BTG 158 - Where do you go from here?

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. Uh today today's episode I'm going to talk a little bit about UFC fight night in Perth where we had Carlos Oldberg versus Dominic Reyes. and uh a little bit on the main event as well. But I mean the just the main card overall Reyes did not have the match that he wanted to have and again this is going to be a spoiler so obviously uh but he came out pretty gunshy was giving a lot of respect to Oldberg who has shown that he is a a dangerous striker but Towards the end of the first round, you can see Oldberg starts putting in a lot more pressure. He starts to connect. Clearly, he's found his range, whereas Dominic was still whiffing a lot of kicks, missing with his punches. Uh wasn't finding his range. And at one point he there must have been like 15 seconds left in the round. He kind of lunges in and it was like the worst possible timing. Oldberg read it threw it kind of weird. They weren't straight punches, but it looked like kind of a loopy uh right hand with another overhand left, if you will. I don't know. It they weren't like your typical right left because they had to go over uh rays of punches, but the two-piece was devastating Florida immediately. And then he had a follow-up shot that sent him into the other another dimension. Soberg has shown that he is the real deal and probably it's going to put him into title contention. Uh at this point he's I think got a eight fight win streak. He's only lost one fight. So very legit. Reyes, on the other hand, h sucks for him. Uh I wanted to see him win. It would have been a cool Cinderella story, but didn't look great. Did not look great for him. And uh I'm not sure it's because it was a tough opponent to face and he wasn't sure how to approach it. Fighting in Australia, way away from home, fighting at 7:00 in the morning, lots of excuses you can make, but the end result doesn't uh change. And now where does that put you? You know, cuz you wanted to make a title run. this was the chance and to lose it in such a devastating way kind of puts you back at square one almost. I don't know what it where you would go with it from there. And pretty bad knockout too. Not a if you're in the corner, you're not happy to see that. You're kind of worried about it. So, uh, hopefully he's all right. And, um, I don't know where you where you go from there. If you're him, it's hard to say, oh, you know, give it up. I'm not sure how old he is either, but he's not in the greatest physical shape as far as appearances. When he fought Jon Jones, shredded. And now he's kind of a little saggy, you know? He's got some extra weight on him. He's obviously not optimized. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't Let's put it this way. Can you be a little chubby and be very dangerous? Of course. Fedor Emmelenko is a perfect example of that, right? The guy was never below 15% body fat, right? But obviously extremely dangerous. Is that the optimal way to fight? Especially when you're not a heavy weight, when you're in like a 205 or 185 where people are cutting. No, cuz you're going to be losing off of that extra muscle. If if you consider someone's 15% body fat versus someone that's 10 at 205 lbs, realistically they're cutting from 225. 10% is about 22 lbs. We'll say 22 and 1/2. Half of that 11 and a4. So you're carrying 11 lbs extra of fat that are not muscle. If you're 15% versus the guy who's 10, it's a significant amount. It's almost another weight class. So, is it impossible to win being undersized? Of course not. But are you at a disadvantage? Yes. Not optimal. And as much as I hate weight cutting, you definitely have to respect it. And Oldberg, jacked, shredded. You know, he's a guy that's probably around 10, under 10. Dominic probably 15ish. So yeah, you are losing some size there. If you see me trembling a little bit, I just jumped out of the cold plunge, so it's hitting me a little bit late, but that's okay. Uh but yeah, I I think for fighters, especially if you're at the top level, you have to be optimized. And Dominic Ray clearly isn't optimized just by physical appearances. That's probably not why he lost the fight, but it is a factor. Undercard, there was some controversy. Jake Matthews versus Neil Magny. Magny was a big dog in that fight. And I honestly I didn't watch it, but I saw the ending and the controversial part. It looked like towards the end of round one, Matthews had Magny in a mounted guillotine. Looked pretty solid and squeezing it. And you could see Magny was kind of riding it like eating it and he has hand you know if you imagine a Magny mounted hand on the small of the back I guess he was just surviving the choke and there was short time you hear the 10-second belt and all of a sudden his hand just drops like this the ref right away comes in to stop the fight, the bell rings because there was 1 second left. And the moment the ref stop comes to stop the fight, Magny's protesting and it's like, "Oh god, why is this happening so often?" And it's somewhat understandable. It's a weird response to have to just be in a defensive position and then just relax. It looks like you're going out, but it was an attack. There was also one second in the round when that happened. So weird. I know the ref there saying is not responsible for knowing the time, but you kind of should know the time, right? Like it shouldn't be completely out of the your realm. If you know a guy's taking some punches and he's weathering a storm and there's one second left to me to stop it at one second when the guy is still defending himself. It's crazy. So yeah, I'm going to argue and push back like as a referee you should know the time because it is a factor in my opinion. And the guy didn't tap. You should have done, you know, the wellness check, which is grab his hand and lift it up to make sure he's still conscious. It's not the end of the world if a guy passes out and he's 1 second extra. It's different if he's out for 10 seconds or 15 seconds and then you're late. But if he just went out, which is what you're expecting when he goes limp, you can do the wellness check first. Don't just jump to stop it immediately. So the referee goofed. I don't think Manny was out. Cuz you wouldn't be that responsive. It was immediate. It was like he went to stop and Magny was already pushing away. It's like no you you weird response by Magny but also bad refereeing sucks for Jake because throws him off. He was celebrating cuz he thought he had won hadn't won. They let the match continue and in ironic twist of fate. Now it's Matthews being caught in a choke at the end of round two. Dar choke. There was probably 30 seconds, maybe less than 30 seconds left and he gets tapped out, but he taps. And you have to wonder how upset he was at that situation cuz he was thinking, "Man, I had this guy." He didn't, but he felt that way. And for the ref to call it aggravating. I don't know why the refs are so trigger happy to stop submissions, particularly chokes. They're the easiest thing to eat. Very easy to check, too. You okay? You okay? Lift their hand up. They don't respond, then they have a a right to stop it. But just seeing someone go limp, while it's alarming, it's not always a signal. We've seen that and there's been so many controversial stops. Why get in there? Just do the wellness check first. Pick up the hand, let it drop. Because if they let it drop and they're not responding to verbal commands, you're going to know within a few seconds, okay, the guy's out. So, it shouldn't be difficult, but it seems like the referees are having a really hard problem understanding like, oh, you know, sometimes a fighter will let their arms go limp or relax. Mind you, I don't understand that. That's not something I've ever done. I a little blame goes to the fighter because like what are you doing? And they were trying to say, "Oh, he's trying to make space on his neck because up here the show like," No, it's not, dude. It's It's not that at all. Manny's explanation was he knew the time was about to finish and he was just relaxing, I guess. I don't know. It's a weird It's weird. I think he takes some blame for that. But hey, it is a fight, you know. What are you going to do? But uh yeah, it's referees protect the fighters, but respect them as well. They understand going in there that it's a dangerous game to play. Most of the real ones are ready to die there. So, you jumping in because you think they're going unconscious or they just fell unconscious and trying to stop a fight real quick, you're not doing them a a service in my opinion. Check them. Takes a few seconds. It's not going to cause any lifealtering effects if they're out for 3 seconds versus out for 1 second. And yeah, that's that's all there really is to it. Be a little bit more on guard and more cautious when you're going to step in to stop a fight. Now, on a totally different topic here, but one that hits closer to home, Sean Strickland apparently is going to get sued by Derek Moneyberg. This freaking guy keeps hogging up all the grappling headlines and MMA headlines. It's very annoying, man. I didn't want to remark it to give it more air time, but then Jake Shield stepped in to defend Derek and kind of push back and Shawn and now it's well, I haven't seen them both in the gym together yet, but it's going to get interesting. Both of those guys have been known to scrap in the gym. I'm not sure if that's really going to happen, but there were some fighting words, so to speak. You had Derek post something along the lines of saying that he has warned Shawn not to speak out and say the things he's been saying, that he's defaming him, slandering him, and Shaun's ignored all the warnings. So, he's going to be forced to uh pursue legal action, which by the way, when someone's accusing you of being a scam artist, sleepless bag, who can't fight, and just makes money by illicit means. and then you go off and sue them for that. It seems like you're feeding you're like proving their argument because Sean didn't say anything that wasn't true. From what I've read, the people who give testimonials to Moneyberg are required to. It's not a choice. And I don't think the Sean even went that far because all the people are getting paid like the obviously Jake's getting paid, hoist Gracie getting paid, Leoto are getting paid. So giving a testimonial in those circumstances, it's worth something. I suppose, but not a lot if you've never backed it up. But people have also revealed the ones that join his mastermind groups and whatnot. Again, I I don't know, but this is alleged that when they joined the one of his groups for consulting that they're required to give positive testimonials. That's if true. Again, I'm not trying to get sued by Moneyburg. All right? So, I I say allegations, right? And mind you, Strickland, I don't think said this. He only said the part which is certifiably true, which is all the jiu-jitsu coaches were paid. So the testimonial, it's a little shaky. I'm saying something different, which is an allegation that people have put out there. Not me personally, but one that's been reported, which is that when you join one of his consulting groups as a paying customer, you're required to give testimonials, and if you don't, you might get kicked out. That's been alleged. I am likely to believe that. So yeah, not a great look for him than to go to try to sue somebody afterwards for just saying the truth because Sean didn't even say what I am saying. Sean just said the jiu-jitsu coaches are paying uh are being paid. So, the testimonials are bought essentially. Jake stepped in. Oh, because Derek made that said that he's going to pretty much sue him. That was the insinuation. Sean responded and said, "Well, how do you think it will look when we go to deposition and I bring in Jake Shields and the rest of these guys and say, you know, Jake's been paid like half a million dollars to be your jiu-jitsu coach and you're saying I'm defaming you by saying you're not a real black belt." Meanwhile, we don't have any any of the footage that we've seen of you rolling looks very sus. And now you have guys like Musi, which I talked about the other day, saying that he doesn't train, he just does the techniques. So they both kind of um Oh, so that was Sean's response. Again, I'm shivering a little bit more. Apologies for that. But Sean then kind of put Jake in the spotlight. Jake came back and then started going a bit hard on Sean saying, "How come you didn't train with Derek when he was there in Connecticut when you were at Pereira's camp? You could have ended this all there. uh instead you try to, you know, put him on blast and uh also says something about Sean being having no friends because the way he is. It took a dig out of him on that. So, I'm guessing Sean's probably not going to like that. and uh when they come together, which they're bound to happen because Sean and Jake are both at Extreme Couture. Probably not going to be too friendly. [Laughter] But I guess we'll see what what happens. It'll be an interesting meetup. But yeah, Jake's, you know, been a good training partner for me and uh to me personally, he's been a good friend as far as like setting me up in the with people in MMA and grappling. He's always been helpful. I haven't been shy to critique him on this though. And I told him think it was a bad move to promote him that fast. And uh I did give some benefit of the doubt and I said, you know, Jake swears that he's legit that he's train, you know, the guy's good. I'm like, okay. But still weird to get the black belt that fast. Maybe we would have given to him like in 10 years, no one would have said anything. going okay it's just you know 50-year-old guy got his black belt in 10 years you know he's been getting pirate license from the best of the world makes sense but to get it in 3 and 1/2 years without any acumen looks bad especially with the amount of money being thrown at you also kind of weird because of Jake Jake's politics, you know, he's famously uh known to be or alleged to be anti-semite or whatever. And this guy is prominently Jewish. So, I I'm not sure how that helps him. It It's just weird. And it goes kind of to Sean's point where this guy Derek's taking advantage of people. Well, not taking advantage of people, but he's making an offer that's hard to refuse to somebody in ME which doesn't have a lot of money and he's just throwing splashing around. And if you're in the need for the money or even if you're not in the need for it, but you just you just see there's a lot of money. Like I'm pretty sure Jake and guys like Leo and Hoist are not like living paycheck to paycheck. But if someone's throwing you, you know, a couple hundred,000 for jiu-jitsu, it's not the worst way to make money, but I wouldn't want you to compromise your your integrity in doing so. You know, I think I've said it before, but my brother and I, we just had another black belt this past week. Guy that's been training for at least 12 years, I think. Shout out to Aussie. Congrats, buddy. Uh, but we've had maybe 14 to 15 black belts in the near 30 years I've been involved in the sport. Fastest black belts was George Maspid Doll and he was about five years. This was a guy that was already fighting MMA as a professional, beating MMA, black belt, jiu-jitsu black belts in MMA also in grappling. So like he did the battlefield test. Was he a jiu-jitsu black belt world champion? No. But guy was a legit black belt and that was our fastest guy. He proved it right. You can't give out a black belt in 3 years to somebody who hasn't proven it. There's no What's the rush? this guy trying to sue somebody for defamation. It's like it's not even in your line of business, dude. Unless you're going to become a jiu-jitsu coach and open up a gym. Like, I don't I think he's just doing it for more for more clout it just just sucks that that's the easiest way to get attention these days. and uh happens to involve two people I know that I I train with. So, it's uh it's funny how that works. Uh hopefully uh they just laugh it off. But I guess I'll find out this next week. I'll be running one of the practices for the fight team and Oh, I don't think Jake's going to be there. So, no fireworks. No, there should be no fireworks in my session hopefully. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys. I'll catch you next week.