The Clinch Podcast
Welcome to The Clinch Podcast, your go-to source for all things combat sports! Im your host Chey, and this podcast dives deep into the world of mixed martial arts, boxing, and everything in between. Whether you're a seasoned fan, an aspiring fighter, or just starting to explore the sport, I've got you covered.
Each episode, I break down the biggest fights, the most exciting up-and-comers, and the stories behind the athletes who live and breathe the fight game. From interviews with fighters, coaches, and analysts to in-depth discussions about the strategies, training, and culture that shape the world of combat sports, The Clinch brings you the pulse of the fight world with a unique perspective.
No topic is off-limits – whether it's the hottest fight night previews, game-changing industry news, or tackling the personal journeys of those in the ring and beyond, The Clinch Podcast always delivers fresh, exciting, and honest conversations.
Get ready for powerful discussions, intense analysis, and the raw energy of combat sports. Join me and step into the clinch – where the action happens.
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The Clinch Podcast
UFC Atlanta Recap, Hill Abt to Get Retired, and Jon Jones' Perpetual Quest for Relevance
Fighting isn't just physical combat – it's a journey that reveals who one is at their core. This revelation forms the backbone of my passionate breakdown of what makes certain fighters special in their approach to MMA.
After briefly recapping UFC Atlanta, where Rose Namajunas proved her technique translates perfectly to 125 pounds and Kamaru Usman secured a run-of-the-mill victory over Joaquin Buckley, I dive into Jon Jones' latest attention-seeking behavior. His calls for a Francis Ngannou fight while avoiding Tom Aspinall expose a calculated strategy of pursuing unrealistic matchups to avoid legitimate contenders. listen to me explain why the economics simply don't work!
The heart of this episode explores the upcoming Hill vs. Roundtree fight through a different lens. Khalil Roundtree embodies what I most admire in fighters – those who discover martial arts as a path for personal transformation. Unlike fighters born into combat sports traditions or those who join to escape trouble, Roundtree represents athletes who find in fighting a means to channel emotional energy into disciplined growth. His journey from someone just looking to lose weight, to a world traveler training in places such as Thailand shows how fighting becomes more than competition – it becomes IDENTITY.
Want to see more of my analysis? Follow me on Instagram @cheymynameee and subscribe to catch every episode where I break down the deeper meaning behind the sport we all love!
Hello, welcome back to the Clinch Podcast. If you don't already know, my name is Shay and I will warn you this might be a bit of a shorter episode, just because not a lot has happened this week, but there have been a few fun things that have happened that I want to go ahead and talk about. So we'll go ahead and get started with UFC Atlanta, of course. So for this one, we'll go ahead and start with the co-main event. Of course, I was very happy that Rose won. I thought Miranda did better than I anticipated her doing, and by that I just really mean she just looked really strong. I wasn't really moved or impressed, and that's not necessarily because I'm a super Rose fan. It's just because Rose really showed her why her technique is to be respected, even in a weight division above, where a lot of her moments have been, her big moments happen. So I was happy. I think that Rose showed that she can do just the same amount of damage in 125 as she did in 115. So I'm really excited to see whoever she gets next. I think that it might be Erin Blanchfield, maybe, or maybe I don't know. I don't know who might be next.
Speaker 1:And the main event we saw Kamaru Usman versus Joaquin Buckley and I'm not even going to lie, I didn't make it through the fight. A lot of fights went all the way, they went full distance and Mama was tired, so I pretty much knew that's how it was going to end, so I just let myself fall asleep. Not that it was a boring fight, it was exciting. I watched it was a boring fight, it was exciting. I watched it back the next day, but I mean it just it was very exciting, lay and pray kind of. So I don't know, disagree with me if you want. I just I don't really have much to say about it. That hasn't been said about Kamaru Uzman before and there hasn't really been enough excitement for me to really go any deeper. So we'll leave it at that and move on to Jon Jones.
Speaker 1:Again, I know it sounds like I'm a fan at this point, but he really is just trying to stay relevant every single week. So because he's always trying to stay relevant, I always have something to talk about when it comes to him. So with John, what it? What the story is this week is he wants to fight Francis again. He's like oh, I think we can make it happen, dana can get things done, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. Like a few weeks ago it was okay, yeah, maybe I'll fight Tom. Now it's like, oh, tom, doesn't excite me again. It's like, dude, just fight him. Like I'm like, oh, it's just so aggravating because he really doesn't have any other options if he wants to, if he wants to compete.
Speaker 1:I don't understand why he is even calling out Francis again when he's not on the UFC roster. Like, I understand Dana can get it done, yeah, but is Francis going to want to come over? No, because Dana doesn't want to pay him what Francis has been offering him. We've talked about this in a few episodes before. Francis is not going to go where he's not valued. He asked for a specific amount of money that wasn't particularly exuberant and he didn't get it. And he was made out to be some person who asked for, like Conor McGregor level money when that's not the case.
Speaker 1:And it's just so aggravating to fight Tom. Like, just fight Tom. He is on the UFC roster, he's ready and available. Like, just do it, but it won't happen. I'm not sure what's going. And available Like, just do it, but it won't happen. I'm not sure what's going to happen. Francis is not happening.
Speaker 1:I don't understand what John or who John thinks he's fooling, but any MMA fan with an extra marble in their brain can tell you that the reason Francis left is because he wasn't getting paid. So in order for him to make this fight happen, he's going to have to pay Francis all the money that he's asking and John all the money he's asking, when the cheaper fight to make is John versus Tom, and John knows that. So all these things he's saying about Francis and Ghanu is BS, because he knows it's not going to happen, it's not in the budget, like it's not, like I don't know. I don't know what they're going to end up doing. I am partly curious, but mostly hoping it just kind of fizzles out and goes away like the Chandler-Connor fight did. But I'm not sure. I hope Tom just books a fight. I hope he just books one and we don't have to worry about the division being held back anymore and Dana just finally stops being silly himself and stops saying that it's silly for John to be stripped. It's a mess, it's a mess. I don't know how comfy those beds are, but John is way too comfy in that bed, in the UFC bed, and no one's meeting him there anymore. So I don't know what he's waiting for. I don't know. But that's all we'll say about him and we'll go ahead and move on to this upcoming fight card, which is Jamal Hill versus Khalil Roundtree.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about that one and the co-main event too, that is Rafael Fizeyev versus I can never pronounce it right versus Ignacio Balmondes. That is going to be fireworks. It's going to be fireworks. I'm so excited for that co-main event. I think that that better be fight of the night. Like it has all the ingredients to be fight of the night. Think that it's very well matched energy-wise, pace-wise. I think that Fizeev might have the edge in technique, but Ignacio might have the edge in ferocity. So we'll just see. We will just see. I'm super excited. Let me know what you guys think, who you think is going to win that one. And for the main event, you guys know I'm excited for this one.
Speaker 1:If you've listened to my previous episodes, you know how I feel about Jamal Hill and you know how I feel about Khalil Roundtree. And if you don't know, I will tell you. I think Jamal Hill is so annoying, like he's so aggravating. He is like a chihuahua in a, a Mastiff's body. It is just so aggravating how he approaches his fight, interviews his opponents. That chip on his shoulder is feminine to me in some way, like just, I don't know, I don't want to keep talking, but it's just. I'm not a fan of him as a person and as a fighter he doesn't excite me. So I'm really going for Khalil. I think that his story is so fire.
Speaker 1:If you don't know about him, he was on the Ultimate Fighter and he got into the MMA world a little later on, you know, not like you know, like two later on, but I think maybe early 20s or something like that. And he originally went because I think he said he was just a little more overweight than he would like to be and he just kind of started going. And from there he found a natural talent and he has trained in Thailand. He's just traveled the world just training and absorbing and just soaking in everything. And I think that the fight with Pereira was I I didn't think it was a bad fight, I thought that he was so gritty and he showed a lot of skill and the fight, I mean the outcome was really just because Alex is who he is, alex Pereira is, he's got a pressure that a lot of people are not yet prepared for in that division or in the UFC period. So it's just another person who makes everyone else in the division level up. So I think that is what we saw in his fight with Alex. He really was on par for a bit, if you go back and rewatch it, and then, just as the fight wore on, he was just kind of chipped away at slowly. But he has a soldier's heart and he and he has just that soldier spirit where he keeps going and he continues to go to these places like Thailand to train and hone in on these skills and improve. So I, of course, admire that.
Speaker 1:If you've listened to my previous episodes, which I highly encourage you to, you will never be in the dark about how I feel about a fighter and why I feel that way. And there's a, there's a trend too. You know, I really admire fighters who are at peace in their journey in fighting and they are fully enveloped in it, and a lot of fighters are. But that's because I feel like there's a, there's like groups that I, in my mind, I see a lot of the fighters in like groups. There's like a group of fighters who they just grew up training, it's all they know. They're surrounded, you know, by brothers, fathers, you know just families who you know, especially in different countries. They live and breathe it from a small age. And then you have other fighters who they, you know, usually go into it, maybe in their teens, and they use it as a means to stay out of trouble and you know that's their main reason, or that's their main reason, to have gotten into it and it blossomed from there. And then there's these Yuba fighters that are my favorite and it's kind of like a subset of the one I just mentioned. You know, they may have gotten into fighting, maybe a little later in life or in their teens, and they did so because they needed an escape or they needed an outlet.
Speaker 1:And I can see fighters and respect that, because that's what got me into this whole realm, this whole community, was the need for refinement, the need for discipline, and it really is the absolute. I mean, everyone has their opinion, everyone has their thing that they love it's okay, buddy, he's grumpy Everyone has their thing that they love that drives them, that sculpts them, and MMA or just martial arts period has an extreme power to give someone who has so much emotion, so much fire, just so much energy that they don't know what to do with, and just helps us refine that and let our mind finally like, forge a path. And I see that in khalil roundtree and rosin on the unis and valentina shevchenko and all of these israeli and all these other fighters that I love and admire. They are fighters on a different level than competition, the fighters who grew up doing it. You know, they're fighters at their core, like they are martial artists at their core. It's their identity, it's who they are. But then there's this just innate nature in some of these fighters that I see that pursue it because it guides them, it leads them. You know, if Khalil Ranchi had never stepped foot into an MMA gym, would he have ever gone to Thailand? You know? Would he have ever been in movies? You know, it's just. There are these spiritual paths that MMA seems to be a common environment or a common setting for these people who have demons, have angels in them that they need to sort, and I think it's a great medium.
Speaker 1:Obviously it's a bit of a one where we can let out our violent energy but at the same time it doesn't, in a way, to where it's confined in, as I keep saying, discipline. It breaks it down into a way that we can compartmentalize things and it spills out not only on a competitive level but a all over level, all encompassing level. And I know that my perspectives are not for everybody. A lot of people enjoy, just like, just sport talk and that's cool, that's fantastic. I don't blame you, it's not for everybody, but I am who I am and I see what I see and it shows in the fighters that I root for and it shows how important the sport is, or just how important doing what you love is to everybody, because I feel like doing what we love is an act of God. Doing what we love is an act of mercy on ourselves and an act of love because it takes us so many places and I am obviously, you know, just really engulfed in the MMA community. So a lot of my examples are from here and it's amazing to see that the journey looks so different for everybody.
Speaker 1:But the theme is the same you, you don't go anywhere being an authentic. You go places by grinding so deep into what you love that it is the only thing you see now and I feel like with Sean O'Malley. He is on a similar path and there are levels to this and sometimes people can be like, oh yeah, I remember being that way and I feel like sometimes on these journeys a lot of people can get really judgmental. Uh, for example, his comments on uh, cody garbrandt talking about like his face tattoos and him being embarrassing and all that really was was him still allowing his ego to speak from him being you know, just kind of hurt that it's okay. He hurt that he won or hurt that he lost the fight and then hurt that you know, cody said some you know rude things to him and I feel like that is a telltale sign of where someone is on their competitive journey, because the spiritual journey applies to anyone who wants it.
Speaker 1:But because this is an MMA podcast, it's going to be about the MMA journey. So with fighters who are in that mind state, they really have to let that go, because soaking in failure is the only way to let it refine you. If you're not soaking it in, you're repelling it and you take nothing from it. Feel like that's what Khalil Roundtree is going to show in the fight this Saturday is that each lesson is a stepping stone, each lesson is a refinement and I'm excited to see it. I know that I'm basically like preaching at this point, but I know that it resonates and fighting spirits are very, very deep. You've got ninjas, you know. You've got samurais, you know, you codes, and once you understand that, I feel like it would be easier to predict a fight outcome. And I know like you can look at stats and all that stuff and you should. When you're making your bets and all of that, and just you know, placing your money on the line, you should be looking at previous fights and everything.
Speaker 1:But to be looking at the mind is very important also, and I think that's because, of course, mental game is a known part of the fight game. But when you really break it down to like mind, soul kind of thing, you can see where a fighter is going to spend their energy. And that's important because if you have these fighters, who they live and breathe it, that's all they know. You know they were essentially born engulfed in it. Other fighters they come into it, like I said, engulfed in it. Other fighters they come into it, like I said a little later, and they have to teach themselves how to fully envelop themselves in mind, body, soul in this game. So I feel like that's why it's easier from these guys, from like Dagestan, to just demolish everybody, because that is the only thing in their mind. They have trained themselves so long to only focus on the kill and overly physical. You know all of that.
Speaker 1:So when fighters fully hone that mind, fully hone the ego, are not going out there and you know, trying to be like oh, cody Garbrandt's so embarrassing Look at the tattoos on his face Makes me think about tattoos on my face. There's no room for that. That's why he lost, and so if you can pick up on those things during fight week, it really will help make your determinations for your bets, know. So I hope that my little spiritual breakdown helps you win more money, because I it's helping me. So, uh, let it help you, um. So yeah, that is all I have for tonight for you guys. I hope you enjoyed my second YouTube video. I have a lot of fun making these. It really is chill. I just set up my phone, this, that and just talk to you guys and it's very fun. So don't forget to like and subscribe and all of those things and follow me on Instagram. It's Shave my Name with three E's at the end of name and yeah, so thank you guys. So much for joining me in the clinch.
