I want to say this on Chuck because so many people have been—look, it was a bad performance.
I saw what you guys saw and I'm not sugarcoating, and yeah, he lost to a bum.
That's true.
But there was also some talk that he should never be able to do it again, and I think
that that's what earlier the point that I was really trying to push back on, which is
one mindset would tell you he should not be able to do it again.
A fighter’s mindset would tell you, “I need to work harder, I need to make changes
and I need to try it again.”
That was a bad night.
I knew that was going to be a bad night.
Ring rust is a real thing.
In many ways, that was like doing it for a first time.
“I need that experience, but all of the experience.
I need to see the lights, the camera, the action, have things coming at me in full speed.
I now know that I need to be in the gym and I need to be sparring and I need to be working
on some things.”
That would be what a fighter’s mindset would say, at most times.
This is a bit of a unique situation because of the age.
I'm just sharing with you, when you guys are calling for that, it's a very tough conversation
and you're going to have a very hard time sounding intelligent having it.
It's very simple to make the statement, get up and walk out of the room, but Executive
Director Andy Foster was put on the spot for this and this was not something that Andy
Foster needed to answer.
But Andy Foster deals with tough questions the same as he deals with easy questions – he
answers all questions.
He doesn’t ever back down from the media.
And the media simply asked him, “What was your mindset when you licensed Chuck?”
And Andy Foster gave an answer and its brilliance was within its simplicity, which is he told
the truth and he told it very quickly, which was, “Chuck wanted to do it.”
He then went on to say, “We have medicals in place that everybody has to be able to
comply with and he did.”
Well, guys, there's your answer.
That's as straight as it comes and you should all be able to relate with that.
Any job that you guys have, how did that start?
Well, you said you wanted to do it.
You went in for an interview, you raised your hand, you said, “This is a job I can do.”
They took you at your word.
You then got an opportunity to go and try.
If you're right and your word was good, you got to continue to try.
If you were not right in your self-assessment ahead of time when you said, “I want to
do this and I can do this,” then maybe you don’t get to do it tomorrow.
But Andy Foster’s answer was spot-on perfect.
And so many people said, “Well, you know, Chuck was out there taking damage.”
It's like, well, okay, here, let's have a further debate on that.
Set what Andy Foster said aside.
That's done.
That part is done now.
Chael’s jumping in here.
But you got to be careful with the whole, you know, “Chuck took big damage.”
He came out, he took one shot, he fell down.
Okay, that did happen and it was not great and that punch was not very hard and it put
him out.
That, sure, may need looked at.
His inability to take much of a blow without going down may need some review.
I will concede that one to you.
But, the argument in the conversation is much broader than that, okay?
Chuck is half-naked in a cage fight against a former world champion and the final analysis
says that Chuck got punched one time, and if you want to sit and complain and you don’t
want to give your money and your participation for an athlete like that, you do have that
right, but to say that that athlete shouldn't be able to participate or that some kind of
damage was done or that a governing body acted irresponsibly in letting that happen, I'm
going, “Guys, what are you saying?”
Are you saying that Chuck should have taken 10 big shots?
Had Chuck been hit in the face by a former world champion 10 times, would that make you
happier than him being hit once?
What if Chuck was hit 80 times in the face over the course of a 15-minute contest and
Chuck won the contest?
Would you be having this conversation?
Because if you have elected to hang your hat on the argument that Chuck should not be able
to do it and somebody should have stepped in because he took one punch, then certainly
you guys believe that the licenses of Yair and the Zombie should be revoked as well because
those guys ate well over 150 punches apiece and ended up in the hospital afterwards.
So, no, of course you guys don't think that.
Of course not.
That's what the sport is: You try to hit him, you try to get him to not hit you.
That's what the sport is.
The sport was followed, the integrity of the sport 100% and without question was held up
that night, and Chuck said he wanted to do it.
And when a former world champion who can pass all of the medicals wants to come out of retirement
and says he can do it and has good reputable trainers, managers, sparring partners vouching,
for heaven’s sakes, of course he should be able to do it.
Of course!
Absolutely!
And frankly, he should be able to do it again.
I will not make this conversation and this argument to you guys over and over.
I will not forever say that that's true.
There are plenty of guys where we have the commissions who have stepped in and saved
themself from themself.
That's true.
But, let's keep things in perspective.
Yes, he was rusty, but he should have been.
Yes, he was out of step in terms of his timing, but he should have been.
And yes, if we wanted to try it again I can all but assure you he will have a better performance.
I cannot assure you that he could turn the tide, that he could find an opponent, I don't
know that he will even be put in this spot, but I will assure you that the performance
will be better.
It may end the same, that's true, but the performance will be better.
You did see him on a bad night.
I think that that chin is something that needs to be looked at.
That punch that hit him was not a very good punch and it did not just put him down, it
put him out, and we've seen that a number of times with Chuck.
We saw it including in his previous fight, if you want to go way back eight years, with
Rich Franklin.
I was there live.
It wasn’t much of a punch.
Not a knock on Chuck, not a knock on Franklin, it's just the reality that over time a fighter’s
chin does go.
Is that something a commission is going to look at?
I've never heard of them looking at that.
As long as all the scans and all the medicals and everything’s good, a guy is allowed
to go out and take a punch when he's in a fistfight.
But I would be open to the dialogue and the conversation.
That show ultimately did well less than 50,000 buys.
As big of a disaster as that is for the projections that they were making of a million buys, which
was just insanity to start with, I will tell you, under 50,000 buys, 35,000, whatever it
did – not a terrible number for your first night in pay-per-view.
Enough to make a promoter lose millions of dollars and never get in the space again,
sure.
I think that's probably what we're going to see with Golden Boy.
Don’t believe there's going to be a Golden Boy MMA part 2, but that's just what I think.
But I will just tell you, the pay-per-view business is extremely hard and many, many
people just don’t understand that.
They do not understand the education that goes on with fans.
When we had Joel on this show last week and said he'd love to see the fight, he didn't
know how to buy it, I answered that question for him by telling him like you buy any other
show, “Find out what time it's on, sit in front of the TV and push the button.”
But the fact that he didn't know that and he is representative of a piece of the marketplace,
that's just the way it goes.
Pay-per-view is very tough.
There are a number of things that are on TV that you guys would like to see or I would
like to see but we don't know how.
We don't know what day or time or channel.
A lot of us don’t even go to the movies anymore.
We just wait for them to come out on rental.
That’s our system.
That’s how we see the movies we want – we check what’s for rent and then we push the
button.
That's built within our DNA.
I'm one of those guys.
I love the movies, I've got kids, I don’t get to go to the movie theater anymore.
I watch it later.
Many people are just simply like that.
So when you're coming out of the gate with a pay-per-view, I'm just sharing with you
the pay-per-view business is very tough.
It was a disaster by what they wanted to hope to do.
The other side of it is, look, 35,000 people all sat down, paid too much money to watch
two dinosaurs fight, not a bad night.