Obviously, you knew it was good, but were you like, "Holy shit, Conor McGregor's interested in this."

Well, let me tell you what happened.

So BKFC 41 was, was the first show that I literally, I remortgaged my house and I bet everything I had on, on it.

Like, like literally I borrowed money, I mortgaged my percentages.

I did everything I could do because my investor at that time pulled out and I didn't have the money for the event.

The event was costing us $4 million.

I had to raise $4 million.

[laughs]

Uh, we didn't speak after the Darrin news was announced, and so I'm wondering how hard was it to get that deal done, 'cause it feels like you guys were flirting for quite some time.

Yeah, you know, I don't know if he really wanted to do it at first, but you know, we talked and we got there.

He has a good team with him that I was able to talk to, and, uh, Lee Eaton was one of the guys that put this together for us.

He's also, uh, big with Queensbury Boxing over there.

So, uh, it was...

Once I got with him, it was kinda easy to get the deal done, 'cause he understood how to get deals done.

Good guy, and, uh, and Darrin wanted to do it, and I think, you know, he was a little shaky on it.

Do you go to every single one of these?

But yeah, the fights on the card suggest it's gonna be a very, very entertaining night.

Yeah, we got, uh, 12 fights on the card, like I said.

From top to bottom, just really, really great fights, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of the prospects on the undercard to see if they have what it takes to, to be a big, uh, star in BKFC.

But I'm ex- really excited about Darren Till's debut here against Aaron Chalmers and, and I think, um, I think people are gonna be a little surprised at, at Chalmers, at what he's gonna be able to do.

But then I think they're also gonna be a lot more surprised at what Darren Till's able to do here, 'cause they might not, they might not believe what he's gonna be able to do here.

But I believe Darren Till, you know, has a shot at being the face of BKFC now.

And then that main event is just, it has fireworks written all over it, Rico Franco versus Conor Tierney, and Conor Tierney has actually sold more tickets than any one fighter ever sold for BKFC in the UK and, you know, he's gonna have a, a rampant fan base there that's gonna go crazy for him.

Um, but over the next 12 months, where do you see yourselves? You've already, obviously made a huge, uh, impact, uh, in this field, so what's the plan for the next 12 months?

Hey, everyone, Ariel Helwani here, and I wanna tell you a fun little story.

So I'm a big New York Knicks basketball fan.

I adore the orange and blue, and I have been lucky enough to raise a couple boys who are big Knicks fans as well.

My son is born in February, and so last year, I noticed that the Oklahoma City Thunder were coming to town.

Now, my son also loves Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

He is a proud Canadian, as am I, and so it would be fun to see the Knicks play the Thunder.

[chuckles]

But, [chuckles] but really, I, I expect it...

... try to offset?

You know, we, when we grew this, when we started this thing, like, we...

I wa- I was just telling the g- um, one of the guys out there, I worked for nine years to get this thing legal.

So I wasn't even trying to build a business.

I just wa- had to do an event.

I'm like, "I worked my ass off for nine years to get this thing done, I have to do an event." So I did an event and it was trending number one on Twitter and everybody was talking about it and I was like, "All right, maybe we can build something here." Three or four events later, I was like, "We've got something special here." So I just started to really build it.

I'm, I'm getting to where I'm going, is-

(laughs)

Okay, 'cause, yeah, when you hear that, and, uh, I know they had bought a significant stake in the company, um, and I hear that they're going to-

Well, it's thrown out.

We're shopping investors.

We're shopping TV, with TV deals, and then they send this auction out for 3 million, uh, Triller (laughs) shares that are, that are being auctioned, and people are looking at us like, "Wow, they're doing an auction for their shares." No, it was just, it was just something that had to be, um...

it was a formality.

Um, it's an accredited lender that lent Triller, um, money for shares, and, and they didn't make the payments so they took them back, and, and they had to do it.

But great people there too, um, in, in that company that, that helped them out, and they're being very, very good to us, and they're allowing us to do what we need to do.

Last one, how many states are we in as of right now and, uh, any on the horizon?

No, I got it.

You don't under- you know...

But listen to me.

Sometimes right or wrong, America gets itself into a war, not of our own choosing, and we commit soldiers to fight that war.

And more often than not, we eventually learn that the war might have been a mistake, and in fact was a war of our own choosing.

But by then, it's too late.

And here's what you don't understand, Sam, because you're a child.

(laughs)