The Sevan Podcast - #687 - Dubai Fitness Championship Predictions with Brian Friend

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Brian Friend will be commentating the Dubai Fitness Championship December 2nd-4th. Watch along on YouTube. Support the showPartners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK!https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the liver king i i uh saw that the uh andrew uh andrew Hiller has made a very concise five-minute video on his YouTube channel. It's basically a summation of the one-hour video that the Natty or not guy did. There's this guy just basically all he does is all it looks like all his videos are is calling people out on their lies and specifically regarding steroid use. And Andrew summed it up. Where are my. I took my liver king pills today. Good morning, Stephen. Those of you who watch the show know that. Oh, liver king is natty. Don't at me. As you guys have known, always, I have always said I could give two shits if he's natty or not.

That is not, that is not part of my, I just don't care. I just don't care. Well, that's not actually, I thought I didn't care, but now that all these videos have come out saying he's not Natty, and I suspect they're true. Andrew's video is very good, and I assume that that other guy's is very good, but they didn't want to get sued into oblivion for saying something that's not true. But the reason why, I guess the one cool thing about it, at least for me, is now I don't have to wonder why I haven't gotten that big. And the sponsor of this show, I think, can help you get that big. California Hormones.

CA Hormones. So I guess in that way, I guess, I guess, I guess in that way, it's because fuck I've been working out forever. I was tripping. I was talking to Andrew last night and I remember the 2007 games. I could do all the workouts, 2008 games. I could do all the workouts. Good morning, Crystal. Good morning, Mr. Halpin. I remember 2007. I could do all the events, 2008. I could do all the events, 2009. I could do all the events 2008 i could do all the events 2009 i could do all the events i could even beat a bunch of the games athletes in those events and then in 2010 i couldn't i couldn't do the game all the games workouts there was something in there i couldn't do and granted i started crossfit when i was 34 but those first three

years i was doing two workouts a day i was addicted like hard workouts you know do do a hero wad in the in the in the morning and a um and and and you know something else at night maybe even another hero wad who knows but uh liver king has a business that made 100 million a year he don't give a fuck about being natty we keep buying his stuff well i did ask andrew about that hi brian okay i did ask andrew about that i said what do you think do you think his supplements are junk and andrew said no absolutely not because he Because he even in the in that video where they know that he he admits to being on steroids because they got some leaked emails. He talks about how committed he is to taking those supplements as part of his regiment. Stephen Flores, Mr. Friend.

Welcome to the Matrix. He was taking stuff before his second work, which was CrossFit workout. That's crazy. He was taking stuff before. Yeah. I sent him a text last night after I saw the video. I said, yo, brother, I love you. If there's anything I can do for you, let me know.

Keep your head up. Hi, Brian. Hey. Any fancy haircuts, new clothes, got your nails done, tried to tighten up your body, anything you're doing superficial to make yourself better looking for Dubai? I did get a haircut. Good. That's awesome.

Look at that. Look at that right there. That's nice, huh? Yeah. Is it blended? Can I see from the side? Is it blended? Not so good.

No, it's not. It'll look blended in a couple days. One of my best friends and a supporter of this show give me gave me this haircut so careful what you say well it's not it doesn't look blended well i'm glad it was free how's that was it free sometimes i sneak money and hide it around his house he hates it oh you're a good dude uh so i do want to thank California Hormones for two things. If you want to get on the journey of the liver king with a clear mindset that can push you towards a $100 million business and get your testosterone levels high, California Hormones has always been a great supporter of the show. And they are one of our primary sponsors for Wadapalooza, and I will be making sweet love to them the whole time. I also was notified of this today. A colleague of Brian's and a friend of mine. I don't have colleagues. I only have friends.

Brian Spin from the Barbell Spin. It looks like he is doing something fun for Dubai. The Barbell Spin wants to win $100 gift card to LSKD. Register for an account at thelawnchairleaderboarding.com and enter the username in the comments or fill out the form on our stories. the username in the comments or fill out the form on our stories winner of the dubai fitness championship tournament on lcl will win a hundred dollar gift card to lsk i don't know what lskd is but i'll help you okay thank you the reason that this is such a cool thing is because he's a member of the media this is with regards to a major crossfit off-season event lskd is a sponsor who's in the last 12 months

has made a move into the CrossFit space and sponsors a bunch of athletes and competitions. They've sent me some stuff. They reach out to a bunch of influencers and personalities in the space. And he's helping out Tyler Watkins, who's another friend of ours, who's building up this lawn chair leaderboarding fantasy community opportunity.

So he's merging a bunch of different entities of the CrossFit culture surrounding the sport into kind of one opportunity here to get fans engaged, not just with the competition, but with a brand who's been supportive of CrossFit this past year or maybe a little bit longer. It's a clothing brand? Mm-hmm. Yeah. They have a couple of pieces of their clothing that are incredibly comfortable. I usually wear their pants in the evening, one of their sweatshirts. I have a couple of pairs of their shorts. When I hear the word influencer, I replace it with

shitbag, shit turd. Perfect. I think that's, yeah, we should probably start doing that. That'd be good. Oh my god, you're a shit turd? That's awesome. A lot of butt shots on this account. Okay, cool. butt shots on this um account okay cool well thank you uh thank you lskd i big news this past weekend no what 2022 cold turkey 17 you got third at the Turkey Trot? That's your trophy? It was a disc golf tournament. I actually tied for second and then with two other guys, and we went to a little playoff. So I ended up with the third place trophy. But it was by far my best performance in one of those things, which was unexpected and kind of cool.

Was the playoff a one hole? Yeah, a one shot closest to the pin. Oh, wow. That was a second close out of three shots wow congratulations that's awesome uh i i'm gonna say this about that tyler watkins uh fitness challenge thing i've i've done it twice and both times because i was working on this show that at least that's my excuse i wasn't able to stay up to date so basically what you do is you get four friends together or 10 friends together and you guys do a draft and you just get on the phone and everyone picks their

athletes. And when you run out of athletes, you're done. And then usually I think the way it works is you can use every athlete twice. And so if there's 10 events, you, you, you right before the event happens, you plug in your athletes. And what happened to me is, is I wouldn't plug in my athletes because I'd be fooling around on the show or preparing for the next show. And every time I regret it because these guys are having so much fun and I'm on the thread and I can't do any of the shit talking. It's lame. I always regret that. I would rather just stick in somebody.

I don't even care. I just want to be a part of it. That is true. And I actually fill in my roster ahead of time even if I don don't know all the workouts, just so I have something just in case. But we're also playing in, I don't know what he calls it now, but I call it the pro league or the pro division. But he has since created an easy game, which requires much less interaction over the course of the weekend, I believe.

So you can just kind of pick some players and play them up front and not have that thing happen. That's cool. I look at Brandon Waddell. I look at the PFL and what they did. They gave away $6 million this past weekend. And I think how easy it could be that I could have sold them $,000, this community, the Sevan podcast and the people on it. We probably could have helped them sell 10,000 more pay-per-views. If they just would have reached out to me and been like, hey, will you please interview these six athletes the week prior to the PFL?

I bet you we would have increased viewership by 10,000. Maybe not the first time. Maybe we increased it by 3,000. And if they, maybe not the first time, maybe we increased it by 3,000 the first time, 6,000 the second time, 9,000 the third time. And people don't do that. People don't take advantage of the resources they have. PFL is kind of podunk. They don't have any promotions,

but the fights were insane. And that's what brings me to this, what Brandon Waddell said, does Brian have a closet disc golf podcast and do rankings for their athletes too i brian and i have talked about doing a disc golf podcast but those i've reached out to a half dozen dozen disc golfers and no interest and disc golf could be blown up exactly the same way usa weightlifting could if they were just to swerve into the CrossFit lane. Because these fucking CrossFitters, they have all of this fitness and they just want to use it.

They just want to use their athleticism. So I don't know why. It's a slam dunk to swerve over into this lane. And I'll interview anyone. I would interview a basket weaving contest. I just want to hang with the best. I will interview anyone. I would interview a basket weaving contest. I just want to hang with the best. I will say this. I feel like I'm doing with disc golf what I did with CrossFit between 2014 and 2018, where I just have an interest in it and I'm watching it.

And similarly, it does stick in my mind. I know a ton of the pros that travel on the tour and the international players and whatever so maybe down the road we'll have some more luck with it but i do think i have a lot of knowledge and insight that can be a lot a lot don't get them started barry mccockner you got the best followers man just great names these people, these people. I know. He's a good dude. They're just a bunch of shit turds. Yeah. No, none of these guys are influencers. There's no shit turds.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Trigger word. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Coming up this weekend is the Dubai Fitness Challenge. Hey, this guy in the chat. We reached out to Brody Smith. I actually met Brody Smith randomly when I was in Texas at a disc golf golf course with Chase Ingram he doesn't want to come on our podcast you know so

if he wants to get big that's great he's I think he's doing good things I actually like the way that he thinks about the game but he won't come and talk to us bother him go bother him and make him come over here I'm just gonna float my own boat here. Pretty much every single person who comes on this podcast afterwards, within a week, will DM me or text me and be like, holy shit, I had no idea how ravenous your crowd is. Because apparently you guys will go over to their accounts and start spreading the love on them, which is crazy cool. Sevan, you're losing viewers seven enough disc golf fine okay fine i understand yes sir uh this weekend is the dubai fitness challenge brian

uh will be going there and commentating with derrick forest forest uh it will be there is this the first time you guys have matched up to do commentating? Yeah. The only commentary that I've done apart from Zalos games last month was I did Dubai. No, I did Guadalupe one year with Bill Grundler. Okay. Probably no one watched that because it was behind the Flow Elite paywall. And I did a few events at the Filthy 150 alongside Maz Jacobson back in 2018 or 19.

And other than that, this is my first time doing it. Derek did Dubai, excuse me, last year with Tommy. And so this year I'm filling in for Tommy. Just to, I'm trying to remember because all the years, last year was the year that they ran in the inside, on the inside ski slope right correct okay i watched all that i thought i thought the comment the commentary was great that year i enjoyed it as i recall i don't know nothing negative sticking in my head so i've been watching it back just to kind of learn derrick's style a little bit and reacquaint

myself with what uh you know what what happened there last year i I went to Dubai three years ago, and I was in the truck, basically acting as a producer for the broadcast there. And I learned a lot in that year. And so watching back some from last year, Dubai is its own entity. It's like a different beast. It goes about things differently than most of the other competitions because that country is different. It's funded by a different person or group of people. And just the way they go but also the people who are programming this competition, which is the HWPO crew, that we can hopefully bring a pretty good broadcast. But part of the thing this season for Dubai is you might not know all the athletes competing as well

as some of the years past there when they've had some invites. So I think that hopefully to enhance the experience for people who are watching, we can start to educate them on who these people are and where they might do well. So I think that's what we'll do today. Let me ask you a hard question off the bat. In years past, let me start over, take two, take three. When people put on events, i'm assuming that every year they put on event the following year they want to put on a bigger event a better event maybe better

athletes maybe more prize money maybe more creative events new locations but i'm guessing that it's a building of on a building onto the previous events. Right. So, or at least match it, you know, even at the super bowl, like the halftime show, I don't know how they do it in the NFL, or maybe even the people who make the commercials for the super bowl, they want to make better commercials. And even talking to, uh, J.R. Howell a little bit,

I could tell that he was invigorated by, um, the crash crucible this year and the following year, he wanted to do a better event. Do you see any of these events as kind of like burning out? Yes, on the men's side, we do have some amazing people. Yanukovsky, Roman Krennikov, Brent Fikowski, Pat Vellner. We have some heavyweights over there. Well, not Pat Vellner. Not Pat Vellner?

In this competition this year oh i apologize i didn't do my uh due diligence um oh sorry uh lazar jukic um we even throw comporter in there comporter pretty actually pretty cool he's returning to the individual field for the first time in a while so excited to see him out there. Is Dubai on the decline? I mean, it's a relative question. You know, Dubai is like a, it's a privately funded event. It was a big, like a big time bucket list item for a lot of premier CrossFitters

or the elite CrossFitters for like the middle teens. I would say like 2016 17 18 19 especially those years it was a really popular event to go to obviously a lot of things changed in 2020 globally but um some of the and you have to be careful when you talk about the prize purse like for example last year at guadalupalooza they had a hundred thousand dollar first place prize but it was a huge drop off to second place, like $30,000 was second place or something. So it was a bigger price tag for the first place. But most of the athletes going there know they're not going to win first place.

There's maybe three to five that actually have a chance to win first place. So if you're being drawn to Guadalupalooza instead of Dubai, because it's 100,000 instead of 50,000, this year it's 75,000 instead of 50,000. You should still like take that for what it is. What are your chances of winning either of those? Look at the fourth, fifth, sixth place spot, something that might be more attainable. What do you get if you finish 10th place there? If you're going there for prize money. So is it on the decline? I don't know. They've always done things their own way. They don't have, they're not very much influenced by the other things that are going on. Programming, they'll do what they want to do. Prize purses, they're not going to try to like keep up or one up or whatever. They just do their

thing. It's still an awesome event. It's really fun to be there. If you ever have a chance to go as a fan, or at least from my experience, it's very intimate. There's not 10,000 people on site, so you can see the athletes. You can get pretty close. It's a pretty good experience. I'm curious to see the new venue they have this year. As far as I know, it's the first time they've had a new venue. They've always been in the Duty Free Tennis Stadium. They're going to the Coca-Cola Arena this year. So I think it might be a little bigger floor space. I'm curious to see what they can

do in terms of production. It'll be indoor instead of outdoor. I wouldn't say they're necessarily on a decline. I just think that they've in some ways have kind of just been steady or stagnant. They haven't been trying to get better and bigger. In fact, they've scaled down their competition. They used to have like 12 and 14 and bigger. In fact, they've scaled down their competition. They used to have like 12 and 14 and 15 events, and they were really heavy and long and very difficult, and it was a beatdown of a competition. Now I think it's very well tailored as an event that is approachable

for both fans and athletes. The programming is much more in line with, you know, it's high level for sure, but it's not this crazy CrossFit Games style beat down offseason event. I mean, you know, they realize that a lot of these athletes are trying to manage a season, an entire year, and that it's maybe not that appealing to come and do a 15 workout event in the middle of the offseason. out event um in the middle of the offseason and would you argue that the bit really the biggest limiting factor for dubai at least from the kind of the american-centric point of view is just to travel it's just far so if you're into watching american athletes or north american athletes they don't we only have one female um athlete from the united states this year but that being said dubai does have, as I saw from your article in Bar Bend, they do have four, uh, out of the 20 women, they represent 14 countries,

which is pretty impressive. Yeah. And there's one, there is one United States competitor and there's, there are three from Canada, Brent Fikowski, and then two on the women's side, uh, both games, athletes, Emily Rolfe and Freya Musbrugger um so yeah I mean that certainly could be a deterrent to people from the U.S. or Canada that might not know a lot of athletes but they still have a good global representation like you mentioned Con Porter's coming from Africa Jamie Simmons who's lives in the U.K. but from New Zealand originally will be competing there and then they have people from all over Europe. I mean, obviously the travel is a lot easier from Europe to get over there than from North America. But I think that, you know, in general, Europe is up and coming and there's going to be continued to be more and more relevant Europeans in the hunt for top 10, top 20 game spots on the men's side, especially.

hunt for top 10, top 20 game spots on the men's side, especially. I've spoken at Nauseam about how good the women in Europe are. And these aren't maybe the biggest household European names. You don't have any of the Icelandic women. Some of the ones that have been around for a while, like Sam Briggs and Krista Holt, that have retired. But this is the next generation of European women that are going to be significant as well and dubai is a good opportunity to get to see them it's only a 20 person field for most of the events they'll just be two heats so you get a really kind of in-depth or personal uh view of some of these athletes that might become relevant on the at the games level in the next couple seasons and with only 20 athletes especially

with uh those four men that i mentioned you're going to get to see a lot of action uh without the weight right without the weight without the weight it or no no without the w-a-i-t without the weight you're going to get to see the good you're going to get to see the good, you're going to get to see good heats going regularly. Well, and what I, what I, I should have clarified this, what I meant earlier, the schedule for the competition, um, on Saturday and Sunday, it's five hour windows from four to 9 PM in Dubai. That's the, that's the whole competition on Saturday and Sunday. So you get to see however many workouts they do in a five hourhour block on two consecutive days. They will have one off-site event the day before, Friday in Dubai, would be like Thursday night in the United States. But, you know, it's a smaller period of time to tune in and watch. It's not like it's going on from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. or something

like sometimes happens at a water palooza or something like that where they have thousands of competitors they have to get through. You said 4 to 9 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday? In Dubai. In Dubai. So that's 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. So if you're on the East Coast uh you could you could it's actually feasible to watch it during eastern standard time was it like seven to one or something yeah 7 a.m to noon i'm looking it is the same day right they don't you don't cross it okay it is the same day

you don't cross the date line okay the first event will be on the i think it will be kind of weird because i think it's on friday morning in dubai which would be like 10 p.m pacific time or something like that on thursday but uh the majority of the competition will take place saturday and sunday evening in dubai which is saturday and sunday morning in the states and you know no joke that venue was built in 2019. So for some people, this will be the nicest venue that they've ever been in. For most people, they'll never been in a venue. Venues age quickly.

To go into a venue that's only three years old, made over there by those guys, those guys don't fuck around. They got some of the best engineers in the world over there. It should be a nice host. Yeah, and that venue hosts a lot of different you know conferences and get-togethers and events and gatherings so um it should be i mean i think it was basically built for something like this brian in that article that you wrote for barbend i think one of the things that caught my attention there was is that brent

fikowski competed in an event in e. I think it was called Elite. Elite? Elite? What was it? Elfit. Elfit. Okay. Elfit CrossFit Championships or something like that. Why isn't Dubai using the word CrossFit anymore?

I wrote an article about that also. Oh. I think you told me to read that a couple weeks ago, and I did, but it didn't stick. What was the reasoning? Do people have to pay for that? Yeah, I think you told me to read that a couple of weeks ago and I did, but it didn't stick. What was the reasoning? Do people have to pay for that? Yeah, I think so. And there's certain expectations on both ends when you do that.

And I think that kind of what I said earlier, Dubai does their own thing. And I think that for a few years, it made sense for them to have that, um, partnership with CrossFit and include that in their branding and their name. And that this year, when they look through the terms or whatever, they just decided that, uh, they were okay without it. And so they were going to return to Dubai fitness championships, which is what they originally were. So nothing, uh, nothing nefarious or dramatic. I don't think so. No. I mean, it it's it's notable in the fact that it is one of the major off-season events and they're you know they're changing away from including the name

crossfit in it but nothing i don't think anything negative uh brian has put out his predictions on his uh instagram account but before we get to that uh let's i'd like to ask some questions about some of the individual guys um what what do you think brent's doing is this uncharacteristic of him to be doing uh two two off-season events back to back uh before the open before we go into the crossfit games and i i'm making the assumption that he is going to compete in the crossfit games this year i think he's intending to, yeah. Is it out of character for him? Yes and no.

Last year, I don't think he did any off-season competitions, but I also think that he was coming off of a Games where he didn't compete at 100% or at least a portion of the competition. I think he's very realistic and aware of his age and his window of time relative to the up and coming generation of young CrossFitters right now. So I think he knows that he's still very good and still has a chance to get top 10, top fives, and maybe even one more podium finish at the games. But he has to be extremely specific and calculated in his build up to that, which he views as an entire year process. So last year he took the whole season off, got healthy, did his thing, looked good. One semifinals came to the games and had his worst live event, live finish at the games ever. Um, I know that he's gone back and re-evaluated since then. He has taken note of

some things that, you know, this is actually a good principle for people to understand. Forever, he was good enough at running that he could just show up and do well in the running events. Last year, and so he wasn't investing a ton of time in that because he knew there were other areas where he could get more bang for his buck and we've talked about i always refer back to the spencer hendel 2015 example for this the guy was super strong one of the strongest in the field he kept doing well on the strength events but he was finishing 10th to 20th every year and all of a sudden he finished fifth which is a substantial improvement to move up five spots that high on the leaderboard and he and he did his worst ever in the strength events, but he just invested

in all these other things. So Brent was also trying to make a move up the leaderboard where there's a very small margin to go from third or fourth to first or second is very difficult. So he wasn't investing in running. Well, he took a hit on some of the running events this year. And so he's, he's realized, well, I have to start running again because I'm not elite anymore. I'm just pretty good. And so he's always doing this. So he looked back. And I think that also he decided that he might not have, and I don't know this, I'm just speculating on this one,

that he might not have that many great opportunities to travel and be a very well-recognized elite ambassador of the sport internationally for years and years to come. And so, you know, I'm guessing that someone from LFIT reached out to him and said, would you like to come to our event? And I'm assuming that's why Vellner was there also. And they said, you can come and watch, you can come and compete. We just love to have you here. He took him up on that opportunity, figured he's going to be in the Middle East anyway. He'll just turn it into an extended trip and get a competition in Dubai. The last time he competed in Dubai was the last time I was there three years ago, 2019. He won the competition, so he has good memories and experience there.

And I think it's a great move for him at this point in his career to go over there, get to see a different part of the world, compete in a different part of the world, meet some different people. And for him, especially the fact that now he's been in the Middle East for five, six weeks leading into this, I think he's probably going to be coming into this competition, very dialed in, obviously feeling very acclimated and comfortable and will likely do very well. How many years has Dubai been going on? This is their 10th competition. I believe it's the 11th season. I think they missed one year. And Brent is the only male who – is he the only male that's ever been on the podium before at Dubai?

But he's the only one who's ever won it. Correct. Lazar was second last year. Let me just see. Sometimes you go back a ways and there's someone. And I think those are the only podium finishers. Yonikoski's been sixth there. Lazar's also been fifth there.

Yorgos Ketervis was seventh there last year. Luka Jukic was ninth. Alex Katoulis, 11th. So they have some guys that are coming back that did pretty well. But podium finishes, only brent first place 2019 and lazar second place 2021 going back to the question so so you didn't give us any specific reason why they dropped uh the word crossfit basically all we're getting is that it doesn't suit them and it doesn't suit crossfit based on whatever regulations there are to use

the name but the details are i would think i would guess that it was dubai's decision i think that you know crossfit says if you want to have crossfit if you want to be a licensed event or whatever they're calling it now these are the terms and whatever those terms are dubai either didn't like them or didn't find them beneficial yeah i mean that's the only thing i that would make sense to me okay uh back to fikowski here um i'm i just typed in in google uh brent fikowski podcast and i'm like where can we listen to brent talk does he not do podcasts like 2018 2020 here's one in september of 2022 but it's only a 52 second clip when's the last time you saw brent on a uh podcast can you does anything here's one in 2020 does the bottom line count oh sure sure he's been on he's been on with her before this year i think several times

um oftentimes talking about pfaa, occasionally some competition things. Where do we go to learn about him? Where do we learn what his childhood was like? Where's that? Where do we learn about him, about why he does this? Is there some comprehensive, defining interview of Brent Fikowski? Because if not, I'll invite him on the podcast for the, I don't know, third time. It looks like the Clydesdale media people had an interview with him.

Oh, where do you see that? Is that where I'm scrolling? In the comments. She mentions it here. Okay. Yeah, Scott does a fantastic job in Digs In. Okay, I'll go check it out. does a fantastic job in digs in okay i'll go check it out uh hugely popular maybe one of the most popular active males in the space uh yeah i mean i would you know if you think about usually success you know dovetails into popularity and so obviously madaris is popular velner and fukowski have been doing well for six years now so it it makes sense that they'd be popular. And then the other guys that are really, really doing well, Roman and Ricky are not, you know, they're not from North America. And so the, like the level of interest is a little bit more variable. And so, and, um, they're,

it's hard for me to gauge how, uh, popular, uh, Roman is, for example, because I don't really know that many CrossFitters from his part of the world. And they're not like regularly, you know, pouring into my DMs from Russia and telling me like, hey, Roman this, Roman that. And same thing with Ricky. You know, it seems like they're very well received, but are they as popular as Brent and Pat? Maybe not, but they've also been around for a long time, are very personable guys. You know, they've had those documentary series that follow their seasons once each, or maybe they did one together also. So they've been, you know, they were sponsored by Reebok for a long time. Now they've, you know, Pat's gone on to go with Tear. But, yeah, they've been pretty big faces in the male CrossFit world for the last half decade plus.

Brian loves the Canadians, though. I don't know what that means. Who has a little test for you, Brian? Who has more Instagram followers, Justin madaris or brent fikowski i would guess justin but i have no idea uh brent fikowski has uh i think over 600 000 and justin just barely peaks over 502 000 winner for brent fikowski uh how do you watch this? How are we going to watch this at home? This Dubai Fitness Championship? TBD and the off-site event.

We'll see. I'm not sure. But for the other ones, it'll be streamed on YouTube. Dubai Fitness Championship YouTube channel. I'm, you know, CrossFit not being a part of it. I'm sure they will not restream it i think i think morning chalk up is a media partner with them but i'm not sure if they're going to restream it but at the very least dubai fitness championship youtube will be an easy place to find it you tell them i'd love to restream it for them let's go over here to live uh it doesn't look like they have the links up yet although youtube is

restructured and i don't know how to find anything anymore this oh this is it though right this is their page dubai fitness championship i think so so guys basically all you have to do is pull this page up in your browser keep refreshing it for the next few days, and then it looks like we're already subscribed to it. Then come over here and then hit the All button, and there will be a button under here I think that will say Notify Me. And you just click that button that says Notify Me, and it will send you a text to your phone or a message, not a text, but some sort of notification to your phone or your computer when they go live wait oh look at that i just clicked this and put all and it didn't stick okay here we go great okay all right it's that easy uh one more time brian i know we talked about the prize money where what's the prize money for first second and third place i have to find that

out exactly i know it's fifty thousand dollars for first you don't even have to someone in the comments will do it for you there's plenty there's a 319 personal assistants um so you're fine uh so uh we don't know the time yet um prize money incoming uh we know 40 We don't know the time. Oh, sorry. We do know the time. Sorry. We do know the time.

You're right. The off-site event is not – I'm not sure how or where we'll be able to watch it. Hopefully find out more information when I get there tomorrow. But the rest of it is very straightforward. And is the off-site event on Friday? Yeah. Okay. On Friday? Yeah.

Okay, and then there's only one event on Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday, we presume, is the 4 a.m. my time. No, no, sorry. 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. their time, 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. my time. Mm-hmm. Okay. We know that there are 20 female, 20 male competitors. Why zero invites this year? Just a good, you know, I think just a decision they made to kind of go back to their origins in that regard as well.

You know, the prior, I believe. OK, that's what I thought. Thank you, Alyssa. 50K, 30K, 20K for top three. Pretty good. I think it was 2016 was the first time that they had invites maybe, or 2017. And then prior to that, it always had been you had to qualify. So I think they just wanted to return to that.

Just a decision they made. No particular reason. Otherwise. All right. Uh, are you ready to look at your, uh, list? Sure. Uh,

do you think that the list, um, it has any controversy in it at all? Uh, possibly, I don't know. I decided to do the men and women side by side this time. Usually I do them separately.

So, uh, okay. Why, uh, what is Brent Fikowski done? Well, let's wait,

let's not start with Brent. Let's go with Lazar Djugic. How healthy is Lazar? Have you talked to him? I mean, by all accounts, it seems like he's fine, which is hard for me to believe or understand.

If you're not aware, he competed at the Rogue Invitational. He rolled his ankle inwards on the Texas trail run. Through conversations with him, it sounded like he might have a small fracture in his ankle, that it probably wasn't a ligament or a tendon. And it's been like six weeks and now he's getting set to compete again. He has advertised on his Instagram that he's been like basically in a hardcore training camp with his brother. Who's also in this competition. And they've been doing all the same training, eating, sleeping, and just getting super dialed in for this. And I know

that he's going there with the intention of winning it. I just can't wrap my mind around having, you know, an ankle injury that makes you finish last in a, in a competition. And then six weeks later, showing up to another off season, major event and winning it like that. But he says he's fine. So I'm projecting him to, to do well.

Based on what he's saying. What if you didn't have that information? Would he, would you put them lower? Maybe, I mean, maybe one spot. I still have this like thought in my mind, like if you're not healthy, why would you, why would you do this? If there's a risk of making it worse, why would you do a competition like this?

You don't need to do it. You're just entering like the prime of your career. You've got two back-to-back top 10 finishes at the games. Really everything on paper is saying that he's the type of guy that could improve still at the games, um, on the trajectory he's been on. I kind of, I kind of view him similarly to Jeff Adler, where he just seems to be like doing all the right things and moving steadily and steadily up the rankings. Uh, so if there's a risk of making this, whatever's, whatever happened to his ankle worse, you know, I don't know why he would risk it. And therefore I have to believe that he's showing up confident that he can compete without being concerned about doing any further damage. What place did he take

it? Rogue? Wasn't it like dead last dead last. Yeah. And he is clearly not the least fit guy in that field. You know, he probably, it's not a great style of competition for him overall. I, you know, I think he would have finished style of competition for him overall i you know i think he would have finished somewhere between 8th and 15th um as a low and high end if if all else was normal meaning not hurt himself in the first workout but you know that's why it's like he took last because of an injury and now you're competing again in a big competition six weeks later and it wasn't just we we saw the injury on the feed. We saw the after effects of the injury.

We basically saw him for two days basically limping around and nursing it. And yet he says on here in his post, four weeks later and I feel better than ever. I am much fitter and much more confident than I was a month ago. There's one person in particular I owe this to, my brother Luca. was a month ago there's one person in particular i owe this to my brother luca so i'm wondering how like you were saying just to reiterate what you're saying how is he even able to train these 24 7 7 to 8 hours a day training with an injured ankle you would think that the best he could hope for is to come back um healed but not with any significant training. Yep.

I mean, he's a super straightforward and upstanding guy. He's not going to tell you anything that's not true. So just take his word for him that he's healthy, and we know that when he's healthy, he can be a threat to win this thing. Okay, and since we were on, Lazar, who you have as number two, the person I'm most interested in is the gentleman you have at number eight, his brother, his brother, Luca Jukic.

He, he, how close did he get to going to the games last year? Wasn't it close? Basically one or two overhead squats away. And that was in a semifinal event or in a last chance. Yeah. Lowlands throw downdown i was there live

on the field working with the broadcast and it was a really i mean this is kind of like what you want in a semi-final the last workout had some bar muscle-ups some calories on an echo bike and 10 overhead squats at 225 pounds and it's just that type of workout where you gotta ride the line but if you screw it up it could cost you everything in terms of your season if you're a guy like luka jukic whose objective is to qualify for the games he qualified the year previously online he finished third place his brother finished second in that same online competition and i think it was really important to luka to back that up and say i didn't make the games because it was an online competition. I made the games because I'm good enough to be there. And so what happened in that workout is, and just like

his brother and keep in mind, he's two or three years younger than his brother. So strength has always been their biggest challenge to build up the necessary strength to compete at the level they want to. Their gymnastics is good. Their aerobic capacity is amazing. Their work ethic is phenomenal. Their discipline, their drive. I mean, it's, it's top notch and it's elite. And their mental game. They, they, uh, Lazar always seems so strong mentally. Oh, for sure. They, you know, he, especially I've seen bounce back. We've talked about how he'll have something bad happen to him, his fault or otherwise. And it just doesn't phase him. The bike to work event was out of his head in minutes. I was dwelling on it for days. He just moves forward. I think his brother is coming along in that regard. And you know, men in general, I think Lucas 23 or four

now, and they are continuing to develop their, that mental maturity through their mid twenties. So I think he's, he's evolving in that way too. Um, anyway, in that workout, it was really kind of fascinating because he was in a battle with, well, this open next Enrico Zanoni, uh, there may have been one, uh, um, um, Adrian one Viler. And then out of nowhere, I remember standing on the field and I said to the broadcast team, I said, Hey, just so you know, Moritz Fiebeck is in lane two here. He's in eighth place and it's not impossible that he could win this workout this is a perfect workout for him and he did win the workout and it was enough to catapult him all the way up to fourth then I'm watching Enrico Zanoni who I basically know nothing about and I'm like this guy is not that big 10 10 squats at 2 7 at 225 overhead squats at the end of the competition with everything on the line and he hit him unbroken

and looked amazing I was so impressed that he was able to do that and in the meantime adrian munweiler struggled and luca jukic struggled and phoebe and zanoni went and munweiler and luca were out and that's how close it was damn since then this guy has been competing like a madman i wrote an article about it like that who luca yeah basically, I don't advise the type of schedule that he's created for himself in terms of competition this year, but he he's, I've talked to him a little bit and he basically said like, I'm angry.

And I want to go out there and compete. Cause I need to cut my teeth on the competition floor. Now it's been the longest stretch of time that he's gone without competing since then from his last competition until Dubai. And we'll see what he's, you know, first of all, what he's learned, is he able to elevate that kind of mature mental approach to the competition? And secondly, if, uh, if a workout comes out that demands strength or volume strength, you know, he, this isn't like um the strongest field we don't have guys that are going to like clean clean and jerk 375 or snatch 320 in this field really so he'll probably be uh okay and like if there's a one rep max or complex style workout but if

there's a workout that has like 10 20 30 reps like that did of a moderate weight barbell movement. I want to see if his strength has caught up a little bit to the field. Here he is doing a clean. I don't know the weight on it, but basically relative to the field. That looks like three, you know, that looks like a three 25 or something. Relative to the field we need to see him get one percent stronger than the field than he was last year so if the entire field got one percent stronger he just needs to just move that dial a little bit which is difficult at his level and then we'll probably see him at the games but this is basically going to be his first our first big look at him no

i would say yes i mean he competed in madrid he didn't do great there i know he's pretty bummed about the performance but what were his shortcomings there i can't i can't remember exactly um but it was uh you know there was a weird competition there was no live stream there were 80 people in the field it was hard to follow exactly what's going on there were very short workouts. So like small margins created big gaps. It could be like 20 seconds in 20 places or something. So, but I think, you know, yeah, so I would agree with that.

This is the big, like the first big look we've had at him since semifinals. This, if Brent Fikowski shows up, is the brent fukowski that kind of we hold in his head he runs away with this right but also that being said you're not surprised if yannikovsky wins uh i think the top three guys here will will separate from the rest of the field. Um, I also spoke to Yona and he, you know, what I said, what I said to him was like, Hey man, my perspective is that since having your surgery, not this past September, but two Septembers ago, so like 15 months ago, that every time I've seen you, you've been, you've looked better and better, stronger and stronger, fitter and fitter. And he said, yeah, I feel the same way. I feel like I'm getting back to being myself. And just like Lazar and just like Brent, he's coming here fully

believing that he can win this thing. And he's competed there before. Like I said, he was sixth place in 2019. That was a really, really good year. Fikowski, Vellner, Krennikov, Gumasin, Jukic, and Koski were the top six that year. And Con Porter, what's Con doing? Why is Con going to this event? First of all, he's with LSKD, that clothing brand that you didn't know about. Why is he going there? I think Con is – I love Con Porter, man. He's just – he's very authentic.

He does what he wants to do. He's great energy. He's a great competitor. I think it's as awesome that he's going to be in this field. I think it'll bring a lot of personality to the competition. And I think it's, you know, for him, because he's been doing the team thing, he's been traveling, he's launched a new business with James Newberry. Like he's got all these other things that are really positive in his life. So I think he's going to be competing pretty freely here. While those guys that I have here on the list ahead of him are coming in believing like, I can win this thing, and that might be their expectation. I think Khan's coming here and he's going to compete hard. He always does. But I

think he's also just having a ton of fun in his life right now. And this is a cool opportunity for him to compete in a competitive, not like elite individual uh competition in an environment that's fun he's been there before as well how old is khan 29 or something like that okay uh and and any injuries from him basically 32 excuse me 32 okay so so he might so he might be in the beginning of his decline. He's three years away from being a Masters athlete. He's only one of two male athletes in the field that didn't reply to my inquiry. So I'll have to give him a hard time about that. I don't know why. I don't know why I'm just surprised that he's pushing into this, why he's going to Dubai. I don't know why it perplexes me. He was on a team. I'm guessing that what's going on with that team? Is that team going back to the games next year? Has Annie said anything? Is that right? Reykjavik team staying together?

Reykjavik team staying together? I'm not sure. I think a lot of teams had certain plans in mind. And with the announcements that CrossFit made in the last month or so about the changes in the team structure, where you can do it a little bit more freely, that people have been reevaluating that. And I think there have been a lot of conversations globally and nationally about possibilities of teams. And so I think that the team landscape is a little bit unknown right now.

And I haven't heard anything since then about whether that team's going to do run it back or not. From what details you have about the path to the, to the games, can Con Porter make it to the games in 2023? Assuming, I mean, I'm trying to think. All of the elite crossfitters, male crossfitters from Australia or New Zealand or Oceania live there. While on the women's side, we know that Tia may or may not compete in Australia. Jamie Simmons may or may not compete in Australia. Kara Saunders may or may not compete at all.

You still have Ricky. You still have Jay. You still have Royce. You still have the King of the North up there, Baden Brown. And did you say Jay Crouch? I said Jay Crouch. Okay. So, you know, it's a bit of a gauntlet to try to qualify on the men's side.

There's these young guys, Jake Douglas, Bailey Martin. I don't know if Ben or Luke Fowler is going to compete this year. I don't know if Luke DeJong is coming back. You throw in a guy like, you know, some of these wildcard guys like Matt McCloud, Zeke Grove, Luke Fiso from New Zealand. Like, it's really, it's really difficult. Now, I don't know that any of those guys, again, Ellie, may or may not be in Australia. So the women are like dispersed all over the globe.

Pretty much all the men that are relevant are in Australia or Oceania than living there. So it's really hard to qualify. And I don't know, and we don't know how many spots are going to get because we, you know, we're waiting to find out some of that information. I think that if Con Porter invest went all in to try to compete as an individual this year,

that the best he could do at a semifinal in Australia is fourth place. And if he placed fourth place there, I do think that there's a chance that they, that they could end up with four spots. So I would say there is an outside chance you could make it if you wanted to. Explain that to me again. If they're only going to take – they're not going to take four spots. They're guaranteed three.

But there are 17 spots yet to be distributed. We don't know what the distribution process is. Okay. So we don't even know if there's going to be a last chance qualifier or if it's some other metric. There will not be a last chance qualifier. There will not be. They took the two last chance qualifier spots. They took 10 spots from North America and five spots from Europe out of the guaranteed pool. So Oceana, which we're talking about, is guaranteed three.

and then if they, for example, do well enough in whatever model CrossFit releases to earn one extra spot on the men's side, because it's not guaranteed that the men and women will get the same number of spots, so maybe they'll get four from the Tournament Pro if that's the semifinal again next year or whatever their qualifier is. And all the semifinals will have the same workouts? Yes. So in the most simplistic sense, if they were taking 17 people, he would have to be in that top. Those 17 spots will be distributed prior to semifinals.

It's hard to speculate because we don't know what the process for distributing those spots is. I have my opinions about it. Wait, that doesn't even make sense to me what do you mean oh i see what you're saying so okay so when we go into the semi-finals everyone's number of people going to the games will be adjusted based on some other statistic that we don't know yet compilation okay i thought it was after the semi-finals it's kind of in replacement of the last chance qualifier they're removing the last chance qualifier altogether and they're going to be so when they go into australia they'll know oh we

have we have eight spots this year it could be four for the women five for the men okay so everyone is guaranteed a minimum okay and adrian bos Bosman has been very clear that by the time semifinal starts, in fact, a few weeks to a month before semifinal starts, every continent, every semifinal will know how many male and female qualifying spots they have to the game. What's the most someone could have? Do we know? Could someone get all 17?

Could someone get all 17 of them? Could it be top 22? I mean, it's unlikely because North America has two semifinals. But what I think is most likely is that of those 17 spots, that seven of them additional will go to North America East. So you end up with 12. Five or six will go to North America West. So you end up with 10 or 11.

And then the remaining, or maybe all but the remaining one, maybe four will go to Europe. So they'll have nine and maybe one will go to Oceania. So they'll have four. How many competitors in the semifinals this year? Is it 20 men and 20 women

or is it 40 men and 40 women? 60 men and 60 women in each semifinal for North America and 60 in Europe, still 30 in the others. That's that's yeah. Which is a big, I mean, this is another thing that CrossFit has to be thinking about is how are we going to broadcast that? Are we going to run 10 heats of six men, 10 heats of six women or six heats of 10 or whatever it is, men, six seats at 10 women, 12 heats per workout, seven workouts.

I mean, that's a lot. And who's going to want to sit and watch six heats of the same 12 heats of the same thing. And, and, and it's going to really affect the scoring also affect the scoring people who take last play. If you take last place in one event, you will be significantly punished. And yeah, and you have to be extremely calculated in what scoring model you're going to use and make sure that that makes sense in the, in the programming that you've come up with. Look, I think that we're prepared to, to help them with that between me and Tyler and help. And we can do that job and we can, we've done it. Uh, I have tried, have to trust that they're also have people that are capable of doing that job and that they have a soundproof plan, that they've been more forward thinking to identify problems and make sure they don't happen before they have, because they haven't done a good job of that in the past.

Tyler Watkins, what's it like to be Sevan to have a life outside of CrossFit and it's only one hour of his day? It's cool. It's awesome. It's awesome. Thank you his day. It's cool. It's awesome. It's awesome. Thank you for asking. I appreciate it. Okay. Big, big, big, big. I think it's a big event for Luka Djokic and Lazar Djokic. We're going to see if Lazar's ankle is okay.

We're going to see. I mean, literally, he came last place at the Rogue Invitational, and now he's coming back here. And Brian, for some reason, has him in second place. For some reason. brian for some reason has him in second place uh for some reason i mean he's he is the fittest guy in the field based on the games last year they could call this the fucking broken horse championships i mean these look at these guys brent fukowski lazar jukic and janikoski these are these are if these guys were horses they would have already all been taken out into the field and shot and put down.

I'm lying. I'm dying. And then we got con Porter down here who I don't know what he's doing. Yeah. He just, he just doesn't seem, it just seems odd to me that he's going over there to test his skills at 33. What about this guy? More, more it's fee big. Could this be, how old is this guy?

Can this guy be, could this be his coming out party? He this event we're like holy shit we got a new guy well not a coming out party he's 27 or maybe he's 28 by now it's hard for me to i don't know when all their birthdays are but you know that's a good competitive age he's one of the guys i mentioned that uh usurped luka jukic on that last workout, the lowlands throwdown by winning that workout, securing a fourth place spot. He had a pretty bad showing at the games. I would say he has since then kind of doubled down on his commitment to this sport. So he's, he owns three boxes, I think in Germany. Wow. And I think he was doing some personal coaching, but now he's working and living in Majorca with John Singleton and the program. And he's taken steps in his other business and personal lives to remove his responsibilities from those things.

He's still involved, but much less so. And he's fully committed and believes that he can get back to the games and do significantly better. So I'm taking a bit of a flyer on him here. If he finishes fourth, fifth, sixth, it would be his best competitive finish outside of the lowlands last year. And I think this field is actually fairly comparable in terms of overall quality to a European semifinal field. So it's not unprecedented for him to have a top five finish

in a competition like this, but this would be a good finish if he's able to do it. field um so it's not unprecedented for him to have a top five finish in a competition like this but this would be a good finish if he's able to do it and i'm basically after talking with all of the athletes in their camps and stuff there are a lot of guys coming into this for example the greek guys yorgos kerevis and alex katoulis they could easily beat moritz in this but they competed last year at the madrid or last weekend they competed last weekend katoulisus and Yorgos, Kerevis there, at the Madrid Challenger Championship or Series. Yorgos got first,

Alex got third. And I don't think it's that easy to compete back-to-back weekends. They won on decent paychecks there, 12 and 6,000 euros, I believe, for their respective finishes. But, you know, Guillaume Briand was at the games this year and he did a lot better than Moritz. Uh, I have had a opportunity to see the workouts.

I've actually done seven other eight workouts myself or versions of them. And I think that this is going to be a good competition for Moritz. I could be wrong, but he is, I would say like the kind of the flyer or the, um, I was gambling on him but he is, I would say, the flyer. I was gambling on him with that pick a little bit this weekend. There was a comment here earlier. I'd like to hear someone's take on Liver King. I will talk more about it, but if you go to the beginning of the show before Brian came on, the first five minutes, I spoke at length about it. Okay, Brian, what was I going to add?

There was one more thing I wanted to mention about this. Moritz. Oh, anything else you want to say about these guys on this list? Any particular guy that you want to be like, hey, we need to talk about this guy? Go to 11th, one page to the left there. Just Luka Vunjak is in this field. He was also at the Lowlands Throwdown. He's also from Serbia. So you got Lazar, Luke, Jukic brothers, and also Woonjack here. He was so impressive to me at semifinals. And he actually won one of the workouts there.

He had like three top five finishes and then three finishes outside the top 20. He like a lot of these guys are invigorated by that. They're not sure they go there. They do really well on some things and they see these problems. He has also reinvested in his training. He said he, you know, it was very obvious to him, the things he needed to work on. He's been, you know, investing a lot into that. He's a, he's a smaller athlete. So like range of motion, barbell cycling, gymnastics. gymnastics, I think like six to nine minute workouts are things he can really excel in. So I'm curious to see how much progress he's made since semifinals because he's also not

very old. He's only 22 or 23 years old. And he looked like he just had some elements of the way that he was moving and competing that made me think that he could become pretty good so when i mentioned earlier before we started talking about athletes specifically that there are athletes in this field who you may not know a lot about but you might want to he's one of those guys for me luca voon jack yeah and i intend to check in with some of these guys when i get there and make sure we have the pronunciations right it could be a soft j I'm not sure but I'll hopefully get it right for the broadcast god he does look young yeah he his build overall is like very uh Noah Olsen Matt Fraser-esque you know like strong and

mighty not the biggest guy but moves pretty well so I'm excited to watch him compete and then for the men there are four Spaniards in this field. I've been mentioning it over the course of this year that Spain is on the ascendancy in Europe. They're congregating athletes into this training culture environment. Fabian Benito is probably the most well-known of these guys. I think I put him in the side of the top 10, Fabian. And then the other guys I kind of sprinkled throughout the field. Yeah, Fabian. And then the other guys I kind of sprinkled throughout the field. Yeah.

Fabian and ninth there. Fabian finished eighth at lowlands throwdown, which was that competition that Luca was in that Alvunjak and both Jukic brothers and Moritz Fiebeck. He bombed the first workout dead last on the Lagos rope climb, just like terrible execution. And then climbed all the way back to eighth and made the last chance qualifier.

He's also kind of just in that, uh, coming into that prime of his career, 26, 27 years old. I think he's leading the charge of these guys, but you have Damian Martinez-Sotores, who won one of the Zelos Games workouts. You have Anil Ikai, who was second place at Madrid Championships behind Lazar Djokic, which, you know, that was a really impressive performance that he had there. So I want to see if he can back that up. And then you have Javier Gonzalez Fernandez, who's he's probably the guy that I know the least about,

but I do know that he won a local competition in Spain recently. And he was on a team last year and one of his teammates failed the drug test. So he didn't get to compete last season, even though he had a pretty good, excuse me, um, start to start to the year. So I'm watching the Spaniards as well, not just on the men's side,

but the women also did this. Did this guy compete last week too in Madrid? Who is this? This is Fabian. Uh, I don't think so. When was, um,

when, how many weeks ago was the, uh, outfit or whatever Fikowski did? About a month. A month, okay. So he's good. I think so. I mean, I think he'll be just fine, ready for this. Alrighty. Let us cruise over to the ladies.

No massive names here. No, Jamie Simmons. Matilda Garns, games athlete. All five women on the front page are games athletes. Okay. Any of those women been on the podium at the games? Jamie with the team and as an individual. And as an individual?

2019. Wow. And she won Dubai in 2014. Yep. She's been, let's, let's see. That's crazy. Think about how long ago that is. She was second in Dubai in 2018.

She was fifth in Dubai in 2019. She's competed there a lot of times, but remember they used to live there. Her and Elliot used to live in Abu Dhabi. Eight years ago, she competed in this event. How old is she? 31 or 32.

And she's not living there anymore. They're in the UK now. They've been there for maybe two years. And she didn't, and she didn't make it to the games last year. No. So all of the women in, in Oceania competed last year or all of the top women. I believe it was Tia, Cara, Ellie, Maddie, Jamie now there were some others that didn't compete that are pretty good like Laura

Clifton who had qualified the previous year and went on a team I've talked about them before but think about the women who beat her Tia Claire Toomey six-time winning champion of the games Cara Saunders legend of the sport 10-time games qualifier you to me, six time winning champion of the games, Kara Saunders, legend of the sport, 10 time games qualifier. You know, she was in the top 10 of the games this year, Ellie Turner, obviously on the ascendancy.

She was, uh, had her best performance at the games came, you know, lost on a tie break to podiuming at rogue and Maddie cert, who just won the down under across the championship, four time games athlete, been in the top 20,

a couple of times at the games. And Jamie was coming back from a bit of an injury. She didn't compete the previous season because of some surgeries, I think. So, you know, his fifth place, but there is absolutely no, no logical reason that the oceanic women with the lineup they had last year, shouldn't have gotten five spots to the games. You know, if this system was in place that they have this year, most likely, uh, we don't know exactly what it is. They would have had five qualifying spots last year and she would have been at the games probably taken somewhere around 10th to 15th place. So I think that she's still very good. There's nothing about the history of the sport that says that someone with the level of experience and success that she has at 32 years old can't still be competitive.

And I think she's a favorite to win this thing. Let me give you a conspiracy theory to be very popular these days at least the use of the term and they almost always seem to be right uh she's 32 instead of uh resting and preparing for the, she's going here because it's her kind of her homeland. It's her old stomping ground, right? Not her homeland, but her old stomping ground. So she's going here, even though it's probably not the smartest things to do, because she got some sort of special accommodation. And really, she should be just chilling for the games.

What do you mean special accommodation? She was third in the qualifier. No, no, not special accommodation in terms of getting in. What do you mean special accommodation? She was third in the qualifier. No, no, not special accommodation in terms of getting in. I don't mean like that. I mean, clearly she's a badass. Clearly she earned her way. But I mean, like this is an emotional,

because she used to live there. She knows the people there. She probably knows the event organizers. She probably got a deal on the hotel room, probably has a nice place there. That's, I mean, she has friends there. that this is being this is an emotional decision instead of a decision of what's best for. Damn, she's strong instead of what's best for her career. Couldn't disagree more.

OK, tell me. I mean, she's coming back from a big shoulder injury last season and you have to you have to get some competition experience and confidence. This is a great competition for her to go to because of all the things that you said and an opportunity for her to get some competition legs under her. She doesn't need them, does she, Brian? She's a hardcore vet. I still think there's a lot of value in it. We've heard people like Vellner and Noah Olson talk about it after having one or two years of the COVID problems that they would say like, no, you know, going back out and having

a chance to compete in the off season is important for me just to have those touches on a competition floor. There's, this is December. The next time she has to do a major competition with anything meaningful in a live setting is going to be in May or June, plenty of time, no matter what happens here. So I think totally fine, reasonable, practical, and probably a good decision for her to compete in Dubai this year. So it's just a conspiracy theory? It's just in your head. Okay, good. If I want to get on the Jamie Simmons bandwagon,

she is your first-place pick, what do I want to see in the programming and what don't I want to see? Honestly, against this field, I don't think there's very much that's going to come up that's going to be too problematic for her. In terms of her strengths, she's very good on gymnastics,

high skill gymnastics especially. So she would want to see, which I think we just saw a video of, things like Legos rope climbs, ring muscle-ups, barbell cycling, burpees, devil's press, which is something that Dubai historically has the thumbnail of having programmed them a decade ago now. This is the first time they programmed Devil's Press in a competition.

Those types of things. Box jump overs. The worst things for her would be a machines. Like if there's a workout, that's just like they had the acid bath one year, that's a tough workout for her. Cause she's pretty, you know, pretty small, but if one workout like that comes out against, you know, seven, eight, nine workouts, whatever they have, I don't think that's going to be a detriment to her when she's going to have top three finishes, most likely in several others. She can go long, she can swim. So, you know, if they go in the desert, if they go in the ocean, if they have a long run, no problem. When, when I see these athletes, the name that jumps out, out at me, the one that I would just pick if I just had to pick,

and God knows you shouldn't let me pick, but I would pick Emily Rolfe. When I think of the, she's seasoned, she's got games experience. She's been through a lot. She never seems rattled. she's got games experience she's been through a lot she never seems rattled she seems to have a lot of the tools um why fourth for her and would you be surprised if she won no i would say the top four here are probably like where i said the top three men are probably going to separate i could see the top four women here separating from everyone else um emily rolf has competed in in Dubai the last two years. She was eighth last year and then she was, uh, sixth in 2019. So she's had some success there, but, and you look at the names of people that have beaten her in 2019, Sigmund's daughter, Frey,

who I have one spot ahead of her here, Briggs, Magala and Sim, Jamie Simmons. That's pretty, that's pretty good company. And then last year horvath holta magala briggs dollstrom nistler sigmunds daughter wow okay so she doesn't get beat by uh nobodies it's all power no she's very she's very good and um the thing for emily is this is the first time that she's competing since that you know blood clot situation and workout one of the games this year so it's a little bit of her comeback i think she's very excited about that. I think she'll probably do very well. I'm just picking her behind these three other women who I think,

I think that, you know, I want to be surprised if you see a hundred point drop off from fourth to fifth this weekend. Wow. Is this Cara Frey? God, I don't even recognize her.

This is, she, she went to the games. What? This is the woman I've been telling you about for years okay tell me tell me because we already established that like that nothing sticks go ahead so 2018 going into the final event was briggs green sigmundsdottir and fray briggs jamie green sir sigmundsdottir and this woman and all of them had a chance to win they were all within like 10 or 12 points of each other Briggs, Green, Sigmundsdottir, and Frey. Briggs, Jamie Green, Sarah Sigmundsdottir, and this woman. And all of them had a chance to win. They were all within like 10 or 12 points of each other with one workout to go. She ended up taking fourth out of those four, which is fine.

And it was that year that I thought, man, this woman just needs to get to the games. She's okay online. She's pretty fierce in person in person. She's, um, she was second place in 2019 to Sarah Sigmund's daughter, as I already mentioned. So she's already podiumed in Dubai. She's been this close to winning in Dubai. She didn't have the best year at the games. She has a few things that I still think she's not elite on. Um, but what, what is she not elite on? Oh, well, definitely handstand walking is a, is a problem for her more complex, the longer, the more, you know, she, she's not, she's just slow and it's very deliberate. And when you're trying to be the best, like that's a skill that sometimes, so the problem with not being good at handstand walking is there's a lot of people that aren't very good at other things that are amazing at handstand

walking. So when you take a hit on a workout like that, it can be really costly. And when you're trying to win, the margins for are small. And so if your weakness takes a big hit where someone else's weakness takes a smaller hit, that can be a problem. And if you're not Laura Horvath, who's going to offset it with four or five event wins in a competition, then you're kind of, you're just going to be behind a couple of people. But I also think that she's on an upward trajectory.

She finished a pretty intensive schooling program, I think, to 18 months ago or so now or maybe two years ago. And so she's a nurse. Is she a nurse? Well, I don't think she's working. I can't remember what her degree was in, but she totally getting Andrea Nistler, Taylor Williamson vibes from her. Is this a nurse? Well, I don't think she's working. I can't remember what her degree was in, but she. I'm totally getting Andrea Nistler, Taylor Williamson vibes from her. Is this girl tall? Yeah, she's like five, seven.

I remember one year she competed with dreadlocks and I kind of thought of her as like the female version of the predator out there on the floor. Just like this intimidating force that you're not really sure who she is or where she's coming from. She doesn't speak the greatest English and you're just like, okay, just like stay in your lane, please. Cause you're just kind of scary. But anyway,

I think I, I would say she could win. Emily could win. Matilda Garns could win. Jamie could win. I think it's going to be a pretty competitive battle for the, all the podium spots on the women's side. So you're saying does Dubai use handstand walk?

Have you seen? They have had handstand walking in the past, yeah. Is there anything that they don't use? I think when you look back through their programming over the years, you'll see that they've touched on pretty much everything. You know, they'll bring in the odd object stuff sometimes. They'll have the high-skill gymnastics. Like I said, they'll go off-site.

They'll run. They'll swim. They'll use machines. They'll have machine high skill gymnastics like i said they'll go off site they'll run they'll swim they'll use machines they have machine only workouts they'll do they'll have a heavy lift and a barbell cycling workout so like you know they'll run the gamut a little bit and they've had a lot you know program some stuff that no one else has ever programmed like the deck squats and the a jumps and the um supinated grip chest of our pull-ups and stuff like that who's the youngest athlete in the field for the women she either i mean i guess let's start with the women but either if anything jumps out at you i think it is freya 20 years old for the women i think that victor hoffer is 19 for the men yeah oh for freya moose bruger she's the canadian girl yeah have her there eighth

what about this girl andrea solberg why do i know that name she games athlete she did compete in the games in 2020 the online version stage one so you never have seen her compete in the games in a live setting she was also at rogue she was uh she was dead last in rogue ah but she was at rogue this year that's how i know the name yeah but she was, uh, she was dead last in rogue, but she was at rogue this year. That's how I know the name. Yeah. But she was not competing healthy at rogue. And she's,

uh, she says she's feeling a lot better now. Oh, why do you have her at 13th? If she qualified for rogue and, uh, yeah, tell me.

And why can't Amy Tringle do better? I need someone from the Isle of Man to win. Let's talk about her next. Sorry. Andrea Solberg. Do you know what a peritoncillar abscess is? No. Just tell me, though.

I'll look it up. Go ahead. P-E-R-I-T-O-N. Hold on. P-E-R-I-T-O-N. S-I-L-i-t-o-n hold on p-e-r-i-t-o-n s-i-l-l-e-r s-i-l-l-e-r and then a separate word abscess a-b-s-c-e-s oh this is going to be good the word comes up drainage oh i don't know if we want to fuck with this anyway that was happening to her prior to rogue so oh it's something in her tonsils. It's in your mouth. So her words were that she was in survival mode there. And like I've talked about,

Rogue is a really unique and special event. You may not only ever get a chance to compete there one time, so you're going to want to find a way to do it. She wasn't competing at her best, obviously. And look, she was never going to do great in the Rogue field. I think she was always going to finish 15th to 20. We're talking about the best women in the world. She's amazing at online qualifiers. Her burpees, barbell cycling, high volume gymnastics stuff is just exceptional. And what you don't get in online qualifiers is machines, long distance running.

You maybe have one heavy thing, but not multiple heavy things. Noah Strongman, odd objects, stuff like that. In live competition, you get most of that stuff or at least doses of it. So she won't do as well in a live competition as she will online. Peritonsillar abscess is a complication of tonsillitis. It is most often caused by a type of bacteria called a beta stebococcus. It's an abscess most often occurs in older children, adolescents, and young adults. The condition is rare and antibiotics used.

It looks painful. It can be serious, especially if it grows large and blocks your throat. Okay, so shit. So it affects her breathing. And look, I thought, like, for example, that she would do really well on the ring muscle up goblet squat and running workout because she's a really good in the gymnastics. And, you know, for the women that the muscle ups were a major factor in that. And she did pretty badly on it.

And that was at the point of the weekend. I mean, I know it's towards the end of the weekend where I was like, maybe someone's not right with her because this is a workout she should do better on. And it turns out there was something wrong. No one hates me. What is this? She hates Se and turns out there was something wrong no one hates me what is this she hates seven who hates seven no one hates me trust me anyone says they hate me they don't know me or they don't even know what hate is uh um and what about amy kringle what about amy kringle 11th. Can she do better? Can she, can she, can she jump the ranks? I really need to get her on the show.

I want her. Look, she's young. She had a, you know, pretty good start to the season. I would say not even that bad of a semifinal 12th place in your first semifinal strength and depth is an okay finish.

So I think she's showing some promise. She has a we gotta see like she's pretty good on certain things and i think she has some deficient deficiency on other things and the biggest problem is that her upper body gymnastics skills pressing and pulling are not great and's, those things matter a lot, you know, over the course of a, of a weekend of a high level CrossFit competition. I think she can have some good workouts. She's got a track and field background. She's pretty good on the longer stuff. If there's a long run or a longer workout that doesn't have a lot of high skill gymnastics in it, I think those are places I

would look for her to excel. I'm curious to see how she does if any strength tests show up. You know, I'm always looking for that for young athletes because it can be a big separator like we talked about with Luka Djokic, for example, who's a similar age to her. So she's the type of athlete I would expect we'll see one or two top five finishes from, two or three bottom five finishes from, a bunch else in the middle. And it'll net her, you know, somewhere around a middle pack finish. Look at that gym. She's training in.

So she trains. Uh, I think she trains with, she says she trains with a team training program. Uh, Will Kane and Zach George are part of this program in the UK over there. Um, but she has, I mean, she has a goal of, of becoming the this program in the UK over there.

But she has, I mean, she has a goal of becoming the fittest in the UK and a goal of making it to the CrossFit Games. She's said that she's been training alongside the AOD fitness team at times who have been to the Games before. And that she has been investing a lot into the things that she's not as good at. So she's making all the right plays, putting herself in a competitive and professional training environment there in the UK. And I'm excited to see her this weekend. This is, again, one of these athletes. She might not make the games this year. She might not make it next year.

But if she stays on the track she's on, I think that she has potential to make a couple of CrossFit games if she can continue to improve on on those things every athlete we've looked at has a promo from dubai that's pretty cool it's almost like they give a shit about their event guys i mean this this should be for those for for those other big events out there that want to promote their event. This is like a no-brainer. Put your logo on it. Say it again. Rogue did the same.

They made videos for all their athletes? Confirmed. They had that confirmed thing and, yeah, a little reel. Awesome. I expect nothing less from dear Bill and Katie. Back to the list. What's the most exciting thing here in the woman's side? the battle for the win and the podium spots is going to be a good one, which is always nice looking at like the tier just below that. So say here,

Kaya Freya Mooseburger, the people in like, um, Manuel Nango, niece, Oiana Moya, Claudia Gluck. I'd say that those five women, all five of those women,

I'm curious, obviously say here, Kaya and Freya Mooseburger made the games this year. So they might be a little distinguished relative to those other three. Um, made the games this year. So they might be a little distinguished relative to those other three. But I think that the others are in the conversation with them in terms of overall quality and potential. Most of these are pretty young. Claudia Gluck is very much like a Luke of wound Jack on the men's side where

she had a couple of really good performances, a couple of not as good performances, but the stuff she wasn't great at, I think she can improve on. She's also super young. She actually trains with Victor Hoffer. Who's the young guy having 18th there, the youngest guy competing in the men's field, um, from France. So I'm, you know, I think that there are several kinds of layers of things interesting to me, but I'm, you know, I want to see some of those athletes that I say are in the second tier, make some strides forward,

take a couple risks in a competition like this. You know, say here, Kaya didn't have too many moments at the games that were big standout moments, but she's training in Oslo with Kristen Holta and the Oslo Norway team. I think Matilda Garns is up there. So she,

again, she's in a great training environment. She's young. I'm hopeful that she's going to give us some memorable moments uh this weekend and uh and dana peran uh strongly representing black lives matter and asians uh for blacks uh here from from the united states uh we'll focus on our competitive uh characters it's a it's a full full persona full persona oh she's one of the athletes that's waiting for uh payout she competed at can west yes or maybe she's just in protest it

seemed maybe protesting is just her thing and it's not so much her that wasn't didn't get paid we earned every penny that weekend and that prize money goes beyond those days that we competed at canwest it's everything leading up to it hours and hours of training qualifiers trips expensive i don't regret the experience oh cool but yeah it fucking sucks doing the work and not getting paid doing the work oh she was ninth place there um she said she told me she doesn't have a coaching team she follows hard work pays off. And then she makes some tweaks to that, to focus on her weaknesses, which she, uh,

and the Canwest games affirmed this were upper body pulling. So her two worst workouts there had chest to bar and bar muscle up. I'd assume that like something like a rope climber, Legos rope climbing and a ring muscle up, but also be, you know, areas of focus for her. Um,

and she's, and she's capable of working out. Here's a restrictive breathing technique she used for training. She has a weightlifting background. She was an Olympic weightlifter in Michigan. She trained at the Olympic weightlifting site there for a couple years, similarly to Matt Fraser. I think she might have said that she trained at the same facility he trained at for a while.

She had a career-ending injury with a shattered foot and ankle, and she's been recovering from that for several years, obviously, now back in CrossFit. She's not that old. She's only 26 or 27. She did qualify for semifinals this year. She was actually 50th in the quarterfinals for North America, but she declined to compete for personal reasons, which I't know what those are so basically our first real look at her uh is this video from 2015 no it says 2021 yeah that's when the post is yeah but i don't know

2021. Yeah, that's when the post is. Yeah, but I don't know. All right. No chance. The American has no chance. Just good to see an American there, but no chance of. I mean, she's a huge unknown. I don't think so.

I think that there's enough women in this field that are very well established competitors that, you know, if anything in the top 10 would be remarkable. competitors that you know if anything in the top 10 would be remarkable there was one other thing i thought that i should point out on here i'll just leave it alone i'll leave it alone brian brian's a professional okay uh here we go back to uh the leaderboard a little off script here because you know I spend hours and hours scripting out these shows. Someone said that all these shows are scripted out. It was like, they meant it as

a put down, but I took it as a compliment. And one of my favorites, Manon Anganese. Games athlete, right? No. Manon Anganese, you're recognizing her from Rogue. And the semifinals. She first popped on my

radar at the semifinals by doing the touch and go with that 100-pound bag while the rest of the ladies were doing onesies. She did that last year at Dubai. Oh, was it at Dubai? I saw it somewhere. She didn't compete in the semifinals this year because she failed to get her scores in on time due to that time zone complication. Right.

The U.S. had their daylight savings. Why can't she get on the first page? Why can't we switch her out with Seher? Sorry, Seher. I mean, there are some people that I think someone even made a comment that said that that she might be uh better than that um yeah gotta say i love the pics but man and anganese was super impressive at rogue i think she could definitely break the top five i think emily rolf might play the few events wrong seeing as she might be so fired up to compete see she missed showing up at the games but otherwise i think the picks are solid like always brother yeah i mean okay so i have her sixth that person thinks she could finish fifth just or

fourth or something like that fine um no man is very good i think like a lot of these athletes she's getting better and better she is a little older 29 or 30 at this point, but I don't think it's a problem, uh, her age at all. Um, and yeah, she did do well at rogue. She was 11th, the best of any of the female qualifiers who came through the queue. Uh, she had a couple of good workouts for sure. Um, I think, yeah, I think she's going to have a good competition. Uh, can she win it? No, I don't think she can win, but what's her hole. What's her hole long, long, slow.

Uh, I don't, well, I don't think that, that, that a hole is necessarily the reason she can win. I just think that some of the, some of these that, yeah, I just think some of these, um, women are a little bit better than her. Uh, one of the things that she did mention that she's had that is, I think is pretty cool is that she hasn't had any setbacks in terms of injury in her CrossFit career. And we've talked about so many other people that have,

so that is generally a good sign. According to her, yes, running and swimming are things that she's worst at and things that she's been working on. So we'll see if she gets a chance to maybe show us an improvement in those. Uh, like I said earlier, uh,

from reading something else about her that I think you'll find interesting is her coach is Andre who day. Oh, wow. Manganese is coaches. Andre who day. Yeah. It's the,

it's called the no shortcuts program. Man. And Anganese, I got to say her name, right? Okay. And Andre who day is very, as we've talked about, very methodical in his approach to fitness.

I'm sure that he treats his programming for other athletes the same way. So Manon is, I would think, is a great person to watch this year. I talked about it last year. And actually, both her and Oana Moya are women that I think can be in the conversation for qualifying in the European semifinal next year, especially if they end up getting 12 or 13 spots, which I do not think is outside the realm of possibility, given the state of competitive CrossFit in Europe right now for women.

So we'll see. Yeah, she should be, you should have your eyes on her this weekend for sure. I don't want to spread misinformation, but I think who day may have just affiliated his gym. I think it might be a CrossFit gym now. But when you think of man on Angonese, you think she would need more Chris Hinshaw or more Mayhem programming and less Houdet, right?

I mean, Houdet's strong as an ox, right? And obviously, I don't know what his programming looks like. I don't know what his programming looks like, but. Fun fact about Manu Nangonese. She told me she's been one spot away from the games four times since 2019. And you know what that sounds like? It's Brent Fikowski. Remember all those years where there were two spots in Canada West and he was like third by a point, third by two points, fourth by three points or something like that. And then he finally made it through and had a great, great showing.

Okay. How old is she? 29, 30. All right. Katie Gannon, your top eight puzzle me will be listening tomorrow. We don't know why it puzzles her. Do we know why it puzzles her. Do we know why it puzzles her? No.

This is the lady who wants to make sure that I always give credit to Lauren Khalil. She is Lauren Khalil's manager. That's true, but she does the social media for the morning chalk up, and I think she does an amazing job. She has a small dog that fits in a basket. She cross fits. She coaches volleyball? Yeah. She has a small dog that fits in a basket. She cross fits. She coaches volleyball? Yeah. Good to the kids.

Great. Good person. I've enjoyed getting to know her over the last year or so. I don't know what her issue is with the top eight women on my list. I feel pretty good about those picks, but maybe she'll tell me personally. She likes sunshine and good lyrics. They make her happy. All right.

Good. Me too. Me too. All right. Compatible. You're compatible with her, Brian. So are you. I am.

That's true. I like when Brian says, fun fact. That adds sunshine to your life. Brian Friend has such a great intonation with foreign names. Actually, thank you. I try to do that. Well, it can be difficult. Let me hear you say Iraq or Iran. Iran.

All right. Iraq. All right. Fine. You know, I had a friend in high school who was from Greece. We all call him Hercules, but his name was Irakeli. Irakeli. Did you call him that?

Not really. But his license plate said Irakeli. Say Jorge. Jorge. All right. Fine. I was trying to one-up you, but I can't. You're right.

He wins. He's good. He's got the foreign shit down. Brian, anything else we want to say about Dubai? Oh, let me say this a couple of things before I give the phone. Do you have a couple of things that you want to say? No, I don't think so. Oh, yes, I do. Thank you. Oh, I thought you'd never ask.

The Dubai Fitness Challenge starts on Friday. That's this Friday. This challenge starts this Friday. Friday, that's this challenge starts this Friday. Brian will be the commentator there with Derek Forrest. Shit, I lost my calendar. Oh, there it is. But there will be an event on Friday, December 2nd. So on Friday, there will be an event.

I don't think we have a time announced yet, but it be and i don't know if it will be broadcast but if anyone does broadcast it with instagram live or anything we will rip their feed and we will go live on this channel then starting at 4 a.m maybe that's gonna be like 10 p.m on thursday night for you i'll still i'll rip it anything and i'll rip it anything for for for the for the supporters of the podcast uh then on saturday starting at 4 a.m uh dubai time to 9 a.m which is uh p.m to 9 p.m dubai time 4 a.m to 9 a.m pacific time thank you you should just be doing everything i guess you are you're correcting me too so that's on both days. So that's nice. The schedule is the same. You don't have to remember a lot of different stuff. 4am

to 9am Dubai. And I love this approach from a competition standpoint. The athletes know, okay, we have a five hour compete competition window. Maybe we have three, four or five, who knows how many workouts in that time, but it's five hours. I have the whole day to do what I need to do and get ready. I have a five hour window to compete. I have the whole day and I have a five-hour window to compete. It's very digestible. It's reasonable. It's approachable. I like this model. So let me do the math for you. If you're on the East Coast of the United States, you can get up at 6.30 a.m. on Saturday, make a cup of coffee, turn on your YouTube, and at 7 a.m., you'll be able to listen

to the sweet sound of Derek and Brian Friend commentate these beautiful bodies as they torture them. And you can do that both on Saturday and Sunday morning. Sunday morning, get up at 6.30. By 7 a.m., the show starts. But more importantly than all of that, I suspect on Thursday, I will be jumping on here with J.R. Howell and Taylor Self, maybe some others, to review the programming that hopefully will be released on Thursday morning, USA time, Pacific Standard Time. So, you know, people are always curious about the workouts, the workout announcements, and how competitions go about doing that. Generally speaking, Dubai's MO for that is once the athletes are all on site, they have an athlete briefing, introductions, whatever, and they'll usually release the majority of those workouts during that meeting to a private group. You'll have the athletes, the coaches, and maybe a few media members who are in town for the event. And so that meeting is scheduled for Thursday midday in Dubai, which is basically midnight and middle of the night in the US. So probably when you wake up on Thursday morning in the US or in Europe, that you'll be able to have at least a knowledge of several of the events or a majority of the events.

And that should hopefully give the boys a chance to prep some stuff and do a little program analysis on what we do know Thursday night in the U S leading into the opening workout Friday morning in Dubai. When do you fly? Excuse me. When do you fly? After we get off this show, I'm going to take a shower, finish up my packing, put everything in order in the house, head downtown Chicago, meeting Patrick Clark to watch the USA play Iran. Eat on, eat on. Eat on, excuse me.

Yep. In what I think is the biggest soccer match that the U.S. men's national team has had in quite some time. From there, we'll head over to the airport, and we've got a direct 14-hour flight to dubai and when do you land brian so tomorrow night it's a it's a 14-hour flight with a 10-hour time change so it's full day okay so you so do you know have you seen an itinerary do you know know when the athlete briefing is on December 1st? I have it. I have to check the exact time. And then I have a, let's see if I have the time.

Oh, I pulled it down. Damn it. Oh, they're just 12 hours difference. They're 12 hours ahead okay yeah uh december 1st noon athlete registration oh athlete briefing oh it's actually in the evening six o'clock in the evening on December 1st, which is 6 a.m. Here. So that should be done by 8 a.m. on the first. It's only an hour. So by 7 a.m. you should. OK, so I bet you we're going to do that. I bet you. So Thursday. And I will try to find a time. I don't know how busy Brian's going to be. I will try to find a time that we can get brian to come on obviously if it's he's supposed to be sleeping and preparing uh for the following

day's events we won't get him but i'll try to get brian on here too um and i want to um thank uh are we done here brian what do you mean all right is the show over i don't know i think we we summed it up good. Anything else left? Katie Gannon texts me. Oh, what did she say? She thinks I have the right eight, but in the wrong order. She's surprised I have Jamie in first and her first time back. She'd put her top three. She'd put Manu on higher, Moya lower.

Simmons, Rolf, Garn's on the podium, but not in that order. There we go. Oh, okay. I should have pulled up your – shit, I got my shit all screwed up. I should have pulled up your post as you read that i was too busy thinking about um dana uh dana peran's asians for black lives i think i'm gonna start the show a minute ago you're right i'm gonna i'm gonna start an organization she inspired me that's black lives for asians i think it's only fair only appropriate thank you everybody uh i will see you this evening we have

the rapper hocus four fifths coming on at 6 p.m today i'm excited for that it's gonna be great show um and uh brian and i will see you very shortly thank you brian thanks