JRE MMA Show #9 with Jeff Novitzky

Joe Rogan (0:02)

4, 3, 2, 1

Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Novitzky. How are you, buddy?

Jeff Novitzky (0:08)

What's up, Joe? Doing good.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

I have to ask you, do you mind the nickname The Golden Snitch?

Jeff Novitzky (0:13)

It's the first thing I was going to bring up with you. This Golden Snitch bullshit.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

I just want to say, it's not my nickname. It's Brendan Jobs. He came up with it 100% on his own.

Jeff Novitzky (0:25)

I was going to ask you. It's all good, though. It's okay. It's all good. A couple of funny stories about that. When did he come up with this? About a year ago? At least. People in the office started coming up to me saying, hey, Golden Snitch, what the hell is that? Do a little research. I see something about Harry Potter, some character name there. I'm like, what the hell does this have to do with me?

About a month ago, somebody lets me know, hey, check out Wikipedia. For whatever reason, there's a Jeff Novitzky Wikipedia page. You go to that page now, it says actually my formal name, Jeffrey John Novitzky, aka The Golden Snitch.

So last week, Donna Marchalini, you know Donna, long 15-year employee of the UFC, now works with me and talk about her a little later. She's a great asset to what we're doing. She sends me a text. She says, check this out. So she's got one of those Amazon Echoes, Alexa, I think. So she says, Alexa, who is Jeff Novitzky and Alexa's name says Jeffrey John Novitzky, aka the Golden Snitch.

So thanks a lot, Shav.

SPEAKER_3 (1:34)

Oh, Shav, what have you done?

Joe Rogan (1:36)

That's hilarious. I love Donna. She's amazing.

Jeff Novitzky (1:38)

She's awesome.

Joe Rogan (1:39)

So she's over there.

Jeff Novitzky (1:41)

I mean, you know about kind of her history. She's one of the five original employees of the UFC was Dana's assistant to start out with, went on to become VP of event operations. So basically, you know, she got everybody to the event, set up hotel at the event, ran the crew, you know, the blue shirts backstage that run the event. You know, I think after doing it for many years, she got a little burnout on it. So went to Dana mid summer and says, Look, I don't think I want to do this anymore. But I'd really love to do something else. And I've seen kind of what Jeff's doing in his program. I really like to go over there and work with him and kind of learn what he's doing.

And so Dana pulled me into the office and said, Hey, what do you think about this idea? And it took me literally a half second to say 100% on board. This woman, I mean, as you probably know, is about his attention to detail and passionate about her work as anybody.

And really, my positioning, unlike the name The Golden Snitch, is an advocate to our athletes to make sure our athletes are successful under the program, not that they fail under the program.

Joe Rogan (2:47)

It's definitely the wrong nickname. It's just catchy.

Jeff Novitzky (2:49)

It is.

Joe Rogan (2:50)

It's unfortunately catchy.

Jeff Novitzky (2:51)

Again, I'm all good with it. Let it roll off my back.

Joe Rogan (2:54)

But the real Golden Snitch is Victor Conti. He's the Golden Snitch, right?

Jeff Novitzky (2:59)

Yeah, I mean, I can see that.

Joe Rogan (3:01)

Because he was a guy who was giving guys steroids. You were a guy that was always catching people.

Jeff Novitzky (3:06)

Correct.

Joe Rogan (3:06)

So it's the wrong moniker.

Jeff Novitzky (3:07)

Yeah, correct. Giving them steroids and then talking about it after, right?

Joe Rogan (3:12)

Snitching, yeah. That's the Golden Snitch, not you, man.

Jeff Novitzky (3:15)

But it's all good. I was hoping Shob would be here.

Joe Rogan (3:17)

Call him up. I don't know what I would do.

Jeff Novitzky (3:19)

I could do anything to him, but it'd be interesting to look at him in the face.

Joe Rogan (3:22)

He would say, I'm sorry, bro.

Yeah, well, anyway, back to Donna. She's awesome. So I'm super psyched that she's with you. So what exactly does she do for you guys?

Jeff Novitzky (3:32)

Again, when I sat her down this summer, I said, look, your role here is going to make sure that the athletes are successful under the program, and in a program like this, there are so many landmines, whether it be making sure your whereabouts filing is on time, making sure USADA knows where you're at so they can come do a collection from you at any time, making sure you make safe supplement choices, making sure the medications you're taking are correct. So she works hard for all those things. I give you the prime example of what she brings to this program. So every three months, every quarter, every single athlete on the roster is required to file what's called quarterly whereabouts.