Happy 2025, Blockhead Nation! Plus, A Few Potential UFC Scraps

0:25 Broadcasting Live. Good afternoon, Blockhead Nation. I'm glad you're back. Been on a two week hiatus over here at the Blockhead Mansion. Been enjoying the holidays, been enjoying Christmas, just having a chance to enjoy some time off, and I'm back on the microphone with you. I've missed you, Blockhead Nation. If in case you don't know this, you are listening to your favorite blockhead. This is the only podcast in the podcasting the world that can somehow incorporate the Peanuts comic strip one minute and then be talking about MMA and Warriors inside the Octagon the next. I'm your host. My name is Brian Little. I'm gonna shake off the cobwebs. I'm gonna get back into the groove a little bit. It's been two weeks as I spoke to you on the podcast. For those of you that went over and checked out the Christmas special on the YouTube page, thank you so much for the love and support. I can't thank you enough for that. That was such a fun episode.

1:13 So I thank Steve Overt Podcast Manfield for having the opportunity to do that. I can't assure you yet that there will be a twenty twenty five Christmas special. I just don't know. It's too early to determine that one, So we'll see eleven months from now if that's going to become a reality or not. Either way, we're back on the show with you, and I'm here to talk to you about the Peanuts if you don't know, if you haven't been following the show. Three things are always talked about on this podcast. Number one, God is King. Number two, Peanuts is the single most successful comic strip in American history. And number three, Mixed Martial Arts is the greatest sport under God's hot suns. If you tune into part one, you're mostly gonna hear Peanuts information on this segment. Segment two, if you're an MMA fan, stick around, we'll cover some things going on in the world of UFC and thus fourth, so beginning with now the holidays are coming to an end, at least with Christmas, I can talk about my favorite episode of all time, which would be Happy New Year, Charlie Brown. It was released, I believe in nineteen eighty three, and sometimes this one gets a lot of criticism for not being a I wouldn't Some wouldn't call this one a masterpiece, but they call it a classic. I tell you it's my favorite.

2:31 To begin with, did you ever wonder if Lucy Lucy van Pelt, if she was proficient in any other sport than just football? Because as we know, she likes to hold the football and pull it away from Charlie Brown, especially in crucial moments, to betray his trust. But also even in the big game, she's done it. So you have to ask the question, she's not great in baseball. She's maybe proficient in football. Possibly she's even got a reputation of being really good at arm wrestling, among many other sports when it comes to summertime. But is there anything else she's proficient at? I'd like to tell you, thanks to this episode, that we can agree that Lucy is fairly accomplished in bowling. How do we know that?

3:24 Because Lias tries to throw a snowball ats his sister and misses by a mile, So she decides to get retribution by rolling a huge snowball, holding it the same form you would in the bowling alley. But you know she actually takes her time to set this up perfectly. And who are the two pins Charlie Brown and Lias and she hits the mark with exquisite detail. So I'd like to say that she's pretty strong in the world of bowling. To throw that out there, and if you can, with a parallel on Happy New York, let me kind of walk you through something with this episode, Charlie Brown's entire Christmas vacation is ruined because the teacher decides last minute to give him and the rest of the class the book war in Peace by Leo Tolstoy to read over the holiday break. Now, granted that book is at least one and thirty six pages long, probably more than that if we were to actually do a page countdown with the notes and all, you know, prefaces and acknowledgments, I'm sure it's more than that. But to give a child that over the holiday break, it's pretty rough. But then, just as soon as you think that this is torturous, Linus comes back over the rebuttal. She says, when Leo Tolstoi wrote this book about the French Revolution, about Warren Peace,

4:54 his wife Sonya copied it for him seven times with a dip. Now this is a fair argument. She'd have to use a magnifying glass weight till the servants had gone away and it was quiet in the house and kids have been put to bed. She copies the book seven times for him with a dip pen. Then last responds, and you're telling me that you can't even read it once. Fair argument here. But he also makes a really good comment in the beginning when he asked him how the book reading is going, and Charlie Brown admits to saying, I just finished reading the Dust Jacket, and he has this on the fly remark, Many is the book report that hath been written by just reading the dust Jacket?

5:43 If I can blockhead nation. And this is me looking myself in the mirror as I say this. This is the time of year when you start making what Once you have your New year countdown, you have your midnight kiss, you have your party that you go to. What do you start making immediately after this? Yes, your resolutions in the spirit of what Linus van Pelt said on this episode, Many is the book report that hath been written by just reading the dust Jacket. Blocket's going to give a challenge to you, blockhead nation. You can do what you want.

6:27 You can decide to follow this trend as you always do, no matter how old you are, and I'm talking to thirty five to forty four year old males. I've done my homework. Most of you that are listening, that's the analytics I'm giving back. So I'm talking to you now. Many is the new Year's resolution that hath been broken within three weeks? The three week period, Well, you have followed through on your New Year's resolution? You know the answer to that one answers no. Most of you as a percentage, will not follow through on this. So here's what I want to say. When it comes to the New Year's resolutions, why not block add nation? Just go back and evaluate how you've done in twenty twenty four.

7:15 What are some adjustments you can make in twenty twenty five. You always hear me give a scripture of the day at the end of the in the middle of this episode, that is something to say that we don't own anything in this world. We manage it. So when we look at things like New Year's resolutions, the trend that comes with that, and how little follow through there is, could we just say that maybe we should just look to a lifestyle change if you can. From a physical standpoint, all of us need to do better with our choices in what we eat. We all need to make better choices on how much activity we get. I fell off the bandwagon was doing DDP yoga, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, it's time for me to fire that up again and start getting serious about it again. But did I fall off? Yes? There was a lot of accountability with that because a lot of you blockad Nation reached out and asked how my trek was going. And I appreciate that. So it's time for me to go back and make some adjustments reevaluate where we stand. Here's another one from a financial standpoint. We don't own anything in this world. We manage it. Would you fire you?

8:32 I think Dave Ramsey's talked about that when it comes to you Incorporated. Would you fire you if you looked at your finances? So it's something that we can all go back and look at. I will tell you be careful with your new Year's resolution. I'll tell you instead, just as we do in this show, look to the scripture of the day. Look where our true daily bread is going to be. And I believe Charles Schultz said the same thing. If you watch all through his episodes from the Christmas episode to the New Year's episode, there's always enlightenment and usually followed by Linus recently had a comic strip that I looked at where he was talking about the Apostle Paul and using the Book of Philippians.

9:22 I'm telling you, Charles Schultz would have made a really good minister. If he was not the greatest comic strip artist of all time, he probably would have been a good American history teacher as well. If you look how subtly he used that. He used these americanisms through the comic strip, but in a subtle way. He would use parable, but in a very subtle way, and you have to look for it. If you want to get these gems, you're gonna have to bob for apples a little bit. Have to get your face wet, reach down and bite that apple and pull up that gem that Schultz would give you. Then there's a little bit of When I share all of these thoughts and all these insights from the Peanuts, there's so much of them that are packed into Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, I encourage you to go to Apple TV and take a look for yourself.

10:12 I challenge you to get off the beaten path and not make a New Year's resolution this year, just do some reevaluation, do a little analysis. What can we all brush up on and do better. Because we don't own anything, we just imagine we get to borrow things for a little while until the day we'll call on our scripture in for this podcast comes from Isaiah chapter forty three, Verse one through two. But now thus saith the Lord that createth THEE, oh Jacob, and he that formed THEE O Israel. Fear not, For I have redeemed THEE. I have called THEE by name. Thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with THEE, and through the rivers they shall not overflow THEE. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle unto THEE. Now, before I get to the reflection Blue Lair of Bible, there's a lot about Isaiah chapter forty three. There's referring back to the Book of Genesis. Basically, if you read through the whole book of Isaiah, he's talking to the tribe of Judah that have lost their way, who have completely rejected who

11:44 the coming Messiah is. Going to be So when they mentioned, oh, Jacob, you have to remember that Jacob took on a new name after he wrestled with God. He was called Israel, and he will have the twelve sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel. So if you look at from blue Lund, our Bible says, take heed, o, children of faith, to the voice of the Lord, for he has redeemed you and brought you under so great a salvation through fire, through famine, through flood. All that's talked about in the Book of Genesis. There's a famine where Joseph is the right hand man to the Pharaoh and his brothers come into Egypt to the flood. That's talking about Noah through all earthly perils. The Lord is with you, protecting and sustaining you know this blockad nation and be comforted. I'm sorry if I kind of gone the pulpit just for a second there, But there's so many parallels from Isaiah that it lead to Genesis, that lead to if you look into what we just had, the birth of our Savior.

12:43 So I'm just excites me to really get into that. So we get into the world of mixed martial arts now, and just know that this podcast, it's usually what twenty to thirty minutes long, and it's pretty succaint. You know, it can be kind of briefing to the point, but just you know as a sport that the UFC and MMA itself is a very ambiguous sport. I'm all gonna have one interpretation of what we see. So when I spoke to you two weeks ago, I threw out a Devil's advocate way of looking at Colby Coventson versus Joaquin Buckley. I just said, if somehow Colby utilizes his wrestling, and I have to mention utilizes it, well, then that could be a long night for Joaquin Buckley. So I have to sit back and eat crow. Because Joaquin Buckley looked fantastic every time when I went back and looked at this again. Whenever Colby would try to capitalize them takedown, Joaquin Buckley was three steps ahead of him. The whole time he would sprawl, he would be back to his feet.

13:50 I mean, he just wasn't able to finish anything. So his wrestling was really sloppy. The build up to the to the match was great. Yes, you had something that happened on the walkout, you had two men walking Colby coven into the cage, and one of them was not Donald Trump, one of them was Chaill Sonning, and the other was the immortal Hulk Hogan. Now this might be succinct as usual, or I might just go ahead and word vomit quite a bit on this one, because I'm I'm gonna go and say it. There has to be an acknowledgment now that WWE wrestlers need to stay out of this sport. They were not a problem when they sat in the stands. They've become a problem since they have started walking fighters to the cage. There already is such thing as a chail curse. That was especially true with Colby versus King Buckley. Hulk Hogan walking Colby Covington using his theme music has not worked out. So I'm not gonna say that the MMA gods are in opposition to this. I'm just gonna say this hasn't been a good pattern. Can we go back to the BMF title.

15:23 We wanted to see Nate Diaz win this fight because it came from his mind. Jorge Mosviital wins. It will be of a doctor stoppage and who walked out to the cage holding this BMF title. Yeah the rock. Can we acknowledge that this is not working out for MMA fighters that want to have wd ERA and WB wrestlers. HA scorted them to the cage, even though that's part of the acquisition, even though that's part of the investors at TKO or probably trying to see a crossover. It's not working. I'm just throwing that out and I'm not ear take it over Kobe Coventon losing. I'm actually quite thrilled with how great Joaquin Buckley looked. So even though I played Devil's advocate, I expected that if he's gonna touch him on the face strength wise, he's gonna tear him apart. And sure enough, you have the doctor stoppage to cut over the eye, which was to actually check twice before anybody gets irritated that this fight got stopped.

16:22 Doctor looked at twice as waking continued to open it up, and he's gonna lose that eyeld if you don't stop. I'm sorry. I agree with that. If you have fifty percent visibility with blood pouring into your eye, you cannot continue. It's the right call. But the trend is when you have these doctor stoppages. We got something where a WWE star is involved, it's got to stop. The crossover between these both of these sports is not working out well. Just had to get that out there. But people ask me, now, is Joaquin Buckley one of the guys that I think that's had one of the best performances this year? Well, obviously, if we go by championships, the two that have stood out the most from twenty twenty four are gonna be Alex Pereira and Elia Taporia. So that one is pretty easy from a championship status, and it's easy to say at the end of December twenty twenty four that Joaquin Buckley is definitely in good standing. But if I had to pick one that stood out for me the most throughout this year Blockade Nation, I'm going with Diego Lopez.

17:30 I'm going with the guy that faced Dan Egay and put on a phenomenal performance and finally got Brian Ortega and was able to perform very well at the Sphere, I'm going with him. I don't know what twenty twenty five holes in store for this young man, but for the featherweights, that's a promising contender, even though he's at number three. So Skott's Lenna in my mind for Diego Lopez only for more improvement, maybe even vast improvement with this young man. So I'm putting that out there now. As far as since we don't have any fights going on this weekend, next weekend until we get into January, we do have some discussion about a possible fight that could happen back to the lightweights Michael Chandler, since we can't get Connor McGregor to come into the to the cage, and it seems like now we're swaying with him possibly boxing one of the Paul brothers, which means somebody either over in Indy or Saudi Arabis, somebody who has deep pockets over there in the Middle East able to pull off this million dollar fighting experience that's gonna go on. Again, this is all speculation at the time, so is this.

18:47 But the talk you have going on now is are we gonna have a chance to see Michael Chandler versus Patty the Batti Pimphlet, the guy who actually had somewhat of a uprise from when he was looking like what could be the next Connor McGregor two point oh, and then everybody turned on him very quickly with the Jered Gordon event. You have to remember also when he thought Jared Gordon, his foot was clearly broken. This is something that Mma Guro has talked about. So if I go to the lightweights sometimes, like I said, there's gonna be some room for different thinking here. Some look at this and think, Okay, you got Patty Bimblett versus Michael Chandler, one coming off of two losses, the other coming off two wins, and this makes the most sense. Sometimes when you don't have a rank contender, you have either one of two things, an anomaly or a novelty. What if we threw the novelty out there that nobody's talking about that came out on Twitter somebody who was looking for a fight. What if you had the opportunity of Drew Dober willing to come in and fight either Michael Chandler or to face Patty the Batty Because you're putting two wins against two losses, which again shows that the ranking system doesn't matter in this sport. So this is just

20:21 another perspective to throw out before we automatically say, oh, they have verbally agreed to this. I can see that being a easy night from a submission standpoint for Patty the Batty. Just because Michael Chandler is reckless leaves himself wide open. We saw that with Dustin Poier. Imagine somebody who's very good at subs, like Patty the Batty, be able to pull this off. So what if we throw in Drew Dober into the mix, somebody who's not even ranked from the top fifteen to number one? What about that one? So I throw that out. When you don't have something that makes sense on paper, you go to an anomaly, which that would be the Drew Dover case, or you have a novelty. The other novelty I'm talking about is what do you do with Dan Hooker. Justin Gaichee is hanging out there at number three in the rankings that has nobody to fight, and the talk is now that Dan Hooker might be willing to face him.

21:32 Another guy who's nowhere near up on the rankings right now. This would be the novelty, somebody who can be very problematic for somebody like Justin Gaichee so verbally agreed their speculation about Chandler versus Patty the batty. But a name that you throw into the hat would be Drew Dover. You got your anomaly. Your novelty would be what do you do with Justin Gaigchee without anybody to take a fight with him? To throw somebody like that who is a probably serious problem for Justin Gaechee, but to get him back into the limelight. And all of this is just what's swimming around in the world of the lightweights, while meanwhile you have a rematch for the title with Islam versus Armantserukion. That's right there on the horizon. So is it confirmed? No? Am I keeping a close eye on how this is going to play out in twenty twenty five, you bet? I am blockad Nation. And when I have a better analysis for you, when that comes closer, then certainly I will share that with you. But all of these things to consider my how ambiguous this sport is.

22:51 And on that note, it's great to be back on the microphone with a block at nation. If you haven't in a while, go back and check out the blog your favorite blockhead dot com slash blog all the links for today's show, or go the descriptions if you want to give back. You also have the merchandise you can purchase. You have the coffee page that are always helpful, rating, review, and subscribe and are always helpful. But the most helpful thing is the downloads. The more you listen, the more I'm gonna keep coming back. And every week blockad Nation give you the best of my ability. So thank you for having back on your headphones. And we will see you or we will hear from you next week, same blockhead time, same blockhead check