No Bets Barred: Can Wang Cong Upset Natalia Silva And Add Some Life To The Women's Flyweight Division At UFC 332?

Mike Heck (0:01)

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.

All right, Mike Hec here from MMA Fighting, and my good friend Jed Meshew is here with me as well, because Jed, the day has finally arrived. It's app day, the all new SB Nation app. It's live now, it's live, Jed.

Jed Meshew (0:18)

It's alive. Yeah, man, I'm really excited. And it's awesome, man. Combat sports, like all sports, but combat sports fan especially, you guys are going to have your voices heard like never before with within SB Nation. MMA boxing, not me, but you, pro wrestling, Mike.

It's it is a community based app. It's all about community with the new SB Nation app.

Mike Heck (0:39)

It's so easy to use and it can keep, obviously, combat sports fans connected to their favorite teams and all of sports too across the board. So I can keep up with the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Patriots and the Bruins all on my phone. And it's so simple to use.

Jed Meshew (0:53)

Yeah, like you mentioned those teams, but there's so much more because I don't care about Boston Sports, Mike. But I get to follow the NFL, all the other sports, F1, the various sports that I care about outside of combat sports.

And then there's the live experience, because that's to me, that's one of the coolest things. You can chat with us during Fight Cards every Saturday, and you can chat with other people in the communities as big events are happening. So it's a really good time.

Mike Heck (1:20)

So ladies and gentlemen, come fight with us over on the all new SB Nation app. Download it today. Download it right now. What are you waiting for? Download it.

Jed Meshew (1:36)

What is up, y'all? We are back for another edition of No Bets Barred. My name is Jed Meshew, though I'm going to guess you probably already know that. But if you don't, welcome in. We are about to chat the spectacular, the wonderful, the divine Ufc 332 going down this Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Delta Center and headlined by the title fight that I know we all wanted to see. We've all been clamoring for Natalia Silva, Wang Cong for the vacant women's lightweight title. But before we get to that, some quick housekeeping notes, right? Gotta give us a state of the union because we missed last week Vegas 121, which ended up being a fairly fun event, albeit with a really scary ending to it. That also ended up being an event that I'm glad I didn't bet because had I had any action down that weekend, I had a climb bet that I spoke about on one of the other mmafighting.com grid website shows. It failed and I think the rest of my bets that weekend would have failed. So the last time we had one of these, it was for UFC 331 And for the first time in a very long time, had a really good fight card. Hit almost all the bets, blew up one parlay, and then sort of missed the Charles Jordan by decision, but spiked the rest of them to eat into the losses of the year.

Up four units there. Overall on the year, down eight and a half units, actually a little more than half, but we're going to round for simplicity. And of course, if you listen to our various shows, you know that The Climb, version 19, or I'm sorry, version 18 of The Climb, it fell. It is no more. I guess that was actually version 17 of The Climb. It fell with Gable Stevenson. Couldn't have gone out in a funnier way, though. We tried to kickstart our next version 18 of The Climb last week with Rina Nakamura. That also failed. So this week, The Climb version 19 begins. For those who do not know, The Climb is my reason for gambling at this stage of things. I am trying to string together 30 consecutive bets of minus 500 or there about, turning a $100 into 20 grand, or as I've had to adjust, because again, if you can do the math there, this is version 19 of The Climb, and so $100 that many times starts to add up a little bit, even though we've banked some profit on a couple of these, right, so it's not as dire as losing $1,800.

The official total is, I have to look, because this last time I banked like 300 bucks, and then I banked again something similar last time. So I think I've only lost like a grand total with some various checkpoints. That's higher up in the climb. For now, we're at the early stages of trying to string together 30 consecutive bets, and we have two climb stages we're looking at this week. We also just sort of have kind of an interesting gambling card, quite frankly, you know, there's a lot, sort of a lot of stuff on it, and we're gonna have some fun, if nothing else, with this weekend. So let's dive into it, and it has become the new normal. We are gonna go bottom to the top, so we're gonna start as these fights will start on Saturday in Utah, and finish with the big main event that, quite frankly, I know it's a pay-per-view card, like, or it's a numbered event, it's weak for a numbered event, undeniably, like, there's just no, nobody could reasonably say that this is like a super strong numbered event. If this were just a Fight Night card, I'd be pretty interested, because there's a lot going on here that I think is good, not all of it. There's a ton of it too, 14 fights is just a ton of it, but there's a lot going on that I like. And let's start with a fight that I don't love, but there is some intrigue to it. The opening bout of the evening is a welterweight contest between Court McGee and Eric Nolan. This is Court McGee's retirement fight. He is walking away after this one, and he gets Eric Nolan, who enters this fight on a two fight losing streak, losing two very highly rated prospects in Basangus Roussakaev, Jimmy Suss, and Farman Hassanoff, his last one out. McGee meanwhile, he is on the wrong side of the 40 curve, right? He is 41 turning 42 He is from Utah, and still lives in Provo, does all that. And so gets to go out basically on home turf here. And this is a winnable fight despite the fact McGee is one in four over his last five coming off a loss over a year ago. So it's been a while since we've seen him. This is at least winnable, though he is not favored. Nolan minus 260 McGee plus 210