You're listening to the Co-Main Event Podcast.

And now your hosts, Ben Folks and Chad Dundas.

That's right.

You're listening to another episode of the co-main event mixed martial arts podcast.

I'm Chad Dundas. That's Ben Fulks and we meet here every single week to chop up all the prominent,

newsworthy and hilarious happenings in the world of mixed martial arts. Ben, we got a lot to talk about

this week with UFC 250

going down over the weekend and the relationship between the UFC and many of its top stars,

seemingly continuing to unravel before our very eyes. First, though, of course, most people

have probably already heard the news and those who haven't,

no doubt noticed the intro to this week's show sounded a little different.

And that's because last Friday, due to across-the-board layoffs and an 8% reduction in total

staff, my personal watch at the athletic has ended, along with a number of our other colleagues. You're still

there, along with Sean Al Shadi and Fernando Prattis. But to say the least, it's been a hard

few days, I think, for everybody who had been involved with the athletics MMA staff. And I assume

for the few people who still remain over there, and picking up the pieces and soldiering on, it hasn't been an easy time for you guys either.

It has not. It really sucks. Every once in a while, I'm just sitting around and I get hit with like a wave of sadness when I realize that the MMA media dream team we had assembled is no more.

And then I feel like that's a weird okay, you can't complain about it because you still have a job for now.

And then also people going through some shit that's much worse than this all over the place, all over the world, and especially in this country right now.

So maybe you shouldn't complain about anything.

And so then I feel guilty about the sadness.

And that's just been kind of my cycle for the last three days or so.

...