fighter and then Charlie you know was fired up about the crowd booing him probably gave me some crap all week and use that slur Manel Cop was a little was even worse because he won a great fight the hit fight with Felipe dos Santos awesome fight I think it won fight of the night right Mike they got they got the 50 G’s they did get they They did, okay. So, you know, well-deserved, well-deserved for their efforts in the cage. But then he caps it off with a, using that word again, using the homophobic slur again. And he really loaded it up too. I can buy a rad key like, you know, and this is not excused at all, but like a heat of the moment thing. Again, that’s not any excuse to use those words. If you’re using those words in the heat of the moment, guess what, you suck. But Kaat really loaded it up. And I think he did apologize at the post-flight presser. He did, he did. But we really gotta do something. I mean, you know, the culture of it is so bad. And I won’t go off on a full rant. It’s bad, I don’t know what else needs to be said. If you agree, obviously you’re a logical human being. If you disagree, I mean, you’re an idiot and you’re a piece of trash. But you gotta say these words still have power. And not just from like, oh, well they have power because people are offended by it. No, they have power because historically they’ve been used to oppress and harm people and to completely denigrate a whole segment of society. A large segment of society. This isn’t a small group of people. This is a large segment of society. These are people you probably know, and people think they might be out, they might not be out. They’re probably people you know. And if you’re okay with people talking about, you know, gay people like that, then that’s messed up. It is not the same as saying, oh, idiot, or a dummy, or like, it’s not just a generic insult. It is historically couched in, you know, because those people perceived a certain way, you know, gay people perceived a certain way that, oh, well, that means it’s negative. So it immediately creates this negative association people. It’s terrible. It’s a terrible word. Shouldn’t be used under any context and ending your putting in your post by speech is just absolutely ridiculous. So I’m glad both guys apologize. I hope they’re sincere. And yeah, I mean, matchmaking for cop just made sense because we want to see that car car France fight. So just keep it in the cage. Just talk about in case stuff. Great matchup and the winner of that probably gets a title shot. Yeah, I mean, they did apologize. Dana said the same thing. And there you go. It was just it was just kind of piercing with cop just like he was like everything was like the fight was awesome. By the way, Felipe dos Santos deserves just a ton of credit. That kid is so game. What a friggin performance from that guy looking forward to seeing what’s next for him. And I’ll hit that dude with everything in his power. And he got dropped in the first minute but that dude just came to fight. So super, super, super excited to see what his future is. Oh, he’s only 22 so a lot of excitement there. What did you know about him before Felipe dos Santos before the fight? He’s just a fun, like I knew he was, I knew he was like a fun, exciting dude that wasn’t going to be overtaken by the moment. He’s a shoot the box guy so those guys have just been coming in making debuts and being super like playing spoiler or at least making things really interesting. So As I said, even heading in, I felt like Cop and his power, and you saw it mostly throughout the fight, even in the first bit of the fight. Dos Santos was having moments and he was landing shots, but when Cop hit him, you could definitely see a change in progression, and you could see Dos Santos really reacting negatively towards it, but it didn’t stop him from moving forward. So I just felt like Cop’s power is just going to be too much for him. But as I said, pretty much all week, and as I said on the watch party, that fight is going to be super fun and competitive until Cop lands the finishing blow. And he never did it. He never did it. So it was kind of the fight I expected, but I just expected Cop to land a knockout shot to end the fight and he didn’t. So credit to Dos Santos. He gets an extra 50 Gs and Manel Cop’s going to go fight Kaikar France, maybe in a five round main event. And it’s a big fight now. I’m very interested in that one. Flyweights, AK. Flyweights. Flyweights are fantastic. The fight was so good. Nothing I saw in the tape that I saw of Felipe Dos Santos told me he’d be ready for Manel Cop. Like I said, fun guy, fun fighter, but the level of competition he was fighting was, you know, okay, not great compared to Menel Cop. And I guess I have to remind myself, and I did mention this in my prediction, he is only 22 years old. And at this stage of a 22 year old fighter’s career, the version you see in a fight from three months ago could be incredibly different from now, right? So I was looking at whatever his last LFA fight, which was also a really good fight, by the way, but I was like, no, like, you know, he’s a short short nose replacement, he gets smoked. I say he gets smoked. But even though he lost a pretty clear decision, he was never out of the fight. He was given out a lot of problems. He was given my five leg parlay a lot of problems. So big featurehead Felipe dos Santos. I don’t know if we’re going to see the results right away. It depends who they match him up with. Like if they give him another top 20 guy, probably have another hard time with it. But it could be a Larrisa Pacheco case where maybe he doesn’t do great in his first round with the UFC. He goes back, builds himself up again, and then becomes just a contender. the talent is clearly there, just vintage shoot the box fighter. Oh, yeah, he’s he ain’t going anywhere. He’s going to be in the UFC for like the next six to seven years. Just getting better and better. So, yeah, great performance. The best part of the whole thing is when the fight was over, like everyone knew Menell Cop won, but Dos Santos gets on the cage and sits on top of it and everyone just cheers and goes bananas. Woohoo! And then Menell gets up on the cage and they just boo the shit out of them. And they chatted bullshit at him after they announced the decision and just all of a man like, just a weird. He won the fight. He won the fight. This was a case of like, of the newcomer doing better than people expected, I think. We see this in MMA all the time. It was the Diego Lopez moment. Yeah, and it’s great. And people get behind them. That’s great. That’s great. You know, one guy goes over, the other guy gets over, right? Pro wrestling parlance, so that’s what happened here, but I get why cap I might have been a little frustrated by the reaction that he got and shout out to landing quinones as well Just going in as a massive underdog made some people sweat out that Nazareth hack press minus 500 man ultimate fighter 31 Good performance fighter 31 never die. I didn’t give him much of a chance either. He looked all right, man. He looked all right He was he was Nazareth leg is gonna be iced for probably the next next, uh, the rest of the week. That was, uh, so Landon looks all right. So good for him. Hopefully he’s definitely getting another shot. He stepped in not on short notice necessarily, but kind of like did the, you know, see a favor because I think now is where I want to fight in this card. And so they said, yep, Landon come on down. So he’ll, he’ll get another shot. We’ll get to your picks wild card round in a little bit. Let’s get through the rest of the main card. You already picked a fight for Justin Taffa. I’m going Justin Taffa versus Waldo Cortez Acosta, both guys with some nasty KOs over the last few weeks. So let’s just match those dudes up. And now Tyson Pedro kicks off the main card, sent the crowd into a frenzy, nasty knockout, some cold ass stuff right there. I went with Vitor Petrino, AK, for one Tyson Pedro. Oh, interesting. It’s a dart, bro, man, at this point. What do you got? First of all, salute to the pleasure man. Mike, I think this great nickname, great gimmick. Oh, you gotta keep them. You gotta keep them. No, no, I was gonna say, I don’t know if they do have to, Mike. You have to. I don’t know if you have to. And I love the Pleasure Man. I’m the number one advocate for the Pleasure Man. But this might be the last time that we see. For now, he can come back. As long, no, no, no, no, no. As long as Carlos Ulberg is still in the UFC, we have to do the normal match-make. We have to do Lady’s Night into the Pleasure Man until the end of time. I don’t think, I think Carlos Ulberg F’s Anton Tercali off. Oh no, they’re not gonna fight each other. I’ll just be on the same car. Yeah, Ulberg fights the fight before the Pleasure Man. That’s just, that’s it. I don’t know, my guy, Connor Brooks, I think got hurt by the Pleasure Man Lady’s Night parlay and I don’t wanna see that happen again. Cause as long as it’s there, it’s gonna tempt a lot of people into doing that. And Tercali, it seems like a cool dude. Again, great nickname. He might not be a UFC level fighter right now. He’s only 27. There’s certainly still time, but light heavyweight’s not a great division. His first fight was a weird cast weight belt with Jelton Almeida. We shouldn’t even count it, I understand. But it’s not like he looked amazing in either fight. Like the last, the fight with Petrino was fun and he had his moments, but he didn’t look amazing. It was a pretty clear win for Petrino and Pedro just knocked him out in under three minutes. So I love Anton Di Cali. If they keep him around for another fight, fantastic. Mike, this might be it for the pleasure, man. It pains me to say it, so. For Tyson Pedro, I want to know, has there been a fighter, Mike, whose quality of competition has gotten like lower and lower, like, I actually mean just the quality of his wins, has gotten lower and lower as he’s got along, or hit like a weird, his wins are, his UFC debut first round submission, Khalil Rowntree, has aged very well, fantastic win, so that’s already starting pretty high. I know round two wasn’t like a top 20 guy at the time, but you know now we look at it now pretty high. Next win, first round TKL Paul Craig, big win at the time, big win, really good win. Lose to Ilya Latifi, and then he gets a weird fight with Sapharbek Safarov. Now this was just so he could fight in Australia, I guess, he wins that one again in the first round. Two more veteran names, OSP, Shogun, lose to both of them. And then Eike Villanueva no longer in the the promotion, Harry Hunsucker no longer in the promotion, takes both of them out in the first round, and now loses to Pukoskas, and then now he fights, he beats the Pleasure Man, who, it gives me no pleasure to say it, Mike, might be the worst light heavyweight on the roster right now. So, it’s a weird, he started off so high, and now all his wins have gone lower in value. So, I’m gonna go all the way back, Mike. I’m taking it back to the Paul Craig Kaleo Roundtree range. Alonzo Menafield? Ooh, okay, I thought about that. I thought about that. That’s like borderline top 15. He might be UFC’s top 15. I gotta look at their rankings. He might be in there. Metafield coming off of a finish win over Jimmy Crute. Let me see here. Light heavyweight Alonzo Metafield is number 14. So I am going from someone who I would rank as like the number 40 light heavyweight to the number 14. But it’s a wacky division. It depends where the fight is. It depends when Pedro’s ready. It depends if Metafield can get another opponent. I’m sure he wouldn’t. I’m sure he would see Pedro’s step back. But I think it’s a possibility. Let’s do the Pleasure Man versus Alexa Kamer. We can headline a Contender Series event and just like loser leaves town. Let’s give the man one more shot. Let’s give the man one more shot. Let’s do it. I wanna see it. Having said that, let’s go to the wild card round. We’ll select one fighter we have not match made for yet. It will match make for them right now. And then we will get to your picks. You just throw them up on the screen. after we do our wild card picks, we’ll pull them off. We’ll react to them for the next 15 or 20 minutes or so until I have to check out of this hotel and get to the airport and go home so I can get some sleep. So AK, who is your wild card pick for UFC 293? Yeah, let me go first. Cause I didn’t have a lot to feel like I had a lot to work with here. I think you probably have a way better pick than I did. I just went with Jay Malarkey and as with Hawk Brass, I think they’re both at similar stages of their career. I think it’d be a banger of a fight. And you know, they’re on the same card, time works out. I didn’t really have a great option. I was impressed with a lot of the performances I saw, but some of you guys have so little UFC experience that it’s essentially, as you kind of mentioned before, I’d like a dart throw as to who could be next. So malarkey hack press for me. Mike, tell me you got something spicier than that. So my first choice was, I was gonna give Carlos Ulberg his wish, because I did like the call out of Dominic Reyes. Didn’t you have a better Dominic Reyes pick, or am I thinking of something? It’s Dominic Reyes, Anthony Smith. Yeah, yeah. And I love that. So I’m not gonna lie. Yeah, you can’t do that. Good call. good. I feel is a good color, but I will tell people I am a fan of what I like to call vulture call outs where you are, you’re clearly strictly calling someone out based on their previous accomplishments and name value, not on like, Oh, this is, this fight will prove that, you know, someone’s Carlos Olberg is a top 15 contender. That doesn’t prove that he beats Dominic Reyes, but it’s a good name. And clearly at this stage for both men, a very winnable fight. So I love the color. I completely understand if people rolled their eyes and were like, Why the hell is he calling out Dominic Reyes? I understand. I like vulture call-outs. Mike, sorry. So you didn’t, no, no, no Ulberg Reyes for you. Did not go that route. I went with the guy who had a really good performance and literally no one’s talking about it and no one is going to talk about it because of what happened. Shout out to Treppe Mariscal, man. Yeah. Dude is two, dude’s two in on the UFC. Jack Jenkins and him had a sick first round. Mariscal started to turn it on in round two. He throws that, delivers that incredible throw. bad circumstances. Jack Jenkins, I don’t know what the actual injury was, but it looked very nasty and looks scary. But as a clean cut win, man, Chepay Mariscal is a fun ass fighter. He’s getting better and better. There’s talks about maybe him going down to 135. I don’t think he’s ready for that just yet. And if you want to go to 135, that’s fine. But before you do that, Chepay, please, please fight David Onama. Go fight David O’Nama. Whoa. Just go fight David O’Nama. And then you can do whatever you want. You go beat David O’Nama. You want to go to 135, go to 135. You want to go to 145, go to 145. Stay at 145. I don’t care. But go fight David O’Nama before you do anything else. Thank you very much. How high are you and I use this term loosely with Chepay on him as a prospect because he’s been fighting for quite a while actually. He’s a UFC prospect if people want to break it down like that. But he’s been fighting for a long time. We’re almost done, I think, nine years, nine years, I think he’s been a pro. And a lot of experience. This is his 20. This was 21st pro fight. How high are you in him as far as upside goes? He’s 30. He’s 30. And he’s in a one of the lighter weight classes where age is not your friend. So do you see him as someone who could be a top 20 top 15 guy? Yeah, I think so. Really? Because I’m very high on Onama. I think we’re both high on Onama. Right? I think Onama is a guy who I won’t be surprised. I would. Onama is a guy I will be disappointed if he does not have a number next to his name at some point is your secret. I’m not saying this like top 10, but I could see onama like working his way into the top 15. I don’t know. I don’t know if I did. Uh, Chepay is a fun fight guy, but I love that matchup. I love that match. I’m just curious if you see both guys like possibly turning a win into something like real. Yeah, I could see Chepay being kind of like in the JSP sort of conversation where he just just goes on quietly goes on a run and then gets a a big win against a sizable name and then ends up getting matched up with like a top 15 guy and getting a chance. So I understand why people are probably a little bit higher on David Onama, but I think Chepay is just kind of, he’s peaking right now. Like I think he’s in his prime. I think his confidence is up. I think he’s learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way. And yeah, let’s just see what he can do, man. Like, I mean, that fight with David Onama is gonna tell us a lot. That would tell us a lot about both guys and where they’re at and both of them. And look, you can make a great career being a fun, competitive fighter. You don’t have to be a ranked guy. David Onama and Chepay Mariscal could be like top 30 guys forever and do very, very well. No one’s going to complain when either of those guys matched up against anybody at 145 pounds, but yeah, let’s just see what they got. I like the matchup. I think it’s super fun. It could be a great like fight nighty main card opener. Let’s go. I love that idea. Chepay Nate Landwer, Chepay Nate Landwer somewhere down the road. That’s the next one. If you beat Sabre Nozomi, it gets Nate the Train next. The only reason we, I think neither of us picked that is because we’ve, I think we’ve picked like 10 fights for Nate this year. So if, if going by, like if we were able to make turn every auto no fight into reality, uh, Nate Lander would have fought like 12 times this year against like a, a list of killers. So I only wish it was possible for Nate Lander to fight everyone if by the way it’s not. So yeah, we got to find something else for, for Chippy. All right. Well, wild card round for the peeps. Let’s go. What do you got? Let’s go crazy. Throw in a matchup for Sean Strickland. Let me tell people. Matchups for Izzy. Whatever you got. We can list them off. We’ll react. We got like 10 minutes. We’re just going to go. Nothing but your picks. We’re going to pull them up on the screen and we’ll get after them. So let’s wait and see what we got here. Let me give a quick, let me give a quick shout out first to Zoe in Australia. You know, I got Gotta give a shout out to the Aussies. She says, for an event posed on paper as a C at best, B plus in terms of storylines? Yeah, I’d agree with that. B plus for sure in terms of storylines. Very 50-50 for the Aussie Kiwi contingency. We’re totally okay with that. And I’ll just read out a couple of these picks here. Strickland, Zoe thinks that would be a rematch, but she does want to see Costa Hamza winner. Tui Vasa, Derek Lewis too, cause who doesn’t want to see that again? Yeah, it could happen. Cop, I really effing hate this guy, but it has to be KKF now. And there were some other picks, Mike. But what do we got? What do we got from the YouTubes? Also Taito Iwasa versus Marcus Sherry to Lima is a great fight to make. Oh yeah. Throw that out there. Let’s go to Tristan. We got Justapapa, Waldo Cortez, Acosta. There you go, sure. Miranda, Jung Young Lee. Oh, fire. That’s fire. Alessandro, come on, just Acosta. I want to make a matchup for Miranda, but like I said, it’s just kind of all over the place. So I leave it to the viewers and listeners. And that is such a good matchup, Miranda and Jung. Ulberg-Merzikonov is interesting, but I wouldn’t do that this early. Right. I think Merzikonov’s a big-ass problem. Not saying that Ulberg isn’t, but I would probably wait a little bit on that. Hackpress bomb theme, that one makes a lot of sense. Mike versus Mike, loser, retired forever. Mike Jackson’s actually fighting Pat Miletich. It’s true, that’s a real thing, folks. That’s super, the real thing. Gerard Izzy versus the Shamayev-Costa winner. I believe that’s where we’re gonna go here as well. Let’s see. Manel, Cobb, Charles Radke and Blood Diamond versus UFC roster watch, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I think roster watch is a minus. Well, Cobb and Radke I think will be okay. Blood Diamond, ironically Blood Diamond, the least problematic of them is probably done. I’d give roster watch minus 800 in that matchup. Sorry Blood Diamond if you’re out there, but no, it doesn’t go your way sometimes. Yeah, Taffa versus I would even go for that idea. I mean, again, let me let me get not mix up my Australia and New Zealand. So both. Okay. So this would be Australia versus Australia versus New Zealand matchup. There’s a lot of fun. I’m assuming there’s no friendship there. I wonder if maybe they’ve trained together at some point, but I think that’s a great matchup. I think you are seeing two guys slug it out. but that has to happen in New Zealand or Australia, right? You can’t throw that in the apex. No, go ahead, no. You can’t throw that. Those two boys, Swang and Meat Hammers, has to be in front of an audience, and really preferably in New Zealand or Australia, so I don’t know how early they go back there next year. I’m sure they will go back, and by there I just mean the whole region. I feel we have to apologize for that a lot this week, my conflating New Zealand and Australia, but it has to happen in front of a rowdy crowd. Yes, they’re gonna throw that fight in like Sioux Falls, South Dakota. of all places. Oh, fantastic. Jake Hadley was no cop. God, no. No, not yet. Hadley’s not a terrible fighter. But now he’s coming off. He’s coming off of a loss. He got run over by Cody Durden. I mean, it’s a fun fight, not run over. But the last two rounds was all Cody. So, yeah. Cops, cops fighting Kikar France. He’s he’s getting a top five, dude, for sure. Paul Craig and Whitaker didn’t even fight for shut. No, Paul Craig is his main eventing against Brendan Allen in November 18th. I believe that fight is, I’m not sure. But man, that Shawn Strickland, Brennan Allen win has aged pretty well, has it not? Shawn, a lot of Shawn Strickland’s wins have actually aged pretty well. So again, I’ll never question the meritocracy of him getting a title fight, only because of this. Mike, we say all the time about, we always say we’ll just get a fight or a title shot and then often we’ll go like, no, but it puts them on the short list. This is the importance of being on that shortlist, is when all the other options fall out, guess what? The UFC checks, checks, checks, guess who was there? The next on the list, Sean Strickland, gets the title shot and now he’s the UFC champion. So getting on the shortlist matters. It’s not a sexy place to be, but that’s how people get title shots sometimes, and in this case, how they become UFC champions, heaven help us. Now, out of sunny cannon air too, I don’t know if anyone’s in Russia. Please no, never again. I don’t know if anyone’s in Russia. Never again. Let me read, Mike, let me read one quick from Twitter, just because it’s the first time. Right. Shout out to Helios, who is, I’ve mentioned the show before during a ask us anything but and I just like one of their picks here I think I don’t know if we mentioned it all Berg all Berg at roundtree. Is it time to do that? They’re both streaking. They’re both. No, you don’t want to keep them away too soon away from each other Yeah, I like what they’re doing. I like what they’re doing with all Berg right now step by step Step by step. I mean if they book it sure But roundtree wants like a veteran name in a main event spot and I think he kind of deserves it So let’s just give it to him another all Berg versus Menafield. What’s up charge biog and what’s up? Okay, no regular Gerard Biagin. Izzy versus Rackage. It’s like a potential move to 205. We didn’t talk about this. Yeah, sorry, we didn’t talk about this. I got a couple of people who still sent in picks, even though we warned them. Maybe don’t send in picks, because we’re doing it live, not going to read everything. But you talk about him taking time off, Mike. Should be the time off B to bulk up and make a proper move to 205. If he wants. Like I get where Jed’s coming from. Like you’ve already conquered 185. what else could you do besides get the rematch? Because then if he like fights DDP and loses, what are we gonna do? Another immediate rematch? And he tries to avenge that loss too? Like, we’re almost to a point where like, there’s not much more he could do. Yeah. And if by some chance next year, even next summer, Alex Panetta is the light heavyweight champion. That is a fight he walks right into. They’re one and one. He knocked him out in the most recent fight. That’s the one. So that should have been our crystal ball pick as Panetta beats Yuri maybe defends the title once and then fights Izzy one more time. I hope that happens. MMA, give us something straightforward and predictable for once please. Tuvasa Taibora. Did they not? That’s in my head a fight that like I don’t think they fought. In my head I feel like that happened but I’m pretty sure it has not happened. No it’s not. Well caught versus feedback. So I saw a bunch of this even with like the messages that I got. Strickland like Kamaru moves up to 185 and avenges his buddy’s loss. That’s a deep cut. That’s a deep cut. I was going to say, have they fought? And I’m like, right, Strickland was a welterweight once upon a time. And that fight is a thing that happened. So, hey, Kamaru, guess what? You can say you have a win over a middleweight champion. How about that? I don’t think that happens, but I like, I like where the head is at though. Izzy versus Rob 3, main event New Zealand, fight night or pay-per-view doesn’t matter. What do you think about doing the trilogy here? I like it a lot. We know Rob has really wanted it. I don’t think Izzy would be against it. And like I said with the Castlemry match, now that the title is out of the picture, it probably makes it more possible. So yeah, doable, doable fight for sure. There’s options for Izzy, even though he’s coming off this pretty disappointing loss. Whittaker takes that fight without hesitation. Of course, he wants another shot. Without hesitation. He wants another shot. Louis too. Yeah, it could happen sometime. Yeah. Thoughts on Shricklin? Is he rematch possible adjustments? I don’t know. I like maybe they will rematch but that’s that is now like a back pocket fight. Like even if Shricklin loses the title, you could still go back to that at some point. And it’s fine. But I don’t know, man. I don’t know if I would pick Izzy in that fight. No matter like how much I mean not saying that he can’t come back and win because stylistically is a good fight and if Izzy is he on his best day probably wins I don’t know how many times it’s not like Strickland would beat him ten out of ten times but he broke the man like I I actually don’t even want to see it I have no desire to see that rematch right now I don’t it was one of the worst possible ways for Izzy to lose that fight yeah for sure yeah because if you didn’t know who was who if this was your first time seeing Izzy fight and your first time stricken seeing Strickland fight, you would have just said, oh, well, Strickland’s the way better fighter, right? You would have no idea that one guy is in the running for, or was, hopefully not in the competition anymore for now, middleweight, at least the second best middleweight ever, and one guy was not expected to fight for the title at all. It looked completely the opposite. Chepe versus Malarkey, since we all know Jamie lost last night. Yeah, GC had a Malarkey bet. He sweated that one out, and he was like, whew, I’ll take that, but Chepe, I mean, yes, he did fight Trevor Pica 155, but he’s not a lightweight. He’s a featherweight. No, he’s not gonna, yeah. that was short notice that was just yeah yeah so i mean chepay’s talked about moving to bantamweight so that was one of things like um maybe we’ll get a nutritionist that’s why because he wants to go to 135 alberg versus bucascus there’s alberg like yeah it makes sense but i just think it’s not a sexy matchup for well i really i didn’t fight with alberg it’s a sexy matchup but i mean it’s not uh you know sexy metaphorically speaking so um it could happen but it’s not my my favorite let’s see anything else Carla another Carlos versus Khalil maybe maybe that’s where we go it’s just they’re both street I think they’re both for fight win streaks right they both have a very appealing stand-up style rankings wise they shouldn’t be too far apart I think Khalil might be a little bit ahead but neither guy for me is in my top 15 so this would be the fight to sort of edge one guy closer to it what I do what I do with all burger now wait What are you saying again dog the value hunter? I don’t know if you saw this coming yet Miranda versus Ryan Hall Grappler’s Delight I mean RIP Gabrielle Miranda in that case, but I understand the appeal of it I do want to see more Gabrielle Miranda. He I think we all I want to see the entire staff predicted Miranda by submission and He showed up. I I want to say a briefing for Shane Young. It’s like he might need to take a break Who’s his teammate who is he’s teammates with Brad Riddell, right? Yeah city kickbox and stuff, right? I don’t know. He’s smart. I’m glad Browardell is taking a break. Maybe Shane Young needs to as well. Four straight losses. Missed weight so badly. And it wasn’t like a weight miss where I think… It’s one of those really bad misses where you’re like, this looks like a miss because of lack of focus. Not because he was trying to like game the system. So I had very little hope for him to pull this one out. And he didn’t last a minute in there. So Shane Young, assuming he doesn’t get released, back to the shop. Take some time off and hopefully we see a better version Alberg vs. Jacobi, I know I that’s that’s a good one. I think you had a good matchup for Jacobi last week I think you would if we’re going by ought no didn’t you match it? I think you had something good for Jacobi or might be thinking of someone else We have matched up Jacobi a few times or the listeners have anyway. Yeah, I think Who won at 205 in Singapore? I don’t think I match it. I think a lot of people said Anthony Smith No, they their teammates so they won’t fight I’ll tell you what, Alberg versus Ryan Spann. I would do that. I would do that. Yeah, I like that. Lucas C, I just wanna read this comment. I’m still shocked by what happened last night, trying to decide which subset is the biggest. Leon Usman, O’Malley, Aljoe, Izzy Strickland. This is definitely bigger than both of those. Leon was on a 10 fight, unbeaten streak. It’s more how that fight went that makes it so shocking. He was dominating the first fight and then got that Hail Mary knockout. But odds-wise, he wasn’t that shocking. He was on a crazy win streak. O’Malley versus Aljo. I mean, we all knew O’Malley had that puncher’s chance and it played out exactly as you would expect an O’Malley win to play out. Izzy Strickland’s the shocker, is a huge upset. And for me, Mike, a top five upset all time. Not sure where it lands for you, but yes, my top five. Yeah, for me personally, yes, that’s where it is. And again, a lot of people were like, you’re not giving Strickland any respect. No, dude stepped in on short notice and saved the day and took the fight and won the belt. So you can’t take anything away from the man. But yeah, man, just so crazy. For me, the betting odds are one thing, and then you just kind of look at all the different paths to victory. Nothing will beat GSP Matsera. That’s etched in stone forever. But even like Peña beating Nunes, like, man, maybe the timing’s not good here. Maybe Peña just need to weather a storm. Nunes just isn’t taking her seriously like there were things out there you’re like okay maybe Luke Rockhold Michael Bisbing crazy ass upset out of nowhere but like the way Luke Rockhold just just kind of cast Bisbing off to the side like he was nothing like you just kind of felt like maybe he’s just maybe he’s too cocky right now maybe the ego is a little too much and like even even Sean O’Malley like you just felt like okay there’s there’s a way he can win and but this one, it just, it just was just really shocking. This is the most chaotic thing. This whole division, like the rankings are broken, pound for pound is never going to be the same. In terms of rankings, because of this result, like it’s just absolutely wild. It’s absolutely wild. So I see someone saying David’s L saying GSP Sarah was a one punch fluke. Yeah, it was a one punch fluke. That’s what’s so crazy about it is if they ran that fight back, that’s why it’s the biggest upset if they ran that back 100 times. GSP probably wins 99 times. We saw the one time that Sarah would win that fight and it happens. That’s, that’s what’s great about MMA. That makes me so crazy, man. Yeah. All right. I think we’re good here. Yeah, I get a pack up and get the hell out of here. So AK, thank you very much. I appreciate you jumping on a little bit earlier. I appreciate all of you for watching a little bit earlier. Normally, we’re like just getting the show started now but schedules and timeframes are different. We’ll be back live on this program. We a little bit of a breather now. Me and GC were talking about this yesterday throughout the pre-build for the watch party like I’m kind of happy we’re getting a little bit of a break because it’s like every three weeks like clockwork, hopping on a plane in New York for one day, hopping on a plane in New York for one day and now we get like a five-week breather and then it’s like right back to it because we’re gonna have 294, 295 like right behind it and then 296 will be be, you know, four weeks after that, and then we’re just going to be all crazy. But the next one, afternoon MMA for the next pay-per-view, because they’re in Abu Dhabi. So I believe that it’s a 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. Eastern main card start time, which is incredible. I love that so much. I love that so much. But you guys are the best. show next week. We will be discussing the fallout of Noche UFC and then we get the September 23rd card headlined by Raphael Faziv versus Matush Gamrant. Let me pull up next week’s card real quick. Do the quick rundown before we get out of here. Do it. Noche UFC. We have 11 fights. Alexa Grasso, Valentina Shevchenko, two for the flyway title. We got Kevin Holland versus Jack Delamadalena. Okay, weird. Big time, big coming event for 170 for the future of this division. Raul Rosas Jr. coming back after his first loss against Terrence Mitchell. Main card, boy, they’re not giving up on this kid, eh? And they shouldn’t, and they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t. Daniel Zellhuber, who is just a super impressive cat, taking on Christos Gyagos, Fernando Padilla, Kyle Nelson. I think so. Lupi Godinez versus Elise Reed. We got Roman Kopilov versus Josh Fremt. We got Edgar Chires versus Daniel Lacerda. fun fight at 125. Tracy Cortez versus Jazzman, Jazz DeVisius. We got Charlie Campbell, CFFC champ, making his debut on short notice against Alex Reyes who returns to the octagon for the first time in like five or six years. Long layoff for Alex Reyes, but he is back. So maybe we’ll hear a little bit from Dominic Reyes next week in Las Vegas. Maybe he’ll do some interviews and we’ll get some because they are brothers after all and uh Josephine Knutson taking on Marnic Mann. Marnic Mann? A Blinded by the Light fan? That’s Manford Man. Oh I see I see I knew I can see DJ DJ Mike I knew I could sneak that I knew I couldn’t sneak that fast you I was like can I get on with this? Here we go, next week apparently, so that’s no GFC, so thank you all very much, have a great rest of your weekend, enjoy week one of the NFL season everybody, or aka I am Mike Hecht, always remember don’t take this stuff too seriously, MMA is supposed to be fun, we’ll have more fun next week right here and on to the next one of the podcast, see you later everybody. you