BTG 192 - Freak Shows

Hello and welcome to Breaking the Guard. As you can see, I'm back in my studio room after weeks now, I guess. It took a lot longer than I anticipated. But, we have everything back in order here. Uh a lot more comfortable for me. I like having these guys >> [laughter] >> on my side. So, uh that was nice. On to today's topic, freak shows. Seems like we're getting a lot more of these now in MMA and in sports in general. Here in Vegas, we had two freak shows over the weekend. The first one was uh MMA card, I guess, hosted by a streamer Aiden Ross that had all sorts of weird MMA mismatches. They have dwarfs fighting. They had two streamers fighting each other. Just a really weird match-ups. Uh and uh Sean Strickland was one of the commentators with uh Arman Tsarukyan. And Strickland afterwards said he was ashamed to be part of this. He wished he never did it. Uh on brand for him. It was weird to me cuz when I saw it, they had a fight between Bob Menery and some other guy. And I remember Bob Menery was like a fake sports commentator. He had like a really big following on Instagram at one point where he would pretend he's a golf announcer and just say like really wild out of pocket things. And it was funny cuz he had a good voice for it. And I remember he was hanging out with Dana White. He was starting to get a lot of fame. He had like a supermodel girlfriend or something. And then just complete fall off and then I saw him on this and he's like he looks in pretty rough shape here. So, it's unfortunate uh that I saw someone like that that had potential like really fall off because you these people are not fighting because they're doing well in life, you know, and that type of thing to me is it's sad to see. Where you're basically doing things that are going to hurt you. It just and then exploiting yourself in a way. I mean, they're choosing to do it, but they might feel like this is the only good shot they have. That's a bad place to be in my in my opinion. Uh yeah, so I saw that. That was pretty sad and I imagine a lot of these fights were similar. I didn't watch the event. I just saw some clips. I wasn't too interested in watching it. And similarly, we had a enhanced games where it's supposed to be like an Olympic style event, but everyone was free to use as many performance enhancers as possible. And there was one swimmer in particular that he was a silver a two-time silver medalist, I think, in the Olympic Games in uh in breaststroke, I think. Looked like a typical swimmer build, very lean, tall. And now he is so wide. His lats are like sticking out here. And apparently, he was so big that he wasn't able to use the best swimsuits. The the ones that are very aerodynamic or what or hydrodynamic. Just because he was too physically large. Which is funny in a way. But it turns out one of the swimmers didn't do anything. He was a gold medalist. He didn't do any performance enhancers and still won. Which raised a few comments. One people are like, "Well, uh you see all this cheating didn't help." Or two, they're still cheating. It's just that he's not cheating as much. Um I would hope that that isn't true, but realistic thing is yeah, most of these high-level athletes are doing stuff now and they're just not getting caught doing it. It's just unfortunately how it works. But in any case, it's a lot of this freak show stuff to get people's attention and I think it goes towards what is now a very short attention span and what seems to be a lot more appeal to grabbing uneducated people who don't really know about this, but they'll watch it because there's a freak element to it. You know, it would be like, "Oh, we're going to do some type of weird event like rock climbing, but it's only people who are paraplegic, you know, who so they can only use their arms." It's like there's going to be a weird market for that. People will watch it cuz they want to see the train wreck. And this is kind of what these events are rolling up to and in general I think the Jake and Logan Paul really Jake in particular really spearheaded the streamers like invading these sports places. I know Strickland had comments about this as well and I'm not too far off from him in that opinion. They're it's pretty disastrous I think from a cultural standpoint that these streamers have so much influence. It's one thing when you're somebody who has accomplished great things and you've built things or you've done things yourself and you now want to help people be able to do the same things that you have done or ideally do better than what you have done and you have laid out a road plan, a road map if you will, of how to do that. It's another thing when your claim to fame is that you are famous but for being famous. You didn't really do anything but you did manage to get a lot of I mean, you did something in the sense that you got a lot of eyeballs on you. But you didn't do in my opinion anything that was worth being noticed for. Like a lot of these guys, they doing this, you know, crazy things to get attention. I mean, they go look at the Kardashians. Like Kim Kardashian basically became famous because she made a sex tape. And that's her claim to fame. And she's rolled that into other things because they have a makeup stuff and whatever other things they do. But she became famous for making a sex tape, right? That's not something to aspire to in my opinion, right? It's not a great thing. Like I wouldn't want my children or uh to to use that as a role model. That seems like a horrible way to do it. Now, they spun that into other businesses that if that would have been the starting point, that would have been a lot better, right? At least in my opinion. I feel like a lot of the influencer game and streamers and stuff, it's the same type of thing. It's them doing crazy things and they're getting a lot of the attention that way. It's just very I feel morally bankrupt to go in on that. And I mean, myself, I stopped watching TV maybe a couple years ago. It's funny cuz it kind of coincided with when I started doing the carnivore diet. I just stopped watching sitcoms and everything else. The only things I watch now are pretty much fights. I don't think I've watched a movie in a um on the airplane I watched a movie, but I think that's about it. And one of the reasons is one, a lot of the content sucks now, like most of the movies are just regurgitated. And same thing for the TV shows. A lot of it is just not good. And two, I just don't want to support what those things stand for in my opinion. So, like I've never been a fan of reality TV, even when The Ultimate Fighter was on. Yeah, of course I watched them. I was more interested in the fights though than that the actual in-house drama. Um I was also just curious because we were trying to get fighters in there. At one point I think my brother would Yeah, he My brother actually did try out for one of the fights also, for one of the seasons. Um So, it was also doing intelligence work, we're trying to understand what we're getting into, how to prepare, what things to be aware of. But the actual drama is meaningless to me. I want to see things that have value. And when we come back into the fight world and we start putting together freak shows, Pride did it best where it made freak shows, but they were ones that people wanted answers to. Can a small guy really beat a giant? The answer is yes. All right. And those were mainly the freak shows where they would get like a guy who was much like like Sakuraba with Kimo Leopoldo. That's a I mean I think that was in the tournament, but still that was a freak show match up. Leopoldo is a lot bigger. Or when they had a fight or with Giant Silva. That's another huge mismatch of size. So these are interesting to see, but like this shouldn't be every show we're doing that. Like I I to me it was an itch that needed to be scratched. Like all right, we did that. I don't need to see it every weekend. It has no interest to me every weekend. I just wanted to know if it was possible. And then yes, it was. Great. We can move on now. Uh but a lot of these things like there's more and more freak shows type stuff. Like now there's grappling events that are doing two on one, three on one, or team versus team. I mean the team versus team I guess it can make some sense. It's different, but it's still flirting with the the freak show element, right? We're trying to get something weird and catchy to make you watch it. But there's a lot more merit to that, right? At least it's equal. Right? Versus like and I've seen them Russia MMA where they'll put like two girls versus a guy, right? Or you know, like one big guy versus three little guys, you know. That kind of stuff I feel like, man, we don't need to watch that. Like we're We're ultimately we're watching watch martial arts. We want to see the skill. Right? And we're not getting that from freak shows. We're usually getting a disparity of skill. Like they've done it in soccer, too, but they don't do it every weekend, right? In soccer, they've done it once where they had like two pro players playing against a whole like elementary school team, right? Or their middle school team, or whatever it was. And they the pros were still able to beat them somehow, which seems crazy to me. But Like I said, those type of freak shows, we just need to see it once or twice and we understand, and then it's is interesting. But if it's every weekend, it loses any novelty. It's to me the same thing with like the slap fighting thing. That's a freak show, right? We just need to see it once or twice and okay, that's kind of fascinating, but I don't need to see these guys get TBIs every weekend. But there's a market for it, I guess. And I mean, there's a lot more shock value in these freak show fights, but I don't feel that's all because it's effective doesn't mean that's what you should be doing. Particularly for the athletes, they're the ones that are going to suffer the most from this because these type of matchups are generally not good for you. When we're talking about the slap fighting, for example, you're just taking brain injuries nonstop. Uh not good. When we have the size mismatches, where we have the 400-lb guy fighting the 150-lb guy, like the 150-lb guy is going to take damage, right? Or he could take damage that is very severe. You know, even with that enhanced games thing, like those people abusing drugs isn't a cause of long-term damage. The extent, we're not quite sure, but there's going to be damage. And it's funny to me because having been involved in the sport for decades now. One of the frustrating things to deal with is the athletic commissions, which their job is supposed to be to protect the athletes, but they still allow this type of nonsense to happen. So, tell me what you're really there for then. Because if you were supposed to protect these people, you're not doing a great job. I've already, you know, talked about weight cutting to no end, so I won't go into it, but that's one. That's a big one. We have the PEDs. They're They're doing the best they can, I suppose, but obviously not enough. But then we have these type of mismatches, you know, and it's just allowed to go by. It's fine, but don't be hypocritical and say that, "Oh, we're here to protect the fighters." I In my opinion, you're there to take some money. Right? You want a piece of the pie. All right. And uh it is what it is. But if you're going to be protecting the fighters, you should be doing everything to protect the fighters. And I I agree it is a needed thing because fighters will do things that are harmful to themselves and others because they really want that win. Uh there the UFC BJJ that just transpired uh this past week. One thing that did happen was that Mikey Musumeci had a severe staph infection, allegedly. That's what he said, that he could barely walk. And he still competed that way. Which one, not responsible in the sense that he could pass that infection onto his opponent. And if it was that bad, that's pretty messed up. You're doing biological warfare at this point, which obviously is not going to affect him during the match, but he might walk out of that match and have problems. A similar situation I think happened with Craig Jones and one of his opponents where he had pink eye and the opponent ended up getting pink eye as a result of grappling with him and had some consequences uh that were lasting. Unethical behavior. Like I said, the fighters I expect it. They're going to do anything they can to win. And I can tell you right now I've wrestled when I had ringworm and I did what I could to hide it to compete. Not proud of it, but it's the fact, right? Um and you talk to any athlete that's serious, they're not going to let things like that hold them back. They might not want people to get hurt or sick or whatnot from their interventions that they've done, but they're not going to let that window pass by. When you're very young, you're going to justify and even when you're not young, when you're just really hungry, you're going to justify breaking or bending those rules to allow you to compete. So an athletic commission will help protect in theory. But if they allow that to pass, obviously they're not protecting. Somebody with full-blown staff shouldn't be competing. It's a hazard to themselves, one, and then there's a major hazard to everybody else. Now fortunately he was a main event, so I guess he didn't get the mats all covered in in staff, but if he wasn't if he was like in the first opening round, you imagine everyone else has to roll in that afterwards. not great. I mean that's not the most spreadable from the mat to you. It's person to person's usually where it goes, but still uh not great. So uh I guess this is just a a dig at the athletic commissions as well where if you're going to say your charter is to protect the fighters, there's a lot more you could be doing to protect the fighters. Uh, I think weight cutting's really still at the top of the list, but the freak show stuff, that's another one that you need to take a closer look at. And of course the PEDs is always a factor. Cuz like I said, you can't expect the fighters to restrain themselves. It's they're going to do everything they can to win. So, if you're going to be the body that monitors this, you have to be very strict in how you guide it. And I I feel like they're getting a lot more MMA fighters involved, which is good. These are people that actually have skills and they know what the game is like. At the same time, they should know the type of stuff that fighters are going to try to get away with, you know, and nip that at the bud. And it's not just to get ah, got you, you know, like to to screw people over. No, you're trying to help people in the long term. Now, they might feel like they're getting screwed over, but long term, you're going to be saving them from themselves cuz that's the point of this. At least my understanding of the athletic athletic commission's responsibility is to protect the fighters from themselves. And obviously from each other to an extent. Uh, so, I would say that as well. You know, that kind of wraps into this freak show thing because you know, these freak shows introduce a lot more danger elements. Especially when you're thinking about guys who are fighting who are completely untrained. All right, like most of these streamers, like the one I saw with Mandarin and the other guy, they they had no idea what they were doing, you know, and on one hand, like, well, that means they probably can't hurt us each other as bad because they can't throw a proper punch or kick, but then on other hand, they also don't know how to take a proper punch or kick or how to take a fall. You know, so they might get thrown and post and break an arm or something like that. Or, you know, the reality is some people they've never had their chin checked and and people die in the street just by getting knocked out and then landing on their head and it's all she wrote. So, a lot of the things that we're playing around with just for entertainment. Now, on one hand, as an individual, yeah, I should be able to do what I want. I'm a grown adult and I can take responsibility for myself. But, we're going back now about this athletic commission supposed to be protecting people from themselves. That's the point of this. If we're saying this is what you're supposed to do, how do you allow a guy who's 30-something that has no training fight somebody? I don't know. It doesn't seem responsible. Um again, I'm not saying that everybody I mean, maybe I am saying that, you know, like like if you're going to have the athletic commission, do your freaking job then. I can't imagine I can do just any sport I want. I guess I could if I'm famous enough and then I guess that's what's going This is coming down to, right? Like all these people are fighting because they're streamers and they're famous. So, people are going to pay to see them and as a result uh these athletic commissions are more likely to get them to fight because there's a lot of money on the line. And I just think that's sad because I know back in the day it was hard to get a fight for somebody if you're one and oh and you're supposed to fight somebody that's 15 and oh. Like, no, these guys are well mismatched and I know in Florida they wouldn't allow certain fights it's of the experience mismatch. And you would have to be able to back it up like, "Oh, you know, well, he has an amateur record or, you know, he has a lot of, you know, grappling experience. It's just not MMA experience, but it's going to translate well." Like, you would have to pitch it to them. Cuz the whole thing is they're they're trying to protect these guys cuz, man, like, you're setting this guy up to get murdered. But, when we're doing it with freak shows that we just ignore that. That's my take, anyways. I'll let you guys go and I wish you a wonderful day. I'll catch you next week.