MMA History Podcast · MMA Detective Mike Davis, Joey Venti

Paul Buntuello BEFORE the UFC

·2 hr 27 min

Joey Venti and Mike Davis bring on Paul Buentello. He is introduced as the Head Hunter, a King of the Cage heavyweight champion, a UFC heavyweight title challenger, and a 50-fight club member. Buentello talks about refereeing. He says it feels pretty good because nobody is punching him in the face. The conversation shifts into the downed-opponent rule. Buentello walks through how posting on a hand is not the same as being truly grounded. The hosts note that Andy Foster and the CSAC pushed the rule because fighters used to game that position. Buentello says the current standard is simple: if you are not really down, you are open game. The talk moves to the one-knee situation. Once that knee comes up, he says, the fighter is free game for a knee or kick to the head. He says the sport has changed a bit because people move faster now. Then he jokes that full soccer kicks would thin the lineup fast. That joke turns into a rougher thought experiment. Buentello says Pride was on a different level and that the scene would look grittier if that kind of violence were still standard. He says he came close to going to Pride. The problem, he says, was management. He explains that he was self-managed before IFC. Back then, he was sending out feelers on old sites and fight boards. He mentions Sherdog, fighting.com, and other underground places as the way work got found. The old-school hustle leads to a call from Paul Smith. Smith offers an eight-man tournament in Fresno with a $10,000 payday. Buentello says he was in Texas and answered yes immediately. He did not wait around to overthink it. The whole exchange lands as a snapshot of how early MMA careers could still be launched by a raw phone call. The back half keeps the same loose, direct rhythm. The hosts and Buentello keep tossing around old-fight lore and sharp opinions. The conversation stays casual, blunt, and rooted in memory, fight history, and guys who were actually there.

As heard by us

Old-school heavyweight stories, rule talk, and a blunt look at how careers got built.

Paul Buentello's visit folds fight history into practical talk. He traces the shift from heavyweight contender to referee, then circles back to the old-school realities of early MMA: being self-managed, chasing leads through fight sites, and taking a call fast if it might turn…

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Why you'd press play

A referee's-eye heavyweight story that moves from old forums and cold emails to a Fresno fight call.

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