Hour 2: Polishing It Up With a Race War

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Episode: Hour 2: Polishing It Up With a Race War
Date: April 13, 2026
Location: Elser Hotel, Downtown Miami
Hosts: Dan Le Batard, Stugotz, with Mike Ryan, Jeremy, Zach

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Overview

This hour centers on recent UFC events, the growing entanglement of sports and politics (specifically the UFC’s alignment with Donald Trump), and a deep dive into the structural challenges facing the NBA as it heads into the playoffs—especially issues of player motivation, tanking, and how market forces and analytics have “hacked” the game. The hosts move fluidly from serious social commentary to signature irreverence, humor, and even cringe, reflecting on how sports mirror (and often fuel) broader American cultural and political trends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. UFC 300 Fallout & Trump’s Spectacle Presence

• Yuri Prochazka’s KO loss: Discussion kicks off with the shocking finish—Yuri loses by KO after a leg injury, trying to tough it out, only for Carlos Ulberg to finish him.
  • [01:38–03:00]
• Trump at UFC Events: The hosts explore how Trump’s increasing presence at UFC events feels like “the carnival and the circus... coming to mainstream.” Dana White’s openly cozy relationship with Trump, including talk of cards being moved to the White House lawn, is framed as unprecedented and grotesque.
• UFC’s Political Branding: Mike Ryan and Jeremy dissect how UFC intentionally aligns as the “sport for MAGA conservatives,” making many fans uncomfortable while failing to replicate its playbook with broader sports or wrestling audiences.
• Public Reception & Internal Dissonance: Despite UFC’s attempt to embrace Trump for crowd energy, the business side (e.g., falling gate revenues, pressure from TKO) signals potential blowback.
  • Notable Quote [05:20], Mike Ryan:
    "What that sport does in ways that others don't is it makes people that disagree with those policies feel very unwelcome, because these are straight up pep rallies for Donald Trump..."
• Dana White’s Immunity & Power: Jeremy offers a mini-history of UFC’s journey from taboo to mainstream power, highlighting that White’s unchecked behavior—including domestic violence—has zero consequences due to his value to streaming services and TKO.
  • Notable Quote [06:52], Jeremy:
    "But they deserve each other at the center of America as Iran war talks fall apart while he's doing this... following a delirious king into something close to nuclear warfare."
• “Stick to Sports” Hypocrisy: The hosts contrast past “stick to sports” demands with current reality—Trump and UFC using sport specifically as political platforming.
• Miami Echo Chambers: Mike Ryan debunks the notion that his perspective on Trump/UFC is “echo chamber,” describing how Trump always seeks environments with guaranteed adoration and avoids events where he’ll face boos.
  • [11:37], Stugotz: "He views himself as a religious figure. That's why over the course of Easter weekend, he's posting AI images of himself as Jesus and criticizing the Pope for being weak on crime."

2. The Hokut-Blades Heavyweight Slugfest

• Josh Hokut’s Gimmicks: The crew breaks down Hokut’s “Randy Macho Man Savage” persona and “Mexican vato” character—widely derided by the panel as excruciatingly cringeworthy.
  • [19:10] Josh Hokut, Macho Man impression:
    "I will show everybody that I'm the best from the east to the west, to the old dying man, to the baby on the breast. Mama. Mama. You know who the best is? Mama. The incredible hooks. The best mama."
• Fight Breakdown: Despite the buffoonery, Hokut delivers an all-time performance, standing and trading with Curtis Blades—both men absorb hundreds of strikes, neither goes down, and the crowd is wild.
• From Heel to Babyface: Hokut’s antics are initially seen as annoying, but his fighting spirit turns him into a compelling figure—even to MMA newcomers. He’s now anticipated for the White House UFC card against Derrick Lewis.
• UFC Ticket Prices: Zach expresses disbelief at how fans can afford astronomical ticket prices, comparing the experience to WWE events since TKO's involvement.

3. NBA’s Existential Crisis: Polished with a Race War

• Transition via Viral Video: The group segues from UFC to the NBA, referencing a viral meme of a robot chasing boar in Poland—used as a metaphor for absurdity and artifice.
• NBA Stereotypes & Polishing the League: Jeremy and Mike reflect on how the NBA long leaned into “Magic vs Bird”/race narratives to rebrand the league in the '80s.
  • Notable Quote [30:26] Mike Ryan (in reference to NBA's fix for image issues):
    "They polish it up with a race war."
• Load Management & “Players Don’t Care”: The hosts critique the narrative that today’s NBA players don’t care, when in reality injury prevention and analytic-driven rest are more complex—echoing baseball’s “Tommy John Surgery” era.
• The Tanking Problem & Analytics Hacking: The hosts lament that analytics and salary cap logic have led to teams openly tanking for draft picks, resulting in farcical games where fans and pundits believe teams simply don’t care about winning. The resulting “hedge fund” mentality is seen as soul-crushing.
  • Notable Quote [36:40] Jeremy:
    "The math that's hacked the game is the amount of commerce that's come to it... If I come in here and I find everywhere in baseball, basketball, where I can make money, I'm going to squeeze the soul out of it. This is what's going to happen."
• Structural Parallels to MLB: Stugotz compares the NBA's challenge (tank-driven bad basketball) to MLB’s former issues with tanking and player development, noting that market inequities are difficult to eradicate in salary-cap leagues.
• What’s the Fix?: Despite rumors that Adam Silver will act, the group is skeptical—nobody knows the real solution to the NBA’s crisis of regular-season legitimacy.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [03:21] Jeremy:
  "Dana White just makes a phone call and then makes freedom. 250 is going to be on the White House lawn. The whole thing’s grotesque. I mean, it’s the carnival and it’s the circus and it’s coming to mainstream, and it’s fun and crazy and interesting."
• [05:20] Mike Ryan:
  "It makes people that disagree with those policies feel very unwelcome, because these are straight up pep rallies for Donald Trump."
• [06:52] Jeremy (on Dana White and UFC’s rise):
  "He’s won. This is the biggest mainstream victory that he could possibly have at the center of America, like he couldn’t have imagined in fiction, any scenario that haven’t had his sport being this legitimized. But they deserve each other at the center of America as Iran war talks fall apart while he’s doing this.”
• [11:37] Stugotz:
  "He views himself as a religious figure. That's why over the course of Easter weekend, he's posting AI images of himself as Jesus and criticizing the Pope for being weak on crime.”
• [19:10] Josh Hokut (as “Macho Man”):
  "To the old dying man, to the baby on the breast. Mama. Mama. You know who the best is? Mama. The incredible hooks. The best mama.”
• [30:26] Mike Ryan:
  "They polish it up with a race war."
• [36:40] Jeremy:
  "If I come in here and I find everywhere in baseball, basketball, where I can make money, I’m going to squeeze the soul out of it. This is what’s going to happen."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• UFC 300 recap, Yuri’s fight breakdown:
  [01:38–03:00]
• UFC & Trump/politics discussion:
  [03:00–11:57]
• Hokut-Blades fight & cringe persona montage:
  [13:33–23:34]
• NBA issues/tanking/load management discourse:
  [29:39–40:18]
• Wrap-up & possible solutions for NBA:
  [39:56–End]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is a classic blend of incisive cultural criticism, pop culture savvy, and locker-room humor, filtered through the irreverent and often exasperated voices that define The Dan Le Batard Show. The transitions between parody and genuine concern are fluid, giving the episode both depth and comic relief—anchored in the personalities and biases that make the show a beloved space for passionate, sometimes chaotic, commentary on contemporary American sports and society.

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For those who missed it:
This episode of The Dan Le Batard Show delivers a vibrant snapshot of the intersection between sports, politics, and entertainment—where the UFC and NBA are both arguably at existential crossroads, and where even the most absurd pop-culture moments (like a robot chasing boar) serve as metaphors for the state of spectator sports in America.

Transcript

[Dan Le Batard]

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[Stugotz]

Hunters Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans.

[Dan Le Batard]

What do you say to that, Rumi?

[Zach]

It's not a battle.

[Dan Le Batard]

So glad the Saja Boys could take

[Jeremy]

breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

[Zach]

It is an honor to share.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, it's our honor.

[Stugotz]

It is our larger honor.

[Zach]

No, really stop.

[Stugotz]

You can really feel the respect in this battle.

[Mike Ryan]

Pick a meal to pick a side.

[Jeremy]

Ba da ba ba ba and participate

[Zach]

in McDonald's while supplies last last night you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party this morning. It'll take you two minutes to list

[Jeremy]

it on Depop and make your money back. Just grab your phone, snap a few

[Zach]

photos and we'll take care of the rest. The sheer dress and platform heels you'll never wear again.

[Jeremy]

There's a birthday girl searching for them right now.

[Zach]

Your one and done look is about

[Jeremy]

to pay for your next night out.

[Zach]

Or at least the ride home. Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop where taste recognizes taste.

[Dan Le Batard]

This is the Dan Levatar show with the Stugats podcast.

[Jeremy]

What happened to Yuri?

[Dan Le Batard]

What happened to Yuri, Dan? He tried to play with his food and got knocked the f out.

[Stugotz]

That guy lost. Yeah, the one that was here.

[Dan Le Batard]

The one that was here got knocked out.

[Zach]

How about his explanation after the fight of what happened?

[Dan Le Batard]

Poor explanation. He basically said I was showing him mercy. Nobody, you weren't showing him mercy. So for those uninitiated that didn't watch the fights, the were great. Carlos Ulberg was from New Zealand fighting Yuri for the vacant title for the lightweight championship. Right? So he's going, he's fighting. Yuri's chopping at his front leg in one of those his back leg buckles. So you see something happen where all of a sudden it's like he's on one leg. So Yuri's chopping at his front leg.

[Zach]

It was very clear that he couldn't use his leg anymore, not knowing that

[Dan Le Batard]

his back leg was the one that was hurt.

[Jeremy]

There was a torn ACL there.

[Dan Le Batard]

That was his ACL that was torn, right? Because in one of those shots that he took on the front leg, it buckled his back leg towards his acl. So he's pushed his back against cage, right? And he's like, I've got nowhere to go. He's chopping on my front leg. My back leg is torn down.

[Zach]

And he was taunting him throughout the round, 100%.

[Dan Le Batard]

Like, basically, like, waiting for hands down and everything. Just like, all right, I'm going to finish you here. Carlos Holberg leans back, throws a puncher's chance and absolutely clocks Yuri, knocks him down with the torn ACL and all runs up on him, starts beating his head off the canvas. And they called the fight, and it was over. He was two minutes away. Dan, from the corner, calling the fight because he couldn't walk.

[Zach]

It was a shocking finish.

[Jeremy]

So let. Let me ask you guys this question. Serious. Lastly, before I move on to other subject matter. Anywhere in there. Anywhere in there, as people are celebrating Trump, as Iran talks fall apart, and he's telling Dana White, hey, put Derek on the card.

[Dan Le Batard]

Loves Derek Lewis, by the way.

[Jeremy]

And Dana White just makes a phone call and then makes freedom. 250 is going to be on the White House lawn. The whole thing's grotesque. I mean, it's the carnival and it's the circus and it's coming to mainstream, and it's fun and crazy and interesting. The fights are interesting. What about the other stuff? What do you guys do with the other stuff? Like, there isn't another sport where somebody, the President of the United States says, hey, let those two teams play. And that's what I want to watch.

[Mike Ryan]

What I do with it is I try to ignore it. I didn't watch this card, but I've been at the card before when Donald Trump, once in New York and once in Miami.

[Dan Le Batard]

And I don't.

[Mike Ryan]

Obviously, I don't like it. I don't like Donald Trump, but I do what so many on the right say I had to do, which was, you know, just keep my mouth shut and power through that stuff. Stuff that they were incapable of when Colin Kaepernick was, say, taking a knee before. But whatever. It's part of the sport. But also, it seems to be catching up to the ufc. It straight up does. Does it Yeah, I mean, we don't want to go. Like, you may want to gloss over the gate. The gate was down big and the

[Zach]

gate down at, like, a bunch of fights lately.

[Dan Le Batard]

The gate was down on this one because there wasn't a ton of big names.

[Mike Ryan]

Okay. They released that Donald Trump was coming a day or to try to drive people to this. And if you see what Dana White is doing publicly and in the press conferences with him, trying to distance, he actually claimed that his speeches at the Republican National Convention are not political, that he's not a political person. He is very clearly getting a message internally from tko. Hey, we have staked out this corner plot. We are the sport for MAGA conservatives. And that's fine. You can do that. You can appeal to that. But what that sport does in ways that others don't is it makes people that disagree with those policies feel very unwelcome, because these are straight up pep rallies for Donald Trump have been. And it's a lot.

[Jeremy]

The gate at this one was under $10 million. Look, I'm gonna go through the history.

[Mike Ryan]

He gets an entrance to Kid Rock's American Badass. When he's attending the CF Championship game, he doesn't get that.

[Zach]

Oh, and at wwe, which is also owned by tko, it's a completely different response that the President gets. Like, when that originally happened, I think TKO thought that, you know, whenever the President is shown or introduced or whatever, that it was going to be very similar, and they were sorely mistaken.

[Mike Ryan]

I remember I was at the WrestleMania in Las Vegas last year. I'm not going this year, but last year, Dana White voiced one of the intro videos, and people recognizing his voice booed him. And anytime he's shown on the screen, he was booed. There's a difference between allowing the President to attend your event and making an entire show about an obvious show of support for the President. At that point, you can't say that you are not a political organization. And this time, at this point in time, Donald Trump's fragile ego definitely needed to be seen by a sporting company that is normalizing him, putting him out there, having this grand entrance next to Dana White, to cheers, which that if there is a group of people on this planet that'll cheer that man at this point in time, it's there. That is the administration using sport the same way that Cuba used the baseball team. To Dan's point, that is propagandizing, and they are a very convenient bedfellow. But it is gonna catch up to the ufc.

[Jeremy]

Let me show you A little more of this history here. Okay? And I will say this again, as someone who loves fight. I do. I always have. Everybody here makes fun of me. They make fun of me because I do like the science of these barbaric, toughest men in the world challenging each other. And what they risk is just. It's really brave. Like, they're vulnerable in front of a lot of people. And you always risk an eternal embarrassment at the thing you care about most because you cannot sleep on the guy with the torn ACL because that cage is primitive. And those people are assassins. They are. They are obviously trained fighters. So I really respect the toughness of all of that. I also respect the story of this sport. Dana White signing contracts in back alleys, you know, like the Fertitta brothers, like, barely hanging on to make this a legitimate league because of how hard it is. And he needs Forrest Griffin to have a barbaric fight in a reality TV series. Because the thing he cares about most, he's so close to running the fighting games. He cares about boxing, cares about combat sports carnival barker, knows how to promote, knows how to fight with Oscar De La Hoya in public. Knows how to be everything he's been, which includes being a man who can hit his wife in public and still run his league, because the power is concentrated now at the top. And he's gotten to the very top of power. He had to climb over John McCain. They had to climb over an assortment of things that made them too barbaric, too primitive for America, and now look where they've arrived. The victory for Dana White is he couldn't get Skipper to sit next to him at a fight because Disney wouldn't sign off on this. And then Disney needs him, and he parlays all, all of that into money and power. And you get to the top of sports where you can hit your wife and there are no consequences because you can tell TKO what to do, because you, you, you have value to the streaming services. He's won. This is the biggest mainstream victory that he could possibly have at the center of America, like he couldn't have imagined in fiction, any scenario that haven't had his sport being this legitimized. But they deserve each other at the center of America as Iran, Iran war talks fall apart while he's doing this. And we seem to be, you know, following a delirious king into something close to nuclear warfare. Like, and, and like all of it. I don't know. How do we get from. Hey, keep Kaepernick. Keep it to sports to this. It's going to be on the White House lawn like it is.

[Mike Ryan]

They haven't historically done well with hypocrisies when it comes to this. You cannot be super pro. I love what UFC is doing with the President, A, and B, stick to sports guy. You can if you. And the thing is, I know a lot of people try to be. And it's just stick to my type of politics.

[Jeremy]

But all I'm saying is, once you put this sport on the White House lawn, what you're saying is this is America. When the polling shows. No, no, it's not. All of the polling shows. Whatever you say about voting, all of the polling shows no. This man being made into a figure that gets to be the mad king of not a democracy who just gets to declare war on whoever he wants. While. While Florida gets the UFC license plates and blocks our view of the Freedom Tower with a library that's. That's not a library.

[Mike Ryan]

We're probably gonna get aggregated somehow. Some conservative talking head is gonna take issue with this and the allegation is gonna be, look at the LeBatard show talking about Trump again. And we are talking about Donald Trump because the guy basically has pyro at a UFC event during his entrance. They make it unavoidable. They have picked their side and we'll see how that plays out. As history will reflect on this administration, they're gonna reflect back on how convenient an ally the UFC was throughout this. And I think if you see from. I know they have a whole new partnership, a broadcasting partnership that since that was signed, and I'm sure they're privy to some numbers behind the scenes, there has been some sort of messaging relayed to Dana White. Ease up. But when the President calls you on this weekend where he's at an all time low with approval numbers, Dana White's not saying, all right, well, let's cool it. He's bringing his good buddy in at one point, hand in hand, walking him into the UFC to a hero's welcome. That is not something the other leagues do when the President attends their sporting events. You are being used. Now, you may think that you are using Donald Trump too, but the internal numbers that you're getting, they're showing you this is not a winning proposition over time. And they're gonna find that out real quick.

[Stugotz]

And you shouldn't be surprised that he views it as a reflection of America, because the only reflection of America he sees is internal. It's. He views himself as a religious figure. That's why over the course of Easter weekend, he's posting AI images of himself as Jesus and criticizing the Pope for being weak on crime.

[Zach]

Like, look at.

[Stugotz]

Look at the screen right now. That is a real thing. Donald Trump posted of himself across this holy time. It's maddening. It's asinine. It doesn't make any sense that these are things that we're comfortable with and we're not. But that same conglomerate that's okay with saying, hey, stick to sports on one end and UFC being welcomed on the White House lawn on the other, that group of people, his pulpit, seem to be okay with just about anything. We'll see how far he can continue to push it.

[Mike Ryan]

A talking point that I often see from those that disagree with the views that I have is, well, you live in an echo chamber, number one. I live in Miami, Florida. No, I don't. All right. I went to Christian school. I have plenty of lifelong friends. This is something that I navigate daily. I do not. I am a UFC fan. I cannot avoid this stuff. I literally had to. And I tried to see what happened in the fight, and it was all Donald Trump stuff. It is a unique point in time. He needed the UFC here. Donald Trump did not attend the Super Bowl. You know why Donald Trump was told he'd get booed at the Super Bowl. Donald Trump didn't go to John Cena's final match. Why? Because wrestling fans are a little bit more progressive, and he would have been met with booze. He wants to live in this echo chamber. He wants to go into rooms and align himself with organizations that guarantee he's gonna get the American Badass intro and everybody's gonna be happy to see him. That is distorted reality. That is not real. That's actually what an echo chamber looks like. But the fights were good, But Josh

[Dan Le Batard]

Hoka vs. Curtis Blades was the best fight we've seen in decades. Dan. Yeah, you could talk about the President, but did you talk about Josh Hokut bringing three characters, being the cringiest guy we've ever seen, and then putting out that performance against Curtis Blades, a heavyweight contender? Like, nobody saw that.

[Stugotz]

Wait, which one's the hot guy?

[Mike Ryan]

Hey, Roy, buddy. Yo. You know that energy shift when the game gets good and everybody all together in unison knows to stand up on their feet? Oh, absolutely. Mike.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Mike Ryan]

You've been at many big time sporting events. You know that moment quite well. That's what it's like when you take your first sip of Cuervo.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, delicious.

[Mike Ryan]

It's the signal that says, we're not checking the time anymore, pal. It's when small talk turns into stories. Cuervo, man. It's that high five. A random stranger effect. That's right. The game is popping. You're hugging people you never met before. That's the kind of energy that Cuervo brings. It's so smooth, so delicious. That's the Cuervo effect. Keep it Cuervo.

[Dan Le Batard]

Folks, listen up.

[Stugotz]

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[Mike Ryan]

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[Jeremy]

Oh, wow.

[Zach]

It's in there.

[Jeremy]

It's better.

[Dan Le Batard]

You think I haven't been practicing stugats?

[Jeremy]

I didn't realize we had a substitute. Complicated legacy brought to by headquarter Toyota

[Dan Le Batard]

441 Power Line Road. Second down to nine.

[Zach]

This is the D? Ler show with the ST. It was the most punches ever landed in a heavyweight fight in UFC history. And like it happened from, from the moment the opening bell rang. Yeah, like what's his name again?

[Dan Le Batard]

Josh Hoch.

[Zach]

No, the other guy, Curtis Blades, he got split right away like it was on immediately.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let's, let's talk about the. The prior to this. So like above you can see if you're watching on. On tv, Dan's face is covering a middle finger from the Josh Hokit walking over to Curtis Blades before the fight even starts.

[Zach]

One of probably two dozen middle fingers that were flashed throughout the fight.

[Dan Le Batard]

Just him just walking up to him and just being like, here, bam. Right here. Just a big one for you. But prior to that, throughout the entire media day, throughout the weigh ins, throughout everything, Josh Hokut has been taking out these characters that he's been trying to play. So he's got a Randy Macho Man Savage character that he's got. He's also got like a Mexican vato character that he plays. So he brought all these characters along with him, and he's kind of like a new guy in the UFC 8, known his professional career, but, like, really, the first time he's gotten any sort of buzz. He was supposed to be lower on the card because there was another. A couple other fights on the car that got taken off because of injuries.

[Zach]

And what can you imagine that fight not being on the main card? Oh, my God.

[Dan Le Batard]

That during the prelims would have been sick. But it happened basically as one of the best fights of the main card. And Dan, I want to play for you some. This is going to be cringe again sport. Not spoiler alert, but cringe alert.

[Jeremy]

How long is this? I, I.

[Dan Le Batard]

There's two different.

[Mike Ryan]

This is so bad. I'm going to step out.

[Jeremy]

Okay, hold on.

[Zach]

All right.

[Jeremy]

This is the reason I'm asking this question. You can't. We can't all leave. Are we all going to leave? No, I'll stay. No, but see, I don't.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'll stand in the breaches you've made you.

[Jeremy]

You'll stand in the breach, but you've made decision here. I'm uncomfortable with because I mentioned this cringe video earlier and I only mentioned it because I didn't want to play it because it made me cringe. And I did not want to foist upon the audience any more cringe than what they've just felt the last 15 minutes, which we punctuated with Jeremy's whimpering. So.

[Dan Le Batard]

Correct.

[Jeremy]

So relax. We decided as an executive team doing this show together to pivot back into the fight.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah.

[Jeremy]

But in my head, I desperately. I had vetoed this video. Video in my mind, when I saw it. This, when I saw it happen, because I don't like videos that make me cringe. And when I asked how long is it? It's because I don't want to put the audience and in a more of a state of sustained cringe.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. So this is going to be cringe, and that's why I had to give you the cringe alert on the front.

[Jeremy]

I'm not doing this.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay. I will, I will lead you.

[Stugotz]

I want to watch it.

[Dan Le Batard]

I want to watch it, too. So, so what happened? What happened?

[Zach]

Is this responsible for this?

[Dan Le Batard]

You're not. I will, I will be fully responsible.

[Zach]

I get second and embarrassment.

[Dan Le Batard]

I know you get.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't think so. You might have to walk out, too. I'm not 100% sure. What I do know is that Josh Hokut, who was a Division 1 football player, at Fresno State, played running back, also wrestled Division 1. Very good athlete. Came in basically unheralded to the UFC and was like, all right, what do I need to do? I need to pull up a gimmick, right? All the great fighters before me have had gimmicks, and I'm going to have a couple of gimmicks in my bag to try and sell this fight, right? So we're gonna play his Randy Macho Man Savage gimmick, and then he's gonna play, like, another Mexican vato character. That's gonna be cringy, but it's gonna lead to the complete heel turn or baby face turn for Josh Hokut into now one of the top guys at ufc. So here's his Randy Macho Man Savage gimmick. Yeah,

[Zach]

I'm in Miami, Florida. Oh, yeah. 20,000 people. 20 million. 20 million watching around the world to see the Incredible Hulk. I will show everybody that I'm the best from the east to the west, to the old dying man, to the baby on the breast. Mama. Mama. You know who the best is? Mama. The incredible hooks. The best mama.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right, so that was his Randy Macho Man Savage gimmick, which had been on full display basically all week, throughout media day, throughout weight cutting. Yuri Prohasco, who we had here in studio, had some offense, took offense to what he was talking about. He's like, hey. He's like, get up in the Randy Macho Man Savage thing. And you're like, are you talking to me? So he came over and, like, had to be separated. He was talking to Carlos Olberg, he was talking to Curtis Blades. He was talking to anybody who had ears. He was gonna listen to him. So this is the secondary character that he has in his gimmick, which is a Mexican vato, which is basically him just pulling out a beanie and then putting over his eyes.

[Jeremy]

It was so dogged.

[Zach]

Hey, that shit got kind of weird, dog. I'm sorry, dog, but the fucking down vatos. The down vatos back, homie. Hell yeah, dog. Oh, did someone say. Did someone ask, dog, how I've been doing, dog? I just been picking up girls, dog, and beating up squirrels, dog. How do you get a squirrel down from a tree, homie? You drop your pants and show them your nuts, homie. Dang, that was a good one, homie.

[Dan Le Batard]

So clinically insane behavior from Josh Hokut, who had all this gimmick. Dana White came out and said, like, I didn't really love the couple of gimmicks that he had. Which was obvious because nobody really liked him. As you can look around. We all thought it was cringe, right, guys? So with that, he comes out to the fight, he gets into the Octagon. He's got Curtis Blades on the other side. And before Bruce Buffer can even introduce him, he comes over and just flicks off Curtis Blades to his face. And everybody in the crowd's like, oh, my God, what is he doing? Curtis Blades, big cinder block hands, has the ability to knock anybody out with one punch. And I'm like, oh, this dude is not only insane, he's about to get his ass completely kicked by Curtis Blades, who is stoic and completely silent and still watching this dude, who's 6 foot 230 pounds in the heavyweight division, standing in front of him, flicking him off, and he's like, I'm gonna kill this guy. The fight starts immediately.

[Zach]

Hazaz, is the video over?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, video's over. So we could talk about the fight now.

[Zach]

Yeah, I didn't like that.

[Dan Le Batard]

You didn't like it?

[Zach]

No, I had to bail, man. Ajita, I just. It makes me uncomfortable as a horrendous macho man impression.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, yeah, the video's over. So, Zaz, I was at the point of the story where he comes over before Bruce Buffer introduces him, flicks off the guy and we're like, oh, my God, Curtis Blaze is going to kill him. Yeah, like, nobody does. It's like, this is a WWE gimmick for Josh Hokut. And then all of a sudden, he comes out and lands about six punches in a row.

[Zach]

Splits him immediately.

[Dan Le Batard]

And we were like, oh, my God, he's going to knock out Curtis Blades. Yeah, he's going to knock him out in the first 35 seconds of the fight.

[Zach]

He just. He just ate those. Both of them. They just ate punches all. All match long. Like they were constantly landing heavy blows. Neither of them went to the mat?

[Dan Le Batard]

No, no, neither guy got knocked down. You're talking about 354 significant strikes between the two.170 and some change up.

[Zach]

I mean, it's gotta be so dangerous, Landon, so many blows to the head in, you know, what are we talking

[Dan Le Batard]

a 15 minutes in a 15 minute window. And the crazy thing about Josh Hokage, he's got an incredible motor.

[Zach]

Again, played D1 well, they were both exhausted. They were dead by the end of round one one.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, they were both dead. But when you look at the tank for Josh Hokut, it was like, oh, dude's not sitting down at the corner. Like he's standing up. He's got still a little bit more in his gimmick and in his bag.

[Zach]

At the end of round one, he stood in the. Everyone's cheering like crazy. At the end of round one, he stood in the middle of the ring, raised his arms. I, I think he thought the fight was over. Dude, there's two more rounds.

[Dan Le Batard]

It was one of the, like, best first rounds that I had ever seen, because Curtis Blades on the brink twice in that first round of being completely knocked out. Yeah, there was one time where he looked at, I was like, oh, my God, he's going down. And it just goes to the testament of being a multi disciplined, multi sport athlete. When you got Hokut, who was a football player, a wrestler, played on the, on the P squad for the 49ers and for the Cardinals for a little bit, immediately started mma. Once he didn't make the team, and now he's getting called up to be on the White House lawn fighting Derrick Lewis. And he's a minus 400 favorite against the Black Beast. It's like, where did this guy come from?

[Zach]

That's what Derrick Lewis's nickname is, the Black Beast.

[Stugotz]

Is that the hot one?

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, so with all that, Josh Hokut has turned from heel, complete heel, throughout the entire fight camp, the entire fight week to now. Baby Face turns as.

[Zach]

Yeah, now I want to watch him with that, that next fight. I mean, Derrick Lewis is obviously fun, but, yeah, I want to watch him now I know who he is.

[Dan Le Batard]

And he's going to be on the White House lawn. He had talked about it with Ariel Hawani a couple of months ago, I think in November or September, he was like, hey, I want to be on the White House card.

[Zach]

It's funny how that sport works, man, because it really. Now looks, look, he had to win the fight, and he did, but it'd be different if he lost, I suppose. But you have to carve out like this lane, like this niche where people like me who doesn't know a whole lot about mma, all of a sudden I know who this guy Hokut is. And I'm not gonna forget who he is.

[Mike Ryan]

No.

[Zach]

Because he was behaving like, like a, like a crazy person.

[Dan Le Batard]

And he won't let you forget him. Right. Because, like, if you think, all right, if these characters worked now, imagine what I'm gonna do the next.

[Zach]

Now I don't want to see the character. Like, I don't think he needs to do that anymore. I think at this point, the fighting and the antics in the ring where he's doing the middle fingers. He's taunting the whole time. Like, I think that's enough. I don't think he needs to do the pre fight press conference where he's, he's acting like an idiot. Like that was tough to watch.

[Dan Le Batard]

I agree, I agree. And that was all part of it. Like, oh, this guy is like crazy. But he's also going to get his ass kicked. And then he didn't. And then delivered an ass kicking. So it's like.

[Zach]

And that's a big boy who's going.

[Dan Le Batard]

That is a big. Curtis Blades is a big boy. Measured in at 265.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

On fight night. And Josh Hoco was 230. And dude, he looks so fast. He looks so powerful. It was crazy to see.

[Zach]

It was a fun night. It was a fun night. I mean, place was absolutely packed, which I gotta tell you, I don't know how everybody affords these tickets. It has to be crippling credit card debt. It really has to be because the tickets are crazy expensive. All right. And, and the place was slammed. I just, I don't understand. You see, you see couples there, like you're going on a date. You're spending $2,000 for a date.

[Dan Le Batard]

Couple, thousand dollar date night.

[Zach]

I mean really, that's before we get

[Dan Le Batard]

the drinks and the food.

[Zach]

Right, Right. I just, I don't understand how people afford it. I really, I mean, I could say, I could say the same thing about wwe, which has really been the case since TKO took over there too. Like I look around on the floor when I'm at these shows. How are these, how are you afford? How are you here? How are you here? Like you're here with your entire family for wwe. How are you here? How are you affording this?

[Dan Le Batard]

How did you feel? Obviously you've been to a couple of them now. You were at, you know, a very good. When we looked at the headliners and we were like, oh, this is going to be like an okay car.

[Zach]

Which is to me. My son told me it was going to be a great night.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right. So like, like the, the people, the ball knowers for real knew that there was real good fights scattered in on the card. It just didn't have the casual fan big names like the Sean o'. Malleys.

[Zach]

Yeah. Last time was Patty Pimblett and of course I know who he is. This was great. I thought there were a lot of really cool moments. You know, the Cubs Swanson win was cool. You know, buddy gets kicked in the head, he loses the guy Goes and talks to Trump. You had that heavyweight fight. We're talking about one. And then the main event, which was. I don't think you could have a match, have a more shocking finish than we saw Yuri lose the main event. Yeah, it was quick. My son was yelling. He was so upset. He was so upset when Yuri lost. It was. Yeah, it was fun. I had a good time.

[Jeremy]

Just.

[Zach]

Man, it's long, it's long, it's long. I was there since 7pm and it ends at 12:15. It was long.

[Stugotz]

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[Zach]

Mmm.

[Stugotz]

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[Zach]

Don Lebatard.

[Mike Ryan]

I went in the margins. I'm like, I'm like, you're a moneyball of sex. I'm basically Scott Hatterberg.

[Dan Le Batard]

Not a stuff, a lot of walks.

[Mike Ryan]

But I'm on base when it comes to sex. Other, other dudes, they can be Giambi.

[Dan Le Batard]

You know your role, you play.

[Mike Ryan]

I know my role.

[Zach]

This is the Dan Levatar show with the stugats.

[Dan Le Batard]

Dan, what'd you think?

[Jeremy]

Too much UFC today.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, not enough ufc, if you want me to be honest. We didn't even talk about the bums. Dominic Reyes and Johnny Walker, those are the hot ones.

[Jeremy]

Give me some robots chasing some animals in Poland. Okay? If you're just.

[Stugotz]

Oh, no, no, no.

[Jeremy]

Hold on. All of you, shut up so I can keep the audio audience abreast of what's happening. That is a robot. It is running through the streets of Poland. You can hear it. And a bunch of boar just ran off because they don't know. No, that thing will run forever. But those, those boar don't know that that's not a human being. They think that's a human being. It's not a human being. It's just a blue lighted robot, a

[Dan Le Batard]

cementing shoes, has a backpack on.

[Jeremy]

He's not running. Really?

[Dan Le Batard]

That's got a book back on for Zach.

[Jeremy]

Edie's running through the hole.

[Dan Le Batard]

Talk about the board. Boar would be like, what the hell is that thing?

[Jeremy]

Speaking of boar, Memphis and Utah played a basketball game over the weekend. And it was just 10 day contracts. And it was absurdity. Look, I want to get back to this because I do love the basketball playoffs. We're headed for a fun two months of stories. I hope, I hope the three pointer.

[Zach]

No, it'll be good.

[Jeremy]

But I hope that there are going to be a lot of bad games too though, because they're going to be a lot of blowouts in the playoffs as well. But there are a lot of fun stories. But. But we really are coming off of a season where the woke league, okay, has gone to its knees since the pandemic. We were just talking about the ufc, okay, The Social Justice League has fallen to its knees with racial stereotype tropes as a lead narrative. These guys don't care. Like the way the league reinvented itself in 1981 and got off of tape delay. Is that Magic and Bird got the view of the league that, ah, those guys are. They're druggies. They're druggies. That's the druggie league. The way they fixed all of that, it polished it up, is, oh, it's Magic and Bird. It's white against black. Let's make TV commercials. It's a lot of fun.

[Mike Ryan]

They polish it up with a race war.

[Jeremy]

That's right. Now you head into the playoffs with. I think I can say this right. You guys make fun of me sometimes about the idea of when my father made me crazy. Cuz he said throughout his life, I've never seen something so ridiculous in my life. He would say it all the time and everything couldn't be the most ridiculous thing that hadn't been seen before. But I've never seen a sports season where America thinks, because the media is talking about it so much, the guys don't care. Like you have to beg them to care. ISHB has got to offer a million dollars. Oh, look, the All Star Game's fixed. They care. And then you get $2.5 billion in missed games. Not because of any other reason. It's not that they don't care. They're fighting over money just like the guys in the ufc. It's not that they don't care. It's that the ligaments are being torn and stretched on seven foot people that aren't meant to move this way because they've sped up the game. And all of it is like, it's just cr. And so I understand where Michael says, MJ says in taped interview that they play all year and he's the symbol for. He plays all the games. Looks at these guys today and it's like, what's this? What the hell is this they don't. They need load management.

[Mike Ryan]

Show this box score from a professional basketball game that happened a couple of days ago in which I think three guys had triple doubles, two of which teammates from the Jazz. First ever teammates that get triple doubles coming off of the bench. They played the Memphis Grizzlies. This is what the Memphis Grizzlies threw out there. Number one. I mean you'd be hard pressed even like hardcore NBA fans are looking at this roster being like, who is that? Exactly. Look at the laundry List of DNPs on this Memphis Grizzlies team. And also can you look up the origins of laundry list?

[Zach]

Dan? One of the guys on the Grizzlies who had a triple double was a minus 46.

[Jeremy]

There's never, there have never been three triple doubles. There have never been three triple doubles in a, in a game before. I want to get back to what I was saying in that. What would even be second place in the history of conversation where you're watching an entire season in a professional sports league? The conversation from media and fans being not just about whether the players care because they're missing so many games, the natural distortion of what's happened with load management, but where the accusation can be fairly made. Those teams don't care about winning. They're actively trying to lose. When has it ever been like this in any sport across any time where the conversation for a season before headed into the playoffs is, I don't believe anyone in this league cares about winning when that's not true.

[Mike Ryan]

Too many teams do it. In the NFL you do have like suck for luck campaigns. Jeremy and I were just talking about that where it's clear because the worst record in the league gets the number one pick. But in a league that has a lottery that's supposed to be like, the lottery is in place to kind of avoid tanking and yet it's actually expanded the base of teams that think they have a shot at the number one overall pick. It's a key inflection point in the history of the sport. I don't think the allegation could have been made to baseball players that they didn't care at the time. But a lot of the things that plague baseball in terms of, you know, the science of the game, that all of a sudden you have one thing squeak out the dam and then you realize, oh, there's a lot of issues with this league. It does remind me a lot of where baseball found itself a couple of seasons ago.

[Stugotz]

We were in a space where. And the Rays were Ahead of it. Joe Madden was ahead of it, where it was like, oh, shifts. We're going to completely change the way you play defense so that we can beat players on offense who are great at hitting the ball all over the place. All right, so the solution became try to hit home runs. And it became three true outcomes. The same way that basketball and athleticism defensively was able to slow down so much that positionless basketball became a thing. And now it's five out. Just keep shooting threes because you'll win with the math. We also saw the same affliction, Tommy John surgery. I mean, I made this comparison last year when Tyrese Halliburton tore his Achilles. This is essentially the new Tommy John because in basketball you have these guys who were raised from a young age only playing basketball, doing the same workouts year after year after year after year, chasing max velocity in their sprint speed, moving all over the court in a way that we never saw guys do before. When you look at the miles run throughout a season, so what do they do? They load, manage. We call that not caring when they don't play. But if a starting pitcher, where we were at least in baseball, trying to figure out how to prevent Tommy John, we start limiting their innings. Was the accusation that a starting pitcher doesn't care or was it that an organization was trying to figure out how to maximize their talent? Nobody doubted those starting pitchers. What they said is, hey man, you're, you're putting the wear and tear on your arm that has never been seen before because you're chasing velocity. These things are akin to one another. And what we need to see is in terms of gameplay and in terms of front office execution that comes from the top of the league on down. How does the NBA counter in a way that baseball has? Because now a lot of those complaints about load management and things like that don't really exist the same way. We just get excited when we see a player like Sandy Alcantara throw a ton of innings.

[Mike Ryan]

When people look at the amendments, you often hear the argument, the founding fathers couldn't have envisioned this science being out there. When they invented basketball and baseball, they didn't invent, understand analytics. You know, they never accounted for math, hacking a game. So we're at that point now for both these leagues and baseball did something about it where it's very clear basketball has to do something about it. There probably is a racial component to why those players in that sport get hit with it so much. As a sports fan, I have a really difficult time wrapping my Head around a star not playing because he's trying to avoid getting hurt. I can understand if he gets hurt and doesn't play, but just choosing to sit out because the team thinks maybe if he plays he might get hurt. So let's just avoid that. I think that's a fundamental issue with the league and that needs to stop.

[Jeremy]

You've got sort of the wrong math hacking the game though, because I know what you guys are talking about. You're talking about the on court product, but the math that's hacked the game is the amount of commerce that has come to it. The reason the draft is so popular with these teams is, oh, I can get cheap fixed labor right away. I can know whether a guy is good or not and I can buy my fan base in a salary cap sport. Something that might be a bargain right away value. These teams have gotten so competitive in every place that the only way to win in the margins is can I get Cooper flag because I get lucky in the draft. Oh, I've got to. I gotta get that 2% better chance because I can't get it in all these torn ligaments and everything else. I have to get it over there. The thing that's hacked the game is if you're always exploiting market inefficiencies and everyone knows how to exploit the same market inefficiencies. The one you have to exploit is there are 10 teams trying to get the next Cooper Flag because. Because you need one of those. You need to get the fixed costs of one of those. Oklahoma City has all those picks and gets to trap those guys. They don't want to be in that city. They get to trap those people for years because they've got everyone. We fall in love with the draft pick and the thing that's happened here that's hacked the game is if I. You guys make fun of me on when I say the hedge funds have taken everything over and squeezed the soul out of everything. If I come in here and I find everywhere in baseball, basketball, where I can make money, I'm going to squeeze the soul out of it. This is what's going to happen. Like you're going to get this absurdity where you've got that Memphis, Utah box score and those teams are not professional. Those teams are professional teams in name only. They're wearing uniforms, running around to lose just so that they keep televising games like somebody's got to show up to play the other guys and lose by 30.

[Stugotz]

The one thing I will say though is that in baseball you would see a lot more of these teams that are winning, God, proportionally what 30 games a year in major league baseball if there wasn't such a gap in development from drafting a guy to getting to the major leagues. Connor Griffin is the rarity. Finding a 19 year old kid who could be at the major league level. There's years before that player gets there and you still need to get lucky. There are so many first round picks that don't even get close. Where in basketball what you see is these teams at the bottom going toward tanking. But you know what, even if they were trying to compete with the rosters that they had, they would still be the worst team. So yeah, you might see less of a disparity. Maybe fewer 60 win teams than you see presently and maybe fewer teams with wins in the teens, but those franchises would still be at the bottom and you'd still have these superstars in the playoffs just like we now.

[Jeremy]

This is the first season there's ever been 855 plus lost teams. Look, the dispos prosperity is jarring. It's not. We've spent says there's not. You're sitting here talking about I can't do five hour events and I've got to be in bed by 9:30. Okay, you're the NBA's old guard. Demo this sport, now that your team is not playing in it. It can't be all of this. If you can't cheapen it this much, this many ways and have an entire season where we're having a conversation before the playoffs that I've never had before a playoff ever in my history. Thinking about sports, I don't know how

[Zach]

they're gonna fix it. I know there have been some, you know, proposals that apparently have been thrown out there. We've seen online they're thinking about this. GMs are intrigued by this and that. I mean Adam Silver swears that that something's gonna change drastically over the summertime. I don't know man. I believe when I see it like you believe that something drastic is going to be implemented to prevent the tanking. I don't know about that Dan.

[Jeremy]

I don't know what the fix is. I just can't believe I've spent an entire season listening to people talk about what is the fix. Like I love the NBA playoffs. Like I'm sitting there, I'm watching that magic Celtics game yesterday because I want to get into all of the stories that are coming our way. But yeah, I just was thinking on the way in, I'm trying to think of what second place is in the history. There have been work stoppages and everything else, but where the conversation from the media, from the arm that sells the league has been this for an entire season.