Sevan Matossian (00:00):
Morning that this is, this is your, this is your post from this morning?
Brian Friend (00:03):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (00:04):
Bam. We’re live. This is cool. Okay. Uh, brought to you by Paper Street Coffee, 2023 Semi-finals power rankings. Uh, the yellow is great. It’s popping. Look at this. Oh, what someone wrote nice shirt. Oh, okay. Low, uh, low Land Throwdown.
Brian Friend (00:22):
Yeah, that’s the event director of the Low Land Throw, uh, Robin Stama, good friend of mine, big supporter of mine for a long time, and I was, uh, happy to be able to help him with his semi-final, uh, last year.
Sevan Matossian (00:34):
Uh, Robin, it looks like whoever posed that try to fade out the low lands throw down.
Brian Friend (00:39):
No, that’s just how the shirt is. <laugh>
Sevan Matossian (00:41):
Don’t get all, don’t get all excited, Robin. Um, okay. Uh, oh, shit. I already, I already ruined it. There we go. <laugh>. Oh. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Wow. What a crazy, what a, it’s kind of a crazy year for CrossFit, right? In terms of just the shuffling of all the athletes.
Brian Friend (01:01):
Yeah. There’s, you know, how
Sevan Matossian (01:03):
Many, many people, I guess how many people who aren’t competing like the likes of Tia.
Brian Friend (01:07):
There are, well, that, that’s really, you know, one of the main reasons that I did the power rankings at this time of the year is because, and as the article on the website explains, I think since August on the men’s side, there’s close to 40 athletes that I had in the original 100 power rankings last season or after the games last season that are not competing individually this season.
Sevan Matossian (01:29):
And, and, and when you, sorry, you said 40? Um, that’s both men and women, because I think, no, no,
Brian Friend (01:33):
Just on the men’s side, I think,
Sevan Matossian (01:35):
Oh shit. But wow. What a shitty reader I am. I thought I read the article last night and it said 24 on the men’s side, which would be a quarter of the, of the people nearly a quarter. So,
Brian Friend (01:44):
Um,
Sevan Matossian (01:45):
It’s this right here, right? This article where, uh, Justin’s biting the coin.
Brian Friend (01:50):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (01:51):
By the way, if anyone wants to follow along, you can open up, uh, I’ll, I’ll put the link in the, um, you can keep watching,
Brian Friend (01:57):
But you might be right about the total.
Sevan Matossian (01:59):
Okay. Uh, you can keep watching and, uh, click the link. Um, the audio probably won’t go away on YouTube. I’ll put the link here down in the comments and it’s just B like the letter B and then friendly.
Brian Friend (02:11):
Oh no. So there were
Sevan Matossian (02:12):
E friendly fitness.com and then you can follow along and see and see the articles we’re looking at and the, uh, list of the power rankings. Go ahead, Ryan.
Brian Friend (02:19):
Actually, su surprise, I was right again.
Sevan Matossian (02:21):
Oh, <laugh>, I was getting kind of, I actually felt bad for being right if I was
Brian Friend (02:26):
Right. There were, so between August and January there were 17 men that I removed from the list because they weren’t competing in the season. Okay. But between January and now, there were 24 more at male athletes that I removed from the list. So that’s a total of 41. And that’s why I thought I would give
Sevan Matossian (02:41):
Myself a partial Correct. For that. Yeah,
Brian Friend (02:44):
Definitely partial.
Sevan Matossian (02:45):
Okay. Not full retard. Just, just not, not fully paying attention.
Brian Friend (02:49):
And that’s, you know, that’s why I thought it was necessary to do it again because that’s, you know, a quarter of the field of the top 100 athletes that I thought, you know, were, were competing this year in just three months, are no longer in the competition, which is obviously, like you mentioned, you know, we’ll shake things up and, but it creates a lot of opportunity as well. And so I was like, well, we should, you know, fill in another 24 guys so that the, the fans in various parts of the world that are all over the world can have the opportunity to be at least like a little bit familiar with these names. Cuz some of them will do, you know, cool things at semi-finals, even if they don’t make the games.
Sevan Matossian (03:24):
Uh, if you go to paper street coffee.com, it’s paper and then just s t street, no, sorry, take two. If you, if you go to paper street coffee.com, but you don’t spell out street, just paper s t uh, coffee and you use the code word Savon, you can get, I th it’s a big discount. I forget what it is, but I think it’s more than 10%, I wanna say even 20% on your coffee. And, uh, it’s always great to, uh, support Gabe. It’s the only coffee that I drink, I assume now it’s the only coffee that I shouldn’t say only that’s not true. Uh, when my coffee machines, uh, busted, I drink strong coffee, but they don’t sponsor me. Um, and, uh, I would also like to say that if you have trouble following along on this podcast, it’s probably, probably because you have lack mental clarity or something’s wrong with your testosterone.
(04:09):
So you should go to ca hormones.com, uh, if you’re in California, New York, Florida, Arizona, that you have to look at the states, but there’s places where you can actually get the free blood work. And then everyone who uses the code word seon, um, can get the, uh, free consultation. If you wanna know also more about, uh, ca hormones.com, uh, Andrew Hiller has a show called Testosterone Tuesday, where he talks about his experience with, uh, ca Hormones. And finally, uh, birth Fit. I just wanna say like, if you’re interested in getting your, um, knowing more about the, uh, baby making process, the, uh, growing of babies and women and the, uh, birthing of babies, you want to do it to make, uh, mama and Baby the happiest. Uh, it’s something I’m hugely passionate about and a huge supporter of birth fit in that community. Brian has a new website, uh, it is called Be Friendly. Is it new? It’s new. It’s, today is new. It’s like new yesterday. New,
Brian Friend (05:03):
Yeah. I guess technically we made it live last night, but as of this morning we had announced that it was live, uh, for the first time.
Sevan Matossian (05:11):
And it is, um, I’ve already found it, one or two inaccuracies things that, uh, I would, I don’t, inaccuracies is too strong. Things that I would be con uh, I think are contentious. He’s claiming it is the aggregator of all the best content in the CF community from the best, um, um, uh, also, uh, creators and reporters in the community, and I resent that. Um, but, um, it’s nearly, I would, I would, I would, how do you
Brian Friend (05:34):
Resent
Sevan Matossian (05:35):
That? I would go as far, because I think that about the Chevon podcast, I would go as far as to say it is, it is, uh, nearly exclusive in its, um, uh, aggregation curation of the best content o o on the, um, web. And, uh, and, and now we really have two powerhouses, to be honest with you. Two people who are obsessed with CrossFit in the field. Um, him and Brian Spin, if you like, using the, um, internet, uh, and, and reading shit and being up to date on CrossFit. That’s, you wanna be a junkie. Those are the, I think those are the places you’d wanna go. Do you, wouldn’t you say?
Brian Friend (06:10):
Yeah, I would say, uh, you know, spin especially is gonna be really, really fast. Anything that’s, you know, and, and he’s, he doesn’t, he’s, I would say he is less selective about what he puts out there. Like if, if there’s something that comes across his plate and he thinks the community should know about it, then he’s gonna write something about it and spit it out faster than probably anyone. I’m a little bit more selective in what I put out there. A lot of the stuff that I work on has, you know, takes time to produce. It’s a more evaluative or analytical, so it might not be as timely as his, so you should definitely follow him for that kind of stuff. And then, you know, we will address some of those topics, but usually not in the same quick turnaround that he will
Sevan Matossian (06:52):
Spin will let you know if he gets a photo of Katherine David’s daughter and, um, a Street Horner holding hands. And he’ll also let you know that the leaderboard is fucked up as fast as he can. Brian, you can come over to Brian’s if you, and, uh, six hours later and Brian will explain to you how the leaderboard is fucked up and post the correct version
Brian Friend (07:12):
<laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (07:13):
But for example, okay, uh, the website’s cool. It’s beautiful, it’s crazy. Easy to navigate. Um, and, uh, and, and here we are. You know what’s crazy, Brian is this is to show you how, um, how much outgunned I am. Uh, yesterday when I was preparing for this podcast, I went to your post from last year for your power rankings and I was reading the comments and I was like, these comments don’t make any sense to me. And it took me literally like 10 minutes of reading all the comments from last year’s post to realize, oh, that’s last year’s post. So,
Brian Friend (07:45):
So that part where I told you that,
Sevan Matossian (07:47):
That was a little embarrassing,
Brian Friend (07:48):
It would be online last night, but the Instagram posts wouldn’t be up till this morning just in one ear, out the other, maybe not. Well,
Sevan Matossian (07:54):
I just, I saw, I saw this and I just, yeah, I guess I’m like, oh, he went, he went early. So this is last year’s,
Brian Friend (08:00):
This is August of last year. So that was right after the games. Okay. And then at that point I was, you know, I just kind of zoomed out all the people that weren’t involved in the cross the games this year. For whatever reason I included them in those rankings. And then as the off season progressed, as we mentioned several, we find out that several of those men won’t be competing cuz whatever team injury, retirement. And then again, as the season goes on, a few more months, we have more people on that list. So, um, these are just links back if you wanted to see. So in some cases you might, you might be a, a fan or you might go to the gym, or your coach might be someone on this list and you could go back and see, oh, in August they were 80th, but with these people that have dropped out now they’re up there in the top 50 or something like that.
Sevan Matossian (08:47):
Whenever we do these power ranking shows, I always start the show by asking Brian, what exactly are the power rankings before I am gonna ask him that bef be. Before I do, I wanna read you this, uh, opening line here, um, from the actual article that published, uh, last night Men’s Semi-Final Power ranking. It says, I’ve been creating my own power rankings for the sport of CrossFit for nearly a decade. It begans as a mean to try to beat my friends in a version of fantasy CrossFit that I created leading into the 2014 CrossFit games. And I, I think that contextualizes it pretty good. Uh, what, what are the, um, power rankings, Brian?
Brian Friend (09:22):
Yeah, so this is, it’s basically, uh, at this point in the season, or you know, just in in general, these are the guys that I think are the top 100 fittest on Earth. And I think that it can be tricky to assess exactly what that means because, you know, there are are data points that we have, um, in recent memory that are open and quarterfinals for these athletes. Every athlete on this list is also registered to compete at semi-finals. So there’s, you know, a high likelihood we’ll see them all in a live competition for the first time in the game season in two to five weeks from now. Um, and so sometimes there’s athletes that do really, really well on those competitions, uh, the online competitions, and it’s like, well, what do you do with them? Because I have seen too often over the past decade that’s that sometimes there’s an athlete that pops up there, has this amazing online performance, maybe back to back in recent years when they do opening quarter finals, but then they get to a semi-final and they can’t replicate it.
(10:21):
There’s other times where the, I think that the opening the quarter, so in that case, I, I’m not really weighing that heavily, that athlete’s performance on the power rankings, even though they might be, you know, top five in whatever competitive region they are. I’m like, I still need to see something more from that them in live competition. But there are other situations where athletes end up having a good competition that you may not have expected. Maybe they haven’t competed in a couple years, they’re coming back from an injury. They had something unusual like Anika Greer had last year happened to him, so he didn’t necessarily get to see what she would’ve done in the semi-final. And there’s a lot of athletes that fall into those categories that I put a little bit more weight into their performances. And sometimes it’s athletes that are a little bit more, that are later on in their career.
(11:07):
And I’m just, you know, we, I think that especially on the women’s side, we’ll have a lot of conversations around this where I’m looking at really specific things like, you know, how well are they handling weight in, I guess there’s been some heavy tests and what’s that gonna look like when we get to a really, really narrow field where most of the athletes are young, are younger and stronger than them. So there can be a lot of different things that go into it. It’s definitely not just like, oh, this is how well they did in quarter finals and this is why. So I’m just gonna like copy and paste into this. I try to evaluate the athletes against each other in a narrow range. You know, I kind of group ’em by maybe tens and then I kind of look and see, um, if there’s someone that I think can do very well. And sometimes I take a risk on an athlete, you know, there’s some athletes that I see and I just based on, you know, 10 years of studying this sport, I think to myself, okay, athletes that have had these three kind of pieces of d n a are generally ones that break through in the sport within one to two years. And if I see that in someone early on, I’ll take a gamble and put ’em kind of higher on my rankings than they would show up on most others.
Sevan Matossian (12:11):
Brian, if, if I were, uh, we have a friend, uh, Tyler Watkins, he has a app called Lawnchair Leader Boarding, I call it the Tyler Watkins, uh, what do I call it? Tyler Watkins Fitness app. Tyler Watkins, fantasy Fitness, fantasy Fitness League. Tyler Watkins Fantasy Fitness League. We, if we play that this year, should I just, and, and I, should I just pull this up and just play right off of here? So as we’re doing the draft, um, the practical application of your list, I could just be like, okay, JR picked Justin, Brian picked, uh, Roman, and, uh, John Young picked Patrick Valor. No one’s picked Adler and I just him, you think that’s just, is it lit? Is it like that?
Brian Friend (12:52):
I would say, I mean, possibly, but you know, you might just say, I don’t, I don’t really like Adler. I’m a hopper guy. You wanna take Hopper? He’s close on the list, but it would be like,
Sevan Matossian (13:03):
But I got the gist of it. The spirit of what I’m saying is accurate.
Brian Friend (13:07):
Yeah. However, you know, um, as you see these, these guys are coming from different competitive regions. So going into each semi-final weekend, I will actually make predictions that are specific to those semi-final regions for men, women, and teams. And if you’re playing Tyler’s, you know, app or his games during that time, those would probably be more, uh, uh, helpful because they’ll con, you know, they’ll condense the list for you to the, the ones that are directly applicable. If this was the games, we’d only have 40 men left, and that might work really well.
Sevan Matossian (13:38):
And, and like, uh, uh, Heidi’s calls it the Tyler Watkins experience. I’m, I, I like that a lot. Um, but, uh, like she said, but then you have to decide who you’re gonna plug into each event. And obviously there’s some nuances to it. Um, if you already have, uh, an endurance guy, um, you wouldn’t pick two endurance guys. You might go down the list, but, but the general, the spirit of what I’m saying is correct. I’m just trying to, for, for people like me, that helps me understand, basically you’re saying if these people had a, a competition out of the hopper, um, uh, you know, 10 or 13 events, this is the, this is how you think they’d finish.
Brian Friend (14:11):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (14:12):
Okay. I like it. It’s awesome. Fantastic. And, um, there’s some, uh, columns here. Um, uh, rank athlete, those are obvious, uh, competitive region, obvious previous, previous to being the list you made in
Brian Friend (14:25):
January.
Sevan Matossian (14:26):
Okay. And then change, would it be if there’s no minus, does that mean that they, the, all these people moved up? Are these all move ups?
Brian Friend (14:34):
Yeah, I don’t think I had anyone that messed that moved down on the men’s field. Some people may
Sevan Matossian (14:39):
Have Now explain why that is. How is it on the first pa first 25, no one moved down. Do you wanna explain that?
Brian Friend (14:46):
Well, basically there were just some guys from this list that, uh, like Ricky Gerard was third on the list and he dropped off. So everyone is moving up. One. Willie, yours, Travis Mayer and Scott Panik were three others that were on the list that, uh, in the top 25 that dropped out. And so those are the, basically the ones that moved up. And there’s no one on this list in the top 25. That’s like a, a massive unknown to me. You know, there are some guys that are, that we didn’t necessarily get to see them throughout the entire season last year, like Chandler Smith or Samuel Cornay who didn’t compete as an individual. But I have a pretty good understanding of who those guys are as athletes. And so relative to their peers, I haven’t seen anything from the open or quarter finals or honestly, I don’t think that these guys are doing anything in the open and quarter finals that’s really gonna be indicative of the growth that they’ve made or the regression that they’ve had. I think we will start to see that in semi-finals. And based on what happens there, there will be a lot more change at the, towards the top of the leader board.
Sevan Matossian (15:48):
Um, what’s the criteria for being on the list? For example, what if you’re not, like, if you’re not competing this year, you don’t get to be on the list. Or what if you go masters? Are you on the list?
Brian Friend (15:58):
No. So these, all of these 100 men are men that are remaining in the individual elite competition.
Sevan Matossian (16:05):
And let me ask you this, so you don’t, is Rich Froning completely at, could Rich Froning still go individual?
Brian Friend (16:15):
Well, theoretically, I think he’s still, I think he is still, I
Sevan Matossian (16:17):
Don’t mean masters. I mean, could he go No, but is he, uh, legally
Brian Friend (16:21):
This season? No, he did not do the individual quarter finals.
Sevan Matossian (16:24):
Okay. And did Scott Pancheck? No. Okay. But if they would’ve,
Brian Friend (16:30):
If they would’ve, they then, I mean, I don’t even think it’s likely then they would’ve qualified for the semi-finals and they would be on, and then if they registered for semi-finals, then I would include them on this list.
Sevan Matossian (16:40):
Even if they said they weren’t going, they were doing it for fun, you basically go off of the fact of what competitions they’ve done.
Brian Friend (16:46):
I don’t think that Rich Froning knows how to work out for fun <laugh> like when he, I mean, especially when it’s like he’s not gonna show up to, you know, he might not have the same capacity in his life or bandwidth his life to, to prepare and train the way that he used to when he would go to a, you know, a live competition. But I think it’s just ingrained in who he is. Like if he shows up to a flag football game, you’re not gonna get a, he’s not gonna be walking through the place, you know, he’s gonna be playing hard.
Sevan Matossian (17:11):
Uh, you are looking at the web website b the letter B friendly fitness.com. It’s Brian’s new website. Uh, but more importantly, this is the, uh, power ranking show for the men in the, uh, CrossFit world. We are going to talk about the a hundred fittest men in the world. Uh, this is the only place where there is a, uh, legitimate ranking of all the athletes. This gets updated every, uh, well at Brian’s discretion, but usually it’s, uh, three times a year, four times a year, Brian?
Brian Friend (17:39):
Yeah, some three or four. Okay. Like, it’ll, you know, I’ll, I will do it again before the games because the, and we’ll have a very, you know, there’ll be no, uh, discrepancy who’s included on the list or not. It’ll only be the men remaining in the season. And so then at that point, I’ll have had, uh, Aug last August, this past January, this one, and then before the game. So it’s kind of like a quarterly check-in.
Sevan Matossian (18:03):
Uh, Eric Weiss did be friendly, uh, D d e I council vet the list before posting. Brian, are there any things that you take into account, uh, sexual orientation, skin color, anything that, that affects the ranking? No. Things like, no. Is it strictly performance? Performance? God so shallow. I cannot believe how shallow this list is. Okay. Incredible. Um, I, I think, uh, uh, so, so l let me just ask you this. Let’s just, let’s just for shits and giggles, th this might take for a minute. Does Rich make the top 25 if he, if he is, um, do, do you have any thoughts on where Rich Phony would fit in here?
Brian Friend (18:38):
Oh yeah. I mean, well we were, you know, some people, obviously yesterday, the age group semi-finals finished and we’ve had, you know, uh, inaccurate leader boards from, from CrossFit. So, but we were able to, they did distribute a, a list that was more accurate. None of those are official or finalized yet, but in the most accurate version that CrossFit sent out to the athletes, which we’ve been able to see. Some of us have reposted them on our Instagram. If you haven’t seen those yet, those are more accurate than the ones on the game site, which still have inaccurate scoring And look, and there it is probably to no one’s surprise, rich Froning has barely beaten his closest competitor, which in this case is Scott Panik. And the reason why I say it’s to no one’s surprise is because that’s what he always does throughout the history of his individual career in CrossFit, he was not the Matt Fraser that was trying to win by 500 points. He was the guy who was like, I’m gonna do what it takes to get on top of the podium. And that’s all he did here. He just did enough to get on top of the, of the leaderboard. And so no one’s surprised by that. And I feel like both him and Scott Pank, I mean, Scott Panche was in my top 25 before he withdrew from the individual part of the season this year. Yeah, they would definitely be in the top five. I think that I
Sevan Matossian (19:51):
Would Scott too. You would’ve Scott in the top five also, uh,
Brian Friend (19:54):
Top 25, excuse me.
Sevan Matossian (19:56):
Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, you did say both. You said top 25 at first, and then maybe, I thought I heard you say top five. I got excited.
Brian Friend (20:01):
I might have, I might’ve misspoke there. How far into the top 25 I think would be different for the two of them. I think I’d probably still have Scott somewhere in the 18 to 22 range. Um, and that, you know, that would be like just behind Saxon and kind of in the mix with his brother Spencer. And then I would have, I think I would have Rich probably just inside the top 10, maybe like 8, 8, 9, or 10.
Sevan Matossian (20:23):
Uh, I, I’m gonna, we’re gonna go back over that for one second. I, I wanna ask you this real quick. I wanna do some, um, uh, gossiping and, and shit talking. These, these leaderboards right here. Who, these are ones you made or Halpin made, or you guys made together?
Brian Friend (20:38):
CrossFit. This is, I don’t really understand this. CrossFit had emailed this to the athletes who competed in the age group, semi-finals, Uhhuh, Uhhuh <affirmative>. So they have a leaderboard that’s actually done the math correctly that they emailed out to the athletes yesterday evening. Uhhuh <affirmative>, I got ahold of it, you know, pared it down to this view and put it on my Instagram so that people who are, you know, may maybe not aware of the fact that the CrossFit games website leaderboard does is not the same as this and is therefore less accurate that they would be able to find that here. And if you see in the comments, some people even ask, well, what’s, what’s different about this? Or why is this more accurate than that one? I don’t know why they were able to email this list out to athletes, but not able to update it appropriately on their website. What they, I think Adrian Bosman said on the podcast with Chase Ingram was that they had, it was a technical situation that needed to be overcome in order for that to happen. So hopefully the game site will reflect this leaderboard soon, but it’s, as of now, it still does not. And so if you go on there and look at the men’s 35 or 39 Scott pant’s ahead of Rich Froning, but that’s not, that is actually not the case based on the scoring system that CrossFit intended to use.
Sevan Matossian (21:54):
Ooh. Uh, I, I, I wonder, I would love to hear the discussion between Adrian Bosman and, uh, Justin Berg on this. Adrian must be fucking furious.
Brian Friend (22:04):
Has there,
Sevan Matossian (22:04):
Have you spoke to Adrian?
Brian Friend (22:06):
No, but I, you know, I would be, because this is a b like this is a, I know it doesn’t get as much press or attention. I know it’s an online competition, but like I mentioned the other day on my Instagram, you know, 540 athletes and 18 different divisions qualified for this competition. And yeah, for a handful of those, they didn’t basically know they’re gonna make it to the games. But like, it’s never a certainty in sports, right? You never really know. And so this is the critical weekend for these athletes, and at the 50% checkpoint you are promised by the organizing body that you’re gonna have a leaderboard. And when the leaderboard comes out and it’s completely wrong, and then they release one, six hours later, that’s still wrong. That’s pretty frustrating. You’re like, this is my, we, this is the, like the Super Bowl for me this year. I, making it here was a big deal, how well I do this week. And determines, you know, for some people in their mind it might determine whether this year is a success or not. And then the, you know, the body who’s putting on the com competition is unable to do it in the way that it was envisioned to be done and by the, by Adrian. Yeah. I would be super frustrated if I were him.
Sevan Matossian (23:11):
Uh, ha Have they, have they made any, have they taken any responsibility for it or anything? Has ju ha have, I feel like I haven’t heard from Justin Bergen forever, and I assume that all of this falls on him as the, uh, director of the CrossFit Games. Have we heard anything?
Brian Friend (23:25):
I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t, um, I’m not in, I’m not intimately aware of how the, you know, distribution of responsibilities go, but yeah, when you’re the, the guy who’s kind of at the top and things like this are regularly happening, it seems, I mean, if I just think about other sports, you know, when when something in the NFL is awry, you get statement from Roger Goodell, same thing in the b a or the N hhl or the MLB from their commissioners. And I think that Justin Berg is in that kind of acting commissioner role, whether that’s the label or not, that he of his actual job, that when something like this comes out, he is the person that I would expect to hear from, and he’s the one that would say, yep, you know, this is on us. This is what happened, and we’re gonna do what, whatever to correct it,
Sevan Matossian (24:06):
At least take the, at least take the heat off the rest of the staff. A berg is probably in Costa Rica. Wow. Heidi, you have a very, very good memory, uh, in, in going to what, uh, Brian said about athletes who are competing, um, as an athlete. This is from, uh, Mike, uh, Oli Olis Olis. What, what, how would you say his last name?
Brian Friend (24:28):
Not like
Sevan Matossian (24:28):
That. Okay. Uh, Mike Pool, boy, Mike, uh, as an athlete who spends a lot of time by the pool of servicing mills, I’m heading to compete at the semi-finals in a few weeks. I’m so fucking worried that even more Fuckups will occur. Like even damn stage so far has had major mishaps. Uh, every damn stage has had mishaps so far. Basically what he’s saying, and we’ve seen this before, is that people who are at the cut line could get pushed out unfairly. And that has happened last year. That did happen.
Brian Friend (24:59):
Yeah. That’s, I mean, that’s the ultimate risk. The risk or the thing that you don’t want to happen, you know, at whatever the competition is, the athletes are showing up to compete. And in the case of the crossroad game season, until you get to the games, every stage is a qualifier. And that’s why I, you know, you’ve, you’ve heard me regularly say that it’s not the ones at the top of the list that I’m most concerned about. It’s the cut line. And so in the open, that’s the 10% threshold. Like that’s the target. Those are the people that are the most interested in the leaderboard. And, and that part of the leaderboard is completely inaccurate going in from the quarter finals to the semi-finals, it’s the cut line, it’s the 60 or the 30. Those are the, you know, the five athletes on either side of that line.
(25:39):
Those are the ones that are sweating it. And you have to make sure that whatever the variables are that’s determining who’s the last one in and who’s the first one out that those variables are accounted for. And I’ve been saying it throughout this season and last season that currently there’s not a, a structure in place that we’re CrossFit can guarantee that they’re getting it right. This, the competition’s online competitions are unmanageable with the resources that they either have or are choosing to use. And now we’re getting to the semi-final stage of competition where you’re advancing to the games and the, you know, damage just means that more is on the line. There’s a smaller field of play, so you would expect that the, even the chances of having those kinds of mistakes would be smaller and smaller. Now we have the masters semi-finals with age group semi-finals, and we see yet again, another stage of competition where there’s been a failure to execute at the, the level that the athletes are expecting and hoping for. And so if you’re an individual or a team athlete who’s getting ready to go to a semi-final, you know, you’re just like, Mike, you know, you’re like, just praying that, please, can we get this one right? There’s a lot on the line for some of us.
Sevan Matossian (26:40):
Uh, is this, are, are we seeing an unprecedented amount hiccups?
Brian Friend (26:46):
You’ve, I mean, you’ve heard Adrian talk about this before. There are, there have been problems in the administration execution of the cross, the game season forever, but not at this frequency. And I would say yes, it’s, there’s been way too many different things that have been published and then redacted and then reposted with, with a correction or a completely different, there’ve been errors on scorecards, errors on weights, on errors on language that’s used, errors on scoring. I mean, the, it, it just goes on and on. And it seems to be like, um, Mike, uh, Olivas, by the way,
Sevan Matossian (27:24):
Olivas, Mike Olivas
Brian Friend (27:26):
<laugh> suggested it’s at every stage of competition. It’s with every announcement, the worldwide ranking announcement, they pulled it down, the strength of field allocation announcement. They, they, they amended that. It’s like every single major thing that the community’s been waiting on that’s related to competitive season this year has, has been less than, not than perfect. And then, you know, you think about if you zoom all the way out to one of these major principles of, of CrossFit in general, which is virtuosity, that is clearly and obviously missing,
Sevan Matossian (27:53):
You know, when I had Don on, uh, one of the things he was put was like a really hands off approach, like a really hands off approach. Really, really. And it almo, it almost seems like it’s getting to the point where that’s just an excuse for no oversight, no leadership. It, it really does look like that. Um, uh, Michelle Shanks, how can they be so careless with their data? I would be out of a job if I consistently put out bad data. Dude, if you spelled something wrong on an Instagram post, Greg would fucking call you at three in the morning and fucking drill you, drill you like shit. Like you’d be talking, like you’d be, you wouldn’t go back to, you wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep at night. Um, well,
Brian Friend (28:28):
And to this thing about, about Don, you know, obviously that would be optimal to be able to come into a, a position and you say, okay, this is the team that we have for this year. Let’s let him run west team trust team, right? And let’s make an evaluation at the end of the season. But at some point, if they’ve just made a mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, you g I mean, you gotta imagine that he’s getting frustrated. I think that Don is pretty plugged in if he’s not watching and digesting all of the content that’s out there. I think he has people that are, that he’s interacting with and he, he knows about this stuff and I don’t dunno, like it’s, I’m gonna,
Sevan Matossian (29:03):
I’m gonna push back there, here, I’m gonna push back there. Let me, let me say this. I think that he’s not, I don’t think he is, I don’t think he’s a gamesa. I think he’s trying to run the company. And as stupid as, as much shit as I talk about the games and as how irrelevant I think the games are, the problem is, is that they’re the most forward facing part of the company. Meaning I think when you get married to a girl, the least important thing is her face, but, or a man’s face. But, uh, the face is what people, everyone sees first. And so if the fucking thing has to be fucking maintained, it can’t have snot pouring out of the front of it, even though I think it’s fucking incredibly irrelevant to the, to the longevity, the person or their, your relationship. And so I don’t think, I don’t think he’s paying attention. Um, you know, maybe you have more proof than me. Maybe I have more proof than you, but I don’t think he’s paying attention and I don’t think he knows about all these errors because I, as a, as a former marine recon guy, I think heads would, we would see heads be rolling. I think we would hear more. I think we would’ve seen.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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