Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Jon Anik: The Greatest Knockout in UFC History & His Journey in the UFC | E125

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Jon Anik: The Greatest Knockout in UFC History & His Journey in the UFC | E125 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Jon Anik: Start to think maybe the UFC has a horseshoe up its ass, because on the biggest night in promotional history, one of the biggest fights ends with the consensus greatest knockout in UFC history. And if you don't know, Max Holloway knocking out Justin gagey with one singular second to go, Justin gaichi face first to the canvas. Just kept thinking like there's just no possible way for the sport to top this and yet, somehow, some way, this sport has a history of topping itself.
• 0:23
  Jon Anik: So we'll see.
• 0:30
  Randall Kaplan: You're listening to part two of my amazing interview with John Anak, the greatest played by play announcer in UFC history, and one of the greatest announcers in the history of professional sports. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two of my amazing interview with John. Let's talk about my favorite topic and one of yours, which is preparation. I call it extreme preparation.
• 0:55
  Randall Kaplan: NFL, one game a week, two announcers, UFC, sometimes 30 fights in a week. How do you prepare for those shows? How long does it take to prepare for those shows and go through the process? Because I think people don't understand what it means to be the most prepared person in the room, and how important extreme preparation is to our success. Well, I'm going to read your book, and I'm gonna start listening to your podcast, because I podcast, because I actually think you might be one of the few human beings on the face of this earth that can actually help me optimize and make my preparation more efficient. But in 2009 when I called my first fights for Bellator, it was season one, episode one. I didn't really know what the jumping off point was in terms of how to begin the research. I didn't have fighter BIOS necessarily at the beginning of that process. We had the internet, but even back then, it wasn't as robust as it is today. So I just started making index cards and writing down what I thought would be the most important information. Now Brian Stan, one of my former broadcast partners, said to me at one point in time, it's an open book test, right? Like we're off camera for a lot of this exercise, that when we're calling fights, it's an open book test, you might as well show up with some notes. Now, the key is being able to optimize that note card to have committed enough of that stuff to memory by handwriting it, in the case of my process, so that when you're live, you can be either watching the monitor or watching the octagon, and that information is not something that you have to necessarily look down at. But when you talk about 30 fighters and 15 fights, and I might be in a situation where I have a back to back Saudi Arabia, June 22 I got 30 athletes. And then June 29 Conor McGregor returns at UFC, 303, I got 56 or 60 athletes in a span of eight days. How much time am I devoting to each athlete and mentally? Sometimes that can be hard to wrap my head around. And certainly during the covid climate, when we went to 15 fights a card, I said to my boss, like these matchmakers are fucking killing me, something's gonna fall through the cracks, right? And I don't want that to happen, so
• 3:02
  Jon Anik: it's exhaustive. It's a labor of love, like sometimes I'll sit at the Palm Beach County Public Library and I'm watching sports, right? I'm watching fights and writing notes, and I'll think to myself, you're getting paid to watch sports. But all of my anxiety in this job, or 99% of it, is in the extreme nature of the preparation, and maybe 1% of my anxiety is in the actual performance. So give us some quantitative figures. If you're doing back to back shows in a week, is it 40 hours? It's every hour, every hour that's available to me. I don't turn on the TV in the hotel room. I barely FaceTime or talk to my kids. There's always one more interview you can read, there's always one more fight you can watch from early on in the UFC careers. I'm not saying this stuff and professing myself as the hardest worker in the room.
• 3:48
  Jon Anik: It's a fear of failure showing up to the octagon. And I can't tell you how many times on show day when we have a pay per view at Madison Square Garden, when my call time is not till 6pm the nugget I use on the walkout is the final thing that I uncovered before I went to the arena. So quantitatively, trying to give you an hour, I mean, the process starts about 10 days out. We voice over a lot of the stuff in advance. So I would say I have probably three hours of voiceover work in advance of a pay per view same day. No. So it'll be, oftentimes the voiceovers might be eight or nine days out, and then I'll do some voiceovers the day before the show, right? We might battle with a pronunciation, and something might have to be re voiced. There might be an error in something that has been laid to tape. So there are a lot of different circumstances, and the UFC broadcast is a completely different beast, right? Like we can talk about the intensive nature of an NFL broadcaster schedule 17 straight weeks plus the playoffs, but they're they're on a mic for three hours. We're doing eight hours.
• 4:47
  Jon Anik: So it's a little bit of a different exercise that we're walking into. You know, you mentioned something. It's minor, but it's major, pronunciation of certain names, words, Akamai Technologies.
• 5:00
  Randall Kaplan: Is the name of the big technology company that I started today. 10,000 employees, $4 billion in revenues. People come in for job interviews. Acme, all you need to do, bye, right? Bye, all you need to do, well, one other bye, bye, after 10 seconds, is what's my dog's name, which is on my website. So if you can't read my website. Don't know my dog's name is karma. The interview is over, and people have open mouths. What? And it's yeah, what? Bye. You don't you don't know, but you don't know.
• 5:28
  Randall Kaplan: Pronunciating names. If you're in doubt, go to Google Translate, right, right? So you do all these things. Makes you the best at what you do. You're considered the best at what you do. In the history of the sport, what do you do to stay on top and are you constantly improving on yourself? How important is it not to rest on our laurels if we want to be the best? So one of the most difficult things and inconvenient truths of being a talker for a living is that you have to scrub your own work, and you have to go back, as I'm sure you do, and listen selectively to your own podcasts and watch, as is the case for me, my UFC pay per view opens, and sometimes I'm not particularly fond of those deliveries or the way that I look on camera. I would come back to my identical twin. It's a tremendous resource for me to have, right? Somebody who is a living, breathing, walking, human being that's just like me, who goes through my work and tells me largely what he doesn't like, but that's something that, you know, I think Kenny Florey and my podcast co host doesn't do enough of, right? Is going back and listening to our work because it's a pain in the ass, right? You get sick of the sound of your own voice, but that is something that I have always leaned into. There was a time in my career, I guess, where I was caught on an open mic saying, you know, yeah, I work hard, but am I any fucking good, right?
• 6:41
  Randall Kaplan: And I felt like there was a time where I would always get all this credit for being prepared and working hard, but maybe not for being a performer or being actually good at the craft. And I would take exception to that.
• 6:54
  Randall Kaplan: And, you know, I don't regret necessarily saying that, but what I've realized is that, you know, the key to my success really is hard work and evolving my process a little bit in terms of taking things off of my fighter card that I'm not using on fight night right first round finishes is something that I was very rarely going back for. I could always ask the truck on my talk back button for that. So refining the process, I have tried to learn and master how to pause, and I'm still working on that, 22 years into this broadcasting career, getting away from verbal crutches, just being comfortable with some dead air or with a pause, but yeah, constantly working on my craft and and wanting to create a gap between me And whoever's chasing me.
• 7:56
  Randall Kaplan: Team feedback is important. What could the UFC be doing better than it is doing today. And you say, walk into Dana's office.
• 8:03
  Randall Kaplan: Hey, hey, Dana, I got an idea for you. You ever do that? And what does it say? So, part of the reason we've realized so much success in terms of our live event production now, we never get any Emmy consideration when it comes to our championship coverage. And I do feel bad for our producers that their championship coverage and directors has not been acknowledged by that Emmy body.
• 8:23
  Randall Kaplan: Because I really do believe I would put our live event, from a live production standpoint, up against all of these other sports. But I do think there are things that we could do to make our production better. I think first and foremost would be to show as many fighter walks as possible, and I know our commercial inventory is robust, but oftentimes we're talking through those fighter walks, and you guys are not getting those at home. So what can we do to shorten up other things during the broadcast, to show those fighter walks? Because those are our maximum moments for humanization, when those fighters are walking out and, yeah, I mean, I think that's a suggestion that we have thrown out there at times, and they do it whenever possible for big fights, but it's just a really difficult thing for the UFC fight nights. But that's always the foremost suggestion for me.
• 9:16
  Randall Kaplan: You know, I don't know that it's necessarily an open forum. It's not that the UFC considers the source of said suggestion. But I'd be lying if I said that. I'm banging down doors trying to affect major change when it comes to our broadcast. You know, I think there, there are some innovators in there, but, uh, you know, Dana White fine tooth combs this thing, you know, he does micromanage the whole process. We all make mistakes in our careers. We have challenges. We make mistakes.
• 10:31
  Randall Kaplan: You've out. You've made one, recent one, UFC 297, you said something about the fans. Let's talk about that briefly. What did you say?
• 10:39
  Randall Kaplan: And how important is it to say, I'm sorry to be successful.
• 10:43
  Randall Kaplan: So I guess I just had an emotional moment on the podcast, and it stemmed from some frustration with a lot of fans who were alleging bias in a fight between Sean Strickland and dracu. Two plus C for the middleweight championship back in January. And I really kind of went down a rabbit hole on Sean Strickland's Instagram page, and just was leaning too much into a lot of those allegations of bias after what I thought was a very close fight. And I think as a play by play guy, if you don't have objectivity, you have nothing. And so for me, those are the criticisms that I take most seriously as far as the regrettable utterance on my podcast, it was me just sort of having a moment. I think Dana White said Anne had a little bit of a meltdown, and that's sort of all it was. You know, I don't think going at the fans or challenging the fans in that way is any sort of positive, but, you know, my whole reputation has been built on fan engagement and having a relationship with this fan base, you know, and I have so much love and support from the fans that maybe it put me in a place of liberation, where I felt like I could sort of have an open conversation with the fans who, I guess, even if it was A small portion were really taking issue with that particular call, but there have been several times where I've had to apologize publicly. You know, I remember an instance with Michael Bisping, one of my broadcast partners, in Colby Covington, several years ago.
• 12:03
  Randall Kaplan: Colby Covington wins the interim championship, and I thought Michael Bisping was upstaging him on the post fight show, and I probably should have just kept my mouth shut. And then I engaged there, and I said, Let's not upstage the athlete as the analyst. And then I issued a public apology to Michael Bisping, which probably put more fuel on the fire. So I'm not afraid to apologize when I think that I have stepped out of bounds, and certainly when it came to one particular utterance at the fan base this past January. You know, I wish I could have that one back. But you know, the result of that was that I sort of got all this love and appreciation from the rest of the fan base and the fighters, and I was not looking for more attention or appreciation. So, you know, maybe there was a little bit of a blessing veiled in there, but at the end of the day, it was just way more noise during a slow MMA news cycle that I could have done without did it feel good to say I'm sorry? Yeah. I mean, I think it always does. I mean, I don't know how your marriage is, but I apologize way more than my wife does. That's for sure. My rabbi and at our wedding said the three most important words in a marriage is I am sorry. And boy, was that right? There you go. There you go. That was, that was right.
• 13:10
  Randall Kaplan: You're live on a mic with 10s of millions of fans, maybe, I think the biggest fight, maybe even more than 100 million fans. Lot of pressure. We live in a cancel culture today. One word that's off, you could be done. How much pressure is that? Do you think about that? I try not to think about that. I think more about some health issue with my vocals, that would resign me to going back to print journalism.
• 13:37
  Randall Kaplan: But Tom Brady recently did an announcement with Michael Strahan, and it was Tom, I don't know if you saw this, Tom talking about his first assignment for the NFL on Fox is gonna be the Cleveland Browns against the Dallas Cowboys, one of the first times in a public setting for Tom Brady as analyst, and he started talking about the Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. And he said something to the effect of, you know, we'll see if Dak Prescott can finally break through, and you are here too for Tommy going to be judged on every single utterance. And even though what Tom was implying is, we'll see if Dak can finally get over the hump and win a Super Bowl, right? But the line itself is suggested that Dak really hasn't done a whole lot of anything, and it was particularly critical. Now, Tom Brady is paid to be critical, but the lesson is, you're going to be judged on every single utterance, and you have to just be very careful, but you also have to recognize that, and you can't not be critical for fear that your contemporaries or athletes are going to take issue with those words. So I try to not think too much about that. But my personality is such that I do walk right up to that line and try not to cross it right. You know, you can Google John Anne 209 tattoo if you really want to, right? But there are definitely times where, you know, my personality maybe puts me in jeopardy of having, you know, my career canceled, or, you know, getting on my boss's radar, but, uh, I also am who I am, and, you know, I'm not, I haven't always been like a fall in line guy. So, so those people don't know, tell us about the lost bet and the tattoo. Well, it's not a lost bet necessarily, right? I mean, it's a tattoo that I wanted, right? Like, if you really know the story, Nick Diaz was my favorite fighter, and I was trying to bring attention to my podcast. Nate Diaz was fighting Conor McGregor on, like, two weeks notice. And so I called Kenny Florian, and I thought, you know, maybe I'll do a tattoo bet. There was the second tattoo bet I had done on my podcast. And I said, if Nate comes out of vacation in Cabo and beats Conor McGregor this weekend, I'll get a 209 tattoo on my arm. It'll bring attention to the podcast, and also a good way for me to sort of honor the Diaz brothers, if it happens, because I related to those guys.
• 15:43
  Randall Kaplan: I really like Nick. I would always tell people Nick Diaz was my favorite fighter when I was first getting into mixed martial arts. But what happened was, during. During fight week, before the fight had happened, somehow, some way, I was the number two guy. Wasn't calling the pay per view. I wasn't covering the live event, but my comments got on Nate Diaz's radar, and so he went on a hot mic and basically, or he went on social media and just said, you know, what the hell's John doing? And then my bosses, it got on their radar, and then Nate ends up winning the fight.
• 16:12
  Randall Kaplan: And at that point in time, once Nate was upset, I was upset I was getting the tattoo, win or lose out of respect, right? Nate wins the fight, and he closes out the UFC press conference by saying, you know, if John anak doesn't get that 209 tattoo, I'm gonna whip his little ass. So about a year ago, I actually showed my daughters that clip and explain to them the sort of backstory of it. But I've done probably four or five tattoo bets on my podcast. I would never do a tattoo bet for something that I wasn't comfortable having emblazoned on my body for the rest of my life, you know. And so this is the one we have, and the other tattoo bets haven't come in but I assure you this will not be the last tattoo bet, nor the last tattoo that I get. What's it like working with Joe Rogan Gosh, man, there's nothing like it. And I won't be the first talking head to suggest to you that he really is a better human being than he is a podcaster.
• 16:58
  Randall Kaplan: And I know a lot of his genuineness comes across on his show, but he's just such a good dude. And I'll just think back to the warm embrace in 2012 when he didn't know me from a hole in the wall and I got that call on three days notice, or to the time that I got promoted in 2017 and his longtime broadcast partner was shown the door, and he even embraced me then, however reluctantly. So I don't know that I have more eternal gratitude for anybody as far as my career is concerned, and him putting me over, as you know, the best play by play guy out there. I can't even tell you what that has done for me, because I don't consider myself to be that, you know. But his opinion affects so much of what public opinion is, you know. So I got people coming up to me calling me the fucking goat.
• 17:46
  Randall Kaplan: Joe's the goat. I ain't the goat, right? But when He calls you that, it obviously has a lot of traction. So there's nothing like his dynamicism in a broadcast booth. There's nothing like his comedy on fight night.
• 17:58
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, nobody gets deeper belly laughs than for out of me like Joe Rogan does, and it just feels bigger and badder and better when he is there. And as I've said repeatedly, Randy, he's going to do this job way past the time that I do it. I think he's gonna, he's gonna be around forever, and hopefully, for the sake of MMA fans, that's the truth. We all meet incredible people in our life, maybe three or four or five, Max. We think that person is just one of the greatest people I've ever made. They're generous, they're loyal, they do things that most people wouldn't do. How amazing is Dana White.
• 18:35
  Randall Kaplan: He's unbelievable. And when I say this, I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears, mixed martial arts would probably cease to exist in this country without UFC CEO, Dana White and the fertittas buying the UFC mixed martial arts is so big in this country right now, potentially having closed into that top four with respect to the NHL, as a mainstream top four sport in this country. So a lot of people might scoff when you say it wouldn't exist without Dana, but he was so bullish on the sport, they bought the UFC, and just continued to pour money into a sport that they thought could be the greatest spectacle in professional sports. So I don't know that there's any greater compliment I could give the man.
• 19:14
  Randall Kaplan: And then I would go to the global pandemic setting, when we were all willing to somehow, someway, get to Lamar, California with masks on and rental cars and small airplanes and everything else, because we would go through a brick wall for that guy. I mean, his staff is so loyal, because he has been so loyal to that staff. So when he wanted to be the only show in town during a global pandemic, even though I might have had some trepidation, you know, I wanted to be that guy for that guy. So even though at times We butted heads, even though he rode me really hard early on, I do think even though I respond to different leadership styles.
• 19:53
  Randall Kaplan: I respond to his sort of tough love, hardened leadership style, and I feel like I've earned his respect. It's one thing to be a great boss and to give people credit for what they built.
• 20:05
  Randall Kaplan: Because I think you're right.
• 20:05
  Randall Kaplan: UFC mixed pastoral arts, mixed martial arts, would not be here today, but for him, it was an unloved, unproven violent sport.
• 20:11
  Randall Kaplan: People thought it was a bunch of animals in the sport. 1993 they were nearly going bankrupt. But talk about how incredible Dana is as a human being. Well, Joe Rogan and Dana White are super philanthropic, but they don't scream from the rooftops about it. And all due respect to all the philanthropists out there who show you exactly what they do, and it's vast, right?
• 20:37
  Randall Kaplan: But he does so many things for so many people, right? Like our IT guy, just off handedly, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but just said something about the suns and the Celtics playing a regular season game the next.
• 20:52
  Randall Kaplan: Thing, you know, the dude's sitting behind the fucking bench in Phoenix, you know. And those gestures have happened 1000s of times over, and you experienced one yourself. So Heart of Gold doesn't even begin to describe it. And I do think it flies in the face of a little bit of his hardened exterior at times. And maybe they don't think that that side of him dovetails with, you know, the bullish UFC executive that is willing to take on all comers. But he's very much a layered, multifaceted individual, and yeah, one of the more you know, deep hearted, philanthropical guys I've ever come across, for those people listening and watching the show today, if you haven't checked out my pod with Dana, he does tear up a little bit. And I did make Dana cry at the Grand Ballroom at Blasio hotel for the scale conference. Hopefully we'll be able to put that video up as well. But as you said, he does amazing things for people.
• 21:46
  Randall Kaplan: He doesn't like talking about it at the conference. I did make him talk about it, and he called it an Oprah moment, which is, which is great. Talk about UFC 300 why was it one of the greatest cards of all time, and then talk about that ridiculous knockout with one second ago? I don't even know where to begin.
• 22:04
  Randall Kaplan: I probably cussed enough today.
• 22:04
  Randall Kaplan: But if you think back to UFC 200 in 2016 I don't know where you were, but probably in a decidedly different place than 2024 I mean, I wasn't calling UFC 200 I was in the building.
• 22:15
  Randall Kaplan: But these milestone events, and I could sit here and suggest to you that UFC 303, headlined by Conor McGregor here in a few weeks, is a monumental event in its own right. But UFC 400 is going to be in 2032 so these things happen every eight years.
• 22:32
  Randall Kaplan: So you can hope that the calendar aligns perfectly, and you can have all this star power, and your athletes can stay healthy, and you can line up this perfect fight card, but you never know if it's going to stay together. And then the date finally materializes, and you hope that the fight card delivers, but you just never know. And then you put together a BMF title fight between Justin Gacy and Max Holloway, and you feel like it is the most bulletproof piece of matchmaking that you've ever put together.
• 23:03
  Randall Kaplan: You know that fight's gonna entertain. And then you start to think maybe the UFC has a horseshoe up its ass, because on the biggest night in promotional history, one of the biggest fights ends with the consensus greatest knockout in UFC history. And if you don't know, Max Holloway knocking out Justin gagey with one singular second to go, Justin Gachi face first to the canvas. And I think back to so many things at UFC 300 like just hitting the talkback button to the truck, and the producers being like, are you guys kidding me? Like, how good are you kidding me? Like you just can't draw it up any better. And I just just kept thinking, like, there's just no possible way for the sport to top this. And yet, somehow, some way, this sport has a history of topping itself, so we'll see.
• 23:47
  Randall Kaplan: But I don't think that moment gets topped anytime soon. For all the fans out there who haven't seen a knockout, it's on YouTube, the video and your reaction, and Joe Rogan's reaction was unbelievable.
• 23:59
  Jon Anik: Yeah, well, it was incredible. I'm thinking in that moment about the call as much as anything else, but when something like that happens so late in the fight, I you it's an out of body experience a little bit. I've oftentimes talked about how I don't always control my diaphragm properly when I'm breathing, so I am on the cusp of passing out potentially. And I do start to see stars, but at that point in time, yes, it's UFC 300 Yes, it's for the BMF title, but with one second to go, had to somehow be hammered home. And you do hope, by the way, as the play by play guy, you're cheating the clock, looking at the clock, you hope that the record will dovetail with the call, and it won't be at 458 or with two seconds to go, right? So, but to me, I saw 459 or I saw 001, and I was like, dude, like it was one second ago. It wasn't three, it wasn't two. So twice in the call, we do reference one second to go, and thankfully, we got the call right. But in that moment, right? I remember early on in my career, like I was reluctant to just hammer through, maybe fearful to steamroll Joe Rogan or Daniel Cormier. And now obviously this deep in it's like, I gotta go, I gotta Hey, I gotta finish that championship call, come hell or high water. And you know, if there's a little bit of a traffic jam, so be it. But dude, it was absolutely insane, just complete pandemonium. I interviewed Dana for my show two days before, and my which was incredible timing, and then my wife and I went to UFC free home. We were in Vegas for the show, so we're with some friends at a 330 dinner. They work for Bob Bill Foley, who owns the knights, and they're, of course, in a bunker box, and we're waiting for two extra tickets of people on show. And we're like, Man, I says it didn't come through. So with maybe two hours before the fight, we just said, Fuck it. We went online. We paid 2500 bucks for great season. Was it was great. That is so good right away. It's so good, right?
• 25:56
  Jon Anik: I mean, the most I've ever spent for a sporting ticket in my life, $4,500 to see the Patriots play the Rams in the Super Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia. It's the best money I've ever spent. You know that's so great that you guys did that. It was awesome.
• 26:08
  Jon Anik: You're 45 years old. Your contractors players in 2006 you've talked about you want to maybe be play by play for football, NFL. Your dream job maybe as be the daily announcer for the Boston Red Sox. What's next for you? So it's crazy to think that at the end of this contract in 2026 I'll be 15 years in and to have to think that I've spent so much more time with the UFC than I did at ESPN back in the day, even though we are on ESPN right now, I think for an American football fan like me, there's always going to be part of me that wants to scratch that itch and prove to myself and my family and my supporters that I can call NFL football and realize success, Not only at the highest level of my craft, but in the sport that is the most ubiquitously viewed in the United States of America. So I don't know that the NFL itch is ever gonna go away with any sort of ointment, but I have the job that I want, and I don't know that any live event is gonna be as exciting for me to call as a UFC pay per view. I think most of these other events are gonna pale in comparison. And even when, you know, maybe I had some wayward comments about the fans back in January, you know, Joe Rogan texted me immediately and said, you know, don't leave for a less exciting sport, you know.
• 27:26
  Jon Anik: And most of the sports are less exciting, but I also am largely focused on, as tried as it sounds, earning this seat for every show you know, and making sure that you know, they don't want to give the number two or number three guy an opportunity to do a pay per view, because they think they'd be losing too much, you know, like I want, even though I never tuned in for announcers to keep hearing from UFC fans who say they tune in for me and that it's a worse experience when I'm not there.
• 27:51
  Jon Anik: So I have the job that I want.
• 27:51
  Jon Anik: If I'm a betting man, I would say I probably don't call an NFL game, and I resign with the UFC and and this is what I do until the voice goes out. But having done major college football on the national level, you know, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't dream of, you know, gracing the Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings booth, before it's all said and done, that's awesome. Before I conclude today, I want to finish my podcast with some open ended questions. I call this part of my show. Fill in the blank to excellence. You ready to play?
• 28:22
  Jon Anik: Yes, the biggest lesson I've learned in my life is be ready for an opportunity, because you might actually have to do the 4:20pm Eastern Standard update, even though you're ill prepared.
• 28:35
  Jon Anik: So be ready. My number one professional goal is to call an NFL football game. My biggest regret in life is, my biggest regret in life is not going to college with my twin brother and being on a similar trajectory with him at a younger age to try to maximize ourselves as identical twins, right? We haven't been in a doubleman commercial yet, and the clock is ticking. My number one personal goal is, my number one personal goal is to be a more present father, you know, not just being there, but to be mentally present in those moments, right to not be thinking about work when I'm with my kids, I struggle with that all the time, and it's part of being, I hate to say, being successful, but to being obsessive about what you're doing, and wanting to be the best, and always thinking there's more I could be doing.
• 29:33
  Jon Anik: But as my kids get older, and you'll see this with your kids as well, the funnel to spend more time with them gets less and less, right and right happens so fast. When they get to be 16 years old, they want to hang out with you. Well, really a 14, and then each year, it gets less and less. And then when they go to college, you really don't see them anymore.
• 29:51
  Jon Anik: But I think it's something I struggle with and I'm working on, yeah, very, very hard. Yeah, no, I feel like my daughters, even right now, lean on me for things that they will be leaning on boyfriends for in the not too distant future. Where are you guys? I'm getting fucking tired.
• 30:03
  Jon Anik: My biggest fear in life is other than heights. I think it's failure and just having a bad broadcast and having Joe Rogan ask me, Hey, which neck fusion surgery did Brian Kelleher get?
• 30:19
  Jon Anik: And this is the one time this has happened. I said, You know what, Joe? I don't have that answer for you. So my purpose in life is, my purpose in life is to create successful children and to allow people, through my professional work, to have some sort of escapism from just how difficult life is. And even though I used to work with special needs kids, and I think really affected lives in. A more profound way. I do think that we affect a lot of lives with the work that we do, even in a recreational way. And, you know, I do feel purposive. I guess about that the best announcer in sports history is Sean McDonough, still getting it done in his prime in game seven of the Stanley Cup playoffs right now, perhaps there's a little Boston bias in there. I think Jim Lampley is the greatest combat sports play by play guy of all time. I have a lot of other announcers I look up to, but Sean McDonough is the goat Al Michaels. Do you believe in miracles? A tremendous call, right? And not something that he probably thought a whole lot about. I don't know if he is admitted as to whether or not that was something that originated organically out of his mouth, but yeah, Al Michaels is a complete stud, and it's amazing how many guys in the sports broadcasting field keep doing it deep into their 60s and 70s. I can assure you, I'm not going to be on a microphone past the age of 70 if I'm even still here. There's no way the craziest thing that's happened in my career or life, is definitely taking the leap of faith with the UFC and moving to Las Vegas with a two month old daughter, thinking that I had finally gotten to ESPN and I was going to hunker down in Connecticut. Still to this day, I think about my young family moving to Vegas thinking not what were we doing, but like, are we really doing this? If you could create your one dream fight. What would it be? Gosh, you know, some of them are fights that go back in time, but for me, like right now, we have the consensus greatest of all time, John Jones against Tom Aspinall, who a lot of people believe is the most skilled heavyweight they've ever seen.
• 32:24
  Jon Anik: So Jon Jones versus Tom Aspinall is the dream fight right now, but the fact that we never saw George St Pierre versus Anderson Silva just sticks in my craw.
• 32:34
  Jon Anik: You know, Lorenzo Fertitta was always the strike while the iron is hot, type of guy, and they never got GSP Anderson Silva to the finish line. Unfortunately, the one thing I've dreamt about doing for a long time, but haven't, is just vacations, right? And I don't mean trips with children, but you and I talked on air and off air, just about the intense, noisy nature of our lives, and I think I need to lean more into vacation and then just being present when I'm on those vacations. But sometimes the noise doesn't turn off. But if you were to ask me, like, when's the last time you went on a vacation free of children, I don't think I could tell you the answer. 10 years from now, I'm going to be 10 years from now, I'm gonna be a better golfer. I'm gonna be shooting in the low 80s consistently. I will have had one sort of knee or hip surgery, I would think, from pickleball.
• 33:20
  Jon Anik: But I'll be a better golfer, and I won't be traveling as much internationally. We built a pickleball court at our house eight years ago. Wow. Early in it, we have some really fun games, a lot of interesting people come over when you're in LA, you got to come over and play with us. I will. It's cool.
• 33:37
  Jon Anik: And I got my new tournament doubles partner right here, Jay, if you're listening, Randy's our guy. So there, there you go.
• 33:42
  Jon Anik: What's the one piece of advice you would give to your 21 year old self? So I always knew that discipline was greater than motivation, but I didn't learn acutely about hard work until probably 10 years thereafter. So I guess I would have said to my 21 year old self, just lean more into the hard work. And even if I would go back a few years before 21 I just became, like, obsessed with, like, girls and different things, when I should have been more focused on, like, high school basketball and optimizing myself as an athlete, you know, so just leaning into the hard work earlier. My daughters and my son are so sick of hearing it, but I just I was a much harder worker at 2728 than I was naturally at 21 you could be one person in the world who would have Bill Belichick? I mean, that is the easiest question Randy has asked me here today. I have drawn so much inspiration from him. I think he's perpetually, perpetually misunderstood, as a lot of public figures are even at Tom Brady's roast recently, he's saying, you know, I'm not a bad guy, and people are sort of laughing and you know, Bill belichick's The fucking man. And I dream that I get the chance to shake his hand. His kids went to the same high school that I went to. So there's connective tissue there. But yeah, with respect to all the great leaders and politicians and human beings and philanthropists out there, Bill Belichick every day of the week, Tom Brady, host, was outrageously hilarious. Tom has come out and said he was regretful of the impact it had on his kids. There were a lot of sexual jokes about Giselle, his mom, but it was great, and it's amazing that not great because of his kids. By the way, the whole thing was just funny, right? Funny as shit, actually.
• 35:26
  Jon Anik: Oh yeah, and belchic went on the show and became more of a human being to people who were very surprised. Yeah, I mean, they poked fun at him, like walking out of some random chicks house or apartment in the middle of the night, you know. But it's interesting when you're in the public eye, because my daughters aren't yet at the age where they are Googling me, but certainly, unlike you and I'm being suggestive here, but there's a lot more inflammatory stuff out there that I have said.
• 35:51
  Jon Anik: Probably. Probably that you have, that my kids will eventually come across. And it's not that I don't consider myself a role model, necessarily, but I want my kids to know who I am, and so if that means that they come across a rant about recreational drugs at some point in time, like I'm okay with that, you know? So I, you know, I'm okay with certain things. I think I would have been more okay with that Roche than Tom was the one question you wish I had asked you but didn't. Is, gosh, you know, I know you have drawn rave reviews for all of your all of your ability to formulate questions. I guess if there's one question, you know, what's it going to take for the UFC to get to that next level?
• 36:35
  Jon Anik: And I think it's just time, you know? I certainly think this next TV deal is going to be huge for us, right? You have the fox deal that laid the foundation for the ESPN deal. People think at $4.2 billion is this crazy?
• 36:50
  Jon Anik: Did a re manual overpay? Now it looks like an underpayment, right? So what is this next TV deal going to hold? Is it really going to be on Netflix and available to that many more millions of people? So we just need time. But I do think eventually this sport, not just globally, but domestically, becomes as big as as anything else out there. And thankfully, we got you on the bandwagon.
• 37:08
  Jon Anik: Now. I love it. Is there anything on the show you want to promote before we end here today. No, I mean thankful for the time with you today, and look forward to picking your brain as a mentor in the not too distant future. And I would just be thankful to this entire fan base, you know, for just supporting me and gives us a lot of confidence as broadcasters, to feel that love from the fans.
• 37:28
  Jon Anik: And these are special live events, you know, I'm trying to sort of recognize that the journey is the destination, and to not forget to have fun while I'm doing these, you know, hard broadcasts, but no just really thankful to, you know, be with you today, and we look forward to UFC 303, and Conor McGregor's return here in a few weeks.
• 37:48
  Jon Anik: You're an awesome guy. Thank you. Congratulations on all of your immense success and Thanks for welcoming to South Florida today, my
• 37:55
  Randall Kaplan: man, you too.
• 37:55
  Randall Kaplan: Appreciate you.
• 37:56
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you, Randy, you.