No Holds Barred With Eddie Goldman

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with boxers Anthony Joshua and Dominic Breazeale, and Stephen Espinoza, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Showtime Sports, and Eddie Hearn, President of Matchroom Sports, about the June 25 Joshua-Breazeale fight and the future of boxing and the heavyweight division. The fight between the IBF champ Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs) and the challenger Breazeale (17-0, 15 KOs) headlines a card at The O2 in London, which will be shown live on Sky Sports Box Office in the U.K. and on Showtime in the U.S. While both fighters are thus far unbeaten as pros, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Joshua is a big favorite in this fight. Joshua is viewed by many as the heir apparent to the title of world heavyweight champion, and as the next major international superstar in boxing. We spoke with them on a media conference call Wednesday. With all the hype and prognostications about his future, Anthony Joshua is trying to stay focused on one thing: boxing. "I onl

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with Dr. Margaret Goodman, a neurologist, the former chair of the Medical Advisory Board of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and the president and board chairman of VADA, the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association. This is another in a series of discussions celebrating the tenth anniversary of this No Holds Barred podcast, which began in March 2006. These interviews will focus both on the legacy and issues raised over the years on this show, as well as contemporary issues and the future of the combat sports and martial arts. We spoke with Dr. Margaret Goodman by phone Monday. There is hardly a day without a report, discussion, or analysis of doping in sports. Even a decade ago, this was not the case, particularly in the combat and contact sports. Yet today, issues like doping, as well as athlete safety, brain trauma, and CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), regularly appear in the headlines and are the main topics in the news and on

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman offers a number of key proposals to unstrangle the stagnant sport of college wrestling and make it culturally relevant in America. Among the topics discussed are: the drop in TV ratings for the NCAA Div. I Wrestling Championships from 2015 to 2016; how there are few fans of college wrestling as a sport apart from the fans of each individual school; why college wrestling must be positioned as the anti-football sport, which is much less likely than football to lead to dementia, brain injuries, concussions, and CTE; why college wrestling should be the anti-MMA sport, which emphasizes honor, respect, and inclusion, as opposed to MMA's ubiquitous trash talk, vulgarity, disrespect, brain injuries, and doping; how college wrestling must reposition itself to be seen as part of the martial arts, and especially a form of grappling, and link up with these martial arts communities both on and off the campuses; the need for a major push for diversity in college wrest

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with Bob Carson, the host of Carson's Corner. Our topic was the life and legacy of the sumo wrestler and martial artist Manny Yarbrough, who passed away at age 51 a few days ago. A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise funds to transport his body from Virginia, where he lived, to New Jersey, where his mother lives, and to assist his family. The page is here. We spoke with Bob Carson by Skype Wednesday. Much of what has been written about Manny Yarbrough has come from people who didn't know him or, worse, care about him, and included numerous factual inaccuracies. The people who did know him know that he was not only a giant of a man in stature and size, standing six-foot, eight-inches tall and often weighing over 600 pounds, but he was also a giant of a person, multi-talented, caring, thoughtful. We discussed how he was a product of the historically Black college Morgan State in Baltimore, where he played football and wrestled, bec

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman discusses the increasing number of grave crises and scandals facing the International Olympic Committee (IOC), its sports federations, and the Olympic movement in general. This week many of these were highlighted in a 192-page report issued by the World Cup and Olympics Popular Committee of Rio de Janeiro, also known as the Comité Popular. This was the fourth such report issued by this group since 2012 in their series known as the Mega-Events and Human Rights Dossier. This year's report is called Rio 2016 Olympics: The Exclusion Games. The report details the many ways in which the preparations for the Rio 2016 Olympics have led to mass evictions, virtual slave labor, "social cleansing", privatization of public resources, militarization of Rio, and even the deaths of many, and principally poor Black youth. We also hear some brief comments by IOC president Thomas Bach at the conclusion of this week's IOC Executive Board meeting belittling the struggle

(Photo credit: Tom Hogan - Hoganphotos/Roc Nation Sports/Golden Boy Promotions) On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman discusses some of the issues around Saturday's unanimous decision victory by Canelo Alvarez over Miguel Cotto, the formation of the Pro Wrestling League in India which will air real wrestling matches on national TV there, how American wrestling needs more competent people to run it, why wrestling does not automatically teach positive values, how we can understand the role of the combat sports in society, and more. The PodOmatic Podcast Player for iOS is available for free on the App Store. The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow. No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by: MMA World Expo. The mixed martial arts community comes to New York City December 12 and 13, 2015, for the sixth annual MMA World Expo, featuring submission-only grappling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, MMA fighters,

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman reposts an interview with Steve Nelson, who fought in and ran the Unified Shoot Wrestling Federation (USWF) in the 1990s in Amarillo, Texas. This organization, which was one of the most successful local promotions of its time, held fights under what were called shootfighting rules, with only open hand strikes allowed, but with all submissions as well as kicks and knees permitted. It was thus a mixture of catch wrestling and MMA. Steve was also a headliner in the company's most famous fight, when he took on Ralph Gracie, who had defeated him in under a minute in 1996 under no holds barred rules in Battlecade/Extreme Fighting 2 in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake near Montreal. The rematch took place August 22, 1998, as the main event of the USWF 11 show in Amarillo. This fight was my selection as the 1998 Fight of the Year in mixed discipline combat sports. A video of this fight can be seen here. This interview was originally recorded in August 2008

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with Bellator MMA and American Top Team fighter "King" Mo Lawal. He will be returning to action on the Bellator MMA: Dynamite!!! card Saturday, September 19, in a four-man, one-night light heavyweight tournament to determine Bellator's number one contender in this division. The other fighters in this tournament are former Bellator champion Emanuel Newton, Linton Vassell, and 2008 NCAA Div. I wrestling champion Phil Davis, who will be making his Bellator debut. This card, which is headlined by a light heavyweight title fight between unbeaten champion Liam McGeary and MMA legend Tito Ortiz, takes place at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, and will be telecast live in the U.S. on Spike. We spoke with "King" Mo Lawal by phone Friday. Speaking about potentially, and in his case hopefully, having two fights on the same card, he said that he became aware of this format "when everybody else did, so it still hasn't registered yet. I feel

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with MMA fighter Fallon Fox. The first openly transgender MMA fighter, she is the subject, along with openly gay college basketball player Terrence Lamar Clemens, of a new documentary "Game Face". Directed by Michiel Thomas, this film documents the inspiring coming out stories of these athletes. We spoke with Fallon Fox by phone Thursday. "'Game Face' is a documentary about LGBTQ athletes, what happens to them before they come out and during the process of when they come out as LGBTQ athletes in sports," she said. "We have been filming for about a year and a half, almost two years with production to get this project complete. So I'm very happy that it's coming to full fruition as of late. So It's making its tour around film festivals, so people can check it out there as it makes its tour around those festivals. And you can also catch it whenever we find a distributor and put it out for the mass public." We also discussed why accepta

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman, who is celebrating his birthday on Sunday, March 22, offers some thoughts and observations on the state of sports in general and the combat sports in particular. Discussed are the growing concern with head trauma and concussions; why retirement is not an option for him; the many problems facing wrestling and grappling events; the need to understand the world as a whole in order to understand the sports world; and much more. The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow. No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by: American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at AmericanTopTeam.com. Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman reposts a commentary from May 2013 about the legacy of Malcolm X and its meaning for the martial arts and combat sports. Plus, added is a new introduction which discusses Malcolm X's emphasis on continuing to learn, adapt, and change, and how this applies to the martial arts and combat sports, especially for the reviving sport of catch wrestling and for those sports which produce repetitive head trauma and brain injuries. On March 29, 1964, at a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York, Malcolm X repeated what he had said many times about the importance of the martial arts: "If you're interested in freedom, you need some judo, you need some karate, you need all the things that will help you fight for freedom." That building now houses the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, at 3940 Broadway, New York, NY 10032, where one of the many celebrations of the 89th anniversary of Malcolm's birth will take place this Monday, May 1

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with lifelong martial artist, former UFC and Battlecade Extreme Fighting matchmaker, TV commentator, and our senior correspondent, John Perretti. This is the 1000th show for No Holds Barred as a podcast, and we used this occasion to discuss the past, present, and future of the combat sports. We spoke with John Perretti, who is in Kyoto, Japan, by Skype Wednesday (Tuesday, New York time). "You've done a magnificent job, and there's nobody more informed than you. And we disagree not very frequently. Congratulations," he said. We mainly focused on not only what has gone wrong over the past two decades and more in the combat sports, but what must be done right in the present and future. That, of course, led us directly into a discussion of the prospects for various styles of grappling and wrestling to succeed as popular spectator sports. Referring to his landmark, if financially unsuccessful, grappling show in October 1997 called "The Co

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with Dr. Sherry Wulkan, who is the Medical Chair of the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC), the lead MMA and muay Thai physician of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, and the Medical Director of Long Island Sports Care Group Inc. in Bayport, New York. In 2012, Dr. Wulkan presented the policy proposal to the Association of Boxing Commissions on transgender fighters, which was based on what had already been adopted by the International Olympic Committee and many other major sports organizations. With the coming to prominence in 2013 of Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender MMA fighter, this policy has been much debated. We spoke with Dr. Wulkan by phone Tuesday. Dr. Wulkan worked on this policy towards transgender athletes with Eric Vilain, M.D., Ph.D., who is a Professor of Human Genetics, Pediatrics and Urology at UCLA, the Director of the Institute for Society and Genetics, the Chief of Medical Genetics, and an attending physic

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with Ahati Kilindi Iyi, a martial arts legend and the head instructor and technical advisor of the TaMerrian Institute. Although as a youth he had a background in both wrestling and amateur boxing - his father was a boxer - Kilindi Iyi soon became attracted to the martial arts. This coincided with the rise of the Black Power movement, and growing up in the oft-rebellious Detroit area, he began to study the origins of the martial arts. He learned that the best evidence we have today shows that the martial arts originated in Africa, so he began to devote himself not only to preserving that history, but also spreading interest in what he calls the African fighting sciences. "No one actually knows where martial arts started. It could have been St. Louis, Missouri, for all we know. But as far as the recorded evidence that we have today, because somebody may come along tomorrow and find out some other recorded evidence, the oldest fighting systems that

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with the ex-pugilist, lifelong martial artist, former UFC and Battlecade Extreme Fighting matchmaker, TV commentator, and our senior correspondent, JohnPerretti. Despite having come up with the term "mixed martial arts" and being a pioneer and one of the founders of modern MMA, John Perretti is no longer involved in the sport. Nor does he even watch it, either on TV or live, although he does sometimes keep up with other combat sports like boxing, kickboxing, sumo, and wrestling. "It just didn't interest me," he said in our interview, recorded by Skype this past week on Tuesday. "The whole thing just had devolved into something I had no interest in." We discussed his disillusionment with a sport in which he had such a key role in creating. He explained how he finds most MMA in the USA "abysmal" and "unwatchable"; how his relationship with the sport has ended similarly to how personal or romantic relationships end; how he "quit" and was

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again speaks with lifelong martial artist, former UFC and Battlecade Extreme Fighting matchmaker, TV commentator, and our senior correspondent, John Perretti. On October 11, 1997, before the major no-gi grappling championships of today, John Perretti was the main organizer of a pioneering grappling event known simply as "The Contenders". The format was a seven-match card, held in Sioux City, Iowa, pitting a team of various martial artists against a team of elite U.S. wrestlers. Victory in each match could come by submission or, if there was none, judges' decision. There was no striking permitted, and the matches were held in a cage. The martial artists won, four matches to three, including three wins by submissions, but controversy ensued during and after the event about the rules and decisions. This ended up being a money-losing, one-shot deal, because attendance was sparse and pay-per-view buys were minuscule. Still, it is considered a pioneerin

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman previews a unique event combining mixed martial arts and the current struggle against fascists and racists in Europe. This is the Second International Tournament in Mixed Martial Arts Among Anti-Fascists of Europe, known as "No Surrender!! II" It takes place Saturday, April 17, in Kiev, Ukraine. We spoke with one of the organizers of this event, known as Anton, who is an anti-fascist activist. The rise of fascist and neo-Nazi elements in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in resistance by the people there, but also the death of some prominent opponents of the fascists. Because of the current danger to those who are active in this anti-fascist movement, this mixed martial arts event will be closed to the public and its location kept secret. The background to these important developments was explained by Anton, who stressed that a key motivation in organizing such events was to train the members of this movement in self

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman speaks with the legendary fight agent and boxing personality, Johnny Bos. There are few if any people alive who know more about boxing than Johnny Bos. But instead of prospering from that knowledge and wisdom, last year Johnny Bos, the quintessential New Yorker, had to leave this faded but still sometimes active center of boxing for a town not known for being a pugilistic capital: Clearwater, Florida. The main reason was that he could no longer find work in this alleged sport. Johnny's fortunes in boxing seemed to head swiftly downhill after an incident whose consequences, ironically, brought him back to the Big Apple this week. His fighter, former world champion Joey Gamache, was slated to fight the late Arturo Gatti in Madison Square Garden Feb. 26, 2000. At the weigh-in the day before, however, Bos and many others said that Gatti hopped on and off the scale without making the contracted weight of 141 pounds. While he objected to this, officials from

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman begins by commenting on the controversy around the November 15 mixed martial arts fight between Brock Lesnar and Randy Couture at UFC 91. We go to the No Holds Barred e-mail bag for an insightful analysis by a listener about how this fight may have symbolized "The Day That MMA Died", and then critique a number of so-called "experts" writing in the mainstream media defending the UFC promoters for handing the inexperienced Lesnar this title shot and inflating what his real athletic credentials are. In the main part of this show, we speak with our long-time colleague, Todd Hester, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Gladiator Magazine. Todd is also a correspondent on this show. In its November 2008 edition, Gladiator Magazine announced that it has presented its first-ever Lifetime Journalism Achievement Award to Eddie Goldman. In an article in its November 2008 issue, Eddie Goldman was also named the "Conscience of the Combat Sports". In a lengthy interv

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman begins by discussing the changed business climate for mixed martial arts following the ratings success of last Saturday’s EliteXC show on CBS. In light of this, we covered the news conference Thursday in New York, where it was announced that the Affliction mixed martial arts promotion and real estate mogul Donald Trump had entered into a partnership, with Trump buying an equity stake in Affliction. The inaugural Affliction show takes place Saturday, July 19, at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, and will be shown in the U.S. on pay-per-view. We got a brief comment from Trump about why he chose to invest in Affliction, and spoke with Tom Atencio, vice president of Affliction, about the company's business plans, as well as their intention of creating unified MMA championships by working with the new sanctioning body, WAMMA. This Saturday night, June 7, WBC super welterweight champion Vernon Forrest (40-2, 29 KOs) will defend his title against Sergi