Hour 1: Speaking Of Danger (feat. Luke Thomas)

Our one of the Dan Lebapar show is presented by Draft King's.

“Draft King's. The Crown is yours. Again, I will remind you that we're going to be popping up”

more and more at odd hours just doing shows for you that are tied to something in sports. And the next one of these that we're going to do is tomorrow night beginning at 630 p.m. where we watch the last of the Panthers season together the defending the two-time defending champions deserve a better burial than Keith Kachuk calling them soft and them losing nine to four and five to two at Pittsburgh to be eliminated from the

playoff. So we will celebrate the Panthers tomorrow night. I don't think there's any dishonor in getting a bunch of injuries and your best player gets injured and then all of a sudden the conference is very good and so you're merely a 500-team trying to get bark off back and you can't get the season to bark off so he decides to not come back at all or I suspect that if they've made a playoff run he might have tried to do something but we'll watch heat at raptors. I'm not

optimistic with that. The raptors aren't very good. They're actually the same team. Both the heat and the raptors are the same team. They got the same point differential. The difference between them is that Miami lost a game at home to Utah that Utah was trying to dump but they've got to play both games in Canada and so I'm not expecting anything from the Miami heat.

And that's at 630 tomorrow, 305 equinox presented by never-missure shock golf.

Thank you and then also the first place Marlon tour hitting and then beat the Yankees, fended off the Yankees to win one of three in New York yesterday but the video team has found what I was looking for. I was not accidentally racist. I was not confusing a Japanese player who caught a home runball from Major League 2 with this play. Major League 2 was stealing this play and I'm sorry audio audience. I suggest going to YouTube so that you could see some greener.

Yeah. Drive the left field. It's almost- oh he climbs the wall and it's caught. On top of the wall he's got his- that was an excellent call. A little sad though. It was also- oh he hit it. It was also sad. We didn't have any crowd noise crack at the bat. He didn't have- what was his motivation really? A Japanese baseball game for- It's a boot zombie in a closet doing career baseball.

“Here's a go yes. Can we talk about them for a second?”

Good times. No, but what he just said at the beginning of the pandemic, ESPN had local cable contracts that hadn't accounted for. What do you mean they're going to be no sports? And so to fulfill those contracts, ESPN was airing at five o'clock in the morning with Luke Shambi in a closet somewhere. South Korean baseball, but the best part of that is that boot would be studying for that game, okay? And what would happen is right before the game.

At five o'clock in the morning, 10 minutes beforehand they say, "Boo, that's not the game. I have- you have this game over here." And he said, "You can me. I don't know any of these players in this game. I'm already in my closet. I'm not going to call South the- it's it to the guy." And number 10, it's a two, 32, 33. Boom goes with that man. Yeah, it's not good situation. I feel exonerated. You guys were desperate to accuse me of conflating major league two

and a Japanese left fielder with a play I had seen in Japanese baseball. It was insulting to me. It was demeaning. It underestimates me. I'm offended that our show would

believe that I would think. You can't act like you've been there before if you've never been there.

Guys, it's one thing right. I think in a victory lap. It's just offensive that my team believes that I just grab random things from the movie. All of this surprises you are. And make them

“my own. Do you remember during that Anaheim Angels game with Gwyneth Paltrow's head was in a box?”

The story from the weekend, I thought. And I know UCLA just won the championship. And I know that Don Stale was very, very happy for Corey Closen, a way she would not have been for Geno-RM. But to me, the story of the weekend from basketball, men's and women was Geno-RM, I'm making a fool of himself as a poor loser after an undefeated season where he gets his head wiped on the floor by a South Carolina team that beats him by double digits and then is whimpering

afterward about how Don Stale wouldn't come and say hello to him that he was waiting for her three minutes to say hello before the game. And then after the game decides to say something to her about it and she could be seen melving. I will beat Geno's ass. She says it twice and I believe

She would have suplexed that sore loser old man. What a baby Geno-RM was after losing. No grace,

whatsoever after losing and should be embarrassed by the way his team performed, by the way his team got dragged and should be more embarrassed by the way that he represented his sport there in a moment where he takes away from what South Carolina did by making the show at the end about himself because that's the punctuation he puts on their season. Just a true embarrassment. One of the great stains on a really truly legendary pioneering career.

One day later, you can put out a statement from Geno-RM saying quote, there's no excuse for how I handle the end of the game versus South Carolina. It's unlike what I do and what our standard is. You're a Connecticut. I want to apologize to the staff and the team at South Carolina. It was uncalled for how I reacted. The story should be how well South Carolina played and I did not want my actions to detract from that. I've had a great relationship with their staff and I sincerely

want to apologize to them and never says Coach Daly's name. He said that they're not friends.

He said they have nothing in common and it wasn't terribly hard. I had kicked their surprising at all that a man would come in and ruin a celebration for women. Don's daily muddering in a way that was snarling and everyone saw. I will beat Geno's ass. Geno's 72 don't stay.

“She mouted it multiple times like I need this to get clipped. What would be the odds would be?”

What would be the draft king's odds on Don's daily against Geno RM? I think Geno RM would have a burst of crazy at the beginning but then stamina would be a problem. 72 you need during the street hockey game where I come out strong and then about two minutes in and like I need a break. I don't want to handicap it. Accept he's twice your age. That's right. He's 72. It is to me

instructive, funny, amazing and a symbol to the competitive spirit of what Don's daily is

that she would say that feel it, think it and know it. Like that she would that she would mouth that that it would be in her because she believes it and because the ferocity and the rage in the competitive nature of the moment grabbed her it was a startling thing for me to watch basically her have inside her the kind of rage that would want to fight an old man. Well, and we've seen coaches get physical with each other before. Well, it was Joann Howard and

who was it a few years ago? I forget the coach but they put hands on each other you remember. Did you want to take a swing in them actually? You've seen it before where there have been coaches who put hands on it. Haven't seen it when it's a man or no woman. That would be crazy. Then something you said earlier you think this is actually going to be a stain on Gino's entire legacy and stuff like I don't think we'll ever talk about this ever like 10 years

done. Oh, wait. I'm not saying it's a stain on his entire legacy. I'm saying it's a stain on everything he's done today. I'm saying what what has just happened here leaves a mark on who he

“is in a way that people will remember that he was this sore loser. Of course the greater”

luck man. I've heard Conan O'Brien say this. He's like, look, we're all dust moats. It's been a long time since anyone mentioned the name of Calvin Coolidge who used to be important. Like, Conan O'Brien was standing over the grave of Calvin Coolidge and wondering like we're pretty small and irrelevant all of us. The history of Gino R&M will be a great leader and pioneer but I will not unsee what a sore loser he was to ruin this for everybody this weekend.

Like, it is just such bad form to have that little grace that the reason you're trying to fight somebody is because she didn't show you the King of College basketball, the proper respect and you had to wait for her for three minutes and the only reason we know it is because you've volunteered it afterward because you would be in such a big baby about the fact that your team got dragged. You haven't lost all season in the way that you lose that one. You have so little dignity

and grace about the frustration of the moment that it leaks out and just sore loser stuff

“that then you have to clean up with a bunch of public relations and statements the day after.”

Again, it's supposed to be a celebration of the women. What are you doing? I'm going to be an ally here. I'm harping on this and saying stuff like that. That's not being a true ally. We see you guys go out this all the time. Jim Schwartz and Jim Harball are running up the tunnel where we're not taking five minutes out to say how could you do that to poor Jim Schwartz. So I'm going to be an ally here at quality for all. Well, but the, I think the

happen. Like he was saying how originally he said, you know, she didn't come and shake my end

“pregame and then somehow it turned into he had to wait for three minutes. They show the video”

of them shaking hands pregame and he also talked about how physical South Carolina was and how one of his players had her jersey ripped and the referees didn't even call it and then they show the video the girl ripped her own jersey after the play behind the basket in frustration. It's like he was he was a confused Bob Salah threat and the kickleam coins asked to his face. Again, the thing that I'm complaining about is the whimpering afterward that he just made it all

about him in in his frustration because he didn't like that he lost for the first time this season.

Like it was it was it was I'm not even talking about the argument with her. I'm talking about everything he did after work. I mean, he's just being a baby. That's not a 72 year old adult. That's somebody who's not used to losing and reacts very poorly to losing. Hello friends, hello listeners. I want to talk to you about Chine because Chine is

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I wanted to talk to this guy because he does very good work in a sortment of areas. Morning combat on MMA, the Draft King's Network. He's a journalist. He's an analyst. He's a host and his work on combat sports. I'd say he's second to none. I put him right there in the class with Ariel Hoanyan. I don't put anybody in that class. Tony, new episodes every Monday and Friday and he's also very good on politics.

Luke Thomas gets political. Nice seeing you, Luke. Thank you for making the time for us. The place that I wanted to start is the fight on the White House lawn. What are you doing with all of that? Trying to process exactly what it means and how to cover it. It's not exactly clear.

It is essentially, I mean, you have to understand, it's basically two events in one. And what I mean by that is on the one hand, it is if you look at the card, it is a real MMA event. And not just that, you can quibble about the quality of the card in some capacity. But certainly the top two fights have very important relevance for the divisions in which they take place. Respectively in the main event, lightweight and then the co-man event, heavyweight. So I'm going to cover it on one level like that.

“On the other level, though, you have to just kind of recognize what it is, which is that this is a reward for the UFC”

in helping return Trump to power to the 2024 election. It is my belief that there is basically no mainstream, certainly not sport and entertainment entity that has a greater role in returning Trump to power than the UFC.

And in particular, and this is important, Dan, they are the most important, again, mainstream kind of actor

in rehabilitating Donald Trump post January 6. And there's more to be talked about if you want to. So I'm trying to cover both of those events as one simultaneously, a fight event, as well as this kind of political reward for this effort that they did for the Trump regime. It's called UFC Freedom 250. As you mentioned, it's going to be Trump's birthday. What are you expecting in terms of the galling fusion of things that are going to bother you?

Is someone who is a journalist who tries to be fair and objective about the way you cover sports, but you also see America melting down in the hands of somebody who ought to be in a nursing home.

“Yeah. I got to be honest, to me, the right-wing turn that the company has made is complete.”

I mean, I don't know that they could keep going further down the line, but what I mean to say is, it used to bother me when they were in this kind of period where they were trotting him out. And it literally changed the sport, right? I mean, this is not an exaggeration. On the one hand, it drove out people who aren't like automatically sympathetic to my Lord, a bare minimum, just politically agnostic. It drove all of them out and it pulled back in a group of

folks, so I would describe as like terminally online chud losers. There's just a bunch of them more than they're used to be. That's one. And then it also gave license down the line within other actors in the space to lean into their right-wing advocacy. So for example, in and Coconut Creek, Florida, that's too far from where you are, Dan. There's American top team, which is a fantastic gym, but they helped hold a political rally to get Rhonda Santis reelected,

you know, during this kind of time, this fever that was happening, that the UFC kind of opened the door to, at least within the MMA space. So it doesn't actually really bother me anymore. I mean, that it's kind of done. What I'm just looking to see is what it actually does to the sport long term. And to be clear, the jury is very much still out on that. They just signed a huge paramount deal. They're going to make a ton of money. But as you indicated, Dan, the

country is on fire. He's trying to set the world on fire. And I want to say this one more time. They wanted a lot of credit in returning Trump to power when there was a lot of fever in favor of Trump. But now a lot of that fever is beginning to break. But I still think we need to make sure that

we always assign the return of Trump to power with the ultimate fighting championship. You cannot

disentangle those two. And so I'm just looking to see what impact all this ultimately has. But my revulsion, those days are pretty much over. Luke, what do you make of Dan's soft launch and to trying to be someone that brings all the sides together and trying to distance himself from how political and organization the UFC is in your mind? Yeah, I find this to be, I mean, manifestly absurd. People have tried to make the argument to me. For example, that, Dana himself is not super

political that this is more, you know, in just sort of playing the levels of what it means to be a big company trying to navigate, you know, the world of whatever your needs might be in terms of interfacing with the government or powerful actors. And there's something to be said for that surely, right? I don't think that he's some kind of Matt Walsh character or something. But it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter because what they did was, again, after January 6, one of the very first

“places that Trump went was UFC, I think two, whatever it was, it was the trilogy between”

Connor McGregor and Dustin Porey. I believe UFC 246 could be 240 something else. I forget exactly what the number is. 264 something like that. But it's the trilogy in July of 2021. It was the same within the span of days of the time where he went to CPAC. And if you actually, I did a whole video

on this. You actually look at when Trump goes to UFC events, not always, but pretty often,

it's in close conjunction with when he was getting indicted and, by the way, held for a liable for crimes in New York state. It was when the Jack Smith case was sort of ongoing and all its various dimensions. So he's getting mug shots. He's in Atlanta. He's getting hauled around.

Didn't a white, in fact, was very explicit about this. And my point is very clear. Like,

whatever Dana White's personal view about the world and maybe he doesn't hold all the same views as for example, Stephen Miller. It doesn't matter because he was a chief architect in returning a political project to power. You own what comes with that. You cannot distance yourself now. It is absolutely too late. So this idea that now we can come to a place after you've changed the fan base. After you've turned and then they into a vector for white wing politics. Now it's time

for Kumbaya. No, it is not. There is no coming back from this. And the destruction that Trump has has wrought upon us is only, frankly, just beginning. And the UFC was very, very clear that they were big supporters of the other president. And I intend to make sure everyone understands that connection

as things deteriorate. You know, vastly more than I do. So please inform this, which is much

reported detail as you can. The criticism that I keep hearing that Dana White has checked out that he doesn't care about UFC, the way that he used to, that he's involved in a bunch of other stuff and his lack of touch on things can be seen. Fair or unfair. Largely, pretty fair. Largely, not entirely, but largely. And for some reason, that's actually not really controversial or has any kind of partisan valence. Part of it is that they want him

to remain in place because he is obviously the UFC's most promoted star, if you think about it. And the fan base knows him. And again, you can make a lot of criticisms about Dana, but one thing you absolutely cannot deny is that to his bones, he's a fight fan. Like, that's real.

“And I accept that that's real. And I think everybody has to. Whereas somebody like Marc Shapiro,”

who's the chief operating officer of TKO, I mean, he could go to fights the rest of his life.

And I don't, I would never consider him a fight fan. By the way, small little note there, Dan,

you may recall, Marc Shapiro was the guy, Dan Snyder hired back here. I live in Washington, D.C., to turn the six flags franchise around in the late 2000s, couldn't really do it. But any event, a little small. Yeah, then he became Steven A Smith's agent. Yeah, right. So you get the idea. But in any case, you're asking about whether he's checked out. There is simply no doubt. They have removed a lot of power from him. Right? And by his own admission,

he doesn't really do matchmaking anymore. He claims he doesn't really do fighter contracts anymore. Now, he is in charge as I understand it of the television broadcast. For example, the production elements and how it all looks and how it all sounds. Obviously, he has a role kind of

“as a figurehead. But I think the amount of success that the UFC has had and the monopolistic control”

is my opinion. Take care for what it is worth. It has made them lazy. It has made them lazy and little bit sitting on their ass in terms of, you know, kind of the, the, the, the, the, these to crack the whip on their competitors. And there aren't any competitors anymore. And as so, between the, the, the market control that they have, as well as changing Dana's role within the company, you know, he'll, he'll do these announcements for these fights. And he's like reading off of

sheet of like stats. And it used to be the case. He would like announce fights. And then he'd be aggressively pitching you on why they matter. He literally cannot do that for the most part. So I would say that there is absolute validity to those if he shows up because he's missing a lot of these press conferences too. This White House event is a logistical nightmare. So what do you believe the biggest issues are in terms of its logistical challenges? Or otherwise, right? It doesn't have

to just be logistical. You might be worried about safety or Alex Praha, how he's going to fair on the ground with Cyril Gondon. Dan, it's a very important question to just engage you hold the right hand of the U.S. a lot of questions to be asked. I mean, just on the logistical side, you know,

“I honestly don't know how they're going to do it. So I've looked this up. I mean, they're going”

to do it. I'm not saying that they won't pull it off. They've been pretty good about, you know, achieving logistical challenges. But on the security side of things, man, I just don't know how this is going to work. So Obama in the last year of his office held a kind of quasi-self-by-self-West knock-off event on the south lawn and he had about a thousand people there and they did that pretty successfully without much issue, different time, different presidency. But they pulled that off.

They're talking about three to five thousand people just on the White House lawn. Many of them will be troops that they're going to bring in, which I don't think is a bad call necessarily. But there's going to be a lot of the, you know, DC McClain KPMG, Booz Allen kind of class of people there. They're all going to have to have background checks to get in, getting into the White House, getting out of the White House, getting five thousand people

into the White House to say nothing of the fact that what they're claiming, and we'll see if the sense of being true, is that the fighters are going to walk out of the Oval Office onto the south lawn. And that certainly creates a grand physical thing to show on television. But dude, how are you going to do that with all of these managers and all of these like agents and all of

how that's going to work. And then beyond that, I'm kind of interested to see just how the rest of

“the world receives it. I think the thing that you have to understand is, with inside MMA, they're”

looking at this like, hey, look at the amount of triumph that we have. We have ascended to the top halls of power. That's what we've done. And so they're looking at this as like, look, we've arrived. And there is something to be said for that, certainly. But to me, the argument is, you did that. You actually made that final assent by making a partisan turn. And in making that partisan turn, there comes a series of benefits, certainly. But a series of costs as well. And I'm

very curious to see, in the end, in this, depending on how much Trump magnification the broadcast actually delves into what this does to the brand or the sport, which by the way, has some issues beyond just, in fact, I would argue even bigger issues beyond just the partisan turn it's taken. Don Lebatar, to us, residents, that's pretty good. I think I have been practicing, still gots. I didn't realize we had a substitute complicated legacy, but I forgot to put it on.

441 powerline road, second down at nine. This is the Don Lebatar Show with a still gots.

Luke, TKO oversees WWE and UFC. And very recently, there seems to be a turn amongst the wrestling fans against TKO. The decisions they're making, being priced out, taking a WrestleMania to Saudi Arabia. And they've got this whole creative arm that the internet, wrestling community, seems to disagree with. In the UFC sector of things,

“are there fans that are directing their iron towards TKO? Is there a clear line of demarcation?”

The way that there is with wrestling fans? Yes, but maybe not quite as explicit. I mean, what I'm noticing more, at least right now, and I think this will change. But certainly right now, what you're seeing from MMA fans is they're looking for a scapegoat of some kind. So for example, the guy that does what Dana maybe wants used to do is his name is Hunter Campbell. And he's the one that does most of not the matchmaking per se, but fighter negotiations. And you'll

see him at events. He has glasses and, you know, anyway, he's kind of... Moustache your team. Yes, he is Moustache, yes, or Moustache, whatever the proper term, exactly would be. Forgive me. I forgot the nature of the question. Can you repeat it one more time? Well, you were holding him up as an example of what TKO, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

“Get it together. Get it together, Luke. You got distracted by your, you're, you're, you're”

got distracted by the Castascio. Me. I apologize. I don't, so that's one. The other one is because the fights, not so much the last two weeks, but in general, they've been very lackluster. Recently, you're seeing people be like, oh, it's the paramount era, which doesn't make any sense, because most of these issues are long standing before. You are seeing some people connect the

dots to what is basically the extraction economy that TKO is trying to do, where they take from

the talent and the extract value from the fan base. They, they have a monopolistic control over the industry, and so everyone just kind of suffers except for them. You are seeing some dots connected, but I don't think it's to the same degree that you do from wrestling fans who clearly pinpoint the corporate overlords in a way that MMA fans are still kind of pointing at the people that are more excessively in their orbit, rather than these sort of like, not fictional per se, but you know,

who is Mark Shapiro to the average MMA fan. I mean, they don't even know who he is in large board nor showdown necessarily, but it seems like with WWE, the fans are much more in tune with

how the product changes as a result of like, basically private equity. I urge you to listen and watch

morning combat on the draft king's network, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube, at morning combat, and also watch listen and subscribe to Luke Thomas gets political, getting political on the way out here. On Easter Sunday, I really do believe that we need to take the keys from grandpa and put him in a home. What he is doing is dangerous to our country. And on Easter, he writes this on truth social Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped in one

in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the F and straight. You crazy bastards or you'll be living in hell, just watch, praise be to Allah. There are a number of things about this that are trouble some up to an including that our president is out here just threatening war crimes. Like, what the hell, Luke? We are in trouble. We are in trouble. We are in deep deep trouble. We are entering a phase of the rest of the world decoupling from the financial and security apparatus that

has secured parts of American prosperity for generations. And the way in which this is going to

even for the average American. I don't think they've even wrapped their head around. I mean, the, for example, just in terms of closing this rate of war moves, the oil reserves that have already in motion to get to the country are basically the last versions of those arrive April 15th. If you think your price is at the pump are high now, just wait. And to say nothing, by the way, of the role that MMA played, specifically in the podcast circuits, with the MMA Jason World,

“that Rogan's fear and returning Trump to power is also an important point that should not be”

lost on other people. But like I just want to be clear, I'm 46 years old. I've never seen the world

through American power as destabilized as I do now. We are, it is very obvious that our trading partners and our friends to the North can no longer trust us. It is obvious that our friends and trading partners in Europe can no longer trust us. We made a bet with the GCC countries that they could do tax, you know, low loose tax laws and they could have this kind of, you know, no street crime society, but we had to provide security for them. We cannot. And I want

to say something else. I watched, this is very important. I watched 9/11 happen in my dorm room, my senior year in college. And if there is one thing that I learned as a result of all of that, is that when you have incompetent people and positions of power, it's not just that they make bad decisions that don't yield fruit for results. It is that they are dangers to the world. They

“are dangers to society. They are dangers and threats to everybody else. We are surrounded. We are”

surrounded with leadership that is grossly incompetent way in over their heads. Simply unable to understand the enemy that they have in Iran, unable to plan ahead because they don't understand their actions. They don't understand, by the way, with this whole immigration, satanic panic, which is what I call it. I'm the, I'm the husband and the child of an immigrant. Like none of that is based in the reality and the truth about immigration. They are Don Quixote attacking

windmills. The phony problems that don't even exist mean while exacerbating the kinds of existing problems or creating new ones because they simply do not know what they are doing. I don't have any great or encouraging words for your audience other than buckle up because the ride is only just beginning. Speaking of danger, talking about danger in the heavyweight division, Alex, but I had a moving up for a on completely crazy three time champ belt champion in three different

weight classes. What did you just say? What did you just say? What did you just say? I mean, I would love

“for Luke Tans for the question. I think it's interesting. What he's talking about is the”

co-man event of this White House card. As I mentioned, there's some gripping about the card, but the main and the co-man have some real value. In particular to me, the fight he's talking about is the best one on that card. So what they've got is this guy named Alex Pereira, okay? He was a very, very, very, very accomplished kickboxer who kind of came to MMA late. And if you know the history of MMA, kickboxers have sometimes done really well, but in general, the wrestlers tend to

do better. And he started out at middleweight had this insane rivalry with Israel Adassanya, who was, you know, on again, off again, champ at that time. Then he moves up to 205 pounds, becomes a multi-time champ there. And now he dropped that belt to go up to heavyweight to do something that literally no one in the history of the UFC has ever done, which is claim a title in a third

weight class. It's literally never been done. And large parkers can even get the opportunity to do it.

Now, the only catcher is, it's for an interim title. It doesn't actually confer full status. That is currently owned by Tom Aspen, all who has been out with an eye injury for some time. Nevertheless, it would represent a historical achievement within the sport. And I would say this. Alex Pereira was the guy who headline UFC 300. He's been like the MVP of this company, him and Elliot Ely, it's worried about more so, pull what's on. And just terms of delivering big action on big stages, high stakes.

He's the guy of basically the last few years. He may be longer than that. And so, real history on the line, at UFC White House. This is what I mean. It's both one of these kinds of events as well as something else. I don't know your history. How you ended up in the Marines. When you were in your dorm room, had you already decided to become a Marine? Yeah. So, the way that worked was, I actually, I joined when I was 17, still in high school. And the way it worked was I graduated high school

on a Friday, and then I went to boot camp on a Monday. And I missed the first week of college,

because I went to William and Mary at that time. And, uh, because the Marine Corps boot camp is 13 weeks. And I went to an artillery unit. Truly, I say this Dan with total, I don't know how to say this. There's been a few things in my life that were really unlucky. But there's been a couple of things in my life that were insanely lucky. And what I mean is, the unit that I'd went to was Hotel Battery 314 4th Marine Division. This was just south of Richmond, Virginia. And the reason why this is relevant

2000s, was being in the Marine Corps somewhat phased out. Now, they changed a little bit of this.

“When ISIS came back to power, because they had to show them. But the point I'm trying to make is,”

when 9/11 happened, and then we invaded Afghanistan, and then ultimately Iraq,

they didn't have use for us. They had very little artillery that they needed, because they were going, you know, house to house quite literally. And whatever artillery needs that they had, could be met by the army. And so what ended up happening was, I get out a few months later, 2004, I get out a few months later, my unit gets converted to a rifle company. And then they get sent to Feluca to go do prisoner transport, which, of course, means they got shot every

single time. They left the base. I got to skip all of it by virtue of just how the Marine

Corps was constructed in my MOS, the whole nine yards. I consider not having to die for Dick

Cheney and George Bush or B mentally affected by whatever you want to say, one of the truly great blessings of my life. Luke, you do a great job. Thank you for the time. Hope you're on with us again, sir. Any time, Dan? Now, Tony, you had such a good joke there to end a really-- I talk to Luke on a semi-regular basis about MMA. Tony, Tony. I need you to back off for my best. Let's get the coaching. I need you to just back off. I understand that you want to be defensive

about this. Mike has been trying to hold you. And while Luke was giving me his history in the Marines, I heard you say, in my ear, just the single, effort, exploitive. And I assume it's because Chris had replayed for you in there the sound of you trying to say whatever you were trying to say about Pereira to Luke Thomas. So before we play this sound, can you tell me now what you were trying to say? He got what I was trying to say. I'm asking you. I'm asking you. What I was trying

to say was Alex is going for a historic thing, which is winning a championship in three different

“week classes, right? So that's what I was trying to ask him. What is that historically mean”

for a four? Let's hear what you actually ended up saying. For a on the just completely crazy three-time champ belt champion in three different week classes. What did you just say? Zass. Look, that's good tape, Ann bad tape. Because the joke, the timing, you slide. The joke was even there. The joke was really the beginning. No, you slide in. You want to talk about danger. And then like that's a great set of just get right to it. But then you said too many words.

The issue is that the three times shut up for a second played again, Chris. For a on the

just completely crazy three-time champ belt champion in three different week classes. What did you just say? It's an unfair at it. What did you cut out the good part? It's a great joke. I want to say speaking of immigrants. I was fed it up. I was danger instead. Yeah, you should have said that too. Which is why I got tripped up when I was asking the question, I was like, "Which one are you going to go with?" And then I saw Dan staring at me and I was like, "All right, I have six seconds to say

a 13 second question." Three-time champ belt champion. This is an opportunity to get better.

“That's what I like about it. You know about that completely crazy three-time belt champ?”

I don't even want to hear from you. You say that six times a week. What do you do? What do you want about? They should give him. They should give him. If he wins, they should give him that completely crazy three-time belt champion belt. Crazy three-time champ belt champion in. This is bad. Jeremy's dunking on us. Oh, he does his right on his little whiteboard over there. He's been funny today on the board. He's funny when it isn't tall. And I'm out, but I don't think he's ever

made a mistake as large. Oh, please. He has a 27-minute question. Do you want to be creative? Three-time champ belt champion. Zas, what are your thoughts there in general? As you delight more than most in Tony's failings? When bars for you, man? Luke Thomas. He thinks I talked to my talk to my hero. A couple times a year. That's my record. Yes, suckin' now.