UFC Freedumb

Jack discusses the events of the March 28th UFC Fight Night card, with Israel Adesanya and Joe Pyfer headlining. After, he dives into his thoughts on the UFC Freedom 250 card and absolutely rips it apart. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome back to another episode of the Brain Bash Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today. Uh I missed you. I missed you, loyal viewer. It's been a while since I've done this. I was on spring break. I am a college student. Still a young man I am, Jack Hodgson. Just a young guy. So I was just on break. Didn't have access to the studio for a while. I was home visiting family, working, as us broke college students do. And um I'm back. I'm back and better than ever. Never been better, baby. Uh I'm in the peak performance of my physical condition. I will never be this strong again in my entire life. Um I bench pressed the other day for the first time in a long time. And was putting up some numbers. I was moving mass, ladies and gentlemen. Uh mostly gentlemen, probably. Um, anyways, that's just a little glimpse into my dark twisted mind. But uh this week we're gonna so Brain Bash, we're gonna try to stray away from the weeks where we have like three different topics, four topics. We're gonna try to keep it to two topics a week at most. So we're gonna try to keep the episodes a little shorter so it's less information you have to digest. Um, you know, I just think that would be a lot easier and easier to manage for me, but also easier for you guys to actually comprehend what I'm saying instead of me just spitting at you for 50 minutes to an hour. So this week we're just gonna be talking about the UFC fight night on the 28th this past weekend, uh the Joe Pi for Israel Adesanya. And we're gonna talk a little bit about UFC Freedom 250 and what I think about that. But we'll save that for later because I want to start the episode on a lighter note. And this fight night, I'm only gonna cover the main card and the uh headliner of the prelims, but that's not to say the rest of this card was not incredible. This was a really fun fight night. I had a really good time watching this from start to finish. All the fights that I thought were gonna be boring and I was worried about didn't end up being boring. Uh I was pretty bummed about the Macy Barber um Alexa Grasso fight not being boring. I wanted that to go the distance, and I wanted Barber to win. Uh I would have won $200, and I would have been able to pay my rent this month. Thanks, Macy. No, thanks, Alexa Grosso. That was a nasty knockout. You didn't need to be doing all that. You're making I'm probably gonna have to eat ramen noodles for the next three weeks because of you, Alexa. But not nice knockout nonetheless, but we'll get to that later. We're gonna first talk about the Chase Super versus Lance Gibson Jr. fight. Uh Lance Gibson Jr. got his first win in the UFC. He had a very close fight with uh King Green in his last bout, his first UFC bout, but that ended in split decision going uh by the way of King. But Lance Gibson Jr. got the victory this time, um, landed a huge elbow that came out of absolutely nowhere in the beginning, and he put Hooper on skates, man. And Chase was able to stay along for a minute and just tried to grapple with him just to regain his balance, but it just did not happen. And Gibson landed some huge knees and found that finish. And while some I I kind of heard a little bit of stirring of people saying it was an early stoppage, but it's it's definitely not. Hooper didn't contest the stoppage at all. Like once once the fight was called, Hooper wasn't getting up and waving his hands like, oh come on, what do you mean? He was he was done. He was just like, yeah, I lost. He didn't make any movements, he didn't make any gestures, any faces, anything. He knew it was over. And uh hats off, no, hats off to Lance Gibson Jr. First UFC win, and against a guy like Chase Hooper, too. That's a pretty good first guy to beat in your second UFC fight. And the next one we had was Ignacio Bahamondez and Tofiq Masayev. Uh Bahamondes, he was incredible with his timing in this fight. Every shot that he was landing was so stiff and it just had so much English on it. And every time he would land those flush, Musaev just had so many visceral reactions, and Bahamondes' his striking was just extremely effective throughout this fight. Um Musayev secured a takedown at the end of the first round that he needed really bad and was able to get a few shots in there. Musaev had a crazy good chin in this second round, uh, and the whole fight in general, he was able to stay alive after he landed just a stone left hand that put Bahamondez on the ground. And then he found himself on top, and he was evening the playing field a little bit, landing some nasty elbows, and then Bahamundes was just bleeding like a pig. I mean, th that I think that's the fight where all of the blood w soaked the mats for the whole rest of the night. Uh I mean, it was just like someone got shot in the ring. It was unbelievable. And then we had round three, that was a scorcher. Musayev, he landed some huge shots on the feet, secured another takedown with like four minutes left, and he was extremely active on the ground. He was always pounding, never laying there without any action, always pounding, pause by the way. Bahamondez what he was able to reverse control to get the back of Musaev down at the last minute, but he just didn't really have enough time to get that comeback and get that finish. Um overall, some good stuff for Bahamondez in the first round, but Musayev took over later on and just didn't give him enough time with the last minute to find anything of substance, like a submission, really. It's one of the bloodiest fights I've seen in a really long time, and this was definitely one of the best fights of the night. This is one of my favorites for sure. And there's a I mean, there was a lot of short ones too. Like that was one of the biggest wars, one of the bloodiest fights, and it was also one of the longest ones, funny enough. Because the next one, we had Terrence McKinney and Kyle Nelson, and there really isn't much to say about this fight. It was just pure domination. McKinney got him down within like the first 15 seconds of the fight, and once he got to the ground, he just went to town relentlessly on him. And Herb Dean, he gave uh Kyle Nelson plenty of time to try to get his bearings, but he just couldn't recover. And McKinney partially landed a head kick, and it was enough. Like enough of it got through the arm of Nelson. It got through that absorption that uh it did some serious damage and then it was just over from there, and Terrence McKinney was able to find that finish pretty easily. The next fight, Mansoor Abdulk Abdul Malik and Yusri Belgarwi. Uh this fight was I d something was going on with my stream at the beginning of this one, so I missed the first like two uh probably two to three minutes of the first round, I think it was, and it was just showing me the paramount screen. I don't know, it was weird. It was just like it was it was giving me audio. It was I could hear Bruce announcing, I could hear the fight going on, and then it just wasn't showing the fight for a little bit, but then it came back. It cut out a little bit again at the in the end of the fit or uh the towards the end of the fight. But besides that, this was the only trouble I had the whole night. I don't know if anyone else saw that or what, but anyways, uh Abdul Malik just seemed completely outclassed technically in this fight. Uh he had some moments where he would get takedowns, but when he would get down to the ground, he had no jujitsu to go along go along with this wrestling, and Bel Bel Garwi was able to get out of it pretty effectively and got off the ground with relative ease every single time. Um Yusri, he had that distance managed, and he was the much more effective striker and just fighter in almost every way in this matchup. The thing was Mansur Abdul Malik just he had no answers and he was just getting picked apart. And you could tell Belgarwi was looking for the finish at the end of round two, and he almost had it. Uh he had some huge knees, huge uppercuts, but he wasn't rushing the finish by any means. Like he wasn't being stupid. He was playing it really smart, taking advantage of Malik's exhaustion. Uh he'd hit quick jabs when Mansur had his hands down to his sides, resting. And when Malik would go for those sloppy attacks while he was so exhausted and beaten, Usri would just effortlessly weave and land a counter that was just devastating and gave Malik some visceral reactions. And Malik was also he was going for super lazy spinning backfists the whole time. He went for one towards the end of, I think the second round it was, and Usri landed a flush right hand and almost got the the job finished before Abdul Malik was saved by the bell. It was just an example of like a a Hail Mary throw from Malik that was just completely countered by Usri. And he was super lucky. If there was even three more seconds on the clock, that fight would have been over. But going into the third, it was just impossible for Abdul Malik to do anything. He couldn't do anything at range, couldn't get a proper takedown. And when he was in range, when he finally found himself inside of that defensive shell, he was being wholeheartedly outclassed with just a barrage of knees and uppercuts in the clinch. He was using at times, he was so exhausted and beaten that he was literally using Usri to stay standing and just spinning like a broken Beyblade, trying to find that miracle spinning back fist. It was ridiculous. But I mean, I say it's ridiculous, but what are you gonna do when you can't figure a guy out for three rounds and you're just trying not to get knocked out? But he did. There was one final knee from Belgarwi, it was just icing on the cake, put the perfect punctuation on an even more perfect performance, and he found he found that finish. It was a great, great finish from him. And the next fight we had Julian Arrosa versus Larion Douglas. This was Larion's uh UFC debut, and he I mean showed no signs of being nervous, no signs of he looked like a veteran. He just he fought like a veteran and he moved with intention and he was so calculated. Uh the fight started out pretty slow initially, I mean, just figuring each other out, until a big leg kick landed from Doug like Douglas hit Arosa with a huge leg kick and it had Arosa just right from the get-go, moving extremely gingerly. He was hurt right in the first round. He was having a hard time navigating the ring, and Larian just smelled blood from there. And like I said, he was just cold and calculated. Never once did he rush. Uh when he'd land a huge shot, he was very composed. And like I said, just didn't rush in there and try to find something and get caught. Uh Rosa seemed to be, like I said, just fairly hurt, m literally moving in slow motion, and all of his strikes were so loopy, he was never protecting himself at all. And similar to the last fight, he was just looking for a miracle. While on the other hand, Douglas was playing the long game, picking him apart, timing his strikes with intention. He had Arosa cracked and wobbling f like five different times before he finally landed that last big right hook behind the ear, cracked Arosa on the ground a few times just for good measure. And this was genuinely one of the best performances of the night. And possibly the performance of the night. I don't think that I actually don't know who won performance of the night, but I don't think it should have been Joe Piper if he did, just because he was getting whooped a little bit at the end. We'll get into that fight too. But I just want to see who won Fight of the Night real quick. Yeah, Mousayev and Bahamonde's won fight of the night. That makes a lot of sense that the Tofik Musaev and um Bahamon Ignacio Bahamonde's fight was the fight of the night. No, I just want to see who won performance. Okay, yeah. So Joe Piper did win performance of the night and Alexa Grasso, and Alexa Grasso definitely deserved it. She had a crazy great knockout. But Joe Piper got a finish on an Izzy who has lost four out of his past five fights, and I know they were two champions or former champions. But the thing about this Joe Piper fight was um again, was uh he was getting whooped. Joe Piper wasn't doing that good in the first he got whooped in the first round, the second round he started doing some stuff, but like he didn't have a crazy performance. Larian Douglas did have a crazy performance. It was an amazing debut for a guy in his first fight in the UFC, and just put on a clinic, making it look like he's been there for 20 years, where I just saw no remote chance of the opponent winning that fight. In my eyes, that's a performance of the night, complete and utter domination. But that's not to take away from what Joe Piffer did. I'm just looking at context, the situation, everything that goes into it, and I do think that Larion was the fighter of the night. The next fight we had was Michael Kisa versus Nico Price, and this is kind of a weird fight because it was literally just Dana throwing Kisa a bone in his last fight of his career. Um I was really surprised to be seeing Nico fighting again so soon after getting knocked out in the first round of his fight versus Nikolai Veratenikov. Uh that just happened in like early February. That was the first week of February that happened, and um I just knew this fight wasn't gonna go past the first round. I didn't have any ex expectations for a barn burn or anything. It was just Dana giving a guy that just got knocked out to a Michael Kisa who's about to retire after this fight so he could go out on a win. And also hats off to Michael Kisa, ending his career on a forced fight win streak is a great way to go out. Uh going out on top, it's always really nice to see UFC fighters doing that. It's always sad when they, you know, go the route of an Anderson Silva who had such an illustrious career and let their uh I'm not gonna say tarnish his reputation at all, but definitely tarnished his record, I should say, because he went to w much longer than he should have. And that that's not just him, that's a lot of other fighters as well. I mean, Tony Ferguson, case in point. But it's just a bummer to see that happen. It's really nice when someone goes out on top for once. That's always good to see. Uh like I said, didn't have expectations for a Barn burner in this fight. Um Kisa he got a very exciting submission victory. I want to say it was within the first two minutes, if not the first three. So a very exciting way to go out, end your career with a submission, and get a big send-off from the UFC. And also, hats off to Nico Price for even taking this fight on a few weeks' notice, about three weeks' notice, after literally being knocked out the month before. If that's not toughness, I don't know what is. Hats off to that guy. That's a really that's a badass way to go. And the next fight we had after that, the one I was just mentioning earlier, Alexa Grasso and Macy Barber. This oh man, I was so bummed out about this. Because I had um the first what was it? I had Larion winning, and then I wanna say it was Yusri Belgarwi winning, and I got their victories, obviously, and I got them in the fashion that they did. So I was one leg away on my parlay from 200, and it was just a ten dollar bet, ten or fifteen dollars, but how nice would that have been? Like I said, I'm probably gonna have to be eating like rotisserie chicken and mayonnaise in a bowl for a couple weeks. Maybe some ramen if I'm feeling bougie. But we'll see. I don't really know. Whatever. Uh I yeah, so I I was so sure. I was so, so, so positively sure that this fight would go the distance, and I was so sorely mistaken. Barbara just got her seven fight win streak, snapped in the first round with a picture perfect, I mean perfect right hand from Alexa Grosso right on the button on Barbara's chin, and she went down like a sack of rocks. Her lights were turned off immediately, and Alexa wasted literally zero time jumping to the neck, going for that rear naked choke, but yeah, it was already over at that point. She had won via knockout. It was I was a little nervous at the end that my queen Macy Barber might have suffered some brain damage. She was laying there, uh, looking up at the ceiling, looking at Alexa Grosso for a while. And uh, I don't know, definitely just devastation. I can't imagine that feeling. Your seven-fight win streak and the ultimate fighting championship comes to an end in a matter of seconds, just minutes into a round. Uh, but hats off to Alexa Grosso, great finish. Macy Barber, you'll bounce back. Don't worry, sweetheart. And then after that, you know what we had. We had the main event of the evening. Israel Adesanya and Joe Piper. So, I mean, if you just watched the first round of this fight, you would probably put your whole house on Israel Audasanya and say, I have the full uh the whole world of confidence in this guy. I can't see him fumbling this one. He was just so calculated in that first round, and he kept great distance. He had a he did a great job finding the range. But the thing about Joe Piper that did even this out a little bit was that Izzy was landing the majority of shots, he was landing the better combos, the more calculated combos, but every five shots Izzy landed is equivalent to one Joe Piper punch in terms of power. There was just a immense, immense gap in power between the two. And Izzy would land nice combinations and spurts, but then like I said, Joe would land one counter and it would just nullify it and do as much damage, if not more. But on the scorecard, Izzy was tearing him apart. And he was doing a lot of setting up in that first round, showing he I saw a few different times he showed a possible question mark kick, and it definitely had Joe very visibly f uh freaking out a little bit, like overselling the dodges and everything, and Izzy had a lot of other feints that just did a good job of keeping Joe on his toes, not allowing him to bum rush and just throw a bunch of haymakers. Um, Izzy was just really mixing everything up very well. He he did not want Joe Piper to get comfortable. He didn't want him to be moving forward confidently, trying to control the center of the octagon confidently. And despite all of this, all the setup and everything else, Piper did do a good job of fighting past it and found a takedown at the end of the first round. But I don't think it was enough for him to win that first round. Izzy was just picking him apart with these calf kicks, and you could tell he was walking a little bit gingerly after the they were they were weighing on him for sure. In the beginning of a second, he was definitely you could tell for sure that he had taken that damage to those calves and he was having a harder time standing and moving around. But one thing Joe was slick with is the dirty boxing, and at times he was doing a pretty good job of grabbing Izzy's hands to push them away to sneak inside the defense. And multiple times it worked pretty well, other times it didn't as much. But when Izzy got cracked a few times. Times in the second round, he stopped moving forward as much and he just wasn't as active in his combos because I think he was he had that respect and he was afraid of getting caught again and just wanted to focus more on defense. But the odd thing about that was his hands dropped to his sides, and I think it was just a combination of um he was like, Jesus Christ, I just got my shit rocked for the first time in this fight, but also being fully exhausted from putting from pushing the pace for as long as he was. And when he got exhausted, he allowed himself to get taken down, and Joe Piff ended up getting the full mount, which he eventually turned into back control, and Piper went for the rear naked, which he didn't find, but he was able to keep full back control where he rained down on Adesanya from right there and just forced the fight to be stopped himself without the submission, but by uh TKL rather. And this was a great comeback win for Joe. He I although it was only in the second round, I believe, maybe it was the early third, Joe wasn't losing this fight astronomically, but technically Izzy was whooping on him and um just piecing him up on the scorecard. So great comeback win for Joe. Pretty unwise decision for Adisanya to try to stand and bang with him instead of just because Israel Adassania was much more like calculated at the beginning of the fight. And as it went on, he kind of stopped going for those feints, setting up different combos, and he just tried to stand and bang with Joe. Pause, obviously, and he just went into a world where he didn't belong with this man. So that's my That's what we got for the UFC fight night, March 28th, Joe Pi for Israel Adesanya. Now I want to talk a little bit about UFC Freedom 250, the UFC White House card, because I've been gone for a little while, like I mentioned, and this was a huge development, especially where Dana White has been talking about this forever, saying it's going to be the best card of all time, the most stacked card we've ever seen. And this UFC Freedom, I think the only free thing about this should be the admission. This is absolutely ridiculous. One of the biggest slaps in the face to fans I've ever seen. And honestly, I think I'm being very generous when I say this card is even a top 15 of all time. I don't th I don't know if it's a top 15 of all time. I didn't even look at the prelims. I just saw the main card and I was heavily disappointed. I don't know. I I guess I'm excited to see Alex Pereira win the easiest belt anyone has ever won moving to a new division. I don't I don't know. I don't care about um Tapuria and Gecchi. I guess on paper that sounds cool for people that aren't as interested in the sport because they're two huge names, but realistically, all we're seeing is a veteran that's at the end of his career who did just get a great victory against a rising star and an up-and-comer who just but he won't beat competition like Taporea. He can't beat competition like Taporea. He is at that level where he can be the highest in his division, but he's kind of in a way, I don't want to c I don't want to call Justin Gacy a stepping stone, but he's not a title contender. He's not someone who can beat Taporea, he's not going to win that title, so he in a way he's just a placeholder. And I love Justin Gacy, but he's just at a standstill in his career right now. And he's fighting arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter alive. This is just gonna be a slaughter. And we have this as the main event of the evening, the main event. And then we have Dana White with the ultimate fumble not giving John Jones the money that he wants. Alex Pereira versus John Jones could have happened easily. It's not a stretch, like it's not a stretch at all. It could have happened, it was in the works, it was talked about, and we could have had the biggest UFC super fight literally in history, which could truly determine who is the greatest and most prolific fighter to ever grace the octagon. There's no we've had this conversation for years and years and years. Is John Jones the goat? If John Jones could beat Alex Pereira at the heavyweight, he would be the definitive goat. It's not close. If Alex Pereira beat John Jones, I think he would be the GOAT. Three division champion, I mean, I already talked about this in the last episode, but three division champion with a stacked resume who has done this all in like five years. And uh some people might say John Jones was old during this fight, like he wasn't in his prime. It I don't really care. Alex Pereira is not in his prime. He's th he's the same age as John Jones. There's no excuse for this. Like they are both at the same point in their lives, they're at the end of their careers. Pereira's probably got like two or three years at most. I can't imagine he wants to stay around for too, too long. He's done everything he needs to do. But yeah, that fight could have happened, and Dana let it fall through. But not only did he let it fall through, he he lied about it. He didn't want to pay the man who is the GOAT on paper the money he deserves, and then he lied about him ever being in the equation or the conversation for even being on this card. To which John, who I don't I'm not like a super John Jones fan, he's not a good person. I don't love John Jones, I don't care. He's a great fighter and an incredibly hum uh talented human being, and the greatest to ever grace your your promotion, Dana. And you at this point, after all he's done for you guys, you have to beg him for any amount of money he wants. Like he deserves and and then the biggest slap in the face of it all, uh, like I said, John has to come out on social media and be like, nope, this fight was gonna happen, Dana's lying about it. I don't this is all his fault. This could have been, and it's not because of him. But also within like the same two weeks of each other, Dana goes and pays Connor Penn and Zufa boxing fifteen million dollars. It's just crazy to me. He can give someone that much money who I'm not as versed as as versed in boxing as UFC, but I've never heard of this kid. Maybe he's the greatest person, greatest boxer alive. I've never even heard of him. And to give him $15 million and not pay your greatest fighter of all time to fight in your biggest card ever is just completely asinine to me, and there's no excuse for that. I don't know. I I digress from the John Jones situation. It's just ridiculous to me that the co-main event of the quote unquote greatest card of all time is an interim title. It's not even a real title fight. They're fighting for the interim title. We don't know when Tom's gonna come back, we don't know what the deal with him is, but his eyes have not gotten better. Ciro Ghan is this false interim champion that doesn't deserve to be there, hasn't proved himself against real competition, and we're just about to watch the UFC feed him like a goat to Pereira. It's literally just this fight it means absolutely nothing because it's just waiting for Pereira to get a real shot at an actual um opponent that's gonna give him any sort of competition. Cyril Ghan is not that person. Tom Askmanall may be that person if he could see. But thanks to Cyril, we'll never probably know because we I mean, I maybe we will, but Tom does not seem to be progressing very well. And then don't we have after that we have Sean or before that rather, we have Sean O'Malley and Zahabi. And again, this is just another bone. This is a bone for O'Malley to get a real win after a fight where I feel like he should have lost with Song Ye Dong. Dana's like, oh, sorry, bud, you had a close fight. Let me give you something that you can snack on here. Go ahead, go tear this guy apart. Because Dana loves to give special treatment to his lap dogs. We know that. And speaking of lapdogs, we have to talk about the biggest kiss ass on the whole card, Bo Nickel. Bo is not a bad fighter at all, by any means. But he is not, not even remotely close to a draw on the quote unquote greatest card of all time. Him being on the main card is an embarrassment. Bo Nickel at best deserves to be one of the early prelims. He is not a draw. And he's literally fighting Dachus, who is a mid-tier gatekeeper of the division. This fight wouldn't even be a co-main of most fight nights. It's just ridiculous, man. And Roofy versus Chandler is fun, but in reality, it i it's completely irrelevant. If we're speaking in terms of the greatest fight cards of all time, this card is lacking in division-defining matchups uh that have any real value or importance. It has no number one contender fights. It has an interim championship and a uh belt fight that's going to be a complete dog walk. And there's no long-standing rivalries. In all honesty, man, this card just doesn't matter that much at all. Like none of these fights really mean anything for the most part. There's a few, I guess, but they're not that important. And the fights are all just so predictable or just flat flat out not good. And I really, really, really hope that Dana White is pranking us all right now. Maybe this is a joke. Maybe we're gonna have like maybe John Jones does come out. Maybe Cyril Gon gets put off to the side, maybe he Syro Gon has to go do some acting thing. He's gotta go film one of his French movies or whatever. And then John Jones drops down from the sky in a black hawk with fireworks shooting out of his shoulders. Maybe the main event will be Trump versus Elon. Maybe it's all being hidden. Who knows? I don't. None of you do. But Dana does. Dana actually has well, I don't know if I want to like I doesn't matter. Dana has family in Maine. I think that's where he's from. I live in Maine. And my friend works at Dick's Sporting Goods and has met him before. He spotted him. He came home for like basketball tournaments or something. So maybe I'll try to get in touch with Mr. Dana, crack his uh wait, not crack him, pause. Um just dig into his mind a little bit, see if I can't see how those intermachinations work and see if I can't make some changes and make it better for you guys. Because I'm Jackie Influence. I can do things like that. That's what they tell me. But that has been this week's episode of the Brain Bash Podcast. I want to thank you again for joining me here today. Um let me know what you think about the episode formats. If you like these shorter 30 to 40 minute episodes, let me know. If you like the hour-long episode, let me know. Uh drop it down. Drop it down in the comments below. Please and thank you. Okay, guys, I'm gonna get out of here and go make some gluten-free pasta because I'm gluten-free this month. Got some pooping problems. All right. Thank you very much for joining me. Take it ease.