Share & Tell with Katie Nolan & Dwayne Johnson's Friend Ariel Helwani

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

I don't know what feathering your boost button means.

I just know that someone out there heard Katie Nolan say that

and liked it way too much.

A little too much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And shout out to that lady

right after this ad.

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This is where I want to start because Ariel Helwani, who is playing sick, playing hurt, and we thank him for doing this, is not in person with me and you, Katie.

Yeah.

There's no chance that's real.

I feel bad that you feel bad physically.

I feel good good that we can now interrogate him about the real thing I want to find out today, which is what the f.

That's a green screen, right?

That's

too many books, and they're too small.

They'd have to be very far behind.

Look at the way I'm moving.

Yeah, that's not a green screen.

Yes, it does.

What's that little, what's that little light flare off your left shoulder?

No, it's just because I have.

Is there one that you want me to pull out?

I'll be happy to pull it out.

Yeah, get the dialogues of Plato.

I see it over there hiding.

Okay, just one second.

Oh, shoot, it's real.

I'm convinced.

Oh, my God.

That's an actual one.

Wow, look at all those books.

It's a very smart person book, too.

And you've read all of them, I assume.

This might be the best thing that I got from working at ESPN.

It's just, it's a TV.

It's sick.

It's not a game.

Wait, but this is the question I have.

This is the question I have.

This thing killed me right here.

Yeah, I told you I saw this.

There's a reflection.

If you're not watching on the Draft Kings Network or YouTube, there's a clear reflection from Ariel's window, beautiful window, the sunlight of New Jersey streaming in.

But those books, like, whose books are those?

Yeah, where'd you get that picture?

How would you pick those books?

What's the backstory on the books?

That's a great question.

A question that no one's asked me.

Actually, one time I was on Sports Center towards the end of my time there, and the freaking screensaver went on.

No cap, Jay, as the kids like to say.

No cap right here.

Co-main event.

I'm more excited about the co-main event.

As my screen goes out behind me, my entire life has just been exposed as a complete fraud, Jay.

Can you believe this?

That was very funny.

Oh, that's very funny.

Very embarrassing.

Very funny.

Flying toasters.

i i i like i like being like a warm library i was looking for something homey i looked at like pictures of libraries and whatnot now this this is a library that's the thing that i i i can't even believe anyone would think this would be my house like look how many books this is i know but there's no um there's no like dewey decimal system i don't see any numbers or tape on the if you look very closely there's a lot here oh okay so I just found the right picture that matches, I think, my skin tone, my hair, my hair,

it really does.

It just kind of fits.

It feels like it's my little universe.

I don't really appreciate you guys breaking K Fabe, as we say in the wrestling business.

We could have just ignored all of this.

Sure, maybe you have to, maybe you should frame out the bottom of the TV there.

So we're

crap.

It wouldn't be obvious.

Thank you.

A little bit off my game.

It's crazy that you have it so that it has to be perfectly set.

I just like how the guy who's the best, foremost MMA expert in the world is like, you know what?

My audience needs to know that I love books.

I read.

Yeah.

I read quite a bit.

So I bring on Ariel Helwani for many reasons.

He is the foremost authority on MMA and all sorts of things that I don't understand.

Also, because I've been obsessed.

What I bring to the table today in this episode of Share and Tell is this video that I watched from my couch of Ariel on a stage in between Logan Paul and Dylan Dannis.

And I want to get to the genre of what they engage in these days because that's a bigger picture topic.

But the micro of this is just this press conference that devolved very rapidly and which Ariel was ahead of, seemingly before anybody else.

If we can watch that clip,

so this is Logan Paul like underhand chucking a bottle of something at Dylan Dannis's prime, I assume.

Of prime or assume it's prime.

And Katie, where would you say that that struck Dylan Dannis?

In the penis.

Hit him in the penis.

Right in the penis.

That's what it looked like.

It was below the belt.

Yeah.

And then Dylan Dannis, like Ariel, how would you describe what you saw?

Because he takes his microphone and then does what?

Yeah, well, I didn't see all of that because as you can see in the

clip, I got the hell out of you.

And a lot of people were making fun of me i'm like yo you think i want to get like if there's another angle if i would have stayed exactly where i was originally i would have been pelted in the head with a water bottle yeah so i'm totally okay with being the scaredy cat who goes off i actually thought i was very calm cool and collected about it i just like said you know what i'm out of here walked there to the left i do think

you did a little bit of hand stuff that okay

you did do a little bit of like

it's very unfair if you roll the tape back,

I'm fixing my IFB.

Look, I'm fixing my IFB, and then he hits me.

So that's why I did that.

Had I not been fixing my IFB in that moment, I would have never done that.

I would have been unflapping

that moment and then you went to here.

I feel like

I was here, and then I went to here, and that's called good defense.

That's Philly Shell right there.

That's good defense.

Ariel was shoulder rolling as soon as that water bottle flew across the stage.

Thank you for that problem.

That said, the other verb I'd use is scamper.

There was a scampering.

It felt like Ariel, you've done this before, though, the face-off, the press conference before a fight, and you had veteran savvy about where you wanted to not be, I guess.

Yeah.

I wanted nothing.

I'm not fighting.

I'm not.

courageous like them.

I want nothing to do with any of that.

And these two guys have had their moments.

In August, they had a press conference and cake was being thrown and water bottles were being thrown back there too.

I want nothing to do with any of this.

I just want to go there, do my job, come home to my family.

There's no, there's no, like, there's no part of me that wants to be a hero and say, I took a water bottle to the face.

So people were making fun of me for getting out of the way.

I wish I got out of the way quicker.

I went to hide behind the ring girls episode.

Like, that's how, that's how I wanted nothing.

I was like, there's no way they're going to throw anything at them.

So let me just hide behind.

I have no problem being a total coward.

That's amazing.

Human shields.

Yep.

You're that guy in the movie that takes the woman and it's like, no, no, take her, not me.

Yeah, yeah.

Like George Costanza, when there's a fire in the apartment and he's like shoving nothing over the old people, That was me, and I am totally okay with that.

But to answer your question, though, Pablo, he took a microphone and he nailed Logan in the head with it, Dylan did, and then he cut him open.

And it was very unfortunate because, you know, there's an actual fight that needs to happen on Saturday.

So for a minute there, I was looking at the executives.

They looked like, you know, they had the fear of God in their eyes because now all of a sudden this multi-million dollar fight was potentially up in smoke because of this hijinks.

In the end, though, it didn't matter.

Everyone was okay.

But that's some scary stuff.

Well, I want to follow up on that framing because this is a thing that had millions upon millions of dollars on the line.

It's real big business now.

And he also pointed out that you, as a professional, want to do professional things.

You want to go show up, do your job, and you doing your job at like, what do we call this genre now, Ariel?

This was a professional boxing fight, but this was Logan Paul, YouTuber influencer versus Dylan Dannis, who at Katie, I don't even know if you have any idea who that is.

So please explain what the f ⁇ .

Okay.

So

Dylan Dannis is actually an incredible Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner.

He's a black belt.

He's had great success in the BJJ world.

Then he met a guy named Conor McGregor and

his profile grew a lot and he sort of adopted some of Connor's persona.

He's only had two MMA fights and they were very low-level fights for an organization called Bellator.

But his last fight was in 2019.

He suffered a serious knee injury.

He's been out for a while, but what he's really good at is like being a crap talker.

He's a troll.

And anytime there's something on like any major Instagram or Twitter account about the Paul brothers, he would always be talking crap about them, that he would beat them up, that he would knock them out, et cetera, et cetera.

He was scheduled to fight a guy named KSI, who was in the main event of this event, who's Logan's business partner in prime, who's a huge deal in England in January.

He pulled out a week before.

At that point, his Q rating couldn't have been lower.

Everyone was like, oh my God, Dylan, like you talk all this crap.

You didn't even show up to fight KSI, the rapper.

Like you couldn't even fight that guy.

You're not a real fighter.

Logan, now, WWE wrestler, killing it all over the place.

He's making a ton of money.

He says he wants the box.

He picks Dylan.

When I heard about this, I actually saw Logan at an event in August, and I said, Why would you pick Dylan?

His Q rating is so low.

Why are you giving him this platform?

He's like, Oh, it's an easy fight, blah, blah, blah.

Well, what ended up happening was Dylan, being the troll that he is, took his trolling into Overdrive and ended up really picking a fight with Dylan's fiancé, a woman by the name of Nina, and went on this two-month onslaught.

This is where

I noticed it, was that my algorithm began feeding me this man's

war on former SI swimsuit model and

tabloid, I guess, like sub-character Nina Agdahl.

Oh, I know that name.

And it got, but it, it got, I mean, Ariel, like, how extreme did it feel relative to your expectations for all of this?

No, it got way too personal and it was, it was gross.

And he gained 800,000 followers on Twitter and all that stuff.

Like, people, what ended up happening, though, initially when this fight was announced, I was like, oh, I get it.

I get it now.

Logan's trying to knock out the guy that everyone hates to troll online.

And let's be honest, Logan is polarizing, and there's some people who hate him, and now they're going to love him.

But what ended up happening was that Dylan became the babyface guys.

Babyface is the

wrestling term for a good guy.

And what ended up happening was all these people on Twitter who are maybe sad, depressed, can't get a girl, I don't know what it is, started cheering him on to harass this poor woman who had nothing to do with this even more.

So he would post these pictures and videos, and it was getting really ugly.

Now she's suing him.

And it's just like, it's turned into this whole thing.

And it got way too personal.

But what ended up happening was it drew a lot of eyeballs and a lot of attention to the fight.

And so when we got to Manchester last week, it felt like that was the main event.

It wasn't, but it felt like it.

That wasn't the main event?

It wasn't the main event.

It was the co-main event.

It was the second to last fight, but it felt like Logan was going to rip his head off.

And who could blame him it became very very personal ariel to your point right like what this did was promote the fight oh yeah i mean the juice that i love i love combat sports boxing specifically because humiliation ego the ruining of a man's sense of self is on the line this one it just felt real like the enmity the stakes were that real and so what happened Okay, so it was really real.

And it's interesting that you bring up humiliation because that ended up playing a big factor in how the fight fight went the fight ended up being a total bust because what happened was dylan dannis who hasn't fought in four years spent the first two rounds like this he didn't throw a single punch in fact he only landed nine punches throughout the entire six round fight when i was watching it and i was commentating for disone i said you know i said you know what yeah i understand what he's doing he's trying to tire out logan logan's got big muscles he's not a you know professional boxer so maybe he's trying to let him you know unload everything and then he'll pour it on come the third and in fact his coach uh confirmed that that was the game plan the problem was at the end of the second, Logan actually rocked him.

And I think Dylan then in his mind said,

I'm not going to get humiliated by this guy.

I'm not going to get knocked down.

I'm not going to get knocked out.

I'm going to get a moral victory and say that I survived his best shots.

And I'm not going to put myself in any kind of harm or trouble to potentially get knocked out by him.

And then he took it one step further and just wanted to create like a moment, a viral moment, a meme, if you will.

So he tried to like get him in a guillotine.

He tried to do a takedown.

He tried to do stupid stuff.

But in the end, he only kind of really embarrassed himself himself and didn't end up doing anything of note.

And then at the end, when it got all crazy, Logan's bodyguard jumped in the ring and it turned into a huge brawl.

Again, Logan ended up winning via DQ.

It was kind of a mess.

It was a bit of a sham.

Unfortunately, it was a matter of governing body of this fight.

It's a great question.

This is a great question.

So this was under an umbrella, like an organization called Misfits Boxing.

Now, this is fascinating, guys, because Misfits is

this boxing organization that is owned by KSI and a guy named Mams Taylor, who was once big in the music industry.

And I couldn't believe, I'd never been to one of their events.

But to answer your earlier question, Pablo, what is this?

It's not boxing.

You cannot call it boxing.

It's sort of like, you know how professional wrestling has the word wrestling in there, but it really has nothing to do with collegiate or Olympic wrestling?

It's crossover or influencer boxing.

You must always call it that.

Crossover or influencer boxing.

It's a whole different thing.

But you know what blew me away?

I didn't know that.

When I went there,

I was at Tank Garcia in April in Las Vegas.

I was at Spence Crawford.

Real big boxers.

Real

boxers.

Right.

But

come the co-main event, those nights, there probably wasn't a thousand people at T-Mobile Arena.

No one was in the arena.

No one cared.

On Saturday in Manchester, before the first fight, and I think that there were a total of 11 or 12 fights on this card.

Before the first fight, it was probably 60 to 70% full.

Before the first fight on the main card, six-fight main card, it was 100% full.

You don't see this in anything but the UFC.

And where this was different than the UFC was, I couldn't believe how many young kids were there.

It was more of a WWE crowd than a UFC crowd.

There were 10-year-olds, 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds with their dad.

And so, what I try to explain to my audience who gets so upset when they see this stuff, this is a sham.

This is an example that boxing is dead, blah, blah, blah.

This isn't for me.

This isn't for you, Pablo.

This isn't for the traditional combat sports fan.

It's for me.

There is a massive audience of young kids that love this stuff and they know all the characters and they're obsessed with them from top to bottom and they know their stories and they subscribe to them on youtube and on tick tock and all this stuff it's a whole other universe that we don't know anything about and it was just fascinating to witness it all but the idea that we don't know anything about it i i do want to challenge you on that because it feels like the reason partly why it's so successful is because the skill set ariel the skill set of how to sell a fight how to create juice how to create that like crackling sensation of like

man i wonder what happens

what happens in this fight we're about to see?

It feels like the comment section or the Twitter thread, the world of influencer YouTuber is such a natural farm system for at least that part of combat sports, right?

The promotion of it.

It is, and it uses those elements of, oh, I like this guy.

I hate that guy.

I'm emotionally invested in this guy.

I want to see this guy beat his ass.

I want to see this guy lose.

But ultimately, like, they're not pro-boxers.

Right.

It's all sister.

There's no steak.

Doesn't it feel like it's once it gets down to the fight, there's never a fight that you're like, wow, what?

Well, some of them, actually, to be fair, some of them were good, but I would just never, they were novices.

It was like seeing, like, there was one fight on that card, which was crazy, but I have to admit, for what it was, was entertaining was tag team boxing.

It was like, I don't even know

what?

Two on two.

It was two on two with one guy standing outside.

Like, they are trying to redefine.

So they have to name it.

I think they have to name it something.

I think it has to become

crossover boxing they should call it celebrity deathmatch

that was a good show back in the day

judge mills lane yeah i just think that like i don't know celebrity in the definition of the way they use it on tv when it's a show of people you know like celebrity jeopardy

stares into the camera uh no but it just feels like um it doesn't bum you out at all i know you said there's young kids and that it's for them it's not for us but it doesn't make you go like hey this was a real thing and now in this time when clearly the boxing landscape and fight sport landscape is changing with like showtime is now out of the game yep doesn't it make you get a little bit like don't you worry don't you worry that somewhere jeremy shapp is weeping ariel just like look jeremy the idea though

to katie's point though the idea of like we're over indexing on sizzle and we're selling stuff and it it reminds me it reminds me of like truly the problem sports faces macroeconomically and macro culturally, which is, wow, all these people are talking about this on social, but how do we actually make this into like a product and it feels like here they're at the very least getting people to to to want to to to want to know what's in the box right and i just wonder is that sustainable does this feel like a real business that you'll be covering for a long ass time no no no this is not you know there are there are actual people that cover this this is their beat this is not my beat um i kind of pop in and out when there's like a connection to the mma

you know, traditional combat world, Dylan Dannis, MMA fighter, et cetera.

You know, when Jake fight, Jake Paul fights an Anderson Silver or nate diaz like that's that's my world crossing over but i'm not going to cover misfits 11 their next event next month because it just it doesn't do it for me and there's enough mma and boxing and other things to cover um it doesn't bum me out katie and i'll tell you why because I don't feel like boxing is in the gutter like people like to think it's in the gutter say it's in the gutter.

In fact, boxing has had one of its best years in recent memory with the likes of Tank Garcia and Spence Crawford and Canelo coming over and having his big fight just a couple of weeks ago.

And there are big fights to come, Hanny Program in December.

Like I could go on and on about boxing.

And so it's just, how do you want to deal?

It's like, it's almost like talking to someone who writes for a major newspaper and say, doesn't, doesn't Twitter bum you out?

Doesn't it bum you out that people just want things in bite-sized form?

Like this is just a sign of the times.

But this is why this specific sport, if we're calling it that with scare quotes, why it's so fascinating, it's because here you can see on some level, you can get the guilty pleasure of like, well, yeah, I'm going to click on this highlight of this guy getting his ass beat because I also know that guy to be a shitty person based on all of his documented behavior in ways that are real and legally troubling and worrisome for the future of, I don't know, the American conscience as regards like how do we treat women?

And there I'm just like, on some level though, Ariel, I imagine a click is a click, right?

Like this is, this is sort of the we will take all eyeballs philosophy of how to promote something.

Yeah, and that gets the most amount of eyeballs.

But I I could tell you, like, there's a main event in the UFC this weekend involving a guy named Alex Wolkanovsky, who's like the type of person that I want my kids to be a fan of, who's a father of three, who his biggest vice is that he likes to, you know,

cook chicken wings and put like Cheetos around it or something like that.

The guy's like a salt of the earth mensch.

You know what I mean?

So there's enough out there that's good and wholesome in the fight game.

You just have to find it.

And unfortunately, those people typically don't make the big bucks, don't get the attention, and don't get people, you know, all crazy going, oh my God,

this is an indictment on the state of the fight game.

It's not.

There's always going to be crazy characters.

There's always going to be good guys and bad guys.

And it's just up to you to find the ones that you want to root for.

It's sort of like, you know,

Tim Duncan was just like a soft-spoken dude, right?

And there are some people who appreciated that.

And then there were other people who just, you know, like the bad boys more.

Oh, Ariel, Tim Duncan would be a terrible influencer.

Oh, he would be terrible.

Yeah.

But you know what?

You know, you know what would be better?

I have a, I have a solutions-oriented.

Yeah.

These guys should cover themselves.

Both Tim Duncan and this gentleman, the other weight champion of the world,

Alex Volkanovsky, should walk into the ring covered in Cheeto dust.

Duncan.

Love that.

Try to lay on his hand.

Lay a hand on him.

Try it.

Try your best.

Yeah, yeah.

Then go home and touch your couch.

See how that felt.

Don't touch your eye.

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So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

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Please drink responsibly.

All right, so now that we've talked about something you know, Ariel, that I knew nothing about, I feel like I should do my story, which is something I know that you know nothing about, which is video games-based.

And now, I think a lot of people,

I know, and I'm, and we're going to get to that, but I feel like a lot of people have negative opinions of video games.

They think they're frivolous, they're time wasters.

But I read an article in the Paris Review.

Now, that is a publication that I only remember to check when a smartie like Pablo sends me a link and says, did you see this in the Paris Review?

That's right.

And I read this really long, detailed think piece.

And maybe you can put somewhere who wrote it because I do not remember.

Yep.

And I want to make sure they get credit.

Hanif Abdurrake.

Yes, about

his relationship with Red Dead Redemption, which is a video game you and I actually have experience with playing together.

Remember the time we, during the pandemic, we both played Red Dead Redemption multiplayer?

Ariel, I'll sit this one out for a second.

We both got on two different horses.

I think we've told the story a million times.

It's worth it every time.

And without communicating to each other, verbally or otherwise, there's a move you can do in the video game where you steal someone else's horse by jumping onto it.

We both tried to steal the other person's horse simultaneously and executed like a gymnastic.

It looked like synchronized swimming.

It was like we jumped, we just switched horses.

Ariel is horrified.

He has no idea why we're so excited about that.

Also, Paulo's whole thing at Red Dead was like, Can I punch this horse?

And you would just keep punching your horse.

I was the Logan ball of Red Dead Redemption.

But this article, again, in the Paris Review, basically talked about how during the pandemic and then since, because I do think in the post-pandemic world, life's a we look at life differently.

Basically, how the video game taught him about life and taught him about death and about the ways that we try to control what we can control and we try to do this complicated moral math of how we can end up redeeming ourselves in the long run.

It's very good and I recommend everybody read it, but it made me see, it kind of helps.

Whenever you're a video games person, you get very happy when somebody legitimizes the thing you love and then you point to it and you go, see, it's for smart people and it's helpful.

And for me, I mean, video games are a big part of my life, but I think socially during the pandemic, just to speak to that aspect of it,

the ability to play video games online with people anywhere.

So my brother who had moved to Chicago at the beginning of the pandemic, I now spend more time with him than I ever did because every night we play video games together.

Every night at around the same time, we get on a headset with a group of people and we play whatever we feel like playing.

But it has given me like a social

aspect that I think without that, I would not, I'm not going to Chicago all the time.

Wait, wait, wait, what?

I'm calling

I want Ariel to begin to imagine what the activities though you're doing with your brother and I know your fiancé Dan as well as gamers what games are you playing well there was we went through a group of a stage of Call of Duty they're still kind of on that and there's a new one coming out that I have to decide if I'm gonna get into or not the thing with Call of Duty and not to get into it I think they stopped doing this now but every couple games was from a different developer.

There were like two developers.

I don't know if developer is the right word.

I'm not smart about video games.

I just play a lot.

It's like a boxing commission, but for so like every other one was made with a different engine.

It was like whatever programmed differently.

It moved differently.

It felt different.

And so there were like a couple that I would just skipped because they weren't for me.

But I now have to check up this new.

Well, because it just feels, if you get really, I got really good at one of them.

I think it was Modern Warfare.

And I got really good at it.

And then the next one came out and I was garbage at it because it was just different.

You moved differently.

It didn't feel, it was too smooth.

Cold War was too smooth for me.

But anyway.

That's what I say about the Cold War.

That's right.

There wasn't enough, it wasn't gritty enough.

But anyway, so we did a lot of Call of Duty.

Then there's, but the main one we go to is we do the Rocket League tournament every year.

Do you know what Rocket League is, Ariel?

Yes, I know about this.

Isn't this like the robots that play soccer?

It's cars.

It's cars that play soccer.

So, you know, the emissions are irresponsible.

I think it's a total waste of time, but far be it from me, a guy who likes pro wrestling to knock someone.

It's a hugest waste of time.

But this, Ariel, this is where I am curious.

I'm also a guy who owns an Xbox Model S and PlayStation 5 because I'm about to play the Spider-Man game, which comes out this week.

As this episode comes out,

I got to go down there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Spider-Man 2.

Ariel, I feel like you not liking video games, but liking all of this other stuff that is allegedly frivolous, allegedly unserious, allegedly beneath smart people.

Allegedly.

How did you avoid ever contracting this particular

interest?

I mean, I liked, you know, I was a big fan back in the day.

I played Madden, I played Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Nintendo, all that stuff.

But to spend three, four hours in front of a screen shooting people, I mean, I'm just not, I think what it comes down to is I'm not a violent guy.

You do fight sports.

What are we doing?

I just turned it off.

What are we doing?

I was hoping you would not.

I don't like violence, but this guy threw an energy drink at this guy's crotch, and I was there, front row seat.

I don't condone that behavior, by the way.

But in any event, I think ultimately what it comes down to is I'm just such a busy guy.

And I don't have time to play Call of Duty with my friends in, you know, California or Canada or anywhere around the world.

And on top of that,

in all seriousness, it is a constant battle as anyone out there who has young kids who have been exposed to iPads and video games and Nintendo Switches and things like that.

It is a daily battle, a true battle, a battle that I don't think I ever presented to my parents when I had an Atari or N64 or anything like that to try to get them to not do that, to do something else, to play outside, to play in the basement with their siblings or whatever.

So if I'm sitting there for three, four hours playing these silly games, what kind of an example am I?

I'm sorry.

That's what you did, though.

You just don't have kids.

That's the problem.

Where I screwed up is you pro-creator.

But I, as a procreator, as the father of a daughter.

Oh, here we go.

Who else owns a Nintendo Switch?

Three and a half.

Phyla's three and a half.

Crazy.

She was born.

Your daughter has a Nintendo Switch at three and a half.

I have a Nintendo Switch that she is always asking to play because I played it a friend.

The way they pick it up is scary.

It is.

So truly, like the intuitive aspect of just how to manipulate any sort of tablet and or video game system is unnerving.

Crazy.

But I do want to point out that Ariel is talking about Nintendo Switches the way like Bob Ryan talks about three pointers.

Like you old ass man.

You old ass.

It's not for you.

To quote you, it's not for you.

But this is, but this is where I think this is where I think, Ariel, and I'm so glad we're talking about this with someone who is not,

again, immersed in open world video games because a part of what this article in the Paris Review

Paris.

Croissant.

What that article was pointing out was like, This is a game that, of course, has like this these existential themes, like the main character who you

become.

He has like a morality meter meter where like the more good works you do, Ariel, you're an aspirational good guy, a babyface.

The more good stuff you do, the more points you get.

And the worst stuff you do, of course, like the different sort of

consequences you encounter.

But the other part about this game, which I find so interesting, is that it's open world insofar as you can just...

as the author points out, go and watch sunsets.

You can go to the western side of the map.

It's a beautiful game.

It's beautiful.

Not as beautiful as Costa Tsushima, but also a beautiful place.

You can be a samurai in samurai time.

Gorgeous.

It's fucking great.

But you can watch Sunset Serial in an open world video game, and it's amazing.

You can punch horses.

Listen.

I don't want to be one of those guys who's like, ah, you're wasting your time.

I just kind of, it's not for me.

I kind of feel like it's a waste of time, and I feel like you're sitting there for,

if you, if you told me you were someone who played it for 30 minutes a night,

let's do the accounting game,

waiting to get into a lobby itself.

I know.

They do these these things on Call of Duty where it's like, oh, a 30-minute double XP pass, but once you activate it, it goes in real time.

Then you have to join a thing, a lobby.

Then you have to wait for the 100 other people to join the lobby.

By the time you're in, you got 15 minutes left on your pass.

It is time-consuming.

Here's the thing, Ariel.

I got a lot of time.

Here I am at not my job working.

Like, I've got time.

So I do spend a bunch of it playing video games, but I find them

entertaining and also

like mentally stimulating and rewarding.

And Ariel Hilwani is doing what to de-stress?

Right.

Honestly, it's

actually a bit of a sad question to ponder because I'm starting to realize that I have no hobbies.

There you go.

Whatsoever.

My wife likes to watch these shows.

I watch none of them with her.

She likes to stay up at night and watch, you know, the, she just finished watching Game of Thrones.

I'm proud to say I didn't watch a second of it.

I don't.

I want nothing to do with any of this stuff.

Honestly, I just want to go to bed if i could go to bed i could i'm i'm very happy if it's 9 30 i'm i'm thrilled um yeah i'm a bit of a loser i guess you're a nine you're a 930 guy if if i could go if i could go um

can i tell you what's my you know what can i tell you what's my new favorite thing right now

is it your sleeping cap is it the candle you carry with you on the way to bed at 9 30 warm cup of milk my new favorite thing right now and this isn't like a crazy answer or anything but i've really fallen in love with soccer.

I adore soccer.

That's become like my escape.

I mean, you love soccer so much.

What if Katie Nolan and I told you that you could play soccer, but as a car?

You could fly through the air.

I'm learning how to fly.

I'm not very good at it.

Rocket League has flying.

Yeah, so there's you get to a certain level where I always say I'm a flightless bird.

I do a lot of groundwork, which you're familiar with.

My ground game is strong.

And so, like, there'll be guys that are trying to fly and the ball will be up here and they'll try to fly it and they'll miss and then who's waiting there for it meet it in the net that's right

but now I'm trying to learn how to fly and it's very hard because you have to feather your boost button which gets your car to fly it's a whole thing I can show you Ariel I can show you later no I have no my kids played it like actually my kids who are 11 and 9 they've outgrown that game okay they don't even know what this feels mean this feels just no I had to say like I was like oh this is cool you like the the robots hitting the ball great I don't know what feathering your boost button means I just know that someone out there there heard Katie Nolan say that

and liked it way too much.

A little too much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And shout out to that lady.

Oh, progressive.

I see what you did there.

Yeah.

I think too much screen time is ultimately bad for your brain, but

says a guy who is, what, never on his phone?

You want me to think you're never on your phone?

There's a guy who's sitting in front of a giant screen with fitness.

With a screen behind him.

Yeah, you are on a screen with a screen.

You are in a screen sandwich, my friend.

All right.

We have.

Well, guess what?

That's a great transition right there.

Can I take that transition?

Come on.

Yeah.

Says a guy who's always on his screen.

Yes.

That brings me to the article that I wanted to present to you guys.

A fascinating profile on a young man named Shams Charnia.

Of course, every sports fan out there knows who Shams is.

He is one of the foremost

scoopers, newsbreakers in the world of the NBA.

There's only really two, right?

There's him and Woach.

It's a story in New York magazine, and it's entitled Scoop Dreams, written by Reeves Wideman.

And it's a fascinating look at a young man who isn't even 30 years old and who has carved out quite the niche for himself.

And the thing about this, I mean, there's a lot to unpack regarding this story.

There's a part, look,

I very much

relate and sympathize to the story, if only because for a very long time, people used to refer to me as the woge of MMA, meaning I would break a lot of stories and some of those stories got me in trouble and didn't want them out, blah, blah, blah.

I have really removed myself from that world because...

It is intoxicating and it is like this never-ending hamster wheel.

And ultimately, I felt like I was too obsessed with the phone, too connected to the phone, too obsessed with with checking the phone in the middle of the night.

Did I miss a scoop?

Did I not miss a scoop?

And life is too short for that nonsense.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

When did this realization hit?

Because Sham Shiraniya, for the context of the story, which is really good in York magazine, he's talking about how his FaceTime average

screen time a day is 18 hours.

That's crazy.

And that he sends more than 500 text calls and emails a day.

I want to die.

A day.

It's suffocating.

To compete, Ariel, to compete in the never-ending rat race of scoops and news breaking.

Yeah.

I don't think that's healthy, but he's a young guy.

He doesn't have a family.

And so I understand why he's doing it.

I don't begrudge him.

I was trying to do the same thing in the world of mixed martial arts for a very long time.

But ultimately, to answer your question, like a couple of years ago, I just felt like it was unhealthy.

And I felt like it was just a never-ending cycle of, okay, you break this story, no one cares 10 minutes later, and then it's on to the next one.

And it just, it wasn't fun anymore.

It was making me hate my job.

And, and, you know, it made the UFC not like me.

It made other people not like, and it's just like, this is not the way to be.

And I would say it is Shams, like he, he has obviously created a great lane for himself.

His whole relationship with Woge, I find to be very bizarre.

Star Wars.

What's going on?

Yeah, like mentor, pupil, betrayal, allegedly, don't talk anymore, all that.

Don't credit each other, never reference each other, don't acknowledge each other's existence.

Like, there's nothing that seems healthy about that.

No.

But, you know,

they're the only two.

And I can't imagine 18 hours in front of the phone.

Speaking from a guy who, by the way, averages like 10 or 11.

So I'm not, I can't be too, you know.

We're all out there.

Yeah, we're all, we're all, we're all ashamed of our fire screen.

I would never say my proud.

I didn't know if that was bad.

No, it's, it is.

It's

we're all there together, so we're not here to judge.

He's on a different, I've stood in front of these, I won't name names, but I've stood in front of these quote unquote news breakers and they can't they can't not look at their phone for more than a minute i mean you see them on tv like in in the nfl like we were never from just being on tv as little as i have you never have your phone out but when you see sheter he has to have his phone out and sometimes he would get up and walk away to take like they are constantly like uh they're just not addicted but like they are tethered

i think it's addicted but also incentivized because the other context for the story is that these are enormously profitable jobs.

Like, Shams doing this is not, he's not, he's not stupid.

He's doing it because this is a niche that is increasingly valuable.

He gets paid a lot, a lot of money, as does Woj, even more so, as a Schefter, even more so.

So, the idea, Ariel, of like, this is a way to do sports media.

I read this story and I think to myself, I don't want any part of this job.

It seems, and again, maybe that's a place of privilege because I have this weird studio that I sit in where I talk to Katie Nolan and pay her zero dollars, but it's amazing.

It's amazing how little I envy the success story that objectively this is.

Yes, you can make a lot of money, but let me tell you from experience, and it was never at the level of shams or woach.

It's a personal jail that you're living in because it's not just about breaking news, this and that.

It's A, you know, the relationships and, you know, it's trying to get, trying to beat this guy.

And then the, the fear, sometimes I would break a story and my heart would be pounding so much.

The fear potentially getting something wrong is so, uh, it is, is truly terrifying.

Now, proud to say, still batting 1,000 babies.

Nice, no turning on.

But, I mean, I did see, I think one of the dudes that we're talking about did tweet that Dame was going to Toronto and then deleted the tweet.

And you can't delete anything on the internet.

Explicitly.

Yeah.

Let me tell you something.

That is not a good feeling.

He must have wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

It's just,

it's unsustainable.

And so for someone who is as young as him, it's great.

I don't know how Oach does it, and there's a reason why more people don't do it.

It is truly an unsustainable and I think an unhealthy and unhappy way to live your life.

I feel like we're all the my favorite meme on the internet is, and it's my favorite because I relate to it, is the meme is the animated gif of that raccoon who's holding cotton candy, who then dips it into into water because that's what raccoons do with their food and then looks away for a second and looks back and it's completely dissolved and it's just like oh this is what making content is but the newsbreaker guys are that to the even more extreme extent i think i would constantly be anxious that i'm being fed bad information in an attempt to change a narrative on something to help somebody save money on a trade or i would always be worried that somebody was giving me bad information i don't trust enough.

You obviously have to double or triple check.

So that was a big thing because people have their own agendas.

But the thing that I don't get is like, okay, obviously, look, as you said, Pablo, they make money off of it.

But there are times where they're literally 30 seconds apart with almost the same wording.

It's almost like they're copy and pasting the same.

So where is

the joy in that?

Well, well, also like you put newsbreaker in scare quotes.

I co-sign your scare quotes.

It's absolutely an occupation that should exist.

I have no, I'm not trying to get on a journalistic high horse here, but just the comedy of everybody's trying to get ahead of a press release by five seconds.

That's the win.

All you got to do is be the nanosecond guy.

Literally, the person in the comment section saying first, that is the win.

It's going to come out.

99% of the time, it's going to get released.

You just got to be the first guy with the tweet.

And

obviously there's a demand for it, like that we live in a world where it's okay to be on television, being paid by your employer, and it's more important to send something out on Twitter as opposed to delivering that.

Imagine Walter Cronkite back in the day tweeting that JFK is dead as opposed to delivering it to the world.

Obviously, it's not as important, but it's just absurd to me that we've reached that point.

Now, I'm not trying to be, you know, sanctimonious here because I used to kind of reside more in this world, but ultimately, as a like a from a personal fulfillment standpoint, a cardiac standpoint, that too, I derive a lot more joy

from getting big interviews, doing great shows, having a personality, things of that nature.

And I would worry for Shams because if he continues to do this,

it's just unsustainable.

It truly is.

And I don't think it's very healthy.

Can we do the thing where we get real uncomfortably invasive?

Sure.

And we...

So he has

72,443 unread emails.

Yuck.

So what do we got?

What you got, Ariel?

What you got?

Right now.

Yeah, right now.

Okay.

Right now, let's go listen.

right this second.

Let's reveal.

We're all gonna go around.

It's amazing that you're asking me this question.

Right now, I have 57, and it drives me insane.

I have seven.

I have insane OCD.

My goal at the end of the night is to get to zero.

Oh, boy.

The people who have years like that screen would drive you crazy.

I mean, I'm currently

Gmail.

I've

managed this better.

I'm currently at unread 3,282.

Wow.

I couldn't live.

What about you, Katie?

Hmm?

Me?

Oh, just at a cool 22,922.

A lot of that is stuff like Grubhub being like, we've got your order.

And I just never open it or delete it.

I try to, every day now, I try to go through and I delete all the ones I don't need, but there's like years of me not doing that that I, that,

but the idea.

The idea of, keep your phone out, the idea of your phone as a prison.

What are you in prison by these days?

Group chat.

Group chats.

I am

technically.

I mean, actually, if you want to get specific, right now I'm in a group chat that involves people that are not on an iPhone, which means that you do not have the ability.

You should be in jail.

You do not have the ability to click on the group and go leave this group chat.

You are, it's a prison.

I am stuck in the group chat.

The only way out is if I message the person who put me in it and specifically ask to be removed.

You can't pull a parachute cord.

No, because it's not just an iMessage group chat.

So I'm stuck and the person who put me in it is like a is like a person I don't want to make mad.

And so I just mute it and then I have these constant

messages and they're just hard to keep up with.

And then if you mute them and they're people you do want to talk to, like I read an article in something.

Wallstreet Journal?

I don't know.

I read a lot.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The journal had an article about group chats.

And this, yeah, yeah, this may be relevant to you.

I know you have children of parents in group chats and they're finding them suffocating, of like other parents, or of like the PTA, or the,

does anybody know if we're allowed to bring peanut products to school?

They're just constantly texting with these tiny questions.

And they said they feel this need to scroll through them just to make sure nobody texted about an emergency or nobody texted something specifically related to their child.

And it's just these, I just think group chats are

like a, they're bordering on like taking over our lives.

It's anxiety inducing.

And I'm not good at them.

I'm not good at them.

I don't, I'm not, I don't need to, you don't need to talk to me every day.

I don't have anything to update you on.

I promise.

I'll let you know when I do, or maybe I won't.

I feel like, so Ariel is also Canadian.

And I feel like your politeness, Ariel, this is your inbox zero guy.

I have a feeling that the way that you hold yourself to account is probably different than me and Katie.

Oh, I have to reply to everyone.

Actually, what annoys me more about the story that you just told me was the fact that some people or one person isn't on an iPhone.

I hate the green texters.

Yeah.

The moment I see that someone is green texture, I feel like there's like a block between us.

Like, I can't fully embrace you.

Like, I feel like the waves of communication just aren't going to be as great as if I could see the.

But then don't you feel icky?

Because then you're basically saying that everybody has to be an Apple product user.

And then you just kind of feel like you're.

But yeah, but it just feels like, shouldn't people be allowed to use what?

Shouldn't these tech companies get together and make it so everybody's blue?

Can't they figure it out?

But that's like some sort of utopia.

Yeah, I hate every text message.

I like them more than any texture.

I prefer to go to WhatsApp.

Do you know WhatsApp?

I don't use it, but I know of it.

Oh, you don't use it?

It's just another text message app.

I don't need another text.

I don't have that much to say.

And if I do, I'll put it on a podcast.

So, you know, it's interesting.

Most of my group texts are on WhatsApp.

Yeah.

And in Europe,

because I cover a sport that is very European,

No one uses iMessage.

Yeah.

There are some people who don't, they only use WhatsApp.

So it's a whole different thing, but at least in WhatsApp, you can't tell if someone is iPhone or Android or whatever.

So everyone looks the same on WhatsApp.

I like that.

So that's to your point.

Shouldn't everyone look the same?

Owned by Facebook.

I get a new number.

I don't do it.

I don't do Facebook.

It's owned by Facebook.

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.

Oh, it's owned by Facebook.

Right.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Shout out to my boy, Mark Zuckerberg.

We're close now.

I don't know if you guys know that.

I bet.

Big MMA guy.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wait, you really are close now?

Well, close as big.

Wait, so

we have, we have, we have, we have, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We have on this show, Papatori finds out, uh, covered Mark Zuckerberg and his MMA, uh,

BJJ specifically, like Dylan Dennis.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Um,

he, he's definitely an aerial Hilani.

He's a Hilani guy, no doubt.

If Zuck is into this sport,

that is the face, the Canadian inbox zero aspirational face of his favorite media media member.

I've

no merch.

You are.

Just in case you were wondering, Katie, that's okay.

I know you were judging.

I wasn't.

You don't know anything about me.

No, okay, wow.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I don't want that smoke.

I don't want that smoke.

I'm sorry.

Has Mark Zuckerberg texted Ariel Hilwani?

Yes or no?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yes or no?

He whatsapped him.

Text?

No.

Do we DM?

And is he an incredibly fast DMer?

Yes.

Yeah.

Have I asked him to come on my show to talk about his love of of mixed martial arts and jiu-jitsu?

Of course.

Yes.

Has he said that he would like to come on?

Yes.

Yes.

Actually, the way I found out that he followed me was he commented on one of my posts, but I, at the time, wasn't following him.

My friend was like, Do you realize that Mark Zuckerberg is in your comments?

I was like, wow.

And I went to the profile.

I was like, follow back.

I saw the follow back.

I was like, wow.

That felt cool.

And I felt good in that moment.

And Ariel Helwani's

beleaguered heart was a flutter.

Listen, I'm not a name dropper.

These things don't impress me.

Sure, you know, The Rock and I text from time to time, but it's just because

we're texting the rock.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

It's gotta be the most experienced.

It's just because Dwayne and I are experienced.

It has to be the most boring experience.

There's no chance Dwayne is putting on paper anything interesting.

Oh, Dwayne is the man.

Are you talking?

What?

Salts of the Earth.

Yeah, but there's no chance.

Can you go into your phone right now, Ariel, and just give us three words from any text exchange you've had with Dwayne.

This one popped up.

You're a class act, and chat soon.

I'll just leave it at that.

Jesus.

I'll just leave it at that.

I mean, he said it right there.

I have it.

Wow.

I mean,

who am I to disagree with that?

Class act.

A class act.

Yeah, I agree.

Soon.

Soon.

Let's chat soon.

So, so at the end here, Ariel, what we do at the end of Hobblatoria finds out is we go around the table.

Katie hates this part because it always catches her.

I'm ready this time.

Oh, you are?

I'm ready.

We go around the table and we say what we found out today.

We've shared a lot of things about ourselves and each other, invasively, publicly.

And Katie Nolan, what did you find out today?

I found out today for the fifth time, but hopefully this time I will retain it, that Jake is the younger one.

Logan is the older one.

Jake was on Nickelodeon.

Logan filmed something you shouldn't have filmed and put it on YouTube.

Ask me that next week, and I hopefully we'll still have it, but I don't think so.

That is

not that.

That's a lot to retain.

And that's all you.

That's 100% coming to me.

So thank you very much for giving me that information.

Ariel, what did you learn?

I guess I learned that I shouldn't be so negative towards video games that for hermits, it could be a great thing.

He had me and then he lost me.

I was feeling my heart was warmed and then it went cold.

I don't leave my house.

Leaving your house is stupid and overrated.

Come at me.

You know, for the antisocial, it could be a nice way to interact with others.

And I shouldn't be so negative towards people who spend four to five hours or so.

Three, four, three or four?

Three to four

playing some fictitious

video game, as opposed to, as the kids like to say online, touch grass.

Wow.

There's no grass.

I live in New York City, so my options are scarce, and therefore I played Zelda to 100% completion.

Wow.

Oh, you didn't.

Oh, yeah, the new Zelda.

Yeah, I got all those Koroks.

Wow, there's a new Zelda.

Every single one of them.

There's a thousand Koroks.

I believe.

Yeah, I had a lot of time.

Last question.

Has Dirac ever texted you about how he knew that Osama bin Laden had been assassinated before anybody else?

Really?

Is that a thing?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

You know the story.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I didn't know that.

The Rock tweeted out like a mysterious, very coy message about like,

can't say what it is, but great news for our country.

God bless America.

Yeah, like proud to be an American or something like that.

Yeah, proud to be an American.

And it was like minutes after we found out that Osama bin Laden was dead.

That's right.

Wow.

He had the scoop.

I didn't know that one.

Yeah, he's scoop.

You kids stay on the internet too long.

You're into

cats.

This guy.

I thought I was looking forward to hanging out with him.

Just got word that will shock the world.

Dash.

Land of the free, dot, dot, dot, home of the brave.

Damn proud to be an American.

Exclamation point.

You know who wasn't a class act?

Osama.

Dwayne.

Osama bin Laden.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not Osborne.

They would not chat Samson.

Absolutely not.

And so we reached the end of yet another week at Pablo Torre finds out.

And I want to point something out.

David Sampson, our arch nemesis, says something very nice about us on whatever the f ⁇ we call Twitter now.

And so I just want to point out that, David, we appreciate you and we will never stop rubbing it in your goddamn face how much we're finding out all of the time because of Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, Studio Engineering by RG Systems, post-production by NGW Post, and our theme song, of course, by John Bravo.

We will talk to all of you next week.