BTG 92 - How low can we go

Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. Let's get on to the news. Got some funny pieces here that we'll start off with, which is a guy taps to an oil check in a BJ competition. If you don't know what an oil check is, uh, you're probably going to be really grossed out when you hear it, right? This comes from wrestling. And in wrestling, there's a move called a butt drag, where basically when you sprawl on somebody, you go to spin behind them, right? But when you spin behind, rather than grab the far hip, you grab the butt and it's a better leverage point. You don't get uh exposed to particular like fat man rolls or whatnot wrapping around the hip. But some people take the butt drag to the next level and rather than just grabbing like the butttocks, they go in between the butt and they use a finger to go inside the butthole. Hence the oil check, right? Uh for some reason this is acceptable in wrestling. And I've never liked it. I've never tried to use it at least that I can recall. Uh I've had people try to do it to me. So, it is a thing in wrestling and some people are particularly proud to do it and I don't know why you would be. Uh, personally, I think this goes along if we're just going to be completely coherent in in combat sports. You can't fish hook and this is an orifice hole. So, you know, oil checking is just fish hooking from the butt pretty much, right? It's terrible. Uh, I think it should not be allowed. Not excusable whatsoever. Right. Um, in self-defense, of course, all bets are off. But in the sport, let's not trying to put fingers in people's butts. Okay. Uh, it's already rough enough as it is. We don't need to add that in there. And, uh, apparently this guy, and it, of course, it happened in Russia. uh they had a clip on it and uh the guy and it didn't even make sense because normally you do this from a sprawl and you're using that you know to stop the shot. This guy was on top side control and for whatever reason he was oil checking the guy from topside control like that's purely like just to harass and the guy I I would have been furious if I was the guy on bottom too. Um, he handled it with some poise to be honest. He tapped and he didn't really make that much of a fuss from tapping to it. Uh, and the other guy said, "Oh, there's nowhere in the rule book that says you can't do this." There should be. If there isn't, I mean, I I would see it as fish hooking. If I can't put my finger in your mouth, why the hell would I think I could put my finger in your butt, right? Like, no. So, it's funny, but at the same time, it's just It's totally wrong. Shouldn't be happening. Uh, other thing we have, we get a reason now for Conor McGregor not fighting. And apparently it is a broken toe. A little weak sauce if you ask me. I've broken multiple toes. He has a picture here. It's his pinky toe. Now, you might think, "Oh, the pinky toe, that's the weakest." Like, that shouldn't even matter. And not necessarily. I've broken my pinky toe before. I've broken a middle toe before. The middle toe was absolutely nothing. Did not impair movement whatsoever. Pinky toe a little bit just because you do, you know, put weight at the edge of your foot sometimes and whenever you do that and you have a broken pinky toe, it definitely doesn't feel great. It is annoying is what I would say. I was still able to train without really I mean I'm sure I was a little impaired but not consciously like it's just like you have a little ouchie there and that's about it. You buddy tape it pretty much which is just coach's tape next to your I guess it would have been like your ring toe of your if you will and you let time do the rest and my coach at the time didn't even care. So like I was running naturally had me doing like sand runs where like you're on like sugar sand climbing up like these giant hills in a construction site running miles uh still wrestling. Uh, mind you, I was 18 at the time, but that didn't slow me down and I didn't see that as an excuse to not fight in the and I was fighting in a shoot fighting tournament for like 500 bucks. So, a broken pinky toe for like $10 million uh would have jumped on with zero hesitation. Uh I'm not Conor McGregor, so there's a few things. One, I don't know the extent of the injury. Like maybe it looks pretty standard from what I'm seeing. Uh, I think if you guys go like I I scooped some of the news from like Sure Dog and BJJ E, so you can check them out there. But, um, looks pretty standard for a broken toe. Uh, so on visual it seems like a pretty weak excuse. Like, are you 100%? No. But 99% probably that's not really going to stop me. you know, uh the idea and he keeps saying, "Oh, I'm only going to fight if I'm 100%." He can do that. He because like I said, he doesn't need to fight, right? Uh but man, to show up to a fight 100% is difficult. I never had that luxury in my life. Uh I was always having some type of injury. And I'm not saying that like, oh, that's a good thing. It isn't. But the reality is you're training every day, you know, three to four hours hard and you're cutting weight and you're somewhat dehydrated and you're training with other animals that are want to try to break you limb to limb. It's a painful thing. So, it's hard to recover from everything. you do your best and um but I I feel like if you're somewhere 90% above then you're in a good ballpark. Like you you might be you might not be 100% but as far as like combat effectiveness you're close to it, right? Um even though you might be 90%, you might still be 99% combat effective, right? Um that's the way I see it. And I think for most fighters, a broken toe for headliner of UFC International Fight Week would have not been a detriment whatsoever. I'm pretty sure Michael Chandler could have lost all of his toes and would have still been at that fight. But again, different situations. Like one of them really, really, really wants this fight. And I think for McGregor, this is just like a another payday. So he's not in a rush to get it. And he has the luxury of not needing the money. So, he's only going to come when he's fully comfortable, right? And I think that's making it more likely that we're probably not going to see him return. Uh, it's just going to be a lot of teases. Uh, but I hope to be proven wrong. We had another big scoop on BJJ. Uh well, in the BJ world with the Craig Jones Invitational, the RTU twins have now joined into the Craig Jones Invitational in the under 80 kilo division. And they're both in the same division. And unlike what ADCC does, which is they try to eliminate them in the quarterfinals, so when in the round of eight, uh they have said now that they're going to only meet if they meet in the finals. So for them, this is great. Instead of a one in6 chance of making a million, now it's a one in eight. And you know, these guys, they're twin brothers, they do everything together. So they've just doubled their odds of making a million pretty much. So that's a sweet deal for them. And uh you remember how I was saying about the talent pool where I felt like ADCC had the higher highs and the lower lows, but uh CGI all the guys were very close and level, very competitive, high level dudes. This kind of changes that now. Cad's the reigning champion in ABC. So he makes a great case for now CGI has the best fighter and if I remember correctly he won the 77 kilo division. So 80 kilos is a perfect uh weight class for him and I think that's why that was one of the factors for them to choose CGI because they both are around that same weight. So, uh, for them to do 88 kilos, they are at a disadvantage because basically they don't have to cut. They're going to kind of walk in that way. Uh, one of them would be at least. And then, uh, everyone else is cutting, you know, significantly. So, there would be a size advantage for him. Whereas now, since they could both do the same division here and only meet in the finals, uh it's a much better deal for them, you know, so that they I think that division is almost set now. Uh I think they just need one more guy. That's a stacked bracket now. That is a really really really good bracket. And uh yeah, that puts the pressure in ADC uh for sure. So, good job on CGI getting all these highlevel guys. And they just now offered a $50,000 bonus for the submission of the tournament. This is in contrast to I think ADC, which I believe offered like $5,000 or even maybe $3,000 for submission, the best submission of the tournament. So, they're really one uping on every level possible. And I think that's great. We then have um so yeah, this is another one that I think just we're getting a little silly with the sports. You have power slap, which we've already seen, and I've comment on it before. If you haven't heard my comment, very short. I think it's a terrible sport. It's essentially giving each other concussions with minimal skill level and maximal risk, right? Because we're pretty much assured one of us is going to get a concussion and I can't do anything to avoid it. All I can do is try to brace slightly for it. Uh, and yeah, you have to build some strength and there is some technique, I'm sure, involved with getting a good slap in, but for the the amount of risk that you're taking and the amount of compensation that's being offered is definitely not worth it, right? They're not getting paid a million dollars to do it. They're getting paid very little from my understanding. And now we have low kick championships. So, in the same vein, people are just going to sit there and eat low kicks and whoever drops first or quits loses. I mean, how low are we going to set the bar for taking just physical abuse? Like, what's next? Who can take the most stabs in the in the stomach? You know, I mean, it's outrageous, you know? This is just I think if you're an athlete, you're doing that, you must be in some desperate uh straits because you're relying on toughness and hopefully your ability to produce significant power where you're not going to take a lot of abuse. But the reality is you probably are not great, you know, and I think it's unfortunate that people are like falling for this. And apparently I've I've heard Dana White talk about the success of um what we call it of the slap fighting saying on social media is a huge hit and they make all this money from and social media engagement from doing it. And yeah, I I not surprised if I was to put uh a show about car accidents, just a graphic car accidents, and you know, make uh Instagram wheels of it. I'm sure it's going to crush, right? We see someone get decapitated or, you know, we see a car split in half or explode. That's always going to get people's attention. But does that mean that's a great product? Uh I I guess what we're defining as you know or or service rather like what what's the metric right is it just about making money then yeah that's going to make money um I guess just by you know the amount of people that engage and then now they get retargeted and now you can serve ads on that and yada yada yada but as far as the value to the community of people like what value are you offering by showing people just getting the brain slapped out of their head or their legs getting pulverized. Like what is that teaching us about anything? I mean like that you're going to willing to sacrifice your livelihood and your physical body purely for financial gain and with minimal display of skill. I mean it's just it's like only fans for tough guys pretty much. That's the level that we're getting at, you know, like and funny because I mentioned that apparently um Paige Vans has now she's now doing a slap fighting thing also, which is like great. Like that's talk about a fall from grace. You had her at one point a UFC contender, then she dropped out. Uh, she got into the Only Fans game, then she went into boxing and she got beat or I think she drew because she got knocked down by a former porn star in a boxing match and now she's going into the slap fighting. So, I mean, it's for me just doesn't seem like a great life, right? It seems like you're just doing whatever you possibly can to try to monetize anything possible, right? Uh yeah, I I think that's sad. That's again, that's my take, you know. I'm sure from most people's standpoint, she's very successful. She's famous. You know, I'm sure she makes money, and that's all great, but at the end of the day, you have to live with yourself. I I'm not sure that type of desire to get so much attention at any cost uh creates a happy state of mind. I would personally be miserable if that was me. I hope that's not the case for her, but I find that hard to believe because you wouldn't do it for free, right? Like I was doing martial arts when it was free. When I was paying for it, I would do it. I loved it. Which is why I enjoy my life now because I'm doing what I love. I don't need to be making a fortune doing it. It's a bonus. And obviously I'm very glad that I I can make money now doing this and I am because it makes it easier to do and support my my family and all that, but even if it wasn't, I would still be doing it at some capacity. No. Um anyhow, um other news here, we had uh a UFC in uh Saudi Arabia, the first one that they've ever done. And uh good card, right? We had I'm going to spoil it here. So if you don't want to see it, you know, you don't want to hear it from me, you might want to tune out right now. Come back later. Otherwise, main event, Robert Whitaker. Uh interestingly enough, he wasn't a huge favorite against a last minute. He had two people get replaced. He was supposed to fight Chime. Chime off we talked about before, got sick, couldn't fight. Had another replacement. That person couldn't fight. They got somebody else. uh Aliskarov. I hadn't heard of him. Even Robert Whitaker said he didn't know who he was. And uh the bookies for whatever reason thought he was a good bet. And uh Whitaker made them eat their words, just absolutely destroyed him and uh floored him in the first round. Looked in great form. He he didn't look out of step or anything. He had the same similar blitzing stance and karate style. uh looked fantastic. Happy to see it. He's a good guy, I think. So, uh definitely puts him back in contention and uh hopefully I mean the guy stepping up with Liskarov, you know, you know that's tough doing and I know that UFC usually rewards guys like that when they take these big chances and that fighter was undefeated. So, it kind of sucks for him that I mean he accepted the responsibility of doing it. Uh, and you know, in the fight world, you have to be able to take chances in yourself, but it's still I think he had like a couple weeks notice at best. That's a tough fight to take. Bobby Knuckles ain't no joke. Um, so yeah, and uh, there are some other good fights on this card here. I mean, there were a lot of fights this weekend. They had this UFC in Saudi Arabia. They had PFL on Friday. They had Bellator in Dublin on on Saturday. They had uh Bare Knuckle fighting, which actually had two of my guys uh from FFA fighting. Uh well, two people uh Edgar Placiola and Christine Venz. They both won by a finish. Edgar got a TKO in round four. And uh Christine once again uh her opponent couldn't come out of her corner after the first round. She they're both I think well I he's 4 and0 I believe and she's three and0 if I remember correctly in bare knuckle fighting. So uh my brother's doing a great job with them and doing the bare knuckle training. Uh it's interesting because bare knuckle fighting does or bare knuckle boxing does not look like uh boxing at all. It's very different. The I believe one of the biggest differences is just the size of the weapons that you're using. A fist is so much smaller than a boxing glove, which you know it can be almost like this depending on how many ounces it is. But it's regardless much bigger and padded, which offers two things. One, more protection for the puncher, but it also takes away some of the sting and the ability to cut as well since you got a soft cushion coming around. When your bare knuckle is just rats, man, you can really crack. You have to have better hand conditioning, which is something that they work on a lot. If you have bad, and this is something that a lot of people don't have awareness of when you are punching with a bare fist, if you don't have strong forearms, strong grip, and a really good clenched fist, you're going to break your hand. People think, "Oh, because your knuckles going to break." That is one of the things a boxer fracture, right, is possible. But I'm talking about wrists, right? This can easily break if you don't have a tight wrist. Um, I've always, uh, since I've learned about bare knuckle boxing and like just the form and this is maybe 20 years ago or something like that, I've always try to punch with no wraps. I I might use a glove just because when you punch leather, just bare fist, you start cutting up all your hands and bleeding everywhere. So, I might use like a hand wrap glove or whatnot. Just something very light. But I don't want a lot of wrist protection because basically what happens is when you use lots of wraps and lots of glove, you know, and basically protection, it replaces the job of your arm, your forearm muscles and your grip to maintain the very straight wrist where ideally like you would look at I'm trying to see how would I get a good perspective here, but your form your bottom two fingers basically should line up straight with your form. arm. So, I don't want a fist like this, which I don't know if you could see where like the knuckles are curving over the bottom of my wrist. I would want it like here, so that the top knuckles almost line up with the middle of my forearm because now I essentially I create a column. And anybody who punches a lot, I mean, you would know you don't want to hit like this. You want to kind of hit here. But even here, it requires some curl, right? When if I just make a fist, you can see how my knuckles are over my forearm, which is going to cause my wrist to buckle that way when I hit. So, I got to curl in a little bit, right? So, I get this straight line, right? And for me, and I believe Jack Dempsey had said this as well, he tried to make his hitting surface here, which is the bottom three knuckles make a plane. Right? And then the top two make another plane. So most people focus on this one. But the problem is that this top knuckle doesn't really line up with the rest of your forearm. So like you start creating this twisting uh force on your fist, which could also be another uh way of you could injure yourself. Whereas these three, this plane here between the pinky knuckle and the middle knuckle connect more to your forearm so that there's a more again we work on a column of force that can absorb the shock of whatever is hitting, right? Versus sometimes this side here will lean you a little bit out this way. Again, these are just preferences. Um, so I generally like to hit with the bottom three for certain punches, like for example, left hooks or whatnot or like hooks. I definitely like hitting here. Sometimes with the crosses or whatnot when we turn over, I can I'll use the front two still. But again, you have another surface you can think about is what I'm trying to say here. And then you can measure what you think would be best. But these type of things come into play with bare knuckle boxing. And one of the main things is since the surface area and the implement that you're going to be hitting somebody is much smaller, your defense is also much smaller because when you have gloves, I can pretty much shell up here and I would cover all the available target of my face, which would make it very hard for you to find a hole in my guard. In bare knuckle, it's worse than in MMA. In MMA, you have the, you know, the small fight gloves, but they still have some area and they're a little easier to protect. In bare knuckle, you have like just, it's pretty much the same as your fist here, right? A little bit of wrap and that's about it. So, there's holes everywhere in your guard. You cannot effectively shell up without getting hit. You know, you might block a couple punches, but the next ones are going to get through for sure. And even the ones you do block, while you might not get cut when you're holding your hand in here and you get hit, the concussive force is still going to go through, right? Like it might not be 100% transmission, but there's going to be maybe a 70%. And if you get enough of those, that's also going to put you out, right? Uh whereas if you have the glove in front of you, when you get hit, the glove is going to, you know, have to compress. So it's going to lose some of that force. Then it has to go through your own hand, which is going to take some of that. and then to gets to your skull, you know? So, like there's just a lot uh of elements into it. And the fact that you're bare knuckle, which you you will see quite a bit, especially like my guy Edgar, like he goes in street fight mode, head down, and he starts wailing and uh mixing shots to the body and to the head, and it's rough, and you can, you know, it it looks like I I'm not sure how the rules are consistently applied or whatnot, but it looks like you can manipulate clinches quite a bit more than you could in boxing. Uh, so you can like dirty box significantly in uh, baron knuckle fighting, which is a big factor, especially if you're digging in for uppercuts or whatnot. And I can like yank the guy with an underhook and then start uh, you know, tooling him up a bit. So, it's a lot rougher of a sport and also of course the cuts. So, it is interesting. It doesn't add another dimension that boxing has, but you don't uh some of the fights is you don't see as technical because some guys choose to essentially get into these type of brawls and really work on the dirty boxing. Although that's not all of them. Some of them do try to play uh a more they try to play boxing in bare knuckle boxing and they can do quite well with that as well. But it's definitely different and uh I haven't been able to corner any of these guys because I wasn't here. So I haven't had that corner experience. Although my brother says it definitely feels different than MMA does or of course like like boxing does. It's a little more visceral. Um so uh yeah, I mean lots of fights this weekend. Uh and we also had grappling events, right? We had the who's number one. I I did a news recap on that already. Um, so I mean it's interesting now like that we have so much fight news like I can't I don't have time to cover it all you know and if I look back like 20 years ago there was barely any fight news the only like big grappling show was like ADC and maybe the Muny that was like two events in a year And then you had UFC's maybe once a year or maybe once every six months. And uh when Pride came into the scene, then we had some more frequency coming in with events and UFC started trying to match them. But these were like a couple times a year and now we have like a couple times a day there's something going on. So, it's pretty overwhelming for the fight fans, I think. At least for me. I try to watch like I I watched that UFC Saudi Arabia. I saw some of the PFL. Um there's just so many good fights to cover. It's like I don't want to just these tank hours to cover each event, you know? So, I try to pick and choose the fights that I'm watching now because there's so much quality to choose from. Uh, which I think is great. There's obviously a lot more opportunity and I just hope that that also translates to more steady paychecks for fighters, uh, more stability in their career, more sponsorship opportunities for them. And, um, well, we're seeing in the grappling already that's starting to step up a bit. And again, thanks to someone like Craig Jones who put pressure to make other organizations have to think twice now, like about athlete compensation. I'm excited to see how it's going to develop. If you didn't watch the recap I did, I'm going to be at the Craig Jones Invitational as well. I got tickets for it. So, uh, they're both here in Vegas, pretty next close to each other. I'm not going to be able to see both simultaneously. I my current plan is Friday Craig Jones Invitational and then I'll do Saturday, Sunday at ACC. Uh yeah, I just wish like if he would have done just uh Thursday, Friday for the fans, it would have been a lot easier. Uh and the poaching effect would have still been in effect, right? Like you couldn't do both tournaments if you wanted to as an athlete, right? Uh, so I feel like this is more of a disc to the fans than it is to the organization because ACC gets hurt regardless if it's on the same exact days, a day overlap or no day overlap, but like you know on the same weekend or in the same week rather like you're still getting the athletes away, right? And since they're all signing contracts, I'm assuming it's not gonna allow them to fight in both organizations at the same time, right? Um, so yeah, I the only thing I can see is that they're trying to take viewership away from uh ATCC for the one day and the overlap, which again uh I guess there's a metric that you could pull from that if they show that, you know, EDCC on Saturday had this level of viewership and then on Sunday, you know, it jumped up a lot and then we would know, well, okay, that portion of the audience got taken. But the thing is, Craig doesn't have access to that information. That's going to be flow grappling. So, like I don't think they're going to reveal that information to people. So, he wouldn't know how much he actually was able to take from them. Um, yeah. So, it's it's weird. Like I said, on the business standpoint, it's very very weird. Uh, but I do hope that it works out and maybe next year they don't have to make it that cutthroat, right? The the big money payday will be enough and they don't have to make the fans choose which event to go to. Anyhow, that's all I got for you guys today. Uh, enjoy the rest of your your day and I'll see you next