JRE MMA Show #185 with Ethyn Ewing
16 claims didn't hold up. False, distorted, or one-sided. Unverified claims don't count against it.
Enough got stretched that you'll want the sources open.
Claim by claim(17 claims flagged)
Blue Chew Gold is three times stronger, five times faster, and eight times longer-lasting than old-school methods.
This is the BlueChew ad, word for word, including the promo code and the safety notice that follows it. Nobody at the table said it in conversation. Sponsor copy is not the show's claim, so the row is withdrawn.
Jose Aldo was undefeated as a champion for 10 years.
Aldo did go about ten years without a loss, from a 2005 defeat until Conor McGregor knocked him out in 2015, but he was not champion for that whole stretch. He won the WEC featherweight title in November 2009 and lost it to McGregor in December 2015, so his undefeated run specifically as champion was roughly six years, not ten.
Max Holloway suffered two fractured orbitals in his fight against Ilia Topuria.
Max Holloway lost to Ilia Topuria at UFC 308 by third round TKO after being dropped by a left hook, and there is no report of him suffering fractured orbitals in that fight. The double fractured orbital story actually belongs to Topuria himself, from his own later loss to Justin Gaethje, so this appears to mix up two different fights.
Alexander Volkanovski is the greatest featherweight of all time.
This is a real opinion held by respected voices in MMA, so it is not baseless, but it presents a genuinely contested debate as settled fact. Volkanovski himself has said he considers Jose Aldo the featherweight GOAT because of how long Aldo held the title, so framing it as simply true skips over a real counter-argument.
Medical studies comparing meniscus surgery versus physical therapy show that physical therapy is a more effective treatment path.
The well known randomized trials on meniscus tears found that physical therapy produces outcomes roughly equal to surgery, not better than it. Doctors use these results to say surgery is often unnecessary, but the studies show a tie in effectiveness, not physical therapy winning out.
Wrestling is the single best foundation for MMA and combat sports.
The effectiveness of any base in MMA is a subject of ongoing debate among experts and is highly subjective rather than an objective fact. While wrestling is often cited as the most effective base for controlling the position of a fight, other disciplines like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Muay Thai are also essential, making the claim one-sided.
Wild pigs in the United States reproduce three times a year.
Wildlife biology sources say feral hog sows typically produce one litter a year, with two litters possible under good conditions, not three. The claim overstates how often wild pigs actually breed, even though they are genuinely prolific breeders with large litters.
Domestic pigs undergo a physical metamorphosis into wild boars within weeks if they escape into the wild.
Escaped domestic pigs do develop coarser hair, longer tusks, and leaner bodies once living wild, but researchers say this takes several months, not weeks. They also do not turn into a different species, they stay pigs and just develop feral traits over time, so calling it a metamorphosis into wild boars overstates both the speed and the nature of the change.
Eric Paulson cut his ponytail because Sean Sherk grabbed it during a bare-knuckle fight.
The famous ponytail-grabbing incident happened to Erik Paulson against James Warring at the World Combat Championship on October 17, 1995, not Sean Sherk. Warring held onto Paulson's hair for most of the fight and dragged him around, which is documented in fight footage and MMA history writeups, so the claim names the wrong opponent.
The 12-to-6 downward elbow strike was outlawed in MMA because athletic commissions mistakenly believed it to be the most lethal strike after watching brick-breaking demonstrations.
The brick-breaking origin story for the 12-6 elbow ban is a popular tale that has been repeated for years, but a former Nevada athletic commission director has called it revisionist history. The documented reason the strike was banned when the Unified Rules were written in 2000 was that doctors saw a downward elbow used on a fighter and worried about orbital bone and spinal injury, not a karate demonstration breaking bricks.
Arman Tsarukyan is one of the best wrestlers in the sport of mixed martial arts.
Tsarukyan is widely recognized for his high-level grappling and wrestling base in mixed martial arts. However, calling him one of the 'best' is a subjective qualitative assessment that depends on specific metrics or rankings criteria.
Islam Makhachev was nearly defeated in his first fight against Arman Tsarukyan.
Makhachev did beat Tsarukyan by decision in their 2019 meeting, but it was not close to a loss. Two of the three judges scored it 30-27, giving Makhachev every round, while only one judge had it a tighter 29-28. Calling that a near-defeat overstates how competitive the fight actually was.
Malcolm Wellmaker fought in three Contender Series events.
Malcolm Wellmaker only fought once on Dana White's Contender Series, a first round knockout of Adam Bramhald on August 27, 2024, which is what earned him his UFC contract. His fight record shows no other Contender Series appearances before or after that one.
Gregory Rodriguez suffered severe toe injuries after his fight against Fluffy.
Gregory Rodrigues dislocated his toe three weeks before his fight against Anthony Hernandez, during a sparring session in training camp, not after the fight. It was one dislocated toe rather than multiple severe toe injuries, and he fought through it to win by decision, so the claim gets the timing backwards.
Deontay Wilder is the greatest one-punch knockout artist in the history of the heavyweight division.
Wilder does have a strong case, he holds the highest knockout percentage of any heavyweight champion in history and many trainers and analysts call him boxing's hardest single-shot puncher. But framing this as settled fact skips over a real ongoing debate, since names like George Foreman, Mike Tyson, and Sonny Liston are also frequently argued as the hardest one-punch hitters ever.
Francis Ngannou defeated Ciryl Gane by beating him up on the ground.
Ngannou did win by taking Gane down and controlling him on the mat for over eight minutes, but reports on the fight are clear he did not do much damage there, he mostly just made Gane carry his weight and wore him out. Gane actually landed more significant strikes overall than Ngannou did, so it was a control-based decision win, not Ngannou beating Gane up on the ground.
Israel Adesanya defended his UFC middleweight title three times in one year.
Adesanya made five middleweight title defenses total, but they were spread across March 2020, September 2020, June 2021, February 2022, and July 2022. The most he ever defended in one calendar year was twice, so three defenses in a single year never happened.
All of this ran on its own. The claims got pulled out of the transcript, then checked against live sources.
This can get things wrong. Follow the sources and decide for yourself.
Get the check before you finish the episode.
JRE drops four or five episodes a week. We check every one and send a short note with the Jamie Meter and the claims that didn't hold up.