Shawne Merriman Talks Ravens Vs COVID Game And Nate Robinson Boxing Jake Paul

with the COVID. I think that we've all uh seen the worst of this thing and trying to figure it out. And somehow, some way the NFL has, especially early on, and figured it out. UM. And yeah, I was one of the ones that was vocal about it early on. I applauded the NFL forgetting a start in the season, you know, against a lot of people saying that they shouldn't. UM. I understand that the health and safety is important. UH be'st number one. But for two, you know, we're shut down.

I really and truly believe that we needed football. We needed sports for what was going on. I mean there's all kind of stress and depression and people going through and I believe that sports, uh is a way for just to escape, whether it's two and three, I was to escape what's going on out here in the world. So I applauded the NFL by starting up because a lot of people wouldn't. Um you know, a lot of businesses shutdown and company shutdown. In the NFL, somehow, some

way found a way to get started. So I applauded them. I appreciated it from being a former athlete and saying, look, we're going forward with the season and we're gonna do this thing no matter what. Now you know, fast forward, we're sitting around in week twelve, going in a week thirteen, and you're having more covid tests, more covid um pop up, and uh, it's it was an inspected expected in my opinion,

it was expected. The surprise in this whole thing, truthfully, was that the NFL made it to week thirteen without having to shut the season down. If you would have told me back in July June July that they were going on with the season and they were gonna be able to have a chance to finish the whole entire season, I would I would be one of the first ones to tell you that I didn't believe it was gonna happen, and they found a way to get to week thirteam.

So again I applaud that because I do believe we need a sports, but I do have a problem. You know, you have these covid uh tests popping up positive all over the place, and now you're pulling guys and moving guys around and taking people off of practice squad and you can't practice certain days. Now you gotta do over zoom and talk to your coaches via you know, zoom and how, how, how wherever else they're trying to figure it out. And football is different unlike any other sport

because it's such a team game. It's such a team game, and you don't have a Lebron James or a big star NBA player that can practically carry your team, carry your team and win games for you alone. Football you can't do that. Every quarterback needs a offensive line, Every offensive line needs a running back who can carry the ball. Every wide receiver needs a quarterback that's throwing him timing routes.

Football is the ultimate team sport, So when you're moving the roster, you're making these kind of decisions, it's going to affect guys, not only mentally, but physically physically. You know, you you start practicing during the week on Monday and you're going through your preparation. You got your weight lifting and watching film. You got Tuesday off, But Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday is all preparation. Wednesday and Thursday being your

harder and longer days in the biggest preparation days. And Friday you're going to more of a fast paced walkthrough. And this Saturday you got your official walkthrough. But your mentality, knowing that we may have may not played this week, we may or may not practice this week, We may or not may or may not be able to get a chance to prepare this week, ultimately affects your mental and your physical going into a game. So I'm not

surprised to see some of these guys getting hurt. You know, I'm sitting around watching that Bud Dupree and I'm watching him, uh, you know, going and uh pass rushing and make some things happen. And I believe you towards a c L. I believe that we have more ac L S tears tears this year than we probably in the NFL has probably ever had. And that's not a coincidence. You know, you need actual football time. You need maybe one or

two preseason games, you need a full off season. And so I'm not surprised at all at the injuries and some of the things that we're seeing this year. And I'll say it again and I'll keep saying it. I applauded the NFL for starting up, but in my opinion, this isn't right. You can't just throw guys on the field and have them go out and play the game of football, which is the most violent and most the biggest, the biggest collision sport in all the sports. So you can't.

You can't just throw guys in the field and having to go out there on a Wednesday and say, hey, guys, you know, I know we were supposed to play on Sunday and we postponed, postpone, postpone. Hey go out there and play on on Wednesday. And you got a guy, uh you know, to step in like r G three. Well, Lamar Jackson goes down and he's not playing that you gotta believe ten or eleven guys. It was pulled up from practice squad and you're trying to figure it out.

So the long term repercussions, I believe uhs want to hurt, and you keep looking on down the down the road and how the fans may perceive this season and how

players and other organizations may have perceived this season. When you have a super Bowl winner, after these sixteen weeks done, and you go through the playoffs and you have a super Bowl winner, will people start to look at it is their abstect next to the super Bowl winners name because they didn't another team didn't have their starting quarterback, or they're starting running back, or they're starting defensive player or start how would it? How was this season ultimately

going to be looked at? And that's the problem I think the NFL will face no matter if they finished the season. You know, they get to the playoffs and they get to the super Bowl. But whoever wins that Super Bowl, if you look at it, people are always gonna say the only reason why such and such team won the Super Bowl is because so me as a player, I know how harded it former player, I know how hard it is to go out there and play this game.

I know exactly how hard. I know the preparation in the off season, workouts and everything you put into it. And then and overall getting into the season, trying to figure it out to continue on game by game. And now you go out and win a Super Bowl and someone questions the the validity of of the of the Super Bowl and you're being a champion. And to me, as a former player, if I was still playing, that wouldn't sit well with me. It just wouldn't because I

earned it and we earned it figuring square. But that's the things that's gonna happen this season when when you're talking about the changes and the moving around and and all the things that's going on. So that's you know, I love I love watching the game still. I think it's very competitive. I think it's still a fun game to watch. But ultimately, when we look back at this season, even as we're looking at a Super Bowl champion, will people still call them a champion? And that's the question

that's going to be there. Um you know. Also, I also got a chance to see Roger Goodell's interview and they talked about the COVID tests popping up and what are they have plans in the future, and wasn't possible for the NFL to go to a bubble like situation that the NBA did, and he simply said, it's not that easy. In other words, no, in other words no,

And I believe that they had it's seven stone. No matter what happened this year, they were going to finish the season and they were going to go through with it and show how big and bad the NFL is, because they are they are. There's nothing bigger and better than the NFL out there, and they will find a way, and they have this season found a way. But to your point, you have eleven or twelve guys on the NBA team, you have a fifty three man roster in

the NFL. So I can tell you right now it is next thing impossible to have a NFL bubble because the situation is completely different. And look, they made its a week thirteam and now we were just starting to see cases pop up. We're starting to see more activity as far as COVID. We're starting to see roster changes and moves to try to rectify the problem to get on through the season. But there's zero possibility, zero, that they would have done any better by trying to figure

out by going to a bubble. I just don't see it. You have too many people, not just not just the uh, the players, but you're talking about the staff, the medical staff. I mean, it's a really big operation that you're now telling have to go to a bubb which I just don't think is gonna happen. And I think they've done

a pretty good job so far. But I do still believe that there will always be an astrict next to that Super Bowl champion speak and you know, speaking of champions, Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr. Who didn't watch that fight this weekend, They just did over a million and a half pay per views. And that's just from the pay per views. We have no idea how many people streamed

the fight and probably got the fight illegally and everything else. Uh, you got all kind of twitch and everything that the fight with YouTube, and there's all types of streaming service out there, which I'm showing that the fight was probably seen by ten of fifteen plus million people. Guarantee, if one point six million plus people bought their pay per views, it was probably seen by you know, somewhere closer to ten million people. Mike Tyson, I'll watch him fight until

he seventy five years old. Pay fifty dollars all day long, any day of the week to see Mike Tyson's fight, the Mike Tyson fight until he SEENTI five, one of my favorite fighters and boxers UH growing up, and to see him fight Roy Jrs. Who was another UH fighter I used to love watch growing up. But let's be real, Roy Jones did not want that smoke. He didn't UH and you can tell going in there that he was on a different level and a different mindset that Mike

Tyson was. And I believe Mike Tyson has two more fights to go with Teller, so I can't wait to see that. But but you know, even outside of that that that wasn't even the talk. I mean, everybody talked about the Mike Tyson fight, but the talk of that card was Jake Paul and Nate Robinson. That was that was the talk of it. I mean, that was on the Mike Tyson card, and obviously Mike Tyson's Mike Tyson, but the talk of that card was Jake Paul and

Nate Robinson. And I can tell you that over the last couple of days, I've seen more memes of Nate Robinson getting knocked out than I have out of any fight, any fight that I've ever seen. There's been more means of Nate Robinson getting knocked out more than any other fighter, any other other celebrity or athletes, and that's gotten a

ring of the cage ever. And one thing that I will say, and I know Jake Paul personally, and I've watched him train over this past year so and I watched him consistently get better spar pro boxers and work on this craft. He's really been in the gym, he's been in the lab, putting in a time and effort. So I know that when a lot of people hear this uh, this YouTuber or this uh social media guy, it has a preconceived notion that a guy can't fight.

And I can tell you right now by watching j Paul over this last year, that's simply not the case. The biggest mistake was is that Nate Robinson, because he played another sport, thought that he was going to jump in the ring and thought that he was gonna be prepared because he was fighting a YouTuber. And mind you, Nate Robinson was the one that called out Jake Paul. He's the one who started it. So a part of me is saying, okay, well, he got what he deserved.

But the other part of me, because I do feel that former athletes from other sports will be transitioning over until combat sports, whether it's boxing, m M mail or some sort, they will be transitioning because the mentality to fight is there. The mentality is there. But you have to understand of being a former athlete in another sport. You can't play fighting. Then you can go out and play football, You can go out and run some routes,

you can go out and tackle and do things. If you're an athlete, can you can get away with a lot in basketball and football and rugby and hockey and these others warts If you're an athlete, you can get away with some things. Being an athlete in combat sports you can't get away from because you can't play it. You know, I've been a not only a fan of combat sports and M M A and boxing, but I've also been training for the past thirteen almost fourteen years

of my life. And I can tell you that these guys in the gym, this is what they do, these guys, men and women, this is what they do, and they sometime they do it twice a day and six days a week. The hard work and dedication of what they're willing to put their bodies through is bar none, unlike anything else you can do. So when Nate Robinson, when I sat back and I saw Nate Robinson take this fight,

I knew immediately that he made a mistake. Now, I told Jake, and I told us his trainer b j who I You know, we talked constantly that Nate Robinson would get out of the first round for one reason, and one reason only is because he's an athlete. Period. He was gonna find a way to run around, a

dance around the ring. Or what you saw was him holding and and and and grab and use his strength uh to stay in the fight, which I thought was a great game plan, especially when you're fighting a better fighter. You have to get dirty with him. You have to get nasked. You have to grab him and and and box dirty a little bit and try to find a way to make the fight as even as possible because he's better than you. Now, I didn't look at how long that Nate Robinson trained for his fight, or who

his training was and whatever. But I can tell you right now that was the wrong game plan. That was the wrong game plan. And you know, I was a little bit embarrassed fordinate because he looked apart. He looked like he's been training, he looked like he was in shape, and I'm all way. He's a big advocate for athletes from others force transitioning into combat sports. Now being knocked out, you might have some guys sitting back like, there's no way in hell I'm doing that because I'm not trying

to look like Nate Robinson. But the truth of the matter is is that if Dave Robinson was to take a fight or two before fighting Jake Paul, I think he would have been okay, it would at least been a decent fight. But you can't leave one sport because you were great at doing that, and he was just a two sport athlete. Nate Robinson, he try to play,

you know, try off football, play football as well. He's he's a freakish or freakishly freakish athlete, and especially at that side, we haven't seen anything like that, maybe since Spudwab or something, maybe a long time ago, but we've never seen anything like Nate Robinson being that freakish of an athlete at that size. But that doesn't mean that you're gonna cross over into combat sports and think you're gonna be able to compete against guys who do this

every single day. And the question to get asked me all the time as well, why don't I fight? Well, I don't have the time to do this every day. And if that's the case, if I can't do this every day and make that my life, then I would never fight. Well, I wouldn't fight, not saying that that couldn't happen, but as of right now, I haven't. For that reason. You can't just cross over from somewhere else thinking you're gonna move over to the fight game and

think you're gonna have some success there. So I I applaud and and appreciate and respect Nate Robinson to follow his dreams and conquer his goals and do something that uh that he was uncomfortable doing because a lot of people are scared. There's a lot of people scared and terrified to go and do what Nate Robinson did, and I'm not talking about just the fighting. Most people are scared to fail. So I applaud him and appreciate him crossing over and doing that, But that doesn't mean that

people aren't gonna laugh or make jokes. That doesn't mean that he uh is gonna look bad. He did. But what I really hope is I hope Nate Robinson get another opportunity to train some more and go take a fight somewhere else and not let that be his last memory in the in the ring. I believe he has a shot if he trains to get in there and take a couple of fights and do really well. So that was it, man, I got right into it. I

jumped into it today. Um, I had some stuff to get off my chest because, uh look, I'm a I love combat sports. And obviously you don't know my background of planning in NFL, but I love combat sports, been

around it. Uh even have my own league now with Lights Out of Extreme Fighting, uh m m. And I felt it was neat to get off my chest and and and all the people that's talking and bagging on on Nate Robinson and the fight and and just really want to encourage him to, you know, maybe get back back in there, lay them up one more time, getting get some more training and get back in there. Uh. Don't let that be the last thing that people see

out of you. So again, I appreciate you guys for tuning in UM, keep leaving great reviews and comments, and subscribe. Don't forget to subscribe, and I'm always gonna be back back next week with another kick ass show. So I appreciate you guys again. Thank you,