The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz XX
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[12] Welcome to the Big Suey, presented by Draft Kings.
[13] Why are you listening to this show?
[14] The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebitard podcast.
[15] I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that.
[16] In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging.
[17] I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there.
[18] That hasn't happened to you guys?
[19] I've done it.
[20] And now, here's the marching man to nowhere, fat face, and the habitual liar.
[21] This interview is presented by LinkedIn Jobs.
[22] It is?
[23] All right.
[24] Pablo Torre is going to be on with us here in a moment.
[25] Pablo Tori finds out is wasting an extraordinary amount of money, chasing down journalistic investigative stories.
[26] Nobody but he cares about.
[27] The most recent one involves Putin, seven anonymous sources, a whistleblower, and Max Fixing in Fencing.
[28] Maximum fixing in fencing.
[29] I can't get anyone around here excited about the Olympics.
[30] Zazlo was complaining about the opening ceremonies in general.
[31] Maximum fixing?
[32] Maximum fixing.
[33] Maximum fixing.
[34] Yes.
[35] Not match fixing.
[36] Maximum fixing.
[37] There's no way to fix it more than this.
[38] This is the most fixing there's ever been.
[39] Someone say the bus.
[40] Pablo.
[41] Oh, boy.
[42] Kind of true.
[43] Dan has stumbled into a factual statement, which is that no sport is more corrupt.
[44] in the Olympics, then saber fencing.
[45] And if I can't convince you on the level of, hey, do you want to know what the guy who owns the largest super yacht in the world, the yacht that got seized by the European Union because the owner was too tied to Vladimir Putin?
[46] And did you know that that guy's running fencing?
[47] And that guy happens to be friends with the president of the Olympic Committee.
[48] If I can't get you in based on that premise alone, then we're just different people.
[49] We're just different people.
[50] I love the Olympics.
[51] Pablo, first of all, hello.
[52] Good to see you.
[53] How do you find out that fencing, as opposed to every other sport that no one cares about, is the one that has maximum fixing?
[54] Because it's come to the United States.
[55] It starts with a scandal, really.
[56] My attention on it starts with a scandal inside of Team USA.
[57] So there are Olympians right now in Paris who have been very credibly alleged by people that I interviewed to have benefited from maximum match.
[58] fixing.
[59] People who have been getting favors from referees in saber fencing that have gone to the Olympics as Americans because of it.
[60] And they're over there right now.
[61] And so the thing about the Olympics to broaden it out here even wider is that, as you might know, nobody really cares about any of these things, save for, of course, like basketball, until this time every four years.
[62] And so what that means is that in the background of all of these random subcultures, there is all sorts of intense, geopolitical, pride -driven reasons to cheat, to humiliate yourselves, to do everything it takes, to get the thing that has justified your existence as an athlete.
[63] And so I love anything that people care deeply about as long as it also has stakes.
[64] And so saber fencing is just one example, the one that I investigated, where you see this firsthand, where you see that literally the war in Ukraine helps explain why it is that there are allegations of match fixing emanating out of U .S. Olympic fencing.
[65] All of this stuff gets connected.
[66] Could have sworn you we're going to tackle like the anti -sex beds or something like that.
[67] This one's, you know, kind of...
[68] It's not surprising me. It's not surprising.
[69] So this is a thing that I am frustrated by.
[70] I can't even tell who wins when I'm watching the thing.
[71] It happens so fast.
[72] That's part of the story.
[73] There's a light -up helmet, which was like a great innovation.
[74] But that's the thing is that in saber fencing, so saber fencing very briefly, okay?
[75] I'm going to try to radicalize you guys into saber fencing enthusiasts.
[76] The beds are made of cardboard.
[77] Yeah, it's crazy.
[78] This is the second straight Olympics where they've tried to be like, hey, no. No one's on our watch.
[79] Every year we talk about the cardboard.
[80] Every year.
[81] It's just like, yeah, okay.
[82] I haven't heard you find out about it.
[83] Yeah.
[84] It is the thing about getting in the Olympics is that it's not enough to simply presume that it happens from a corruption match fixing perspective.
[85] You got to get people to talk about it.
[86] And so when I talk about saber fencing, what I wanted, Mike, what I want to tell you is that saber fencing is unique, okay?
[87] Sabre fencing is the one.
[88] sport, the one weapon in fencing, where you can hit people with the blade, right?
[89] The other two are sort of like poking with an antenna.
[90] You can hit people in the head, in the torso with the actual blade of the saber.
[91] It's the most like sword fighting.
[92] Like you could slice them?
[93] People die all the time.
[94] They get cut in half.
[95] Okay.
[96] Okay.
[97] I saw Rob Roy.
[98] File.
[99] The point of what I'm saying is that this stuff happens incredibly quickly to Mike's point.
[100] And the electronic scoring system, you would think, oh, that adjudicates all of it.
[101] That's all we need it.
[102] We just wait for whoever's light pops up first.
[103] But this shit happens within milliseconds to the point where, by rule, a human being, a referee, needs to adjudicate who had the right of way.
[104] There's like a defensive driving aspect to who should get the point here.
[105] There's a human interpretation.
[106] And in a human interpretation, there is just enough room to plausibly hide a corrupt judgment.
[107] And what I have reported here is that approximately half of the top, the best referees in the world of international saber fencing are corrupt.
[108] And so you have a system in which Russia, for instance, is rewarding its gold medalists with seven -figure bonuses and the U .S. is not to do anything like that.
[109] You have a system where Russia is using a literal oligarchs to run a sport and bring rewards and great glory to a country using a, I would call using a perfect crime of an obscure sport that can result in lots of actual benefits for the people who participate.
[110] And so SabreFed's like to me is a, this is a true crime podcast.
[111] It's not a, hey, isn't this sport awesome?
[112] It's look at how this is hiding right in front of our eyes on NBC and nobody really understands that it's happening.
[113] That's crazy, but did you see Snoop dogs running with the torch?
[114] Pablo, this is why decency loses all over the world, all over the globe, because I'll tell you why.
[115] I was thinking about this over the course of the weekend.
[116] The idea that you're not really fighting a fair fight if only one of the political parties has to address shame and, hey, I'm getting old.
[117] I've got to get out.
[118] I've got to be impacted by shame.
[119] Oh, saber fencing.
[120] Looking good.
[121] So it's not lightsabers?
[122] The other party doesn't have to have anything to do with shame.
[123] You're sitting here trying to get them interested in cheating at the highest levels.
[124] They have no interest in what you're talking about, even though it is really hard, journalistically, to uncover cheating of this kind.
[125] I want to update the story, actually.
[126] I have been talking to people since the story came out, and there are literal investigations by governmental bodies that have resulted because of this episode.
[127] That doesn't scare you?
[128] Internationally.
[129] I'm with jazz.
[130] I don't want to die over saber fencing.
[131] It's not important enough to me. Not at all.
[132] I'd be really scared.
[133] Thank you for acknowledging a genuine concern that I have, which is that we had people on the record who are speaking out against Vladimir Putin's oligarchs.
[134] I don't know how you guys became numb to this, but it is actually dangerous.
[135] Who's numb?
[136] I'm worried for you.
[137] I'm asking you if you're scared.
[138] Who's woo?
[139] But also, there is human feces in that river.
[140] And I don't know if they fix it in time.
[141] I don't think they feel.
[142] Also, if you're coming after Pablo, he's in the New York office, not the Miami office, just FYI, Putin.
[143] To Zaz's point, you could argue plausibly that the cost benefit on this, given that the benefit has been a resounding lack of support from the shipping container, was not worth the cost, which could plausibly be, I don't know, whatever that thing is, that they inject into your food that makes you die, like that probably wouldn't be worth it in the end.
[144] Poison.
[145] Yeah, all of that.
[146] I am somewhat concerned about that.
[147] No, but when you sit here and make the jokes about this is dangerous, I would argue that general numbness to all sorts of malfeasance, that you can't journalistically get anyone interested in what is an obviously interesting cheating story, suggests to me that cheating is way too rampant throughout sports and that morality that all the walls have fallen down on morality around sports.
[148] It's, Dan, it's the bed of nails theory.
[149] When there are a zillion corruption scandals happening, which is a metaphor of course that applies directly to finally bed talk.
[150] God.
[151] The bed of nails.
[152] If they meant that beds of nails, people would not be having as much sex whatsoever.
[153] Maybe some, I mean, some people are into that, but.
[154] Hellraiser.
[155] If you've ever seen Hellraiser, they're into that.
[156] You were saying, Pablo.
[157] them.
[158] I just wish that people realized that just because there are a thousand nails, it doesn't mean that each one of them is worthy of our concern.
[159] Like we, dad, I guess what I'm saying here, I'm not, part of the whole premise of my show is that I'm going to tell you a story about something that you on its face don't give a single shit about.
[160] When I take on saber fencing at the cost of perhaps the freedom and livelihood and health of various sources that I interview in a real way, it's not because I'm like, oh, this is going to be box office gold.
[161] It's going to be because you're going to be surprised by what's inside of it, which is a story that you can understand and appreciate even if you don't care about it.
[162] And the Olympics writ large to me is exactly this.
[163] Again, what do I care about?
[164] I care about stakes.
[165] And really, I care about people's egos being on the line And nothing embodies that more than the Olympics, where everybody gets together to cheat, to occasionally and also, also to try and manage what it means to be the best.
[166] And in that mixture of things, there are scandals all over the place, but it's just really hard to prove.
[167] And so this was my attempt to prove that this one nail of saber fencing is sharper than anybody realizes.
[168] And it's actually a metaphor for everything else that's happening.
[169] And the fact that you guys would rather talk about the cardboard bed makes me realize why the Olympics have remained exactly the same for about a century now.
[170] There's breakdancing now.
[171] Speaking of cardboard.
[172] Do they spin on the cardboard, do you think?
[173] That should be like the home field, right?
[174] Well, we'll see.
[175] Maybe it's clay.
[176] It can't be cardboard anymore.
[177] It can't.
[178] You can't get to the...
[179] It's in Paris.
[180] It's clay.
[181] You can't come out on...
[182] How much pressure is on us to win this?