Speaker 1: The countdown is on to fight time. This is Big
Fight Weekend. Now here is your host? DJ Leaves. Well, well,
well we're hanging out now in the month of March.
We're ready to preview some fights that are coming in
fact quickly on Friday in specific and we've got a
huge name joining us, like fourthwith post haste because there's
a new boxing deal being done not only by Turkey
Alashic and the Saudi's, but their partner is who Dana
White and the UFC folks. We're going to talk more
about that and the business venture and how it works.
You're gonna hear from Dana White with us right here
coming up in just a few minutes. I am merely
the somewhat capable host TJ. Reeves. He is our insider,
Dan Rayphiel. You have been hustling about sixteen different directions
right now, including scoring a one on one with Dana
White off of this announcement. They're gonna hear that coming up.
Good to be back with you here. As we head
into a little bit of a lighter weekend, we'll explain
more a little bit, But how are things.
Speaker 2: I'm okay with the lighter weekend. Once in a while.
We've come off some massive, massive fights in the last
few weeks, so it's all good play coming up.
Speaker 1: By the way, final chapter not written from last weekend
with Jervonte Davis and Tank Roach. More on that coming up.
Dan's been working on that. We have some other fight news,
some nostalgia as well to get to thank you for
finding us. We preview going into the weekend on the
Big Fight Weekend Preview obviously Thursday night into Friday. We
recap coming off the weekend Sunday night into Monday. Great
to have you aboard, follow, Subscribe, Apple, Spreaker, Spotify. Where
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If you've been enjoying the interviews you heard from Lamont
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enjoyed that, If you enjoyed Dmitri b prior to his
rematch win for the undisputed light heavyweight till you heard
from him on this Podfait, the banter back and forth,
the fund, the frovolity, Rayfield, swatting Reeves. If you enjoy
that five star ratings and reviews. Help us take thirty
seconds and do that. We love it. With that being said,
all right, for the obligatory part of the podcast, before
we get to Dana White and what's up with the
announcement that has been made with his TKO, the parent
company of UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment and the Saudi
Entertainment Authority. They have come together for a new boxing
promotion entity. You'll explain it more coming up, and you'll
hear from Dana White before we get to that. The
obligatory preview will come for Friday, and this is interesting.
In the boxer all female card from London, Natasha Jonas
is back in action as the Unified Women's Welterweight Champion,
fighting Lauren Price. She has one of the belts. Correct,
we have that, we have Caroline Dubois, the women's WBC
lightweight Champion. We'd get a doubleheader of women's fights on
Friday that are kind of headlining. So in the vein
of the preview, Dan, that's what we're paying a lot
of attention to for Friday, for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is this is just so folks know.
It's the Sky Sports main event. It's The Boxer Show.
So it's sky Sports in the UK. You know, as
I wrote a couple of weeks ago the Boxer contract
and deal with Peacock for their fights to be on
the platform, which was a simulcast of the Sky Sports
broadcast that is over. But this event is still available
in the United States on Triller TV Plus. If you know,
it's one of those deals it's like, I don't know,
seven I subscribe to. It's like seven bucks a month
or something like that. Anyway, this card is on there
if you want to watch it in the United States.
In any event, Jonas and Price it's you know, for
women's boxing, isn't important and a pretty good fight. It's
for three of the welterweight titles. Jonas has two of
the belts. Lauren Price has one of the belts. They
this is not does not come out of the blue
or anything like that. They were on the same card
together back in December when they both had victories and
it was you know, promoted as like the last step
let's say to get to this unification. But one of
the big differences between the two women, and they're obviously
both excellent fighters, is you have a Natasha Jonas who
has been around for a very long time. She's forty
years old, and she's been a credit to women's boxing
and boxing in general for a very long time. She
was a twenty twelve Olympian and has all kinds of
accomplishment in the sport and has been she was the
first ever British female Olympian for boxing, and so it's
you know, she's had a great ride and she's popular
and beloved figure. Lauren Price is only thirty years old.
She's ten years younger, and she is an Olympian who
was a gold medalist for Team Great Britain in the
most recent Olympics, in the twenty twenty Games that became
I don't know, was it the twenty twenty twenty twenty Olympics.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty one Tokyo Yeah, yeah to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So she won the Olympic gold medal and
that not not the most recently summer Olympics that were
this past summer, but in twenty twenty that became twenty
twenty one. Like you said, anyway, she is on the
feat and as moved quickly. Women's boxing for the most part,
if you're if you're good, you don't need a lot
of fights, more like more of the fights that the
men have before they get to the championship level. So
they've been promoting this to get together and unify these titles.
That's fighting. They're fighting at the very famed Royal Albert
Hall in London, so it's sort of a big deal.
And as you mentioned, it is an all women's cart
and uh, may the best women win. But it is
hard as good as as Jonas has been in her career.
The ten year age difference, my friend, gives me a
lot of pause because Jonas is really good. But at
some point that does catch up to you, whether it
be Price who's a lot younger, and and uh and
and just been fighting at a high level herself. So
but these are two of the more accomplished ladies in
the sport for at this moment. So I actually, uh,
you know, I've never been the biggest women's boxing fan,
but when the best women do fight each other, you know,
I'm certainly into it. We're going to talk about another
big time women's fight a little bit later, but you know,
put Price in Jonas in the ring, you know, I
think that's worth time to check it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting too that I was just thinking this when
you were talking. Remember Cecilia break Who's dominated this division
for a decade, and it shows you just how much
she dominated it because Jessica McCaskill had some of the
titles and now these ladies have have are going for
three of them. There's been a lot of musical chairs,
like in the last year or two in this division. Well,
the name when the name Breakoos was there like from
the mid twenty tens until almost twenty twenty one or
twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: When when in their first fight, when when Breakhu's lost
to mccastal in a very close, you know, somewhat disputed decision,
she became the undisputed champion in that fight. And then
eventually you know, belt started this point, this and that,
but it became a fractured division and these women are
trying to put it back together.
Speaker 1: There you go, And again Caroline Dubois was just in
the ring. We were looking this up. I said it.
She was in the ring fifteen minutes ago. Rayfield said, no, no,
settle down. It was January, so it is rare on
the activity. But she fought a fight in which the
opponent suffered a bad cut. She had also heard her
late in the second round, and then they stopped the
fight because of the cut, and it would ended up
being a no contest.
Speaker 2: So she's right back, no, no, no, it didn't that's
the problem, and saying no, it was a technical draw.
But no, but that's that's a problem because in Britain
it's it's stupid. So she gets a blemish on her
record as a draw, which is nonsense, because she was
beating a living shit out of jessic Ka Kamara. She
was about to knock her the fuck out. They had
the head butt, she got cut, and they called it
a technical draw, and then they stopped the fight two
seconds into round number three. And so because the four
rounds were not completed, you know, in under the normal
roles in America, it would have just been a no contest,
but for whatever reason, in the UK they called it
a technical draw. If the fight had been in the
United States, it would have been a no contest. And
so she winds up with an unnecessary blemish on her record,
which is really unfortunate. So I feel like she's gonna
go out there with her opponent bo Me Ray Shin,
a fighter with a eighteen to three record a woman
from South Korea and probably kick some ass.
Speaker 1: Probably, And you did not go down. And I don't
sing it either to you. You did not go down
the musical scale of do ray me. You didn't do
that from sound of music. You went instead bow me
ray I'm just making jokes. Maybe I'm a little punchy
on a Thursday night, all right, So that's the the
primary preview for the weekend. Let's let's get to what
we have right straight away, as the Brits like to
say straight away, and that is the news that I
have already referenced here of this merger the Saudi Entertainment
Authority aligning now with TKO, which is the parent company,
the multi billion dollar company that oversees UFC and World
Wrestling Entertainment. So again, this story sent some shock waves.
I was texting with you saying, what does this mean?
Are these guys looking to wipe out all the other
boxing promotions. So before we hear from Dana White in
a couple of moments on his own about this, tell
me what your read is, what you think about this,
and a little more before we get to the interview.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying they're not looking in the long run
to wipe out boxing promotions of other companies, but that's
never going to happen. Boxing is too much of an
international sport. There are promoters everywhere in the world that
have different starfighters, and at least the way that Dana
said to me, believe otherwise fair enough. They're going to
do their thing in their bubble and try to make
it the biggest and the best thing they could. It's
not so much a merger. What it is is Turkey
and Sella from in Saudi Arabia are paying TKO ten
million dollars a year on a multi fight year deal.
They didn't say the number of years to administer and
run this new promotion, and they will fund the events
and obviously if it reaches a certain threshold of profitability
that I believe TKO will come in and make profit
as well besides just the fee they're being paid. So
from the people from the point of view of the
TKO people, as you mentioned, they oversee they're the parent
company of UFC of WWE. They're in like a no
lowse situation because they get to play in a sandbox
that they're coming into in boxing. They obviously have a
mass experience in terms of putting on events, UFC events
and wrestling events, so they understand about ticket selling and
merchandising and in ring, in in arena experiences, doing broadcast
deals and all the things go into making it. But
they're not going to have to put up any of
their own money. They're going to just make a fee
on these events. And the Turkey and the saudi'st obviously
have a large amount of money to spend on this
as they try to make their way through it. So
they made the formal announcement of this deal yesterday, and
so Turkey and Dana White, who obviously is the president
and CEO of UFC, and then also Nick Con who
is a WWE president, they were making the rounds all
day in New York, and just for the purposes of disclosure,
Nick Con was my representative, my agent from two thousand
and six to twenty twenty when he was at CIA.
In any event, they're going to run that they're going
to be the top executives that run this promotion, and
Dana of course will be the outfront guy like he's
been with UFC, and they will try to build this
thing to the biggest level that they can and it
doesn't have a name yet. You know the promotion, you
know the way we have you know, top rank or
Golden Boy or match, and they don't have a name.
They don't have any fighters under contract just yet. They
don't have a broadcast deal just yet, although I'm sure
we'll get one given the strength of the personality and
the success that WW and UFC have had, and they've
got a lot to do, but this is the start.
They rolled it out in a big yesterday. Dana did
like ten thousand interviews, it felt like, including he's looking
he was, I have to say this.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: I had scheduled this with one of his PR people,
and I know Dane a little bit for the last
you know, ten to fifteen years. Not like we're close
to anything, but we've spoken several times. I've met him
a few times whatever, But I don't run in the
UFC circle, so we've never really had a wreck a
real reason to like on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: But I was.
Speaker 2: I was excited to talk to him to hear his
views on this, because he's talked about coming into boxing
for such a long time and never actually taken the
plunge until now, and he explains the reasons for that.
But the thing about it is, as he enters this,
it's it's I'm all for competition, and let's see what
they can do and that they can make an in
print and put on big events and bring some clarity
to things.
Speaker 1: Great, speaking of clarity, clarify this before we get to
the interview. This is not going into a fact now,
Am I correct on this? This is a twenty twenty
sixth thing? And my right or what have you found out?
Speaker 2: And what are they saying twenty twenty six with an asterisk?
So in the press announcement that they issued, they went
through a few of the particulars and they made the
thing that they said they were going to, you know,
allow all the UFC performance institutes in Vegas and Shanghai.
And I figured where the third one was that they
all get their athletes, will you know, have the highest
level of that in terms of training facilities. And then
one of the other bullet items was the first event
twenty twenty six, you know, TBA And so that may
be the case, but you'd have to be living under
a rock or be just an absolute idiot not to
think about the fact that Turkey has a four fight
deal now with Canelo Alvarez and he doesn't have like
an official promoter like when he was with Matchrom or
with Golden Boy, or even when with he was doing
fights with p and TGB. And so Dana uh is
going to be doing these events for this unnamed company.
You know that Turkey and that Saudi's are backing. I believe,
and I've heard the rumblings over the last couple of
days that that it would seem logical that in the
end that that TKO based company will end up promoting
the fight between Terrence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez that will
take place in September, presumably Canelo when he defeats.
Speaker 1: Making too much sense now, but yeah, that seems like
the place where you would begin, right, yea, it would
be better than that to begin with.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean what a way to make a splash.
I mean in their first event. Yes, like I said
all along, I mean Dana when he when he's going
to go do something, he's not going to look to
do it on a small level. He's a guy that
wants to make a big splash. He's not I don't
think he's not not amenable to doing some smaller events
and building younger fighters, but he likes the big time
stuff and this is no doubt it would be a
big time thing. So we spoke about that little bit.
People can hear it in the interview. And so look,
boxing world is changing. Everybody better buckle up because it's
SUPs happening.
Speaker 1: And the money that's flowing over where. Not that I love,
not that I don't love hearing from you, but why
don't we hear from Dana White about this again? You
spoke to him in the aftermath of the announcement, and
this is gonna be a little lengthy. I'm just saying
this to the audience. And by the way, the two
words that the kids say worth it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a couple of things about this. So I
was making the point though, because he was doing so
many interviews and you know, and I'm this, I wasn't
like upset by this, but you know, things get backed
up because you're not on an exact one minute time limit.
And he had although yet he got his publicist text
me he's he's sorry, we're running all the lady got
pulled into a meeting and he got pulled into something
else anyway. So my interview with him was set for
a certain time and in the end it didn't happen
until about two two and a half hours later, which
was fine, But as I joked around with him, I said,
you know, you've been doing all these interviews. I feel
like I'm the I'm at the tail end of a
very long day. Because he started off doing interviews like
in the early morning, and he was on like some
of the ESPN shows. I think he was on like
you know, CNBC and this and that, and I was like,
I hope you're still in a good mood.
Speaker 4: He left.
Speaker 2: He says, I'm in a great boot. And you wouldn't
have known that. I was like interview number like you know,
fifty of the day or something like that.
Speaker 1: You should never be interview number fifty of the day.
That's okay if you were number if you were number seven,
like Mickey Mantle from your Yankees, that would be you know,
about the h I would think that would be about
the limit.
Speaker 2: How about have you here, let's hear from Dana White.
Speaker 1: Enough of this blather. Here is Dana White specifically on
what they're doing, why they're doing it again, This is lengthy,
but worth it, and then you'll hear us after it's done.
Speaker 2: Well, it is my great pleasure to welcome to the
show this week the one and only Dana White. You
know him as the UFC, the top dog at the UFC.
But now Dana, you're coming into boxing. I'll just explain
what's going on. You know, your your parent company TKO,
made a deal with Turkey al Chic to bring your
forces together to create this so called boxing league that
you're going to be the front man for. Similar I
guess what you do with UFC and UH and try
to try to make your your bones and boxing like
you've done on other combat sports. So first of all,
welcome and congratulate your deal.
Speaker 3: Thanks buddy, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure. So that got finalized and as has
been announced UFC or I guess it's TKO. Really you
get a ten million dollar fee from the saudi'st to
run their promotion an annual and annual, an annual feed
to put this on and to work the magic that
you have done in the MMA space. And so you
have talked Dana for many years about becoming involved in
boxing promotion, and so my first question then, is why
is right now the right time for this? Because you
have talked about it a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I've looked into it a lot and and
sort of played with it. And then literally every time
I got on the phone with a boxing guy, I
would literally say, why the hell am I doing this?
Speaker 3: This is insane? You know, why would I put myself
through this?
Speaker 4: And everything in life, and definitely everything in my life
has come down to timing.
Speaker 3: And you know, I know a lot of people are
going to talk about money and money.
Speaker 4: I got money, I could go out and raise money,
I had had raised them at one time, and everything
I do, everything by gut, and it just didn't feel
right to me. About a year and a half ago,
Nick con made the introduction to me in Turkey, and
you know, I'm a weird dude and like I like
to stay in my own little space, my own little bubble,
and do my thing.
Speaker 3: I wasn't interested in any of this stuff.
Speaker 4: But over the last year and a half he and
I have created a relationship to the point where not only.
Speaker 3: Do I like him, I trust him.
Speaker 4: I've done business with him, and he and I are
very aligned in our outlook on boxing, our thoughts for
the future and this was the right time, the right place,
and the right people to.
Speaker 3: Do it with.
Speaker 2: Well, I will give my listeners a brief disclosure. Nick
Cohn represented me as an agent for fifteen years through
my career at ESPN, So just to get that out there.
Nobody can accuse me of not being honest about that.
I really got to tell the people the real truth.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: I don't think it has a bearing on what we're
talking about or understood, you know, you as a as
a reporter.
Speaker 3: Or or a journalist. You know, it's just Nick Cohn
is the one who made the introduction.
Speaker 4: He used to be with c AA, then he ended
up with WWE, then we did the acquisition of WWE.
Speaker 3: And you know, Nick is a.
Speaker 4: Big, big, big boxing fans, has always had his hand
sort of in the.
Speaker 3: You know, in the boxing business.
Speaker 2: As I used to joke around with Nick. I think
that's why you put up with me for so long,
because I was a boxing guy and he liked boxing.
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 2: But you know, I understand how you're talking about how this,
uh the introduction was made, but how did it come
about from the standpoint like let's do a deal. Was
it you saying to Turkey, hey, let's do something him
saying to you, Hey, what do you think maybe we
should do some business on the boxing side of things.
Obviously you had worked together on MMA events with UFC,
and I just wondered, did it, like, how did that
come about? In terms of who who was the one
that like asked for the first date?
Speaker 3: I guess you're You're.
Speaker 4: You're the You're the you're the only guy that's asked
me that after doing one hundred and fifty seven and today.
Speaker 3: That's that's a So Turkey wanted to hire.
Speaker 2: Me to come, uh run the boxing you like, that's
the ring stuff, the read season stuff, the business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, basically what I'm gonna do now. Yeah, we're
going to do it through TKO.
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not leaving the UFC or you know,
the things that I'm working on here now.
Speaker 3: So we brought the whole thing.
Speaker 4: Into t KO.
Speaker 2: And and so that was your sort of I guess
I don't want to come work for you and then
leave UFC, but we can still do business by doing
it in this manner, and he was open to that.
Speaker 4: It worked out that you know, he and I both
like each other, trust each other and feel like we
are aligned and what we want to do in the sport,
and we just ended up getting.
Speaker 3: A deal done.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you have, as you mentioned, TKO, the parent
company of UFC now the parent company of WWE. You
also obviously have Power Slap. And it feels like when
I look at it from the outside, I see, well,
you've got those particular things I just mentioned, but that
boxing was sort of the one missing element, let's say,
of the combat sports portfolio, and it made sense.
Speaker 4: It was not Yeah, that's what people are looking at
as far as oh, does this round out.
Speaker 3: TKO and all? This has nothing to do with the
TKO side of it.
Speaker 4: I only do things that I like to do with
people that I like to do with it, do it
with right and you know, power Slap for me, I
saw it, there was a gut thing.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to do it, so I went out
and did it. And now the same thing with boxing.
I liked it. It's like if I like something, you know,
I'll I'll talk to Ari and I'm like, I want
to do this. Can we do it? We end up
figuring out how to get it done.
Speaker 2: So one thing, I'm interested and I've seen in a
lot of the particulars that have been put out. I
have obviously got the press release, and I've seen some
of the comments that have been made, some of the
things that have been said. Why are you referring this
to as a league? When I think of a league,
I think of like a team and they're going out
to play the other team. You know, because if you
think of like baseball, or you think of NFL or NBA.
But but it seems like the word league is being
used to describe what I view as a promotion.
Speaker 3: The word league. I'm with you. I hate the word league.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're on the same page with that. It's
a boxing promotion, there we go, okay, promotion. The only
thing is I thought I was missing something.
Speaker 3: You know, I know you're not.
Speaker 4: You're You're absolutely right. I couldn't agree with you more.
But but but here's the difference. Uh, skip you in
the car. I got the great Skipper Calvirom the.
Speaker 3: CARKI when when did when did boxing start? Sixteen first place?
Speaker 4: Sixteen eighty one was the first boxing match?
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Now think about this think about any brand, business, sport,
anything that has created trillions of dollars in revenue, been
around for hundreds of years, right, yeah, and at the
end of the day, there's nothing there, literally nothing.
Speaker 3: So I guess you could look at us as a
league because we're gonna build a business.
Speaker 4: Right, We're actually gonna build a business with boxing, which
has never been done before. It's never even been attempted before.
People say that it has because this guy raised money
and that guy raised.
Speaker 3: Money, but there was no no plan to really build
the league.
Speaker 4: All anybody's ever done that the sport is take from it,
take money, take money, take money.
Speaker 3: Nobody's ever reinvested back in the sport.
Speaker 4: The only one who has ever invested in the sport
of boxing, Oh you shake turty?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, understood, I get that. I mean it's ever invested.
Speaker 4: So we are gonna build a business in where we
build this brand, which you know I'm looking at at
TKO being the name of it. You know, we're still
kind of playing with some things. There's a lot of
things that need to be worked out still as far
as the business goes. But we are building a business.
We are building a brand. So I could see where
you know. I know Turkey called it a league. I
even called it a league in the video today. But
at the end of the day, it's it's you know,
if you call the NFL a league, right, yeah, then
the UFC, I guess you could call the league whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's it's it's complicated.
Speaker 2: It was sort of like that was actually that was like.
The next question I had in my mind is that
I sort of looked at the announcement of the league,
so to speak, as somewhat audacious from the standpoint that
you make the deal with Turkey. Yet the league, as
you say, has no name yet, as you just mentioned,
to my knowledge, no broadcast deal in place yet, although
maybe you do and you haven't told anybody about it.
To my knowledge, you don't have fighters under contract just
yet in terms of the boxers, and no specific set
date other than in the press release saying first event
in twenty twenty six. So there's a lot of on
edge questions. But it seems to me that the force
of the Dana White personality in Turkey Hooschek makes people
sit up and say, oh, this is legit, This has
got to be the real deal.
Speaker 3: It's legit. It's the real deal.
Speaker 4: And yes that the the you know we're we're in
the part is way ahead of the horse situation here
right now we're announcing, you know that what we're doing.
But there's still a lot of work that needs to
be done. Nick CON's flying out the Vegas next week.
He and I are going to sit down and basically
start building the infrastructure. I've already got the space. We're
already ripping the space apart and starting to build and
figure out how many offices we're going to need and
all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So there is no broadcaster in place yet, that is
what you're saying. No, no fighters on our contract yet,
right So if.
Speaker 4: You wanted to ask me how many fights are going
to do a year, it's going to depend on uh,
on who we do a deal with, what they're looking for.
You know, I say this all the time. If you
call Kevin k who used to be the uh, you know,
the head of Spike TV. If you call Eric Shanks
from Fox, you know, if you call Tribute Pataro, ask
any of these guys who's the best sports partner they've
ever been in business with.
Speaker 3: I'm a good fucking partner, you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean, So we will go in, we will
cut a deal with somebody, and we will basically build
this thing around what they need for programming.
Speaker 2: Are you looking to do multiple deals? Because I mean,
there's plenty of professional sports outfits that have broadcast partners
that are more than one. NFL has a bunch of
NBA as a bunch, Major League Baseball has lots of
local They obviously just you know, are finishing with ESPN,
but they also have had Fox. Are you trying to
do multiple deals? Are you looking to have one home
that's going to depend on.
Speaker 4: How this whole thing plays out. What's fascinating right now
that's happening in the will?
Speaker 3: How are you Dan?
Speaker 2: I am fifty four years old.
Speaker 3: Yes, so we're the same age exactly when you and
I grew up this channel three, Channel five.
Speaker 2: Where I was it with six, ten and thirteen. But
I hear you same thing.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 4: Then in high school we had like thirty three channels
on Cape Satellite Hit. And then when you think of
the peak of linear television when ESPN was, you know,
getting seven bucks a sub and all this other stuff, right,
it was massive. Now you know it's also linear starting
to go away. We're heading into you know, the world
is becoming a much smaller place because of streaming. And
I think there's going to be a Channel three, Channel five,
Channel eight, and Channel thirteen again globally. And the question
is who's it going to be. Is it going to
be Amazon, YouTube, Disney? You know, list goes on and
on of who the players are going to be. But
what's fascinating right now is when you look and you've
got the NFL, college football, NBA, college basketball, you got
the NHL, the Major League Baseball, the NBA, you got UFC,
WWE and tennis, and the list goes on and on
of all these sports power slab, all these sports that
are looking for rights deals right now, right And I
was just saying the other day, it's going to be
interesting because even the majors, unless sure, the fucking NFL
and college football, NBA's numbers are dropping drastically.
Speaker 3: You know, the.
Speaker 4: Major League Baseball just went back and ESPN turned them down.
Not only do they turn them down the deal, they
cut their fucking what their deal.
Speaker 2: Was in half, more than half. It was five fifty
a year to two hundred they offered it.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's going to get fascinating here. I just announced.
Speaker 4: So when I announced this on Friday, they embargo the
story on power Slap. I always go out and figure
out how to build shit without the help of anybody.
You don't believe in my fucking thing, beautiful, no problem.
I'll go out and figure it out myself. That's what
I do, because then you get into the combat sports thing.
Top rank just lost their deal, right, Top rank lost
their deal. You got Eddie Hearn, you got you know,
these bare knuckle boxing guys that are running around looking
for everybody's looking for a TV deal, everybody's looking for money.
Speaker 3: I always try to.
Speaker 4: Figure out how do I take my thing to the
next level and figure it out on my own without
our first part. Think about this, Top Rank had ninety
million dollars, right, first Spike deal.
Speaker 3: Is thirty five million.
Speaker 2: Box did pretty well of.
Speaker 4: Thirty five million dollars, you know. Then from there we
went to Fox on Fox deal was like one hundred
and ten, you know what I mean. We had less
money and just a little bit more money than Top
ranked did.
Speaker 3: And look at what we built.
Speaker 2: You went to a billion at ESPN, yeah, or in
the ballpark, yeah, eight and change still pretty darn good.
So now you mentioned in the press announcement that the
first event of this would be twenty twenty six. Now,
I hear rumors all the time, Dan, I'm listening to people.
I'm talking to people every day in the boxing space.
May not follow UFC Ultra closely or anything like that,
but in boxing, I got a lot of people that
talk to me about a lot of different things. Twenty
twenty six may be the case, but I know there's
a mega event that's supposed to take place in Las
Vegas in September between Kenel Alvarez and Karence Crawford. Kenel
Alvarez just announced and Turkey and Hint did a four
fight agreement that's going to commence with the fight that
will take place in Saudi Arabia coming up in May.
But that fight in September is supposed to be back
here in the United States. Boy, wouldn't it be make
a lot of sense that Canelo does not have a promoter,
specifically that the Dana White in this new league that
doesn't have a name yet, it starts at the very
top of the sport and promotes the biggest fight in
North America that you could possibly make. Right now, one
of the biggest fights in the world period, is that
on the Is that on deck?
Speaker 4: That would be amazing, That would be amazing.
Speaker 2: That does that come up? I can't imagine that.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 2: He's got the number one star in the sport. And
like I said, when all the people were talking about
Dana White coming into boxing, I was like, Okay, bring
it on. You know, I'm all for a competition. But
I can tell you one thing, even though I don't
know you, well, I've followed you. Dana White's not coming
into boxing to do four round preliminary fights and be
called a day. He's gonna do it. He's gonna try
to do it at the absolute peak level of the sport.
Speaker 4: Well, what I do is but what I do is
I come in and build things that people think can't
be done. I take niche sports and pull them up
and turn them into monsters.
Speaker 3: That's what I do.
Speaker 4: That's my passion, right. I mean, if you look at
what I I did with the UFC, why the fuck
would I get involved in power slap right? Why would I?
Speaker 3: Why would I do that? You know why?
Speaker 4: Because I believe in it. I think it can be
big and uh, you know, nobody else does. I mean,
that's that's basically what I do now. I also believe
that the sport of boxing is absolutely broken and has
to be fixed. It has to be rebuilt from the
ground up and and and that's pretty much what I'm
good at.
Speaker 2: So are you going to be promoting Crawford and Canelo?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not some guy that has to walk in
and do you know all leave forman you know, because
I you know, it's it's a big ego play.
Speaker 3: It's the exact opposite.
Speaker 2: No, I'm thinking, I'm thinking that's the way to make
the splash. Though you can do all that stuff, but
you make the splash at the highest level.
Speaker 4: Listen, we made a splash today, I mean just the
announcement that we're going to do it as a splash.
But I'll say this to you, anything is possible. Anything
is possible.
Speaker 2: So one of the things in terms of boxing, you
check it it's broken. You know that it's that people
haven't invested in through the years, that you're looking to
change that sort of concept the way things are. So
I guess the question is what do you think is
the biggest thing that you can do in boxing to
make it better than all the things that you've kind
of ragged on it about over the years.
Speaker 4: What's the thing you just answered your own question? Literally
all the things that I have ragged on over the
years is exactly what I mean.
Speaker 2: But there's got to be priorities. Though you can't do
everything at once.
Speaker 4: You can, though you can. So here's how you build
a business. Right in the comment spot, everybody focuses on
all this other goofy shit. Number One is go out
and find the best up and coming talent that you
can find. Number two, put on the best fights that
you can possibly put on, from the first fight of
the night.
Speaker 3: To the last fight of the night.
Speaker 4: Make sure that the live in house production is off
the charts right, and that everybody who shows up has
a good experience, and the people that are watching at
home have to have that same experience too on television.
And then the other thing that I do is I
sell holy shit moments.
Speaker 3: Right, That's what I do for a living. Now I
have to have three or four.
Speaker 4: Holy shit moment it's a night to make the people
that paid for tickets and people that watch it on
TV to feel like they got their money's worth. We
have gotten the UFC brand to a place where I'll
put on I'll say I'm coming to a town, tickets
will sell out before I even announce the main event.
I also have gotten, you know, to a place with
my fan base where they know that if something falls
off the card, people don't start returning their tickets.
Speaker 3: They know I'm gonna put something else on.
Speaker 4: There that's either as good or better than the first
fight we had. So I have a really good relationship
with my consumer and that's what boxing doesn't have, and.
Speaker 3: That's what I need to build.
Speaker 2: So what do you think then are the differences? You
obviously have vast experience promoting MMA through your UFC affiliations, obviously,
but what are the what do you think is the
biggest difference then that you're going to need to do
maybe a little differently to promote the boxing it is.
You know, they're similar, but they are different sports. They
do have somewhat different fan bases. What are you looking
at in that respect?
Speaker 4: You need to build a good product. As long as
you build a good product, you know what I mean,
it's gonna I'll give you an example, like the difference
between UFC and other sports like I'm an NBA fan.
I'm a Celtics fan, right, I shouldn't say I'm an
NBA fan. I'm a Celtics fan.
Speaker 3: Now, when I when?
Speaker 4: When? When the games are on TV, you got to
watch the last six minutes.
Speaker 2: Of the game, right, Other than that, that goes with
pretty much any basketball game.
Speaker 3: I guess it's true.
Speaker 4: And it's not a great sport on TV in my opinion,
it's slow and boring and da da. But when you
go live, it's awesome. I love live basketball now. The
NFL is incredible on television. I don't like the NFL
so much live. I don't like being at the sitting
in the traffic and getting to the stadium.
Speaker 2: Well, we agree on both of those factors. I feel
the same way about the NBA and the NFL. What
you're saying, right, and the game.
Speaker 4: Looks different live than it does on TV. The NFL
is probably one of the most perfect products you'll ever
see on television.
Speaker 3: It's so good on fucking TV. Right, yep.
Speaker 4: Now, boxing is bad live and bad on fucking TV.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily agree with that, but I hear what
you're saying. There's definitely things that can improve.
Speaker 3: The UFC is exactly opposite. Well, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 4: My son, who's been going to UFC his whole life,
he just went to the Tank Davis fight the other night.
He asked me to buy them tickets, so I bought
them tickets to the fight. He said the live experience
was terrible. He said it was completely fucking unorganized, and
it's just he couldn't say enough bad things about it.
Then when you watch it on TV, you fucking sit
there all night waiting for a fucking these guys will
put on a fight and then do a podcast. Then
another fight will fucking come on, and they do. You know,
you blow your whole evening sitting there waiting for them.
Speaker 2: I have to I will say this though, in terms
of what happened on Saturday with the Tank fight. And
I've been a critic of exactly what you said many times.
The PBC folks that ran that Tank Davis show, they
finally got it figured out because they actually was only
a few minutes between fight. They actually ran them in
pretty quick. They didn't have anthems and a lot of nonsense.
They didn't even do some in ring interviews. After some
of the pay per view fights. So that was actually
better than it's been believe it or not.
Speaker 4: Apparently they didn't even do replays.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a whole different story. The one thing I
was thinking about, but it's not.
Speaker 4: It's part of the story, Dan, if you're not an
avid UFC watcher, right, But what happens is when something
happens I poke low blow, uh, you know, knockout, the
fucking replay plays during the fight.
Speaker 3: While the fight's still happening. We do the replay. We
have multiple camera I am a fucking well psycho, Dana.
Speaker 2: They did have They had the replay, they just were
not able to apparently to transmit it in time from
the truck to the replay. Officially had to look at
the official replay. But that's a whole different matter.
Speaker 3: But it's not.
Speaker 4: It's all part of the fucking problem. It's all part
of the problem. There's no money going in for fucking
production the way that it should be. Our production is
second to none, and.
Speaker 2: You're bringing that to this TKO project.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things I was thinking about though, when
I was asking about the differences between promoting and then
they in boxing. Yes, there are things in terms of
the arena experience and as you just mentioned, the pacing.
I also think about on the business side of things,
like for example, you know, like the boxing promoters, they
are bound by the Federal Muhammad ali Ak and so
they have certain things that have to do on the
business side of things that will make it different. If
you're promoting boxing compared to and then they win, is
not covered by that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we will be too, but none of these guys
think outside the box. The bigger problem with what the
boxing promotion is nobody wants to spend the money, right,
Nobody wants to spend the money.
Speaker 3: You have to spend the money to be invested in
the business.
Speaker 2: Boxing is such a worldwide sport UFC, I mean, and
then you guys kind of created it. Not to say
it didn't exist before UFC came along, but you've obviously
changed it into you know, to become what it would
it became boxing. There's there's big time promotions that happen
all around the world in their own countries that they
do other things. I mean, you know, I don't know
if can you not are you looking to roll up
all these different places around the world to do this?
I mean a lot of great fighters and champions come
from all places in South America, Asia, throughout Europe and
you know, in in the former Soviet countries, et cetera.
I mean, is this going to be American focused or
is this like all over.
Speaker 3: The bust global.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gonna be global.
Speaker 2: You're gonna do events globally and and yes, we'll.
Speaker 4: Do events globally and and understand this, I'm not here
beating my chest like I'm the fucking big you know. Oh,
I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna fucking fit. I'm gonna,
believe me, this is gonna be a very humble beginning.
I'm gonna I'm gonna start from the ground up try
to rebuild this business.
Speaker 3: And uh yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2: Don't don't take a sense, but I've never really heard
the words Dana White and humble in the same sentence.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I'm going to be very humble in the
way that we build this sport. You know, I'm not
coming in crash bang boom. I want all the big
events and i want to be you know, I'm gonna
come in and I'm gonna build this thing. Think when
we bought the UFC, right there, going bankrupt. We bought
those three letters in old wooden octagon and we had
twelve contracts, right and look at what we built.
Speaker 2: How many do you have that? How many contracts the
UFC right now?
Speaker 3: Over a thousand? Wow?
Speaker 2: Okay, So if you're doing I heard some of the
comments in the earlier in the day when you guys
were doing some the video, for example, in some of
the other interviews and stuff, that you were specifically talking
about like, you know, we don't need like the letters.
I took that to mean the sanctioning bodies. You know,
we don't need five belts, four belts, three belts whatever.
Are you looking to dislodge the sanctioning bodies from their
position or do you want to work with them in
some capacity or do you want to create your own belt.
Speaker 4: I'm going to create our own belt.
Speaker 2: But that is against themamad Ali reformat though, you know that, right?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, we got to figure that out. Okay, Yeah,
I'm not interested in working with sanctioning bodies. I have
no interest in it whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So Turkey has been working with the sanctioning bodies as
he's doing these big read cards and the ring magazine cards.
How do you square that circle.
Speaker 3: He will continue to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but just not with TKO's project, you know, not with.
Speaker 4: The thing that I'm working on.
Speaker 2: I'm working on, not working with them, okay.
Speaker 4: And doing less less weight classes, you know, not three
fucking weight classes in one weight class.
Speaker 2: You're not looking at You're not looking to change the
number of pounds that the tradition has been for one
hundred years of like the featherweight divisions or twenty six
pounds right exactly, okay, exactly, now going to stay the.
Speaker 4: Same, ten rounds, twelve rounds, all that stuff stay the same.
I'm just I want the best guys that I have
in the organization, fighting the best till they get up.
When when when guys get up into the top five,
there's no question to the top five best guys are
in the weight class.
Speaker 2: And I figure the weight classes will continue to exist,
you just may not use all of them within the
content confines of this promotion one hundred okay. So the
other question that is this Turkey.
Speaker 4: Here's the other thing. These sanctioning organizations will exist too,
because guess.
Speaker 3: What, Eddie Hearn isn't going anywhere.
Speaker 4: Eddie Hearn's still going to be around and and all
these other guys that will still be you know, promoting
the sport of boxing, are still going to be there
and still do everything I'm a mean the way they
always did. So and then as far as relationships go,
there's guys that I'm really cool. I love Eddie Hern,
I respect Eddie Hern Me and Eddie Hern I'm assuming
will always be cool. And there's gonna be guys that
I don't like. I don't like Oscar Day, Lakoya and
Bob Aerm and you know these guys.
Speaker 2: So so that that was that was I was kind
of getting at. Turkey has been doing business with Queens
Queensberry and Matt Room, some top ranked Golden boy even
working with all these promoters and bringing them together to
do the mega cards. So my my my thought was,
you know, does Dana White and the New Project do
you want to reach out and do you could you
do co promotion on a right fight with Eddie or
are you looking to do what you've done with the
UFC where you know, you you haven't worked with you know,
one championship or you know Bellatour when they were doing
their thing or PFL or what have you.
Speaker 4: Right now, that's a great question as of right here,
right now, I'm going to live in my own little
bubble and do my own thing. Yeah, but that doesn't
mean that I don't respect the other guys that are
out there, or just like the other guys got that
that's all going to remain the same.
Speaker 2: So then I wonder this, and this actually was something
that popped in my mind immediately when I heard about this,
this potential project. There have been a lot of UFC
guys through the years that have wanted to try boxing
for whatever reason. You know, obviously Connor McGregor Floyd may
whether it be in the number one example and the
amount of money and interest of that generator, but there's
been others. We saw it happen with France and Naganho
not that long ago. But if TKO is running a
boxing league, a boxing promotion and you have your fighters
under contract with UFC, is it one of those things
where if they're under contract with UFC and they come
to your folks at UFC and say, hey, I would
like to go try my head at boxing, that you
could seamlessly allow them to do that in some capacity
because you're still the promoter under the TKO banner. You
know of the the whatever.
Speaker 4: I definitely could, but I'm definitely not interested in doing
the the you know, the matches between discipline, so you know,
the boxers will box and the MMA guys will fight.
Speaker 2: Understood. I will wrap up with this because we've been
doing this for a bit. I wonder when you think
when you lay your head down at night and you
think about all the things that have to get done
on your laundry list, of your your checklist of stuff
that you need to deal with, Uh, what is like
the number one thing that you that was like the
reason that you wanted to do this Because you said yourself, Dana,
You've got You've got your own money, you can raise money.
You don't need this headache. Your busiest heck already with
UFC and with your other endeavors. But why why this?
And what is the first thing you got to do
when this all gets rolling?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just felt like the timing and the Turkey
relationship and all this stuff was you know, I just
felt it, and I do everything by gut. Number one.
Number two, the first thing that needs to get done
is we need to build infrastructure. We need to build
the right team, you know for this project. I always
surround myself with really good.
Speaker 3: People, you know.
Speaker 2: And when you say team, what what roles are you
speaking of? Is it like, you know, an executive matchmaking?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I need I don't need executives. I need matchmaking.
Speaker 4: We got the legal I need U operations, people like
my girl Amber that runs the shows, the fucking animal,
you know what I mean. I need people like those
are the key people I need. I need ops, I need,
I need matchmaking, And.
Speaker 2: Uh, you need a talent scout to go sign some fighters, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, We've got a laundry list of guys. We've
got over one hundred and fifty guys right now that
we're looking to sign. Okay, but that even the fighters
that are going to be signed are all going to
be determined by our rights deal.
Speaker 3: And uh, you know what they need, you don't.
Speaker 2: You don't sound too concerned about getting a right steals
the point.
Speaker 4: Listen, I just did a fucking right steal for for power,
slap for insane money.
Speaker 3: I figure that stuff out. That's that's what I do.
Speaker 4: I mean, I will always figure out how to run
the business and how to distribute it to as many
people as possible.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how you shake things up.
I think it's gonna be very interesting. And I'll just
say this, I'll see you at the Canelo Crawford by
which I think you're going to be promoting.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it, Dan, Thanks.
Speaker 2: Dana, Thanks a love for doing this. Thank you very much.
Good luck with everything, Have a good day thanke care.
Speaker 1: All right, So put a bow on this for now,
if you would. There's a lot of optimism. I mean
one other thing that I will just add to what
you're talking about. He has built an empire off of
the UFC concept. Obviously, the WWE stop laughing people at
wrestling because Nick con who you were talking about, and
the WWE people got a five billion dollar with a
B five billion dollar deal with Netflix for Monday Night wrestling,
a ten year Monday Night Raw deal for five billion dollars.
These are serious people, obviously. Just to follow up one
more time and put a bow.
Speaker 2: On it, no doubt they're serious people. I know Nick
con Well, I mean, like I said, he represented me
for fifteen sixteen years. You know, in large measure the
beautiful home I live and I owe in large measures
do is negotiating.
Speaker 1: I often joke the house that Nick con built.
Speaker 2: I listened to. I used to joke around with Nick
about that that and this is this. God's on his truth.
I would joke with him. I said, if I could,
I would carve the letter c AA in my front lawn.
Thank the company for the beautiful contracts I had for
all those years with ESPN. But I would be fine
by my homeowners association. But your point is well taken.
These are serious people who know the business end of things,
and they've been dramatically successful in what they do, and
I have every expectation that they will have some modicum
of success in boxing as well. And it's going to
be very interesting to watch a play out. I mean,
you know, it doesn't start until probably next year. Maybe
they'll do an event at the end of the year,
as I reference with potentially doing Canelo and Terrence Crawford.
But they, you know, Dana's ding, as they heard in
the interview, is now to ramp it up to you know,
get their matchmaking in order get their their operations people
that they need to run these events. And obviously they're
gonna have to go sign fighters, which with the money
that they have at their disposal, with Turkey and the
Saudi's backing them, probably won't be very difficult to either
sign some of the top young fighters in terms of
amateurs and or free agents. Who are you know, promotional
free agents or people whose contracts expire. So listen, you know,
I'm very interested to see how it plays out. And
I listen. I've said from day one, I welcome competition boxing.
You know, there's nothing wrong with a little shake up
here and there. You know, they're gonna do a few
things different. I mean, Dana talked about. Look, you know,
they're not looking to play with other promoters, and they're
not looking to deal with the sanctioning bodies. They're gonna
want to try to create their own belt. They Turkey
owns the ring belt. Now that said, there are things
that are going to be different. You know, promoters in boxing,
unlike UFC and MMA, can't have their own belts because
that is a against the Federal Muhammad Ali. But maybe
there'll be a movement to repeal that Act. I hope
they don't because it does do some protections to the
professional boxers. But I've never understood, other than outstanding lobbying
by UFC, why the ALI Act does not cover mma,
but it does boxing because everything about it is the
same except the actual you know, location of the fights,
the octagun instead of a ring. But that's a story
for another day.
Speaker 1: All right, good on that. Let's get to some news.
So when you and I last talked, it was the
aftermath of the Tank Davis Lamont Roach fight. You broke
news on our podcast, our Fight Freaks Night Recap podcast
to us and to the audience hustling on Sunday that
the New York State Athletic Commission had said to you,
essentially that we didn't get a clean look at whether
it was a knockdown or not for Javonte Davis in
the time window that we needed to. So in the
aftermath of that, there's been a lot said, There's been
a lot going on about that. You know, again, I
find it dubious. That's the word that I have that
the executive director wasn't in the middle of that. This
is me saying this up on the ring apron saying,
hold on, we're in between rounds. We want to see
whether that was a knockdown before we resumed the fight,
and none of that happened. So we're not going to
relitigate all this.
Speaker 2: So why would he get on the ring to stop
the round.
Speaker 1: And to make sure that they had look at it.
Speaker 2: That's not permissible under the rules of the replay.
Speaker 1: Well, they had sixty seconds in between, and then you
said another thirty seconds, right, and they can also call
time and say but it wasn't about They wouldn't have
in the middle of the round, not on the middle round,
So no thing is they.
Speaker 2: Can they do the review while the round is going
on if necessary, right. In other words, they had two minutes.
My impression is that the replay was sent to them
within seconds after that he hit the deck, so they
could theoretically review it in those final two minutes and
make the call and then then use the one minute
and then potentially thirty more seconds. There was no reason
for anybody to get on a ring apron. That's not
even part of the deal.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is hold on, hold on, all right,
So two minutes have gone by under the theory that
you just said, and if they don't have a good
look at the replay, I'm back to my original point.
The executive director should be up on the ring apron
saying what I'm saying in between rounds. He can go
up to the referee and say, we've got to look
at this. Hang on on, we call time whatever to
look at it.
Speaker 2: That is, I'm not going to sit here and argue
with you about that. We can talk about it off
the air. That is not how it operates under the
rules of the Commission. They they let's get to the news.
The news is the attorney for Lamont Roach Junior, has
sent the Commission, Matt de Laglio, who was the executive director,
a letter saying that they want a hearing, a review,
and all that which which to the credit of the Commission.
Even before that letter was sent, they said they were
reviewing the situation. So that's good. They all know that
there was a problem. But they made the case in
the letter that I published on my subject, so people
can certainly go there and check out the folk. It's
like a four page letter that details it the way
that the lawyer approached it is not even basing it
on strictly knockdown or not knockdown. They're saying they should
turn it into a victory for Lamont Roach. And the
thing that they included that part of it with the
knockdown and not calling it properly. But the point that
they emphasized at the beginning of it was really about
the fact that he went to the corner Tank and
that his corner person, Calvin Ford, came up the stairs
with the talent to wipe him off, all of which
is illegal. You're not allowed to go to the corner
and turn your back. They could be you know, you
could be told that you're abandoning the fight, and he
could have been stopped on a TKO, or he could
have been disqualified because the cornerman came up the steps,
or he could have been disqualified or had a point
deduction for both of these infractions of coming up the
steps as well as wiping off the fighter. And the
referee Steve Willis had opportunities to penalize Tank in a
multitude of ways, but chose not to do any of them.
And so if it takes one point, certainly could have
taken two points for the different infractions. One point, wrote wins,
two points. He wins comfortably, and so that's what they're making.
The point to the permission is that they need to
turn this from a draw into a victory for our client.
So we'll see they're going to obviously go through the
process and presumably at some point they'll be hearing and
they'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: It seems like we did all of this in the
spring of last year with Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia
and trying to get the verdict overturned into a win
for Haney. And you said there is precedent in other
jurisdictions that this has happened before. What, Okay, give me
the raid. What's the likelihood that they're going to get
it reversed to a win? I think almost nil. I
think almost none. What I mean, ultimately, is the best
case scenario that they avoid the outcome.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think they. I don't think the Roach
people want the outcome avoided because that helps Tank because
it takes the blemish off his record. Look, Roach, Hardy
has a loss to herring from a few years ago.
This is you know, he's got a draw, so this
is not going to impact his record. He wears he'll
wear I believe, like a like a badge of honor.
Speaker 1: But you don't.
Speaker 2: You don't. They don't want it to become a no
contest because they want that blemish on Tank. Stavid Tank
Davis's record. So in terms of the Devin Haney situation,
it's very different because a drug test is different than
than a than a cascade of errors that were made
in the context of a round that are easily provable
by a replay. Look. Uh, so that one had a
chance to be overturned, it obviously wasn't. This one I
believe has a better chance to be overturned, but probably
won't be. I mean, I guess that's just they usually
don't change those things, but you never know. If you
make the right argument, You've got, you know, a good lawyer. Hey,
they can look.
Speaker 1: At it clearly. When the guy is admitting that I
had the grease with the sweat coming out of my
hair into my eyes and I had to have it
wiped off because I could have gotten knocked out. I'm
paraphrasing what Gervonte's Davis said after the fight. That is
definitely grounds for something should have been levied against him.
Speaker 2: You bring up a good point, though, and I forgot
that I mentioned to you about the making and emphasizing
the fact that he came up the stairs and there
was a lot of things that were against the rules
that went on the second point that they make in
this letter prior to getting to the point about missing
the knockdown, is the fact that Davis admits that he
wore that stuff in his hair. And in this it's
very clear in the rules about having nothing on your
body that could be an irritant. And if that theoretically,
if they're banging heads and they're they're you know, in
tight in a in a clincher, you know, head to head, it.
Speaker 1: In his eyes, yes, eyes, So they make that as.
Speaker 2: A point that all, so it should be grounds for
him breaking their rules. So, look, they have I'm not
a lawyer, but I've covered boxing a long time and
I've seen a lot of protests that are nonsense. This
is not one to me that is nonsense. They got
a lot of things that they can work with. Now,
whether the Commission will have the fucking balls to do
something about it, that remains to be seen. And I
also can guarantee you that if they did overturn the decision,
I promise you on all of my boxing posters that
the folks at PBC and TGB will be suing the
New York State Athletic Commission to oblivion based on that
particular situation. So this ain't done yet, is the point.
Speaker 1: There will be lawyers. As we often joke, stay tuned, lawyer.
Let's let's let's get to let's get to happier and
more interesting news. So full disclosure here, I haven't even
shared this with you earlier. On Thursday morning, I went
with Missus Reeves, my father, and we went to beautiful Lakeland, Florida,
in between Tampa and Orlando. The Twins' high school basketball program,
of which they are JV players, was playing in the
state championship semi final Dan Rayfield. It did not go
well in the semifinal that were beaten by the team
from Miami, but still a great experience. The team got
all the way to the state semifinals. I am in
the stands Dan Rayfield, getting ready for this morning basketball game,
and suddenly on my phone ding, like your phone ding.
We get notifications social media ding, lights, bells, buzzers like
we've always talked about that. There's an announcement from MVP Promotions.
And the announcement is that Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor
are going to fight again in July. Third third fight
for them. It's back at Madison Square Garden. It's back
on Netflix.
Speaker 3: That's the best.
Speaker 1: So, so tell me more about this, because I'm I'm
sharing with somebody that is in the stands. I'm like,
I know you're a boxing fan. How about this? They're
gonna fight again? Look at it. It's right here on
my phone. So that's how I found out about it.
So they announced this on Thursday. Tell me more about it.
Le's get into it a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's been expected. I mean they've been
you know, there's not been like a lot of secrets
to say that. They've been discussing this fight. Eddie Hern's
been talking about it. It's a fight that the fans want.
Both of the women involved are certainly open to it.
It's clearly the fight that the fans want the most
in terms of either of what Amanda could do or
what Katie could do. It's certainly from a financial standpoint,
will pay both Amanda and Katie their biggest persons they've
ever had, and they've made their previous biggest persons by
fighting each other anyway. And so Netflix had a huge
success not only with the Tyson Jake Paul main event
where they set all kinds of records for streaming, but
the undercart fight between you know, this was the co
feature when Jake and Tyson had their bout back a
few months ago that that Doubt in particular, on its
own did something like seventy four million worldwide viewers on
average through the course of the fight, which is gargantuan.
And so Netflix sees value because they are in the
business of big events, and I think there's no doubt
that Amanda Serrano taken on Katie Taylor for the third
time is a big event when you're a company like
Netflix and you're looking to do those type of ten
poll things, and you know, it's the middle of the
summer where there's not a lot of other stuff going
on in the sports world, and so I think they
made a really good decision to pick this up. They
obviously have a business interest that they've worked with Jake
Paul on and whether it's his documentary or doing the
Tyson fight. So and I guarantee you not paying as much,
let's say, for Taylor and Toronto three that they did
for Jake Paul against Mike Tyson, and the Garden is
the perfect spot for it. They're both in that huge
amount of fans there. They'll sell out with no problem.
They sold out the first one over nineteen thousand. This
one will be sold out. I guarantee it'll have a
bigger gate because there'll be more expensive tickets, and they'll
both have great fan bases. Obviously, Katie will draw from
the very big and boisterous and loyal Irish fan base,
and Amanda's from Brooklyn and Puerto Rican, so she'll have
her team there and it's going to be the third
fight of Look, we talk about trilogies a lot on
this show, and we always talk about like, we don't
know what's going to happen in this third fight, but
I suspect unmitigated violence once again. The first two fights
are both sensational battles. Now, what's interesting about this trilogy
is that they go into the third fight where it's
not one and one. That's usually the way it works
in a trilogy fight. It's Amanda has lost the first
two fights, but Katie won those fights by the slimmest.
Speaker 1: Of the one we interject. Amanda goes into the fight
having been robbed of the second fight, and a lot
of people believe she won both fights, and she doesn't
have either one right now, So there's high, high motivation
for her.
Speaker 2: No doubt about it. But she didn't win either fight.
And I mean, I thought the first fight result was
fine in terms of I mean, I actually thought that
Katie eked out both fights. But I totally get the
fact that it was close enough. But they were really
great fights, hugely popular in terms of just the excitement
and how good they were. And certainly, even though Amanda
technically is zero to two, you can't tell me she
doesn't deserve a third fight. And so they're gonna do
the third fight. And you know, Taylor's victories in their
first fights are super super close. She won a split
decision in the first fight that was could have easily
gone either way.
Speaker 1: But we've had it's six or four for Taylor to
first time. And what was that May of twenty two
at Madison Square Garden? Correct? I believe that was the
time frame.
Speaker 2: April?
Speaker 1: When was it? I had that six four? I had
that sixty four for Amanda at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: Go on, No, the first fight took place on April thirty,
twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: I was clused.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the second fight took place in November on the
on the on the j. Paul Tyson card and they
had like seventy two thousand plus in the standup Arlington
at the AT and T Stadium. Anyway, in that third fight,
which was second fight, probably I mean, I'm sorry, in
the second fight, probably just punched for punch, even a
more hard hitting, brutal, hard action pack fight in the
first fight. In that fight, it was it was a
lot of a lot of stuff going on that fight,
but in the end it was Katie Taylor winning the
fight ninety five to ninety four on all three scorecards.
And then of course Amanda had that horrendous cut that
she suffered from a head butt over her right eye,
and she accused Katie Taylor of repeated purposeful head butts.
They'll go into this fight, I don't They're not going
to be They're gonna be respectful, I think, but they
they they know each other well at this point and
they're going to kick some ass. So I think another
fantastic the.
Speaker 1: Other and the other concern And you brought this up
kind of half jokingly half serious too. There have been
a lot of bomb punches landed by both of them
in these two fights, and especially one that just happened
in November, So we do we do for their health?
To be honest, yes, and I acknowledge too that this
was the you know, this was a wild, brutal second fight. Listen,
here's the thing but over Serrano's eye gnarly. But yeah, Amie,
this is a payday. They're both cashing in big time here.
Speaker 2: Aatie Keller is thirty years old. I think this might
be her last fight, win or lose. She's going to
have made a lot of money for a recent fights.
Her first fight with Serrano was a ridiculously violent in
action fight. She came back and she had somewhat of
an easier night in the fight after that, and that
was at Wembley Stadium. But after that she's had three fights,
the two fights in twenty twenty three against Chantel Cameron
which she split lost a majority in the first fight,
one a majority in the second fight where she captured
the undisprited junior welterweight title. But those were the two
fights of the year candidates, but they were in the
same year, so you can only pick one. But those
were absolutely brutal, and then they had that. Then she
had the second fight with Serrano in November. She took
a year off in between fights and that was another
brutal fight. So in her last five fights, Katie Taylor
has been in like World War three in four of them. Yep,
there's only so much the body can take.
Speaker 1: And by the way, and the brain, by the way,
the Braindy.
Speaker 2: Taylor is one of the nicest, sweetest, most humble people
you could ever possibly meet outside during Nobody wants to
see this woman walking on her hills a few years
from now, so you know.
Speaker 1: She's tremendous to deal with and work the hard way
up the same way. So I'm with you. But hey,
they're gonna do this.
Speaker 2: We're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: We got plenty of time to get between now in
July to get it ramped up. But back at the
Garden and back on Netflix stand by for that. All right,
Let's follow up on something we did mention on the
recap pod. It is now official. Jim Lampley put a
social media of it out as well that he is
going to be back in the fold for this May
second card, the uh what is it? Fatal Fury card
that they have coming at Times Square that has Ryan Garcia,
Devin Haney and separate fights and Tea Fimo Lopez in
action as well, So follow up on that being made
official as they had the press announcements and stuff earlier
this week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when he was when Jim Lampley had been
in New York at the Tank Davis and Lemon Roach
Fight doing what he does in terms of the ringside
chats with our buddy Lance Pugmyer for our friends at
PPV dot Com, which are the folks that actually brought
Jim back into boxing, you know, for the first time
in his post HBO life, and they've you know, brought
him in to help promote their product and do their
chats and make videos and work with Lance on the
fight nights, which has been fantastic and I'm glad that
PPV dot Com did that. But where Jim's heart has
always been and I know that because Jim has been
a friend of mine for a very long time, He's
wanted the call fights again. For whatever reason, it didn't
happen after HBO went off the air, and so he
has not actually called a boxing match since December of
twenty eighteen, when he was on the call of the
final HBO event. He'd met with Turkey who was in
New York for the press conference for the card you
mentioned about Times Square, which is Ryan Garcia, Rolli Romero,
Devin Hainey against Jose Ramirez and then tia Fimo defending
his junior welterweight title against Armor of Barbosa. So Turkey
came to town for a bunch of stuff this week.
One was the press conference and to meet with Lampley.
Two was to do the press conference for that event
that they did earlier in the week. Three was the
rollout of the suff we were just talking about with
Dana White announcing their partnership on this new TKO boxing
promotion that the Saudis are backing. And then three Thursday
night at Radio City Music Hall is the press conference
for the Canelo Alvarez Williams skullfight that they're promoting that
will take place in May in Saudi Arabia. So to me,
the biggest news of all of that, because the press
conferences are just press conferences. The TKO thing they made official,
but it not wasn't a shocked anybody. We've all kind
of expected that was they brought Lampley back to side.
So he's gonna call these fights. I know, he's very
excited about it, and I hope he's got his voice
in good form, and he he gets into training like
the fighter fighters, and maybe does a little practice work
on the mic, you know, when he's in the shower
looking in the mirror, whatever. But it'll be wonderful to
hear it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm the broadcaster of the two
of us, and I never practice in the mirror in
the shower anymore. I will say this, though you call
the game for I understand. I will say this, and
she I don't think they're going to hear this or
find this out. The twins have a couple of presentations
coming up, and one of them is continuing to practice
in front of the mirror. And it's sweet and it's cute.
It's not something that their dad does anymore. But she
gets mad at herself and I'm in the other room
and she's practicing in front of the mirror doing the presentation.
I don't My point is, I don't think Lampley's gonna
be doing that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Here, you didn't call a football game or a basketball game,
I understand for five years, and now you're being put
back in.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you what's more realistic. What will
probably happen is he might go into a studio coming
up or something and do and do a mock like
that where calling it off TV. That might even go
to a local show and do something like that. And again,
this man was the soundtrack of HBO's World Championship Boxing
for so long. Incredible, so good to have him back.
Good on him. Whenever the broadcasters can get back in
here for Jim lamp Plain, We've got plenty of time.
And by the way, they can hear from him. Search
on this podcast feed. You had a phenomenal I gotta
stop kissing up to you on this podcast. You had
a phenomenal interview with Jim Lampley last year I believe
it was last year. Search his name on this feed
Jim Lampley, l A M P l E Y and
go back and listen to Dan and Jim Lampley telling
stories at his career and being brought back in the
fold with PPV dot com. It is tremendous stuff, including
the Tyson Douglas call and the upset that night. That
kind of stuff. It's gold gold, go back. There is
a plug for that, all right. Continuing with the news,
all right, so as much as we're like keeping it
positive with these last couple of announcements, I have a
the action for you on your next news item about
Dillion White being injured and so he can't fight Joe Joyce,
I really don't care, but apparently you care, so give
the give me the news real quick at we'll move on.
Speaker 2: It's not that I care or don't care. It's what
happened this week, sour thing.
Speaker 1: I don't care that this fight was ever being made,
so I definitely don't care. The reason why it is
that's my opinion, go ahead.
Speaker 2: The reason why it's more important than that is because,
for better or for worse, on April fifth, this was
the main event on the Zone, of the first event
that Queensberry was doing under its new exclusive contract with
his zone, And so you always want to get off
on a good foot. You always want to start off
on a positive note. So when you lose your main
event because of an injury a month before the fight,
that's never a good thing. And the reality is, say
whatever you want about done what And Joe Joyce, I
have no doubt in my mind this would have been
a fun fight for as long as a lesson between
two big, lumbering heavyweights that can both crack, that both
are sort of desperate for a win against another notable opponent.
So while I'm not going to tell you I thought
it was the greatest fight in the history of heavyweight boxing,
I think it's a lot more significant and notable and
interesting than you're making out to me. But now you
don't have to watch it because Dylan White suffered the
hand injury and he's out of the fight now. The
good thing about that is that the fight card will
still go on. Joe Joyce will still be in the
main event. They are looking for opponent for him. I
am told they have not signed yet, unless something's happened,
you know, in the last few hours that I'm unaware of.
But they had at least a verbal agreement that he
would be replaced in the fight by Philip Hergovich, which
in some ways is actually a better, more interesting fight
Hergobac coming off of the loss that he's suffered by
TKO because of such severe cuts when he was boxing
against Daniel Dubois for the interim IBF heavyweight belt that
took place last fall. So if he is in fact
the guy that winds up in the ring across from
Joe Joyce. That's a much Oh, that's a little. That's
a hell of a save, And I think it's a
better fight.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: It's a much better fight. And let me spot back
at you. There's nothing significant or important about a Million
White Joe Joyce fight in the present day. They've both
been knocked out multiple times, including Joyce over the last
year and a half being knocked out twice by July
Jang brutally and being beaten beaten up by Derek Chesa.
So yeah, that was nothing, implayan.
Speaker 2: I just looked at it from the fact that it's
two good names.
Speaker 1: The British fans would about the names. Yeah, the British
fans would care about the names.
Speaker 3: But I'm with you.
Speaker 1: The Hergovic thing is much more intriguing and I would
favor him greatly over Joyce in that scenario. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2: But either way it's Dylan White or it's argument. You
gotta figure they're going to make a fun fight for
the fans. That's the bottom line, all right.
Speaker 1: One more news item before the nostalgia, and that's Golden
Boy making some announcements, including Oscar Klazo will be back
and what else do we have here, including does it
involve Zerdo Ramirez on a separate announcement. What else do
we know here?
Speaker 2: Well, two things on Golden Boy Front number one, they
did announce that the WOWBA Ring Magazine Straway Champion Oscar Colaso,
who is one of the more exciting fighters in boxing currently,
he will be making a defense against a fighter named
Edwin Cano who was from Mexico, so Klasa was from
Puerto Rico will travel to Mexico to defend his title
in Mexico. That'll be on March twenty ninth. It'll be
on the undercart of a a good main event, which
is the WBC's interim lightweight title holder William Zebita, one
of the most exciting fighters in boxing, in a rematch
against Kevin Farmer. They put on a heck of a
fight on the Latino Night card that took place back
a couple months ago, and so they're doing a rematch,
you know, while Zepaida theoretically is waiting to do the
mandatory against your cor Stevenson, and so that is the
main event, and he'll have Claso in the title defense
on the undercard. So anytime I can watch Oscra Coloso fight.
I could watch him fight you. I could watch him
fight Edwin Kenno. I'd be very happy to do so easily.
Speaker 1: Can't watch him fight me because I weigh a whole
lot more than Strawwaight.
Speaker 2: He still kick your ass though, so.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's not the case, but I can't
legally fight him at strawweight. I haven't been strawweight since
I was in like middle school.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying I am a big fan of Ostria
Colaso and the other thing. While not an announcement, they
are planning the next defense of Gilberto Zerdoormeriz who in
that Latino Night card defeated your boy Chris Billains meant
to unify the WBA and the WBO cruiserweight title. So
he has been linked to the possibility of a fight
with a ji Opataia and that may happen eventually, but
he did have you know, they did a step asideal
with the former title holder at union Ol Dorta cost
to step aside. That will be He's the mandatory. That
will be the next fight for Zerto. That's a very solid,
very intriguing fight. In my opinion. Dort Coast is older
and doesn't fight a whole lot, but he's a tremendous puncher.
He's twenty seven to two with twenty five knockouts, has
frankly one of the greatest nicknames in the history of Boxton.
They call him the ko Doctor. I mean, just a
massive puncher when he lands the right way anyway. So
that is a very good fight, and they're trying to
get that done, and it's not done yet, but it's
ear marked. Let's say for June twenty eighth, we headline
one of the Golden Boys shows on his own. So
they're putting together what feels like a nice spring and
summer schedule.
Speaker 3: Like all of that.
Speaker 1: One final thing to do, and that is talk nostalgia.
And on March the seventh, which as we release this
is Friday. It is my goodness, now the tenth anniversary.
I remember this fight of Keith Thurman March seven, twenty fifteen,
decisioning Robert Guerrero and retaining the WBC welterweight title. HEBBA
do it, says WBC on your rundown, So I'll swatch you.
You got your rundown wrong. WBA welterweight title. It's the
first ever PBC event. I remember watching this, you were
ringside for this, and that's Clearwater, Florida's Keith one time Thurman.
And there's even a tie in to an upcoming Keith
Thurmon fight. But let's go back in the nostalgia way back.
That's been a decade ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not so much about the fight itself, but
it's because it's now the tenth anniversary of PBC and
we look back at the ten years of the trajectory,
the ups and downs of PBC, what it started at,
what it went on to be, what it became, what
it is currently. A lot of stuff's happened in ten years.
But there was a lot of anticipation for this fight.
From the standpoint, not so much again, the matchup was fine.
Keith was defending his WBA bill for the first time.
Guerrera was a good contender at that time still, and
they did put on a hell of a fight, by
the way, a very underrated fight, really exciting. Garral got
dropped in the ninth round. He did end up winning
a very one sided fight, but it was not it
was a good fight to watch. In other words, like
just because it was one sided on the squorecards, you know,
virtually a shutout. But it was a really good pitch
battle and you know, fun to watch, and they had
a good crowd there and the thing did very good
numbers on NBC. That was at a time when PBC
first started where they were buying time on the networks
trying to induce one of their various networks that they
were putting fights on to turn around and give them
a right steal. They ultimately got one. I mean, they
were still on showtime getting right steals. They ultimately got
a right stale from Fox. It obviously didn't last very long,
but they were buying time on a lot of networks CBS, NBC, Spike,
ESPN and others. But this was the first one of
that whole group, and NBC blew it out. They had
like Marv Albert calling fights. They had like I felt like,
about twelve different commentators doing stuff that was kind of
a mess, to be honest, but they were starting off
doing their thing. The MGM had a big crowd, they're
over ten thousand, and that was the beginning of PBC,
which went on to put on some tremendous fights others
that were not so great, but this was it. They
spent crazy amounts of money when they were buying the
time and on this event alone, based on the purses
and the production that they did and the way that
they set up all the stuff with the rams they
were trying to sort of emulate the WWE introductions and walkouts.
It was probably over a ten million dollar a night
for PBC, where Al Hayman was using money that they
had raised from you know, hedge fund money to do
this investment. You know, I don't Ultimately it probably didn't
work out because they did all these deals and they
got a smallest right sale from Fox. It didn't last
very long. So that was the rage back then. You know,
we talked so much today over the last year and
a half about all the money and all the things
that are going on with the Saudi's and with Turkey
and doing this deal and doing that deal. But ten
years ago, that exact conversation was happening, but it was
all about Aiman in PBC. Now, who knows what the
end result will be with the Saudia's, but the end
result for PBC has been lots of great fighters and
tremendous fights and lots of good events. But in the
long run, you know, they're in a problem right now
because they have a very like not a great rights
deal or whatever you want to call it with prime video,
which is very sporadic with the non paper used. They've
done one, they've got one more coming up than I
know of, and all the rest has been paper used
every couple of months. So you know, it's it's been
an interesting ride, let's say, with PBC.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's an argument you couched it and said
it gently. I mean, there's a lot of argument. They've
petered out completely except for the pay per views as
an entity. But the interesting thing in that time period
is the fights were being put back on air quotes
network TV, that NBC even had a Deontay Wilder fight
in prime time on the NBC television network. The CBS
television network was showing primetime boxing. This was the eighties
and the nineties that you used to always have fights
on network tea on pay per view.
Speaker 2: But when they did try yeah, when they did this
fight with Keith Thurman and Robert Guerrero, they also had
Adrian Broner, who was red hot at the time, against
John Molina, on the undercard, So that was like a
big deal to have those caliber names on the same show.
And by the way, it was the first primetime boxing
event on NBC in thirty years when they did this
fight and they drew an audience, it started off like
tremendously well the audience on that I actually went back
and I looked up because I was keeping track back
in the time of all the ratings, because it was
a very big deal about how they were doing with
these network fights. They never reached that level again with
a primetime fight what they did with Thurman against Guerro.
That fight did nearly three and a half million viewers
on primetime NBC. Now, the one caveat to that was
after the Olympic Games, they had the American basketball team
had won the gold medal, and I guess it would
have been what the twenty sixteen Olympics right that right
after that game went off the air that the program
that followed that was an Ryl Spence fight against Leonard
Bundu and a title eliminator that took place. It was
like a special one fight or I forget, it's maybe
be a one fight deal, one fight broadcast or whatever.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: But that point is that boxing match, because it came
after such a massively viewed Olympic gold medal match on NBC,
even not in prime time. That fight did like over
four million viewers, but the prime time kickoff over three million.
Everybody was thrilled, thought we might have something here. And
you know, while they did, you know many many of
their shows, through their time buys on the various networks,
were doing an excess of a million viewers. They never
reached that three million plus ever.
Speaker 1: Again, Yeah, and TV, and we don't have to go
down this road. TV's gotten so flat, fractured to the
point where most people don't have TV anymore. They have
streaming outlets. So this is what's evolved into over the
last few years. So you struggle to get some audience
and just one more tie in. Keith Thurman had a
long run as a welterweight champion there for two or
three years. He's then had injuries, et cetera. He's still around,
by the way. Nostalgia on top of the nostalgia, And
here's a tease on the recap pod, which will be
recapping a little bit. We're going to talk about his
fight with Australia's Brock Jarvis. That could set into motion
the proposed fight from a year ago with Tim Zoo
Zoo fighting here in the same time frame that Thurman
is the fighter injury that.
Speaker 2: Rock servis fight those not to what Wednesday morning.
Speaker 1: Correct Wednesday morning. But we'll talk a little bit more
about it on Sunday night into Monday about that fight.
But my point is Keith Thurman still fighting ten years
later and uh still trying to make a go of it.
I think he's at the very end. I think he's
good on the commentary, but he's going to get back
there in the ring.
Speaker 2: Big problem he's had the injuries, you know, that's that's
really assortment of them.
Speaker 1: But that night against Guerrero, he was brilliant that night
and for he and shout out to our guy, Dan Birmingham.
I have known Dan Birmingham for thirty years from his
days with Winky Wright and Jeff Lacy, et cetera. And
he had another great world champion with Keith Thurman, who
was he was on a run in the mid twenty
tens and in the late twenty tens. He was on
a run at that time period in Dan and Keith
are back in the gym and then headed to Astro.
I would assume they're already in Australia right the way.
Speaker 2: One thing about that show that I was thinking about
when they did these NBC shows early on now right now,
if you look at PBC, they are all in dead
with the sanctioning bodies. I mean, they've got all kinds
of WBC champions and interim champions and they do business
with those guys, you know, like there's no tomorrow. But
when it started, Hayman purposely was trying to diminish the titles.
Keith Thurman was, as you mentioned, he was defending the
title that night. They didn't allow the title to be
in the ring when they were introducing the fight. They
were purposely trying to do that. I remember one PBC fight,
not this fight, but another one where the supervisor at
ringside had the WBC belt propped up and they ended
up tearing it away and so it wouldn't be showing
on the broadcast. I mean, that was the type of
control that that Hayman had exerted over those in ring
and on the broadcast the time and a show, so
they wouldn't they wouldn't let the officials in. In terms
of the sanctioning bodies. Theydn't even mentioned the belts on
the broadcast. They didn't allow the entourages to walk with
them to the ring, not even the trainer. It was
just the fighter comeing the ramp. I mean, I actually
did mind they're being a less crowded ring. They also
didn't have the ring announcer in the center of the ring.
The introductions were done off camera in a microphone like
the Voice of God's kind of thing. I mean, I
remember they tried to sort of reinvent the wheel. It
really didn't work because now they're back to doing it
the way boxing's supposed to be done.
Speaker 1: All right, good nostalgia on top of the nostalgia and
great stuff with Dana White, score yourself ten more bonus points.
By the way, Rayfield would like to say in the
preview mode, let's go Duke because they're going to look
to kick the crap out of North Carolina again on Saturday.
While we go a preview, you do realize, for all
of the historical massive success that Duke has had, they
are on the most epic run this season of destroying
the rest of the ACC and that includes college basketball,
that includes killing North Carolina the first time by thirty points.
At Cameron Rayfield, you're going to be in a really
good mood if they clabber North Carolina again on Saturday.
I know you'll take the one point when if it's
a point win. But right now they've been rolling. Let's
see if it continues for Cooper Flag and Duke and basketball.
So there's something else in the preview mo. But excellent
job with Dana White on this edition as well. Why
don't you and I reconvene on the bet US Boxing
Show one Eastern Time Friday afternoon on the bet US platforms,
and then off of this weekend we'll do a recap
podcast of the British fights on Friday night and all
the other action, and then look ahead to a couple
of other interesting fights midweek. Why don't we do that?
Dan Rayphiel, all else is good?
Speaker 2: That sounds good? There he is.
Speaker 1: There's our Insider Fight Freach unit is a substack. Subscribe
there as well to find Dan Rayfield. I'm merely TJ
Reeves follower. Subscribe on this podcast feed. You've been listening
here to us on the Big Fight weekend preview pod