 Two men walk into the octagon. Only one will walk out. Well, you've got to count the referee. And if there's a big old melee at the end of the fight, you've got to count that too. Hello, how are you? Welcome to Octagon St. Leveau. I'm your hostess, Betty St. Leveau. On this show, we talk about all things relating to the octagon. And because I'm a novice, it's a little bit about novice fever. I don't really know too much about the sport, but I'm looking forward to my first taekwondo, jiu-jitsu, or karate class. Hey, if I'm going to talk about it, I need to practice too, right? So today, we're going to start off with going to comment a little bit about the Rose Numanunus and Jessica Andoraj fight. And I want to say right now, this is not an objective sport. This sport is extremely subjective. And I want to say that when you've got a champ who's champ-champ or champ, and she doesn't have a mark on her, but she loses, it's just weird to me. And when you have someone who's also a good fighter, but she's all cut up, and she's all bruised, but she wins, it's weird to me. However, Jessica, I think she just got tired of Rose using her as a punching bag and lifted her up and knocked her out, OK? And that is legal in MMA. And I wish it wasn't. But it's very what a great sport, nothing objective about it, everything subjective. And props to Rose, you are, we all adore you, Rose. I wish I could train with you, Thug Rose. I'm telling you, I think you'd be a really, really good teacher. And I think that you wouldn't only teach me about the moves, but the inside, how to be a peaceful warrior on the inside. OK, all right, and props to Jessica. Congratulations. And I'm looking forward to that rematch, all right? Not me matching up with you, but you and Rose. OK, right on. OK, so next we're going to talk about, I've really been getting to definitions lately, we're going to talk a little about the Taekwondo basics. And this is from Yeats and Robbins' great 1987 book, which is called Taekwondo Basics, I believe. So I'm just going to name all the positions, and then we're going to go into our legend segment, all right? So the ready position is Junbi. The attention stance is Ch'e-ho-yo. The bow is Kun-ji. The forward stance is Chong-so-ik. The back stance is Su-go-so-gi. The straddle stance is Kim-so-gi. And the canned stance is Go-nyan-gi. Now, I do regret. I'm not pronouncing these terms right, but I'm sure if I continue to study, I'll get the language correct at some point. So the exercises are to impalm touch. They're sitting stretches. There's a hamstring muscle stretch. There's a groin muscle stretch. There are standing stretches. There's a front leg swing. There's a side leg swing. There's a partner stretch. And then there are sit-ups and push-ups. Pretty intense. Their segment three is punches and kicks. How to make a fist, how to chop, the palm heel strike, reserve punch, ridge hand, and elbow strike. The elbow strike, to me, is fascinating. That looks like a very dangerous strike. There are four blocks, I believe. Down block is Han-mak. Up block is Chu-go-mak-i. Inside block is Ab-shi-shi. Outside block is Yop-mak-i. And knife-hand block is Su-do-mak-i. And then there are five forms. Heaven and Earth, Chung-gi, Providence of Universe, Pine Tree Cell, Song-aom, and Freedom Jiu-yu. Pretty wild, OK? So there are four types of one-steps. And I don't think I wrote those down. But there's some self-defense grabs and hugs, such as that I did right down, which single-risk grab, double-risk grab, front choke, front bear hug, rear bear hug, shoulder grab, rear choke, rear arm lock. The naked-end rear choke, it's a term that's been coming up frequently when I was checking out the Guide on Our Legends segment today. Then there's sparring stances. There's the open stance and the closed stance. And I think the open stance is when both the sparring partners are facing each other. And the closed stance is when one is turned this way and the other partners turn that way. I think I've got that right. It was pretty easy to check out through the pictures. Now, I've got some intents. I guess I just wrote all the list down of blocks, bows, chops, do-bok, how to bow, fists in front of pelvis, legs apart, the sitting stretches. Those notes are a little scattered, but the book is great. Please, please check it out. And the pictures make it easy to follow the stances, written by Yates and Robbins, 1987. And I think that that was printed over in London, England. And then it was printed over here. OK, so the personality that we're going to talk about today is Matt Hughes. I've been remembering back who I would always notice first when I first got into MAUFC about a year ago. And the first couple guys, Chuck Liddell. And it was Randy Couture and Thador. And I just wanted to do everybody in a row. And I could remember Matt's name for Love or Money. I'm like, I know his name is Matt, but what's his last name? And then I figured out who he was. And I was so happy that instead of skipping to a couple other guys I'd love to skip to, I just need to do him in the order that I saw all the fighters. So this is all information from MMA On Point. It's a great YouTube channel about MMA. Please check it out. I'm quoting these guys sometimes directly. I'm going to try not to. They gave me some really good information that I couldn't find information. I wanted to somewhere, so I went to them. So basically, he and his twin brother, Mark, were born in Hillsboro, Illinois. They're both high school wrestlers. And Matt won state finals in a single year twice. And Mark finished second in his single year. I think they both went on to Bellevue. And then Matt was entered in a Division I wrestling program at Eastern Illinois University. So after he graduated, the promotion of cage fighting, promotion UFC was just in its infancy. And it used to be called no holds fighting. And on New Year's Day, back in 1998 in Chicago, he won his first fight in 15 seconds by a KO. And it was refed by Pat Milovich, who is also a MMA legend. And Pat became his coach and mentor. Matt and his brother, Mark, became part of Milch fighting systems in Bendorf, Iowa. And at the time, it was one of the elite fighting schools in the country. Jens Pulver, Tim Sylvia, and Robbie Lawler also went to that school. In a later episode, we're going to discuss the brutal Robbie Lawler-Roy McDonald fight that I call a glimpse of watching one of Al Pac at the Soros' episodes about a year ago. And it was one of the most bloodiest fights you've ever seen. I actually think I tried to watch the fight, and I stopped. Kind of hard to watch. It was either that one or another one at any rate. Robbie Lawler is another one in my list of, we're going to discuss him and check him out. So he won his third match. And then he started winning matches. His career took off. And he had a middleweight fight with David Monet. Hughes dominated it. And then he became up to fight the UFC undefeated champ, Dennis Holman, who, guillotine Hughes, in an analyst's decision. And I think at that point, Dennis had a 15-match winning streak. And then Mark had a fight with Pelé, who also got knocked out. Oh, pardon me. Pelé knocked him out. And then he won his next five fights. Because his coach had lost the fight with Carlos Newton, Dana White, who had just become, I believe, President of the UFC, decided that Hughes was next in line for a title, even though Hughes thought his mentor Pat Milovitch should have been up for it. They call this a crazy fight because when he knocked out Newton, he appeared to be unconscious at the time, but he still won the fight. I got to check this out. Now I saw a little bit of a clip today. Now, Newton won the rematch because he kept saying, oh, I should have won that fight. Matt was knocked out. Yada, yada, yada. Right before the rematch, Matt fought Higato Sakurai. And I think he won that fight. So up until all this time, Matt's fights had been with people who he'd either gotten along with or were able to with. But along comes Frank Twig, who was sort of a trash talker. And I think that he ended up slamming Frank Twig while he was standing up, which was amazing. And at that point, Matt had a better record than Tito Ortiz. So then Tito had had five defenses. Matt's record was better. He fights BJ Penn, who has the record for the most losses trying to win a belt, I think. And BJ choked him out in the first round, which everyone was amazed by. So then BJ quit the UFC. He went over to another promotion. And there was a little spat. And he sued them, yada, yada, yada. And then George St. Pierre shows up. Now, Mr. George, he's very classy. And he was 23 at the time. Matt was a bit older. And from what I see, they had their first fight in 2002. And George St. Pierre idolized Matt. You'll find with a lot of fighters. For instance, Pat Berry, Rose, Nelma Jouza's fiance, Dord, Millicle, Kilkaup. And they had fights together. So a lot of fighters, they idolize their hero and then end up fighting them. And they love it. It's like a dream come true for them. So GSP lost. And then there was a Trig rematch. Matt and Trig fought again. Dana White says it's his favorite fight. Trig groined Hughes and had him in a rear naked troke. But Hughes ended up slamming Trig and ended up getting him in a rear naked choke. And when you look at that, they're literally on the mat. And the guys on top of them, they choke him out. But it's more graceful than that. I don't know the whole physics and fundamentals. But I think you all understand what I mean. So then Matt had a fight with Hoise Gracie, one of the forefathers of MMA. The Gracie clan is immensely talented. They're all fighters. Most of them are fighters. Now, Hoise was passed as prime. Passed as prime. But I don't know who won that one. I wish I could tell. I think Matt won that one. And then they had another rematch with BJ. And then there were stalks of fighting again with GSP. Now, with BJ, Matt got it. BJ gave him a triangular ombaw. A triangular ombaw, for my believe it, is both guys are lying on the mat. But one of them has the arm pointing up between their legs. I wish I could explain it better. I'm just learning. So Matt won that. His whole MO is that he gets into these incredible positions. And everyone thinks that he's lost. And he has, and he ends up winning. Now, after the fight with BJ Penn, there was another talk having another rematch with GSP. And I guess GSP won that. But then GSP fought Matt Sarah and lost to Matt Sarah. So that's the greatest thing about MMA. Mark has been called one of the greatest fighters ever. He had a bad accident train hit his truck. And he's been recovering slowly from it. I think that he's UFC Hall of Fame. They had something, a big celebration as honor. I really, I like his style. There are fighters who suffer from head injuries. And so some of them have to retire. And they go through personal problems. But it's because they're fighters. It's combat. And so the best you can do is pray for them when they don't feel that hot at the end of the day when they retire. So I think that that's it for me. I hope you've enjoyed watching Octagon St. LaVeaux. I think next week we're going to do another ladies night. And I'll try and do a breakdown. And we'll talk about the Son and Machita fight that is coming up. So I hope you've enjoyed the show. This is Betty St. LaVeaux, your hostess. Trying to teach myself and give you all some hints about all things in the Octagon. Until next time, love each other. Ciao, babes.