The Level Change Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com In 2022, UFC’s lead color commentator, Joe Rogan, came under fire after a social media account stitched together a multitude of instances where Rogan used a very ugly racial epithet into a video clip that ended up going viral. Several outlets picked up the story, including mainstream news media. Joe issued...

Sean Strickland certainly has tongues wagging this week after his latest social media video clip. His video confessional, a staple on his social feeds, comes from inside his car, where he tells fans how he doesn’t feel mentally stable, and that he told his girlfriend he just wanted to burn everything down but that he felt really connected to his fans. This level of “honesty” always seems to grab f...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com UFC 299 was a great card in practice and according to the promotion’s brass, the event garnered a sellout gate that topped $13M—their fourth best live gate. The headliner, Sean O’Malley vs. Marlon Vera, was a title bout for bantamweight gold and it featured a fantastic supporting card with everything fight...

UFC Vegas 87 is an ugly card, full stop. Despite the fact that the alternative stats look decent (ranked fights, fighters, etc.), the matchups don’t do much in the way of getting us amped to watch the card. If anything, it’s a deterrent to it. Let’s face it, no matter what they do, the Apex cards always seem like leftovers, even when they’re not. Bloody Elbow is fighting for the sport, the fighter...

Ian Garry barely eked out a win over the ultra tough Geoff Neal this past Saturday night, but after all the trash he talked combined with that performance, we’re left wondering if the Irish lightning rod can turn his plight around. The crowd, the fans watching around the world and his fellow fighters spent a fair amount of time roasting him on social media in the aftermath of the contest, and even...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com Sean Strickland had a very eventful week in the leadup to Super Bowl Sunday. It started off right after the Republican caucus in Las Vegas, Nevada where former POTUS Donald Trump was making a speech. Just a few minutes into it, Trump gave Sean an extended shoutout and following the event, stopped in with t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com The first was the unexpected merger of WWE with the UFC. The historic deal saw the two companies combined under one roof with the combined entity branded as TKO Holdings. Vince McMahon would end up with a new title—executive chairman—a ton of shares, and the perk of being able to choose five of the board’s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com UFC 297 was not the best card. As a matter of fact, if I had to rate it on a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 4. On paper, going into the event, we were quick to notice how there were no ranked fighters on the undercard and eight of those fighters were coming off losses. All four of the opening fights were los...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com He’s back! Well, at least for this episode. Who? The one and only Mookie Alexander guest hosted today’s episode so we could make our yearly champions predictions, break down seven select fights from UFC 297, look back at UFC Vegas 84 and discuss how Saudi Arabia is not going to accept just any old slop the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com The UFC is back after a long winter’s nap and what do they give their loyal fans? More Apex slop. One might think they’d want to kick off the new year with a firecracker of an event but instead, we get one that even if it does go off like a house afire, who’s gonna care? And more importantly, who’s gonna g...

The holidays are always good for fun videos and photos, lively quips and interviews and lots of social media posts by combat sports athletes, but none have been quite as mesmerizing as the ones Conor McGregor puts out. Over the last two weeks of the holiday season, the Irish former champ-champ kept jaws wagging with some over the top antics. Bloody Elbow is fighting for the sport, the fighters and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com UFC 296 is a card done right and proof that when the UFC wants to, they can absolutely put on great events. With the stranglehold they have over the sport, all their cards could look a lot better and they certainly need to get the majority of them out of that stinkin’ Apex facility, but I digress. We need...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com It’s been another busy week, especially regarding the UFC antitrust case. With the mountains of discovery now available, there’s a veritable treasure trove of documents that include contract information, text messages, e-mails…just about everything but the kitchen sink. Bloody Elbow is fighting for the spo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com Well, after a week off from UFC weekend content, we’re back to the grind. We’ve got a very nice event this weekend in UFC Austin, so we selected a quartet of contests that we feel are the most important ones. Here’s the bouts we predicted: Bloody Elbow is fighting for the sport, the fighters and the fans....

FREE EPISODE ALERT!! FREE EPISODE ALERT!! FREE EPISODE ALERT!! A lot has happened since our last episode so we tried to cram it all in a neat package. First, we went over the absolutely phenomenal cards that were Bellator 301 and UFC Vegas 82. Bellator saw two new champions crowned but never let on that the PFL purchase revelation was just two days away. They kept their secret in the most impenetr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com You read that headline right, folks. Conor McGregor, who was expected to headline UFC 300 (never official, though) is no longer on the card according to his longtime coach John Kavanagh. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Kavanagh revealed the UFC was the decider in this latest delay of McGregor’s return...

We’ve got a special episode today, a preview of the last Grand Sumo tournament of the year, the Kyushu basho, with Bloody Elbow’s Tim Bissell. We go through quite a few topics, which I’ll list below, but if you require more in-depth analysis, Tim has a great feature that you can check out here . Bloody Elbow is fighting for the sport, the fighters and the fans. If you share our mission, please con...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com Last week, big news hit combat sports media circles. Well, actually two things happened: * The UFC’s appeal to the antitrust case was denied by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals * The release of every UFC athlete payout from 2011-2016 That release of the athlete payouts gave John Nash and Anton Tabuena pl...

We had a special guest drop in this week, TUF 30 winner Juliana Miller gave us 20 minutes of her time to discuss the surgery that’s taking her out competition until sometime next Spring, the external sponsors she’s managed to acquire, training at Sikjitsu and more. I had toyed with the idea of making this our bonus content, and in the episode, that is what you’ll hear, but in practice, I am making...

A few weeks back, we told you all a rumor that Showtime Sports would be closing its doors for good by the time 2024 rolled around. Unfortunately, that rumor proved to be true, with confirmation hitting the community today. All 38 employees, including Stephen Espinoza, will have their positions terminated. Dan Rafael reports that contractors and freelancers (including Luke Thomas and Shakiel Mahjou...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com For the last few days, “pundits” from all over the MMA and boxing communities have been weighing in on the lawsuit against Dillon Danis, launched by Logan Paul’s fiancee. Every one of them seems to think it’s Logan himself that’s initiated the suit, but it is indeed Miss Agdal responsible for the litigatio...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com This week’s UFC card is quite possibly the most APEX card we’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. It started with just three ranked fighters (not fights) out of 12 fights. Then the unfortunate news came that one of those three was having their fight scrapped thanks to his opponent’s sudden illness. So...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com That’s right, folks, Showtime Boxing is rumored to be shutting down after their 2024 schedule. Reports of everything from dwindling viewership and rising costs to online streaming have surfaced as contributors to their reasoning for the closure. Here are some of the other headlines we discussed: Bloody Elb...

This is FREE episode week! California’s athletic commission is experiencing what appears to be a slow death. Fight Opinion’s Zach Arnold wrote extensively about it on Bloody Elbow and the word he used was “atrophy”. That seems like a perfect word to describe what happens when higher taxes, mergers, attempts to force sanctioning for promotions like Power Slap and a spate of other factors create the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit themmadrawpodcast.substack.com Now that the UFC-WWE merger is complete, the new company, TKO Holdings has been creating a stir since the move was first announced. With a joint valuation of more than $21B, far exceeding that of any other sports property, the venture has the potential to see even more dominance across the sports entertain...