UFC fighter Charles Radtke was widely mocked online after talking trash about Canada before his bout with Canadian fighter Mike Malott—only to be soundly defeated by Malott in the second round.
Radtke leaned into the role of the villain leading up to the fight, invoking President Donald Trump’s talk of annexing Canada as the “51st state” and saying he was seeking revenge for Canadian hockey fans recently booing the U.S. national anthem.
He said:
“I don’t give a s**t about hockey. That’s not my gig. But what I do hold dear is I grew up on a bison ranch with my grandfather, who’s a sergeant major in the Marine Corps, and when you all booed the national anthem, somebody’s going to have to pay for that.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Radtke leaned into this further when he refused to shake Malott's hand before the fight.
Then Radtke quickly found out that talking all that smack wasn't actually going to get him anywhere.
In the opening moments of the second round, Malott landed a sharp combination that caught Radtke in the center of the cage. As Radtke moved forward, he was met with a clean left hook that sent him to the canvas.
Malott quickly followed up with a flurry of ground-and-pound strikes, rendering his opponent unconscious and prompting a thunderous reaction from the home crowd. The emphatic knockout win marked a statement performance for Malott, improving his record to 7–1 over his last eight bouts.
And as you can see in the video below, it was as brutal as one would expect.
It was a great moment for our northern neighbor—and people celebrated.
Canadians celebrated the outcome of the match as Prime Minister Mark Carney introduced his new cabinet at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Tuesday, vowing to make the country’s economy his administration’s “primary focus” following a snap election triggered by trade tensions and annexation threats from the Trump administration.
Addressing Canada’s evolving relationship with the United States, Carney told reporters he would “take ultimate responsibility” for managing diplomacy with Washington, supported by a five-member ministerial team covering foreign affairs, finance, public safety, defense, and Canada-U.S. trade.
Trump, meanwhile, repeated his false claim that the United States is “subsidizing” Canada by $200 billion, referencing the U.S. trade deficit with its northern neighbor. In reality, U.S. government data shows that the trade deficit with Canada was $63.3 billion last year—not $200 billion—and if energy imports from Canada are excluded, the U.S. actually runs a trade surplus.
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