BTG 91 - Drop outs and Cheap shots

Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. Let's get to the news. There's a lot of things going on. One of them is that you guys probably heard already Conor McGregor is out of the fight with Michael Chandler. And now they're discussing whether the fight's going to be postponed, put on a future card, or maybe scrapped altogether. They're not disclosing the source, but apparently it was some type of injury that Connor suffered in training, and as a result, he's no longer able to be medically cleared. This is a disaster situation. one, it destroys that UFC International Fight Week card, which is one of the biggest cards of the year, and with Connor headlighting, it was probably going to be the biggest one in a long time. So, he totally destroyed that. And then two, I feel bad for Michael Chandler, who, as we talked about before, two years on the sidelines just waiting for the the red penny night and he's going home with blue balls, you know. uh pretty terrible uh for everybody involved and it sucks you know um but one has to wonder like you know there's not a lot of incentive from where I can see for McGregor to keep coming back right like he has allegedly you know over $100 million you know this UFC what's going to bring him 10 15 million obviously that's a big payday but is that enough for someone like him because he's doing all sorts of big business deals from what I can tell. So, I mean, to be in a fight camp, you have to be very motivated and someone like Chandler is extremely motivated because this is literally everything he's been building up for in his life. Whereas for McGregor on appearances, this just seems like another payday of many paydays that he has and many different ways of making that. So, and he also doesn't need the UFC for that payday to happen, whereas the UFC needs him for the big fight. I feel like at this point, Dana White should, you know, from a business standpoint has to really watch out for putting all his eggs in that McGregor basket. Fortunately for the fans, we had another matchup come together from two savages. Uh you have Poten Alex Pereira stepping up to defend his belt against Ji Pasca or Paskki in a rematch. Both these guys are taking the fight on short notice. Neither of them was booked to fight and they immediately said yes to it. So the funny thing was they did show a video of Potan getting the phone call and it's the only time you see him smiling ear to ear laughing. you know, he say, "Okay, Chama, no chama," you know, his whole little thing. Uh, so all the comments and where my thought process was was how much money did they just throw on them to save this fight card, you know, and well-earned, you know, and this is a fight that I I love and hate at the same time because I think both of those guys, Potan and Jiri, are awesome. They're like real characters, you know, they're not big into the, you know, the talking and all that, but they are very unique characters and you see their personas on camera. They do really cool stuff. Like Potan is a really good archer, you know, like if you see him, like he does all sorts of really cool things. And then you got, you know, the samurai, you know, the Polish samurai doing really cool stuff, too. So, uh, it sucks that one of them has to lose, but I think that's a great save, you know, but, uh, I don't know and I don't think that's going to draw as much people as, uh, McGregor would have, obviously. And then there was another fight that fell through on the Abu Dhabi card which you had Rob Whitaker and he was supposed to fight Kamza and then Kamza had to pull out once again due to illness. He seems to be having a recurring illness that people are saying could have been from when he had a really bad co infection and hasn't really settled which is unfortunate. Uh, a lot of people are dogging at him, but he doesn't seem like the type of guy to shy away from a tough fight. Like, you know, he he's fought really tough guys. I mean, he fought Gilbert Burns, you know, he fought Camaro Usman. Like, these are no jokes. And he won against both of them. Um, so obviously, and he's very young in his career. He just exploded out of nowhere. and but now that he's getting these illnesses recurring, that's very unfortunate. So, I hope that those issues resolve for him cuz he definitely has a very promising future if he can get past that. And uh they just put in some guy I've never heard of. And Whitaker also says he's never even heard of this guy before, but he's, you know, he's ready to take the fight on short notice also. Um, so yeah, been a rough week for Dana White. a lot of scrambling around, but there's also other weird things going on. The on the jiu-jitsu front with the Craig Jones Invitational versus ACC, there's some weird twists that have come around. One, now the card has 11 people in the lightweight division, 11 people in the heavyweight division. So, they're only 10 athletes away, or I guess 11 because Fion doesn't have a an opponent match for her super fight. So, 11 athletes away from locking up the brackets. Uh, they just put Andy Varela in there, which is another exciting addition to the card. Uh, in the heavyweight side, they put in Adam Bradley, who we talked about, who I thought should have won the ADC West Coast trials. So, he got his redemption, so to speak, getting in there. But, um, the interesting thing was there was a ADC yesterday, I guess Saturday, and one of the B team guys ended up getting into a brawl. I saw the video of it, which looked very strange to me, which is uh the match looked like it ended and the guy had back mount. The top guy then stands on his opponent who was prone flat on his belly like he's surfing him. Very disrespectful, of course. And as he gets off him, there's opponent gets up and shoves his opponent that just stood on him out of bounds. The match is over already, right at that point, some guy runs in and sucker punches him and then a bunch of it starts a whole brawl. So, not only did this guy get stood on, he then got sucker punched. Now, mind you, he did put hands on somebody, but it wasn't totally unwarranted either. And in in my mind, the guy throwing the sucker punch, total coward. There's no redemption story there, right? You're like, it wasn't like this wasn't instigated. If you stand on a man's back like you're riding him like a surfboard, you know, there's going to be some issues, right? That's like getting slapped in the face. It's disrespect. So, the fact that this guy stood at him and then walked away like that was nothing was going to happen, very foolish, right? If I smacked someone in the face, I should expect some retaliation. At the very least, some ill will was going to be shown against me. So, the fact that he just walked away like nothing happened. Again, I don't know where your brain's at there, right? Uh, should the other guy have pushed him? One side of me says no. Other side says yes. Right. I'm kind of a mixed bag here. Uh, you know, even though he laid hands on him first, this other guy laid feet on him, right? So he was touched, right, in a way that was not consensual. So I could see a defense for it. So I would allow that to slide in my book. Like, yeah, you try to do you disrespected me. I'm going to challenge you now. Which is what the push is about. The guy coming in with a sucker punch. Again, total coward dirt back move in my part. And now you're asking, why am I talking about this? Well, it turns out the guy that did the standing and the guy that did the sucker punch were part of B team fighting at the ABCC open in Austin. And apparently the guy that got sucker punched is now pressing charges and head organizer Mo Jazzim now said he's going to provide full legal counsel for that guy and give him the best lawyers that money can buy. So that's kind of weird, right? Especially since in a previous ADC, someone pulled a knife. I think it was Mirilla Santana after a bad call or whatnot or I guess what he perceived as a bad call and nobody really got in trouble from what I recall got maybe banned for life, but there was no cops or anything. Whereas in this case, people were carried out in handcuffs. I believe the guy who did the sucker punch and uh now they're going to be pressing legal charges. So, with the drama going on with the CGI and ADC stuff, now we're seeing it's getting a little more personal or it appears to be getting more personal with Mo backing up. Now, I could see the defense. Hey, like you're starting crap in my event. Of course, I don't want to allow this to slide, so I'm going to help whoever got offended here. I could see that. And honestly, like if there was no drama here, like we didn't have this whole CGI versus ADCC thing and I heard this incident happen, everybody would be applauding Mo Jackson. They'd be like, "Hey, good good on him for helping this guy have legal representation." Uh especially after he got cheap shoted, you know, and attacked by these people. Um so from that perspective, I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing. I think this is a bad look for B team. That's for sure. Right. Uh the whole standing of the guy thing, if they would have ended right there and the guy would have pushed him and then they would have just had a little scuffle, nothing would have been said about it. It would have been a non-event. The guy coming in with a sucker punch, that's what took it over the top. And I don't know, it wasn't clear the extent of the damages that this guy suffered. He did get dropped. I'm not sure it's because he got surprised or he actually got knocked unconscious. Uh so who knows the extent of you know what damage he suffered but you people are not look making us look good here right you know we're supposed to be martial artists we're supposed to be under control and u show that we're above this type of nonsense and then you have these jerk offser you know cheap trotting people something I really really really don't support to me fighting is if we're going to fight it's going to be mono mono face to face, not getting cheap shoted. So, that really rubs me the wrong way. So, whoever did that, shame on you, you know. Um, at least that's my take on it. Another thing I saw that's somewhat related to this is Zanji Hiro uh claims he's down $2 million on expenses for competition preparations throughout his very, very long career. That's pretty steep. I've never really thought about costs and I'm trying to understand what he's talking about here because if I'm being honest, if we're saying because the opportunity costs are easy to understand that, right? Yeah. Because if you spent I mean, he's been competing for so long. Uh I think he just stopped recently, maybe like a year or so ago. So talking about like a 30-year competition career, of course, opportunity cost, you could have done anything. You could have started Amazon, right? But training expenses for grappling at 2 million, it's doable, sure. Um I I just never really thought about it. I don't think I've spent 2 million out of pocket. Mind you, I'd probably done half the comp competition career that he did. I clocked mine at 15 years. Uh, for sure, you know, you're in the $100,000 range, but 2 million, that's pretty steep. But then again, you know, I've never spent a lot on travel or on supplements or on vitamin S or anything like that. So my competition's training, I trained at my home gym. We did fly in people, which I say, you know, a few thousand bucks here and there to have people to train with. I have invested and of course on occasion traveling to Thailand to get, you know, train Muay Thai or or whatnot, but those were few and far in between. They didn't really add up significant amounts to be honest. Um, so yeah, I think I bootstrapped pretty pretty cheaply compared to Sanji, right? So I thought that was interesting. Uh, but he is also not happy with CGI. Um, and I think he he also admit that he's going to be honored in the Hall of Fame this year for ADC. So it kind of throws egg on egg on his face because now like ACC has somewhat diminished in the eyes of some people because of the whole conflict. Again, uh I think as long as CGI is sustainable and they can keep on doing it, it's going to be a good thing for the sport. Um, although I did see something and I guess I'll talk about this too as a topic here just from a honor standpoint which Mo put and again I can't really verify it but I think I know who he's talking about where Mo was upset and he said tip for future ADCC uh hopefuls if you ask me to get on the card and then I accept you and then I promote you and then right afterwards you drop me and go into CGI and then rant against ADCC, you're not going to get invited into ADCC anymore. You're going to have to qualify and 100% fair. Also, dirt bag move on whoever that was. All right. If you go and ask for an invitation to a party, get the invitation. Then you use that invitation for like social clout to say, "Hey, look, I'm so important that I got invited to this big event to get into another event. And then once you get into that other event, you start talking crap about the event that invited you that gave you the leeway to get in there in the first place. really poor taste. In my eyes, if I'm understanding the situation correctly, this is kind of like a guy asking out a girl. Their girl says yes. Then he tells another girl, "Hey, look, I was going out with this girl to kind of build up his status and now that gets him to get a date with that girl, and then he dumps the other girl and talks crap about it to everybody." It's like, man, that's a dirt bag move. So, I feel there's got to be some honor in this thing, right? Like, if you're going to uh ask for an invitation and get it, you can't just dump the guy and then talk crap about him, unless something happened underhanded after the invitation, which I'm not aware of. I think a lot of people are being wowed by the the marketing storm that Craig has done. And his approach has been interesting, right? because he pretty much gets everybody to talk. Again, maybe I'm let me retract that because I don't know that for sure. But the appearance is that everybody that comes out to say they're going to compete in CGI seems to talk crap about other organizations and build up what Greg's doing, right? And again, not the greatest way of doing it in my opinion. I and I'm maybe that's not everybody maybe just just a few people that I saw that were doing that. Um but I have seen it repeatedly done. So there's seems to be a formula, right? And I don't know if this is what they're telling them to say or this is just something that they're saying out of their heart. Uh but again, like when you're trying to build up your business, the best way to try to attract people, in my opinion, for a long-term benefit, is not to crap on everybody else. Talk about the things that you're doing, right? The goodness that you bring, the value that you bring. You don't have to talk crap about your competitors. Like even when we're in the martial arts, like when I'm trying to attract new students to it, I don't say, "Oh yeah, that place across the street sucks. They're they're garbage. They're terrible." You know, they they charge too much. They are poor level instruction. You know, we do everything better than they do. Like that's a not a great way to build confidence in my opinion, right? We when someone asks, oh, you know, like, oh, you know, that's a great school, that's another thing, but here's what we do differently. Here's what I think that our unique value proposition, right? This is our strengths. You don't have to put down other people or other businesses to build up your own. All right. Uh again, that's my take on it. Craig's ob obviously doing something right because he's gotten some traction and like I said, I hope that event does well and you know it creates a new venue for people to compete and it's also puts pressure on all the organizations to up their pay. Like we talked about before, ADCC now says they're offering $2,500 in show money to all competitors. So that I feel that had that probably was pressure from uh from Craig that made that happen, right? It's still not as much as the 10 grand he's offering, but it is a token gesture, right? And it's starting to move things in the direction where now all the athletes going to be paid just to show up. Um so I think it's kind of undeniable the pressure that uh Craig has put and this is good pressure. Now, um, you know, Zanji made some good points that I've talked about as well. It is a weird way to put the event, um, to overlap, right? And again, as a fan, it kind of puts me in a bad spot because ideally I would have watched both of these events. Now, I have to watch one and a half events. And I'm going to most likely watch both nights of ADCCA. Let me just watch the first one if uh I can get tickets. I think they're saying they're putting tickets on Monday. That's also going to be an interesting time to see how this actually does because there's a lot of people that talk but who is going to show up is another thing. So very um weird way of putting this event together, right? Doesn't seem like it's the best business decision, but let's see if they could prove me wrong. But as far as the level of competition, because when you go online and I'm gonna look at my phone here just to um get the latest lists, a lot of people are like now talking crap. Oh, you know, there's no one in ACC now, right? But that's not what I saw. And let's look at the the list here and we'll do a comparison here because right now again like I said we have 11 competitors in each division on the under 80 Andrew Taget Nikki Ryan Joseph Chen Lucas Barbosa Henato Konut Mateas Denise Egan Flanigan Levy Jones Ley Tommy Langacher Jason Nol and I Varela again stacked card now Over 80, William Tacket, Luke Rockol, Nikki Rodriguez, Mason Per, Roberto Himenez, Joel Gabriel Rocha, Victor Hugo, Owen Livesy, Filipe Andrew, Maxime Menz, Adam Bradley. Again, another stat card, right? Um, let's compare that to ADCC and I'll try to make this a comparison that's a little more relevant. under 77 kilo division, right? Which would be very similar to the under 80 that they have to compare comparator comparator. K RO, Elijah Dorsy, Kent Wimoto, Luis Paulo Miieros, Alexandra Jesus, JT Torres, Mika Gaba, Dante Leon, PJ Barge, Jonath Gracie, Oliver Taza, Matezchinski, and David Hamos. That's 13. They got three more to fill. That's very sacked. And if I'm looking at both divisions, I feel that ACC's tournament is tougher. That's not to say I think there's some higher highs and lower lows in ACC if I'm being honest, but when you got guys like Dante Leon, Miko Gavalo, Kertolo, you got really and JT Torres really high. And I think those highs, again, I might be a little swayed here, are a little higher than the ones at Craig Jones at CGI. I mean, CGI, I feel, well, Mattez Denz was a gold medalist, so he's obviously again one the higher guys in that division. It's proven. You have a lot of guys that at ACC I felt like we're going to be this is going to be their year to make their mark. You know, guys like Andy Varela, Andrew Tacket, Nikki Ryan. Um these were guys that were going to meddle probably, right? But on the ACC side, Cade is a champion. you know, JT champion. David Hamos champion. Um, Mika Gavalo, I don't think he won, right? But I mean, he's on a roll. So, that under 80 division, I feel in ACC still a stronger division, right? Like I said, there's higher highs and there's lower lows uh in ACC. I feel what makes a Craig Jones one more interesting to me in one in one aspect very evenly matched. I feel like I feel like a lot of those guys are very close in level. So that might make it a more entertaining card as far as quality of matches, but I feel the talent is still in 80C. Now let's go in the over 80 division in 80C which would be 88 kilo. John Kar Bodini, Sant Centidi, Lilius, Jacob Couch, Isaac Mitchell, Taylor Perman, Charles Negra Monte, Pedro Marinho, Tyberlo, Gabriel Mida, Jacob Rodriguez, Elder Cruz, Andrew Proffurio, Ryan Aken, Chris Wjack, Magna Roachcha, and I guess to be fair, we would have to include all the other divisions because over 80 includes all of them. you have Kanye Darte, Luke Griff. I mean, there's talent still going to be in the ACC side, especially when you think uh you got Cyborg, Margalli, um Kanye Datre, you know, like uh Bodini, Vagnner, you know, these are really Jacob Couches on a roll, you know, and I they still have Gordon Ryan being the plus 99. If he is, I mean, good luck for everybody else, you know. Uh, again, I still feel that talent is stronger in ACC, but same aspect, there's higher highs and lower lows, whereas I feel the one thing that is going to I think, and again, if I'm predicting right, is that the Craig Jones competitors are much closer in level. So, they're all high level and they're all like very close together. So all the matches are going to be dog fights. I I feel I could be totally wrong but it seems that way at least to my perception. Whereas in ACC there's guys that are really really topnotch gold medalist and then we have guys that are just in that worldass level. And I'm not trying to diminish anybody but I'm just being honest, right? Like there's guys that it's going to take a couple tournaments for them to get the experience that the guys at the top already have. Not to say they can't break out, but it's just not as likely. Um, so that's my take on it, right? Um, like I said, I'm I'm hoping both events blow it out of the park and that would be an amazing uh statement for grappling as well. If we could have two world class events on the same weekend and they both crush it, our audience must be doing awesome, right? like we have more audience than we would have ever dreamed of which is great. All right. Um so I hope that's the case you know but I would say like my last point just on honor you know I understand that a lot of people are getting swayed by what people are saying and they're going after the the money and the opportunity and that's totally fine. I get it. Like I understand a guy who is just dipping their world into that world class level, wanting to go into the Craig Jones one, get the 10K guaranteed and plus you get the chance for the million. Um, I totally understand, but you shouldn't be using another organization as a stepping stone to get in there and then talking trash about them, right? Especially because before this event even existed, you were begging for opportunities to get in. You know, it just rubs me the wrong way, right? Like there was a way to handle it with class, which I've seen some people have done, right? Uh that they didn't use their little statement to totally crap on everything everybody else. But the the ones that did again, I feel it's not the best way to it's not professional, right? And again, I'm oldfashioned, so maybe that's just on me. You don't have to listen to me, right? You probably are not listening to me, and that's totally fine. But I just feel from being a grown man, you know, or woman and being an adult and a professional, you don't take these opportunities that are going to elevate you to make people lower than you, right? Like you don't have to diminish somebody else's work to elevate yourself. just put in the work, do the show your skill, show your heart, and that's going to elevate you on its own. You don't need to put other people down to raise yourself up. That's all I'm saying. Anyhow, that's my take. I hope you guys uh picked up something. You have any comments, go ahead, drop them, and I'll be more than happy to address them. Thank you, and I'll see you all next week.