00:00I'm making it down with Brian Campbell from CBS, CBSSports.com,
00:04and he's got an interesting pound-for-pounder rankings from the UFC
00:08up on the website right now.
00:10And pound-for-pounder rankings are always going to get a debate
00:12and a conversation going.
00:15But I don't have any beef with the rankings.
00:18Depori is one, Islam is two, Murab is three,
00:25Chemayev is four, coming off the dominant performance.
00:28Pantoja is five, Volkanovski, six, Ankaliev, seven, Pereira, eight,
00:36Madelena, nine, Driscus still comes in at ten.
00:42What caught my eye about this, Brian,
00:44and I've been thinking about this for a couple of years,
00:46it's sort of been brewing, and I know I'm not the only one to think about this,
00:49but where are the Americans?
00:52Where are the American champions?
00:53Where are the American stars?
00:55Like, they're non-existent.
00:58Eastern Europe and Europe have taken over the UFC, haven't they, Brian?
01:03They have, in a huge way.
01:05And it's not that we haven't had trends like this before.
01:07Everybody remembers when Brazil absolutely dominated this sport,
01:11and there's still a power player today.
01:13But it is difficult when you look across.
01:15There's one champion from the U.S. and all of UFC.
01:19It's Kayla Harrison in the women's bantamweight division.
01:21And if you're really trying to look at why, I do want to bring up a couple points.
01:25First of all, Logan Storley, the PFL fighter, former Bellator title challenger,
01:30he had a really interesting point last month when asked about this.
01:33He said, look, these days, the American collegiate wrestling stars,
01:37not only are they making so much money in NIL and endorsements
01:41that they're not like a, you know, college basketball player in the past
01:45who wasn't getting paid and couldn't wait to jump to the NBA,
01:48they're not as motivated to automatically transition
01:52from American amateur wrestling directly into mixed martial arts and the UFC.
01:56Why?
01:57Well, we do have a fighter pay debate that we talk about
02:01in terms of when you come in on that lower starting level,
02:04if you're making a lot of money in NIL and college,
02:07maybe you're thinking about Olympic hopes.
02:08It isn't an automatic.
02:10Yes, Gable Steveson, the 2020 American gold medalist
02:13after a failed run in WWE and trying out for the NFL,
02:16he's going to start his pro career in LFA coming up soon.
02:21Exactly, Brian.
02:22He exhausted all avenues first.
02:24He exhausted it.
02:25He said, you know what?
02:26I'm going to try wrestling.
02:27I'm going to try football even before I do this.
02:30It's not an automatic anymore that, you know,
02:33the American national collegiate champions are going to just transition right away.
02:37I think the other thing is, this is what happened in boxing about a decade ago
02:41when fighters from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, from that area of the world just started popping up
02:45and they were just a little bit different, a little bit more hardened,
02:49a little bit more motivated, willing to fight anyone.
02:52You are seeing right now an absolute force of dominance coming out of regions like Dagestan
02:57and Russia, all the surrounding former Russian territories, a bunch of, you know, Ukraine.
03:02There's a lot of countries around there, Kazakhstan itself, the nation of Georgia,
03:06which has two UFC champions right now.
03:09These guys are being brought up in a much different way than the United States,
03:13much more disciplined background, a toughness that we don't always see.
03:17Is it a privileged American thing?
03:19I don't know.
03:19You can make all the debates you want,
03:21but the guys coming out of those nations are just built different and I think things go in waves.
03:27When UFC really started to make moves in the middle 2000s,
03:31it was still American wrestling that was your dominant base.
03:34That's come all the way back.
03:35It's wrestling, but it ain't American wrestling right now.
03:38It's the wrestling you see out of Chechnya, out of those areas of the world
03:42where it's absolutely suffocating and dominant.
03:45Habib Nurmagomedov was a big charge in that force.
03:48You have Islam following in his footsteps.
03:49Marab Duvalesvili from Georgia has a gas tank that just kills you as he lays on top of you.
03:55And now we have Chechnya and Hamzat Chemayev,
03:58who just over five rounds made DDP look like an amateur just by laying on top of him.
04:04This is a style that you need a big gas tank for.
04:06You need to be skilled.
04:08But if you're dominating a fight like Chemayev did against DDP,
04:11you're not taking any damage, by the way.
04:13It's not always exciting if you're not looking for the finish.
04:16And Chemayev was criticized for that in this specific fight,
04:19although Duplicy did nothing to change that.
04:22But yes, the stars of today are from different areas.
04:25They speak different languages.
04:26Is that a problem for UFC?
04:28It's not great.
04:29But remember one thing about this era of UFC.
04:32They're not trying to create the next McGregor.
04:34Would they love if Toporia is a worldwide sensation?
04:37Yes.
04:37They're not looking to pay or give leverage to the stars of old.
04:41They used to need stars to make it.
04:43Now they have two things.
04:44The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:48The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:49The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:50The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:51The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:52The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:53The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:55The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:57The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:58The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
04:59The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
05:00The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
05:01The UFC brand and Dana White's face to sell any fight they want to.
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