Level Change Podcast

Alright, kids - big content warning at the top as we start with an impromptu conversation regarding the UHC shooting in NYC and the Daniel Penny case. But we move on to fight stuff, we promise.

Once again, the pathetic spectacle that is the decline of Conor McGregor’s fighting career makes itself seen against our wishes. He’s now been involved in yet another back and forth with Michael Chandler well past the point of anyone being invested. But has he forgotten about his civil case that he just got smacked in not long ago? Gonna make it real tough to plan any fights right now with all this heat on him.

Then we have middleweight, and sweet baby Jesus is that division an unholy mess. Who will get the next title shot? Only one thing is for certain: “deserve” has got nothing to do with it.

Also, why does Ilia Topuria want to move up to lightweight? Is it even a good idea to begin with? Maybe it’s not so crazy after all, and perhaps may be a necessity.

Finally, we’ll be scaling back our episode output for a short while. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have more bonus content for you all. Watch this space.

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money, because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

UFC 310 has enough juice when it comes to really good action fights, even if there’s a few odd mismatches here and there. But man, you’d be forgiven for forgetting there was even a PPV event at all this weekend. Worse still, it’s a guy making his UFC debut in a title challenge in the most challenging division to move ahead in: the dreaded flyweight division.

Also, former champ Aljamain Sterling is relegated to the prelims on this one, as are former main eventers Anthony Smith and Chris Weidman (another former champ). Feels like there’s zero buzz around it, but our mainest man and former co-host Mookie Alexander joins us to try to make sense of all of this and make some picks.

One last thing: what exactly is going on with Bellator? PFL absorbed them only to do… well, it’s hard to tell what, exactly. Fighters want out and former champ Gegard Mousasi is straight-up taking legal action. Hard times, baby.

UFC 310 Card

* Alexandre Pantoja vs Kai Asakura

* Shavkhat Rakhmonov vs Ian Machado Garry

* Ciryl Gane vs Alexander Volkov

* Bryce Mitchell vs Kron Gracie

* Nate Landwehr vs Doo Ho Choi

* Anthony Smith vs Dominick Reyes

* Vicente Luque vs Themba Gorimbo

* Movsar Evloev vs Aljamain Sterling

* Randy Brown vs Bryan Battle

* Chris Weidman vs Eryk Anders

* Cody Durden vs Joshua Van

* Michael Chiesa vs Max Griffin

* Clay Guida vs Chase Hooper

* Kennedy Nzechukwu vs Lukasz Brzeski

UFC 310 Fun Factoids

* Ranked fights: 4

* Ranked fighters: 12

* Fighters coming off losses: 6

* Contender Series alumni: 2

* TUF alumni: 6

* Debuting fighters: 1

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money, because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

The Kyusho Basho has wrapped and what an exciting tournament it was. We had photo finishes, high flying moves, matches that had to be repeated…in short, it had a little something to whet all Grand Sumo appetites. Of course we had Sumo Stomp’s Tim Bissell over for a pre-Thanksgiving celebration, and we put him to work straight away with all the fine points of the Basho.

Make sure to check out Tim’s extra cool contest right here. He has one of the most unique prizes I’ve ever seen. Plus, the visit over to Sumo Stomp is worth it considering the wealth of information there about the sport. If you’re new to Sumo or an old head, it’s a site worth taking a visit to.

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money, because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Conor McGregor once again in hot water as the civil trial against him in Ireland has led to him losing his case. He’s now got to shell out some cash, and we ponder the potential consequences and ramifications of it all.

We also look into this weekend’s early morning Macau card, with some excellent talent on deck and some surprisingly great matchups. A great little card to watch with your Saturday breakfast.

To kick off this bigass episode, we had Tim Bissell from Sumo Stomp on to give us the latest update from the Kyushu Basho, which is turning out to be one for the ages.

UFC Macau Card

* Petr Yan  vs.  Deiveson Figueiredo 135 lbs

* Xiaonan Yan  vs.  Tabatha Ricci 115 lbs

* Kenan Song  vs.  Muslim Salikhov 170 lbs

* Cong Wang  vs.  Gabriela Fernandes 125 lbs

* Volkan Oezdemir  vs.  Carlos Ulberg 205 lbs

* Ozzy Diaz  vs.  Mingyang Zhang 205 lbs

* Su Young You  vs.  Balgyn Jenisuly 135 lbs

* Kiru Sahota  vs.  Dong Hoon Choi 125 lbs

* Xiaocan Feng  vs.  Ming Shi 115 lbs

* Carlos Hernandez  vs.  Nyamjargal Tumendemberel 125 lbs

* Lone’er Kavanagh  vs.  Jose Ochoa 125 lbs

* Long Xiao  vs.  Quang Le 135 lbs

* Maheshate Hayisaer  vs.  Nikolas Motta 155 lbs

UFC Macau Fun Factoids

* Ranked fights: 3

* Ranked fighters: 6

* Fighters coming off losses: 4

* Contender Series alumni: 5

* TUF alumni: 0

* Road to UFC alumni: 10

* Debuting fighters: 3

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money, because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Mike Tyson went out sad against influencer Jake Paul, and it was a depressing spectacle despite being bonkers business. on the MMA side, UFC 309 is over, and Jon Jones was able to deftly dispatch of Stipe Miocic. Does that really help his status as heavyweight champion? Stipe handled it all with grace, but the heavyweight landscape remains murky despite a clear-cut contender in interim champ Tom Aspinall.

Also, there’s Charles Oliveira. A man we don’t deserve, fighting against both Michael Chandler and the incompetence of referee Keith Peterson. Finally, it looks like Ryan Garcia found a way around his suspension, and it’s kind of an ugly one.

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money, because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com

Here it is, kids. We break down the prelims for UFC 309, plus our mainest man Tim Bissell is back with more Sumo action. The UFC prelims are an odd mishmash, with Chris Weidman facing Eryk Anders as a middleweight bout. But we do get some quality matches with Jonathan Martinez facing Marcus McGhee, for example.

Are these fights actually good? Some are, …

Time for the UFC to return to Madison Square Garden for a major heavyweight title fight that has pretty much lost all of its steam. But we still wanna see it! We break down the main card for UFC 309 and make our predictions, but we also look at a few headlines related to the event.

Does it make sense for Jon Jones to fight for a BMF title? No. No it doesn’t. But he thinks it does! And Matt Brown tries to make sense of Jones’ reasoning on what could happen after his bout with Stipe. Plus, Jon Anik weighs in on the topic as well, and Daniel Cormier will have the task of being impartial as he calls the fights this weekend.

Oh, and Jon took umbrage to some choice language Miocic employed in the Countdown special. What a timeline we live in.

UFC 309 Main Card

* Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic 265 lbs

* Charles Oliveira vs. Michael Chandler 155 lbs

* Bo Nickal vs. Paul Craig 185 lbs

* Karine Silva vs. Viviane Araujo125 lbs

* Mauricio Ruffy vs. James Llontop 155 lbs

UFC 309 Fun Factoids

* Ranked fights: 3

* Ranked fighters: 7

* Fighters coming off losses: 13

* Contender Series alumni: 7

* TUF alumni: 0

* Debuting fighters: 1

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money, because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

It’s that time again—time for us all to wait with baited breath to find out if Terunofuji will compete in the Kyushu Basho, and time to see if Onosato will keep on his upward trajectory. In case you’re new here, we’re big Sumo fans, so when there’s a new tournament about to drop, we bring out the big guns aka Tim Bissell from Sumo Stomp.

In this episode, we take a look at what’s happened in the interim (some elder stock awarded after a very youthful retirement), what we’re looking forward to and we provide some basic knowledge for new listeners. Tim is also running a contest with an insanely cool prize. The episode is entirely FREE, as well.

Check out the prize:

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money. Because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Man, it’s a strange weekend ahead for the UFC. Is this upcoming Canadian card bad? No. But it’s also not great and smacks of laziness in spots. Or maybe stinginess? Hard to tell! But there’s certainly a few bangers, some in the middle, and some atrocious clunkers. The good fights are pretty great and tough to pick, but man, the bad ones are a dog’s breakfast.

But that’s fine! We’ve seen worse, and there’s some lovely action to look forward to. Here’s hoping it exceeds expectations. And we even managed to sneak a Hinchcliffe joke in there, too.

UFC Edmonton Fight Card

* Brandon Moreno  vs.  Amir Albazi 125 lbs

* Rose Namajunas  vs.  Erin Blanchfield 125 lbs

* Derrick Lewis  vs.  Jhonata Diniz 265 lbs

* Caio Machado  vs.  B. Ribeiro 205 lbs

* Marc-Andre Barriault  vs.  Dustin Stoltzfus 185 lbs

* Mike Malott  vs.  Trevin Giles 170 lbs

* Aiemann Zahabi  vs.  Pedro Munhoz 135 lbs

* Ariane Lipski  vs.  Jasmine Jasudavicius 125 lbs

* Charles Jourdain  vs.  Victor Henry 135 lbs

* A. Romanov  vs.  R. Nascimento 265 lbs

* Serhiy Sidey  vs.  Garrett Armfield 135 lbs

* Chad Anheliger  vs.  Cody Gibson 135 lbs

* Jamie-Lyn Horth  vs.  Ivana Petrović 125 lbs

* Jack Shore  vs.  Youssef Zalal 145 lbs

UFC Edmonton Fun Factoids

* Ranked fights: 4

* Ranked fighters: 9

* Fighters coming off losses: 13

* Contender Series alumni: 10

* TUF alumni: 3

* Debuting fighters: 0

We sincerely hope you enjoy listening and that you'll give us your patronage with a subscription. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you all so very much. We appreciate every one of you.

Please consider becoming a paid member for bonus content and other fun perks. We need some ice cream money. Because we love ice cream.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit levelchangepodcast.substack.com

Ilia Topuria came out victorious once again and blazed his name into the annals of combat sports history this past weekend. That said, Paddy Pimblett still isn’t seeing the vision and wasn’t quite on board with Ilia being the guy the rest of us see him as.

At least Aljamain Sterling’s got a solid perspective on the matter and is taking a very pragmatic …