BTG 141 - Most Mid UFC Card?

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. Today's episode, it'll be a short one. I just wanted to remark on UFC Fight Night Vegas 107. This is a card that I don't think anybody was excited about. It was just uh weird matchups and no big names matched up with other big names. Um and lots of weight misses which going to be more what I'm going to be focused on here really because the main event which was uh Macy Barber and Aaron Blanchfield women's I guess I forget the weight class name but it's 125 now. They were supposed to weigh in and they did get a pound allowance for non-title fights of 126, but Barbara missed it by half a pound, 126 and a half. Not a super big deal, mind you, but she really tried to make that weight from the looks of it uh when they had her on the on the scale. She didn't look great, a little shaky. She clearly had a rough cut and probably pushed it to the limit. Couldn't make weight. And uh again, I don't really pay attention to women's MMA too often to be honest. So, I didn't notice any differences, but apparently a lot of people were commenting that, oh, you know, she had, you know, breast implants put in. I'm like, well, someone did the math. It's like that would be close if not half a pound, you know. So, like if you're a professional fighter, that seems like a silly thing to do in my opinion. Uh, I know aesthetically people have their opinions of what's important to accentuate or whatnot, but as an athlete doesn't seem like a great, especially in a contact sport to have like, you know, saline or silicon or whatever they're using as a filler that could potentially burst. I know they're not toxic or anything like that, but doesn't seem like it'd be a great time either. Uh, not to mention that's weight that you're not going to be able to lose that you're adding to yourself. So, that's one twist on that thing. But the fight was still scheduled and Aaron in the press interview uh pre-fight uh conference was saying that she doesn't think that Barbara was going to be able to show up to fight even though they had weighed in and you know she had missed weight. And I I guess people thought she was talking smack, but it turns out that when they were doing the walkouts for the main event, final night of the evening, the production team had to stop the walk out and they called off the main event just before the walk out. I don't think we've seen something like this since Kevin Randleman slipped in some pipes in his head which actually happened like I think it was like UFC one in the 20s like where you know a couple decades ago you know so it's not something that happens very commonly where a fight is canled in the walk out and it wasn't clear what happened but I guess Aaron revealed in the postfight conference that she was having a seizure during her walk out backstage age. Not a great look, right? Uh obviously I hope that that young lady's all right, but you have to question what you're doing with yourself if you're not able to make the weight responsibly, especially if you cut so hard that you're going to get a seizure. That could have been a potentially life-threatening situation. You imagine you have a seizure, she falls, hits her head on the floor. That could be game over, right? Uh it's not trivial. So coaches also have to be wondering, well, we goofed here. How did we miss this weight cut so bad? Or how did it get this extreme where we put our athlete in harm's way? On the other hand, UFC also has to be wondering like um we had three fighters miss weight on this card. Not one but three. And Trevan Giles was also supposed to fight. Uh they pulled him off the card, but I know he was supposed to fight. They yanked him because he went unconscious during his weight cut and they called it off. So you actually had two fighters with severe weight cut issues. The other one just missed weight was still able to fight. U and this is where I would say can we just stop the weight cutting games already? Can we grow up and just institute a new system? And my brother was the one with the idea which simplified an idea I had too which is just weigh the athletes in two days in a row. That's it. You're not going to be able to do any big weight cuts if you have to weigh in twice, right? You're not cutting 20 pounds, 30 lbs and holding that for 72 hours, right? It's just not going to happen. You do one little thing like that and it's going maybe some guys are still going to cut 10 pounds. Fine. I think they're going to suffer for that, but that's okay. That's their choice. But you're not going to be able to do a drastic weight cut if you're getting your weight checked two days in a row. And the UFC can swing that. Most of these guys are coming in a week in advance anyways because they have to do the preight postconference and then they, you know, so they're in there days before. So it's not like they can't swing it, you know, they can do it. And it's very simple. My original idea was weighing them in three days in a row. That would be 72 hours, I guess, would before 7 would have been I guess 48 technically. But still not something you can do, right? You could see even 24-hour recovery is not enough when you cut extreme like uh Macy did, right? Imagine if she had to hold the weight down for 48 hours. It wouldn't work well. And you're not going to be able to put the weight on and then take it off and then put it back on again. like that's also definitely not going to happen. So that's why two consecutive days would nip this in the butt. Uh especially if you're weighing them in day of, you know, right? You would definitely have people never being able to cut any weight. They would just have to be the weight they're at. And I think that would be the way it should be. Just fight where you're healthy. We shouldn't be. It's a ridiculous notion. And I know I've said this before, but again, current events just brings us back to light here, which is if I'm going to fight you and me and you go, we're going to fight in the street and okay, we're going to go tomorrow in front of the schoolyard at noon. All right, but you have to weigh 155 lbs before you [ __ ] fight me. So, we're gonna cut weight the day before. Like, okay. It's like, who would agree to that? That makes no sense, right? It's [ __ ] We should just be fighting based on where we feel healthiest at. And based on that, matching up with somebody who's around our weight. That's all. It shouldn't be such crazy measures to optimize like, oh, I'm gonna try to squeeze out like 25 pounds, you know, so I can bounce back up 20 and have a good strength edge on my opponent. And then your opponent's doing the same thing anyways. So like dummies, let's just not do this whole game to begin with and be able to be as healthy as possible. And of course, competitors, everyone's going to try to cheat somebody, but it's the UFC or the Athletic Commission, in this case, Nevada, that should be the ones that should stop the games here, right? Let's just If you're supposed to be focused on fighter safety, which is what the athletic commission's job is, you're doing a terrible job by allowing weight cutting. There's no other way to say it. Weight cutting is not beneficial for your health. It's not safe. It's not improving health outcomes long term. Why are you allowing it? Take it off the table. Again, if you could see a flaw with what I'm saying, you know, two day weigh-ins this in a two days in a row, let me know because I think it's a very simple way of handling it. You're not, like I said, there's going to be some people who are still going to try to cut, you know, 5 10 pounds, but that's going to be rough even on a on two days in a row, right? Because that means I'm going to have to cut 10 lbs. Then that day I'm either holding that 10 lb cut or I'm rehydrating and then I'm going to recut the next day. that doesn't seem like it's gonna be worth the the juice is gonna be worth the squeeze there, right? Like it it just seems to make more sense. Just optimize my body, get as lean as I can so I have as much muscle from for my frame as possible while still being have enough fat where I have energy. I'm not uh straining my joints or whatnot, right? And obviously maintaining good hydration, right? Like I said, there is going to still be some weight optimization, but I think it'll be drastically reduced and I I would believe in a more healthy way. You're not going to do these crazy, you know, 30 40 lb weight cuts that guys are doing, right? Is I don't think that's going to be possible on a on a 48 hour weight cut, right? you're you because you're gonna have to weigh in twice in a row. That's going to be real rough. And I would hope that would avoid tragic situations like this, right? Where, you know, you have some a young athlete that could potentially have health issues as a result of weight cutting. Uh I think it also makes for better fights when the people are not drained, right? there. And and we know now scientifically that weight cutting makes you more likely to get a concussion because the fluid in your brain also is the first area to lose water and the last area to rehydrate. So that means there's less brain fluid, which means your brain is more likely to wobble around when it gets hit. another not great thing about weight cutting besides what we usually hear the the damage to the kidneys and other internal organs. So let's just get rid of that and and as fighters I think everyone should be embracing that. I don't know why you don't hear that from fighters more often like, "Hey, let's get rid of this weight cut." Like, listen, I don't know a single fighter like, "Oh, I can't wait for this weight cut." Like, no, it's a miserable part of this game that really doesn't have relevance into the actual fight itself. It makes no sense, right? Like why are we adding this incredibly difficult hurdle into a sport that's already incredibly difficult, right? It's already one of the most grueling sports is the most complicated technical sport. Why are we adding this extra toughness hurdle of, oh, we have to be able to make weight? Just get rid of it. And I don't think the UFC or any excuse me any um of the organizations promotions have that control. It's going to be primarily the athletic commissions at least in the United States here that supervise all the states. Each individual state has their own athletic commission. Do something useful as the commissioner and take out the weight cutting. make it structured differently. I think what I'm advising is the easiest way of doing it because I know 1FC does hydration testing, but having spoken to 1FC athletes, there's lots of ways to gain that too, which people are. Uh so obviously that's not going to work either. I I think you just keep it simple. Just uh two days in a row, that's it. And if two days is not enough, three days in a row. The the the point is not to like make it easy for them to weight cut. It's to make it unappealing to weight cut or you know basically you're going to be taking a hit if you cut weight because the fighters are not cutting weight because they like it. They're cutting it because they want to get an edge. And if you're able to deincentivize that by making it a penalty for cutting weight, they just won't do it. And then the only other way you're going to optimize your weight now is by being lean, eating healthy, and stacking on as much muscle on your frame while maintaining your weight class and being responsible with your hydration, which is going to put them to be healthier. And that would be the goal, right? Like your your fight camps shouldn't be fat camps, right? And likewise, they shouldn't be also about like, oh, I got to watch my sodium levels and I got to, you know, not eat for the last couple days and, you know, drink like teaspoon of water and spit in a cup. Like, these are crazy things that uh we're putting ourselves through for some silly arbitrary weight loss. Just it's try to strip that, right? I think that would be the best way moving forward for for this. And I'm probably going to fall in deaf ears, but I think it would be great, you know, if we can stop doing this before someone actually does get seriously hurt. I think the UFC has been fortunate. This is probably one of the more uh severe incidents that we've heard of in recent times. I don't think the UFC's ever had a fatality or a serious, you know, permanent injury from a weight cut, but I don't want to wait for it to happen, right? I don't want to wish that and see that or wish that anybody. I rather that we didn't have this because to me as a coach, what a relief. I don't have to worry about weight cutting anymore. Now I don't have to hire like a special, you know, nutritionist slash like alchemist or whatever that knows how to do weight cuts and has the formula for getting the IVs and we know what to put in the IV and you know what's the the the schedule for eating and for drinking and the the how they're going to sweat it out like no no we just have to train our guy to be as strong as it can as well as condition and as and as technical That's what we know best as coaches. We're learning along the way of how to deal with weight cuts. So, we hire people who specialize in this, but it's a crazy idea. I'm telling you, no one wants to do this right now. I get there might be, well, I say no one. I'm sure there are guys who love weight doing weight cuts because they might be very good at it and they feel like they have an advantage with it. And to them, I I'd say, man, tough luck. Become a better fighter instead. Stop trying to be a weight bully and optimize that part, you know, and actually focus on being a better fighter. Uh, I I think it sucks that this is such a important part of the game now because right now, for example, if I was in a fight, I'd have to fight at 170. It's like impossible to me to fight another weight class. 185 I'd be fighting Driscus. If you seen Driscus, he's huge. He's almost as big as Tom Aspenol. You know, it's it's crazy. Like I would get, you know, just absolutely crushed by someone of his stature, right? So I'm walking around now 200 lb, right? 15 lb back in the day was like a reasonable weight cut. And mind you, I can obviously lean out a bit more. Um, but like 170 would have to be like the minimum weight class that I could or the highest weight class that I could effectively compete at. So, not great. Like, not like, man, I had to drop 30 lbs basically. Now, I could probably diet about 10 lbs and a 20 lb cut. It's like, yeah, it's doable, but man, that's pretty miserable, right? Uh I so like I I don't like these type of calculations that we would have to do. Uh I think it would just be better like we can get rid of this game and then the case for me would be okay well I would wait optimize to be around 190 and then fight 185 right and that would probably make sense. I wouldn't be cutting much of anything and at that point I'd be like 10 sub 10% body fat. That's like fair, right? Uh but that's my take on it, you know? Uh as regarding I didn't watch this UFC to be honest because like I said, I wasn't excited about it. I'm like, man, uh I only had one of my friends that was fighting there and he won his fight, actually Jordan Leven, the Monkey King. I just trained with him last week. So, it was great to see him catch that uh Anaconda from the guillotine and he would win fight the night. Uh, so one for the good guys, but uh, other than that, I didn't really know anybody else in the card, so I I didn't tune in to it. Seemed like to be a pretty cursed card though, right? Like I said, three fights or two fights that dropped the main event dropping last minute. Uh, not a great way to be remembered for that. I mean, I fortunately that's an apex event. Imagine if that was a live event and the main event just fell through that way. What a disappointment that would be. In any case, that's all I got for you guys this week. Like I said, it' be a short one. Uh, by the way, I will be going to Florida from June 10th to June 17th. If you're in South Florida, you want to train with me, the classes are open to jump into. You just have to pay the MAT fee if you're not a student at FFA. I think it's like 35 bucks or something like that for the day. I'll be teaching three classes which will be a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, which I believe is June 11th, June 12th, June 13th, uh 6:00 p.m. That's get Miami Eastern time and it goes to about 7:30. Uh so you can attend all three classes. I'll be teaching different things in those classes and they're run more like a seminar, right? Because I'm basically trying to distill as much information as I can uh to my my team. So I I teach one consistent theme throughout those three days. And that way I have armed my guys to the best of their abil the best of my ability with some of the cutting edge stuff I've been working on. I actually had some cool things I pulled off in training yesterday that I want to share with them as well. So if you're interested uh you could just send me an email davidmma.com and I can send you more info of you know the address. Again it's freestyle fighting academy Miami Florida. Uh you can just Google that freestylefightacademy.com. uh you can just go there. But if you have any particular questions, you can also ask me. So I'll be there for that. If you're a student FFA, uh if you're a CAT member, it's free. And I think our intro MMA members just pay a small fee to to get in. But yeah, that'll be a good time. So I'll be there for those days. And uh I I stick around for a few more days afterwards. It's actually going to be my brother's birthday on Saturday. So, I'll be there to celebrate his 45th. Uh, so that should be fun, too. But yeah, that that's what I have going on there. And, um, if you again, if you're interested, you can just send me an email or or you can visit freestyle academy.com to get the gym info. Give us a call. Just make sure if you do plan on going that you reserve a spot because normally when I'm teaching there, everybody shows up. So the mats are pretty full and if we have like 20 extra people want to jump in, it's probably not going to we're we can't accommodate everybody. So if you're going to be a visitor jumping in for a session or two, uh make sure you call in and uh reserve in advance so that we can save you a spot. Other than that, uh if you can't go, no worries. If you guys have been following the website for a while, I do post these on my website at davidmma.com. Uh you have to be a subscriber or a member, right, to get access to those videos because I put them up as posts. Uh, and yeah, it's uh, we man, I haven't looked in a while, but I think there's like 500 or so posts at this point, and I've been posting every day except Sundays religiously since I started the website. So, a little pat on my back for myself for being consistent for that long. Uh, I tell people I'm pretty disciplined in that regard. And once I can get a habit going, I can keep it for a long time. I was actually talking to who was it? I think Mo Jazzim. Um because I use uh you guys know like my fitness pal. I have 13 plus years of entering every meal I've eaten every day. Uh pretty impressive streak there as well, right? And I I record all my workouts in another app, my Fit Notes. So I journal now every day as well. So I have a lot of little discipline uh rituals that I do that uh I don't stray from. But yeah, I'm happy with how my website's been progressing and growing. We've been getting lots of new people uh joining and it's great to see that. I would like to see more some more feedback. There's a lot of uh lurkers on there. Uh but uh whether if you guys give the stuff likes or comments just lets me know what you guys like more. But it seems like we have a lot of very shy people, which is fine. Uh but I would like to see some more engagement there as well. So if you're on there and you've been lurking for a while, you know, give some thumbs up to a post or even a thumbs down if you don't like something or just give a comment. Uh, it makes it a little easier for me when I know what people want to see or what they like to see and I can create more content that way. I'm actually going to start doing uh more rolling footage because somebody did comment that actually. Uh, they I put up one of my rolls and they're like, "Man, I wish we could see more of your rolls." I'm like, "Okay." Uh, challenge accepted. So, I had actually went to get a drone because I wanted to be cutting edge. I think it would be kind of cool if I can get a drone, throw it up, and then have it filming me from above. That way, it can kind of just follow me wherever I am on the mats and get some cool like angles because you can have it like rotate or whatnot. Unfortunately, that didn't work out, right? And I I quickly realized that's why no one's doing this cuz I talked to somebody uh I think it was DJI that one of the big companies that make the consumer drums and uh like oh because I'm like I have a special use case. I'm not going outside hiking. I'm going to be doing this indoors in the gym but I want something that I can control the altitude of and so it doesn't hit the ceiling or it's too low it's going to like bump into people. But it also needs to be silent because if it's sounds loud, it's going to be very obstructive and you know, I mean, disruptive. Like, oh yeah, this one's good. And I got the one they recommended and man, that thing sounds loud as hell. And unfortunately, it doesn't look like the AI is quite there yet as far as being able to stay at one altitude or just track. It seemed like it would, you know, dip down, move up, dip down, and it it looked like it wants to keep a certain range, which is not great, you know. Uh, so I had to scrap that idea. But I did find something else now. Uh, same company, but they sell one of those gimbals, and the gimbals does like a tracking, and uh, that seems to work better. I'm not sure if it's going to be perfect, but I'm going to give it a go. on my next training session here so I can film that for you guys and I'm crossing my fingers that works out because if that does then I can start filming more of these rolls and do breakdowns on my own sessions since I'm not competing anymore you know at least when I roll around and full around the gym I can give you guys some different looks um as far as what I'm working on u and yeah so things that we got coming down the pipe. Uh, like I said, if you guys have suggestions about things you want to hear me talk about in the podcast, uh, techniques you want me to cover, matches you want me to break down, courses that you want me to make, or just any suggestions about anything I'm doing, just send me a message, david.com, or, you know, you can direct message me on Facebook X or Instagram at David Avalon.