I'm not going away, Atyku says, after Supreme Court's verdict on the 2023 general election, and Reaver's impeachment saga lingers. I am Bola Alba and this is Plus Qualities. The presidential candidate of the People's Democratic Party, PDP, in the February 25, 2023 election, Atyku Aboboka says the political arena despite the Supreme Court verdict of October 26, 2023 that affirmed the electoral victory of President Bola Tinubu. Atyku, who lost his appeal last week against the declaration of Bola Tinubu as president by the Supreme Court, spoke during the press conference at the National Secretariat of the Party in Abuja yesterday. Atyku Aboboka said he is, quote, not going away, unquote, and will, quote, continue to struggle with other Nigerians to deepen democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential, unquote. It's bigger than one or two presidential elections. Atyku Aboboka, by retarges, is Mosad Atyku Mohammed, is a confirmation from within the apex court that all is not well with the Supreme Court. The court and indeed the judiciary must never lend itself to police station as it is currently the norm of nearly every institution in Nigeria. What we are currently dealing with is bigger than one or two presidential elections and is certainly bigger than Atyku Aboboka. It is not about me. It is about our country in Nigeria in your future. It is about the kind of society we want to live for the next generation and what kind of example we want to set for our children and their children. It is about the reputation of Nigeria and Nigerians in the eyes of the world As for me and my party, this phase of work is done. However, I'm not going to go away. If you think I'm going to go away, forget about it. To discuss this is a key among the PEDP publicity circuitry legislated. Honorable, I today welcome to Plus Politics. Could it be construed that Vice President Atyku has just announced has been an aspirant on the ticket of your party in the next round of presidential elections? How do we need to reform our electoral system? This is a part of what is contained in this speech. He has not put himself forward that I am contesting in 2027. He has never said that. At no failure, as he called the members of our party, the National Party or had a meeting with the National Executive Council to say that I am contesting the next general election. He has not said that. Let's now look into some of the submissions he made in the speech. He almost rubbish the integrity of the Supreme Court. This same Supreme Court was the court that on a number of occasions vindicated him against the oppression of the then-President Ullusia Goombasanger with the incumbent president being a formidable strategic lieutenant and deploying the machinery of the Lagos State Government's Judicial Ministry of Justice to a particular case. Suddenly now because he has lost the Supreme Court the Supreme Court is now a cesspit for him. Is that not hypocrisy? On the way Supreme Courts are back then are they still constituted the same way? Now you can hear what the last member of the Supreme Court just is that retired few days ago to rebuild the member of the Supreme Court the judges in the Supreme Court so this is to amend credence to what he said that the judiciary needs a reform so it is not about rubbish in the judiciary it is him saying the obvious but what Nigerians do see is different from what the Supreme Court sees and the member of the Supreme Court the last judges that retired few days ago the last judge that retired few days ago articulated the same view but there is a lot that is wrong in the Supreme Court so he has never and it has no point in time said that Supreme Court is the final court of justice and is going to abide by that but you may not accept the decision that is exactly what it is but it is going to accept it but this is where we are as a country that is exactly what is happening in Nigeria as we speak because we can go way back and see a lot of things that are happening in the Supreme Court so Supreme Court and the justice system in Nigeria need only stick reforms a cursory examination of some of the allegations of justice that Tiju retired Supreme Court justice that Tiju retired that he rehashed in his speech a cursory examination of those allegations against his political history will also speak to hypocrisy he has always been since 1999 in the form of power and he is one of those who command a lot of resources how come he is now complaining that a judicial system is now filled with nepotistic characters one is just wondering is it now that he lost that he suddenly realized that all these anomalies and aberrations have been normalized for a while okay but this is not about hypocrisy it is about what is happening now we believe in the justice system and that is why he went to court but he did not assert the last judgement but that is the final court and if you remember months ago somebody asked him and said if you lose at the Supreme Court what are you going to do he said he will lose everything to God but at the same time if you now find that there is a lot that you think is not right in the judgement as in Nigeria you have to say this is how I feel about this judgement but because the past judgement has weighed his weight it doesn't mean that this judgement did not go his way he should not speak out and already believe in and already expect so everyone that goes to court expects certain judgement and if it doesn't go your way and you look at it then you have the opportunity to say this is how I feel about this judgement and that is what he has done he has expressed himself to say this is how I feel about this as in Nigeria you have the right to say your mind and that is exactly what he has done given and pardon me if I am getting a bit personal about this given what I know to be your antecedents especially in our diaspora in the northern hemisphere I know you have lived in some respectable jurisdictions before coming back home to give your own contribution back to Nigeria given what I know to be your antecedents would you think this is proper in a respectable jurisdiction where a loser suddenly goes out there and lampooms and lampests the justices of the supreme court when he knows particularly I don't have the privilege of replying is that the responsible thing to do just asking you personally now okay thank you so much now I will now to use the same example that you have just referred to because I have just lived I have been living abroad for so many years before returning back to Nigeria and I just came back few days ago from America and you see what is happening now because you are in Nigeria does not give you the right not to speak you have the right to speak as in Nigeria the same way in America today from a president Trump is expressing himself about the judiciary about the judges in America so there is nothing wrong if you feel that you are right as an individual as the Trump of course or if you feel that the judgment that you express is not what you get then you have the right to express yourself to say that I am not happy with this judgment and I felt that this judgment should go in certain ways so it is within his right to express himself and he has done that so nobody can fault him for expressing himself give me the example you can now look at what he says to what justice that he does few days ago so you can now see that there is something wrong within the Supreme Court given the example that you have alluded to in America you will agree with me that the court in Georgia and the court in New York are both are both inflicting some degree of punishment on former president Trump for not being circumspect in his use of language about the proceedings in the two courts so and to be honest with you let's be very very frank with ourselves are you now using Trump as a standard character for a Nigerian politician to emulate or imitate so what I am saying is that as an individual you have started right under the law under the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria you have the freedom of speech to express yourself and all he has done is to express himself and he has not contravened any law and I know that if he has contravened any law by now you will have had sanctions from the Supreme Court the Supreme Court has the power to sanction so but they haven't done such that is to say that is within his right to say what he says and that is how we feel so every Nigerian has a right and freedom of speech so I don't think he has done anything wrong or against the law that is how you feel about the judgment and you cannot fault that okay for you for you is the case of of spanking a child and not expecting the child to cry is it if you say so but the reality is this there is no time that anyone goes to court whether at the cemetery level or at the governorship level that the governors or the senators do not have a view on the other if this should not be different at who is a former former presidential candidate candidate of PTP and by so doing is also a Nigerian who has certain right as well so he is not different from somebody who went to court and got certain judgment and said I am happy with the judgment then the others will say that I am happy with this judgment so he is still with him is right to express himself as a Nigerian under the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria so as the person who is fortunate to be in charge of the publicity machinery of the PDP in Lagos on arguably apart from the national the national publicity secretary of the party one would want to believe this is the most popular state you know most popular federating unit in Nigeria one would want to believe that they must have somebody who is capable in place in Lagos but I haven't said that as somebody who holds this position do you think it is proper for somebody as eminent as Vice President Atilku to be addressing a world, a so called world press conference twice in three weeks twice in less than one month nothing wrong like I said earlier on as a Nigerian and also as also the leader of the opposition in Nigeria so there is nothing wrong tomorrow if you have something to say in the country it can address the press conference don't forget it is the leader of the opposition now so by so doing if something is not right it is what this is right as a Nigerian to express himself and to say this is where my party is on this issue and so there is nothing wrong there is nothing wrong my brother okay let's come back now we cannot but engage you on the on the activities in Lagos as the PDP publicity circuitry what is your take of governance in Lagos today you can see the way Lagos is in Lagos and I have said this many time after about 24 years of APC government in Lagos that we should still be having flooding in Lagos the channels are all blown all these channels are supposed to have been cleared in preparation for the rainy season that is still there we still have security issue in Lagos we have the admiral issue in Lagos state which the government of Lagos state able to resolve the government of Lagos state get him involved with this admiral issue issue don't be the people of Lagos state wanted a governor who will look out for their needs to provide accommodation, good schools and the healthcare facilities all of them should be up and running we still don't have all of these done now the amount of money that is accrued to the state government on a monthly basis should be enough to turn Lagos around Lagos is supposed to be the mega city of Nigeria or Africa but where we are today there is no reason why we cannot be better than Dubai with the amount of money that the state government is generating in Lagos state and the kind of things that they are doing particularly for those see if you go to Lagos island today where Mr Babaji said go up go and look at what Lagos island is today look at what our job is today look at what some part of Sherry looks like today look at Leki you cannot be constructing an highway in Leki and people are stuck in traffic for 5-6 hours it is not done when you are constructing you keep one leg open so that the people can go you cannot be constructing doing both roads together at the same time Lagos state needs the Lagos state government needs to open all alternative roads in Lagos state so that we don't have what we have today if you want to go to a place today you cannot use it is so bad so what are we talking about what are we talking about is it the city the economy or the railway that makes Lagos I am not the mouthpiece of the government or the spokesperson of the ruling party but you want to agree with me that you want to agree with me that the traffic congestion you are talking about in Leki are very despicable in some respects I can't agree with you on that but you want to agree with me that is in the context of the fact that the road is being is being done and development actually also comes with some with some inconveniences you want to agree with me you want to agree with me that as somebody who just returned from the United States of America a couple of days ago you want to agree with me that even in this eninio season many may not know that we are having an unusual phenomenon that is called eninio and that is why we are still having rains in Lagos entering almost entering into November you know you agree with me that even in even in America where you are coming from especially in New York just the axis they have been flooding how would you respond to that thank you very much see let's take this axis that you will find Lagos State Government I don't think there is any projection for making axis now and this is why I said it we know that relocation of negotiations towards that axis is so high as of now people delays that we have in that axis with the kind of industries that are relocating to that area there is not even measure to be infrastructure that you have cannot even take the volume of development coming to that axis so the government needs to be ahead they need to be ahead of the development there should be a projection that in 10 years this is what this place will look like you understand now you are looking at that same road we still maintaining three lanes by now there is no reason we should not have a wider lane more lanes you are having this same road is the one that we need to admit the new the theme city that they are planning this same road is the one that is going to accommodate the new airport this same road is going to accommodate the new the volume of traffic that is going to come to that axis we need to prepare for it talk less what we have now I understand that there is a natural phenomenon right now about the ozone layer but the point is this are we ready what are we doing in preparation for that the government needs to have a forecast and then prepare for the rainy season not when the rainy season that is when you will be running up and down that is the better if we are well prepared that is the better place to leave it it is one of these things live by you that is the better place to leave it we hope to give the legal state governments an equal opportunity to come and defend themselves thank you for guesting on plus politics we really appreciate this thank you thank you so much for having me we are going to short break now when we are back we will take on issues in river state


So, what I would like to start up with today is what next? What's the National Human Genome Research Institute after the Human Genome Project is completed? And how did you think about the transition from doing a project to next things that are important to do? Well, having the draft announced in 2000 was a milestone, but maybe scientifically, more importantly, having the publication on the draft in February 2001. It was pretty clear at that point, we are going to finish this. We're not going to leave it as a draft. That would be unfortunate. As in most things, the last 5% is about as much work as the first 95%. And that was certainly the case. So there was an awful lot of work to do there for the next two years, until 2003, where we basically said, OK, we have a complete human genome, admitting at the same time that there were bits and pieces of it, like centromeres, that had not been completed and still have not, because of the nasty nature of those DNA sequences, just preventing you from being able to assemble them. But just the same. It was a moment, April 14, 2003. We had this event in the Library of Congress. We said, OK, we've really, really gotten to all of the goals that were put forward for the human genome project 13 years earlier. So it wasn't just that we have the first reference human genome sequence. We've also accomplished all the other things that were part of that effort as laid out by the National Academy original blueprint. So it was really a moment. And you might say, well, then we should all fold up and go home. But obviously, that would have been kind of leaving the good part unattended to, because this was laying out a foundation, and now you had to build on it. And knowing that was coming, we had spent something like 18 months really working hard on sampling all the bright brains out there about what would be the next appropriate goals for the field of genomics, not just genome sequencing. And where should we place the resources and place our bets in terms of what the Genome Institute could do to keep that momentum going or even accelerate it.  And one very large meeting at the beginning and a lot of workshops. And then another large meeting at the end that sort of pulled this together, ultimately a document that laid out what the plan was going to be published in nature. So we made it very clear, here's what we think is next. And that was published simultaneously with saying we have now completed the goals of the project. And it needed, of course, a visual that I was struggling with what that should be. And I went to a boarder's bookstore to sort of look through books of various kinds of images and happened across a book of falling water, Frank Lloyd Wright's most iconic structure. And that was like, oh, OK, we could do something with this. And so there it was as figure one in that paper describing the future of this building, which had three levels, but it also had cross-cutting elements. Maybe it was helpful. At least I used it for the next two or three years to kind of explain the various areas that we were trying to nurture. And out of that came a lot of what came next, although some of it already started. I mean, we knew that having a reference human genome was nice, but the 0.1% variability in the well-behaved part of the genome was intensely interesting. And we should start looking at variation. And we had already started doing that well before 2003. But HapMap kind of as one real flagship next effort was clearly part of where to go next. And we wanted to understand function. And that's the motivation behind putting together the idea of ENCODE, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, and how we could, by building on lots of laboratories that had lots of capabilities in challenging cooperative agreement kind of mode, begin to understand what were the parts lists, what was the parts list of the genome, and how do those parts make sense in terms of regulation. There were other really important parts that related to ethical, legal, and social issues. We had not solved any of those as definitively as we would like, obviously, especially genetic discrimination. There were lots of issues about advancing technology and not wanting to stop with DNA sequencing abilities we had in 2003, because we knew one genome for $400 million was not going to be a good long-term solution. So all the more reason to put effort into dropping the cost, increasing the speed while not sacrificing the accuracy, all the things that really played out beautifully then over the next 10 years and continue to in terms of making sequencing ever more accessible and affordable. So Francis, the politics of this, one way of taking that is you've gone from having a difficult problem of getting a whole bunch of people to work in concert for this incredibly big international huge goal and a huge public event for announcing success. And now you've got a whole series of projects and an institution that is driving science in genomics. And your role as the NIH director sounds like it changes a little bit from trying to get to the goal line and being the quarterback to trying to figure out four or five different games that are going on simultaneously. Is that a fair characterization? In some ways, yes, because certainly something like ENCODE had a very different set of ideas and needs as far as pulling together a collaborative effort to look at the functional parts of the genome. HapMap, on the other hand, had a lot of the same flavor as the sequencing of the genome. It was international. It required a lot of coordination and Friday morning phone calls. It needed a field general. And once again, that was me with lots of help from colleagues and other places, especially the UK. But that had many countries involved and everybody had to agree to certain standards about quality and timetables and data release and all that. So HapMap in many ways was sort of a natural follow-on and it was also a sort of natural building on what had worked in terms of how to make such a collaborative effort successful. So that was pretty familiar territory, also pretty exhausting. And we had some different players in HapMap than we had had in the sequencing, which made it interesting because some of them hadn't had the experience of the sequencing project and were maybe not quite sure why they should give up their autonomy to be part of something of this sort. So Eric, you had a question. Well, another comment I was going to make, which I think is relevant for sort of I think an inflection point of the Institute that took place slightly before and then in 2003, I think had a lot to do organizationally due to the following reasons, especially the leadership team. And that 2003 plan came together in a slightly different way because of a different core leadership group.  Jeff Trent left as a scientific director. And that gave opportunities for a little bit of shuffling around. Francis appointed me the intramural director, the scientific director. Mark Geyer became the extramural director. And then Alan Gutmacher became the deputy director. Exactly. The three Gs. Which I actually refer to the three Gs. And what I think was important was that 2003 vision that was published in Nature the day the genome project ended, and that 18-month or so process that Francis described was very much of a committee effort. He really delegated to us a lot of responsibility for seeing this planning process go on, which really made it a trans-institute planning process because intramural was as involved as extramural and having Alan as the deputy thinking about issues that complimented nicely what Mark Geyer and I could bring to it. And so that document was affectionately sort of the three Gs plus Fc was sort of the internal abbreviation for it. Exactly. And I also think then leading on beyond that, I think Francis turned to not only the three Gs, but lots of other good leaders within the institute to really help him more on individual projects. Mark Geyer and I went off and really helped, I think, develop some of the early blueprint for encode. Alan certainly went off and helped on some specific areas. I think it was a more distributed effort, which gave him the opportunity to decide where to spend more of his time knowing that some of the other trajectories were taking good care of. So let me stay on that for just a minute because I'd like to pull out kind of the signature of this National Human Genome Research Institute. What is it that's distinctive about it relative to the other critters here in the NIH forest? Yeah. It seems like there is an element of planning and anticipating where the science is going and systematic staff work, the politics, the leadership. Talk a little bit about top down versus bottom up science and what's the distinctive role of this particular institute compared to its brethren here? That's a good question because certainly by this point every institute is investing in genomics one way or another. The technology has gotten distributed not necessarily at scale the way it was in our large-scale sequencing centers, but certainly many labs were taking a lot of advantage of the success of the genome project and that was good. What was the unique niche then for NHGRI? It was about this time. I think the IOM came out with their big description of what should happen to NIH which had a number of recommendations that might be considered, none of which have happened in terms of shrinking the number of institutes and maybe NHGRI ought to just sort of wander back into NIGMS and be absorbed in that space. Obviously that didn't happen. But it was it was crucial that NHGRI continued to serve and to serve they had to have some unique kind of role and I think the unique role was genome science at scale because other parts of NIH were really not prepared to do that. Now that doesn't mean it's all top-down. That means you want to induce very bottom-up technology that will improve the scale and so getting for instance DNA sequencing to go faster and better cheaper. I wouldn't say that was top-down. There's a lot of really incredible creativity going on in academia and in small businesses that Jeff Schloss brilliantly nurtured along and look where that's gotten us. But some of these were production projects to produce community resources that should follow Bermuda rules and therefore be immediately accessible and you don't see those happen unless there is an organizing force and that was sort of one of our visions of what NHGRI could continue to do whether it was for ENCODE, whether it was for HAPMAP, whether it was ultimately for Cancer Genome Atlas only a couple three years later, whether it was a knockout mouse project which was also very much something that got pushed forward from the Genome Institute or even whether it was and this was maybe the furthest departure from what had been our sweet spot, the establishment of the molecular libraries program as a means of trying to put into the hands of academic investigators high throughput screening capabilities for small molecules so that they could in fact go from diagnosing to thinking about treatment and that was a personal strong priority for me is to make sure that that opportunity didn't get missed and this came along at the point where Elias Zerhouni had started something called the road map to try to find ways for funds to be collected that would not necessarily get spent by any single institute on a project but could benefit everybody. That was timely that he had that vision that certainly turned out to be a way of extending the genome institute's ability to influence some of these game-changing projects that were large-scale expensive and beyond our own little budget. I mean we had many opportunities after 2003 and even more recently to become more normal relative like all the other institutes and centers. I think there's a certain cultural flavor of the institute, I think an expertise level at this is to be pioneers in the way that science is done. Now that is a model for doing science. I don't think we've ever said it's the only model and it's probably the unusual and the rare one. I don't think every institute should be like us by any means but you know we clearly did something very different in the genome project and the projects the genomics projects that immediately follow the end of the genome project and they continued to receive good feedback about their reports. I think what they produced was valuable and I think the way we led them was was key to their success and also proved to be an effective way of leading some types of science. Now what does that get you by the way? It gets you more work because what it means is that when you're that rare institute or institutes that is capable of leading these efforts and then other opportunities come up. Common fund examples what Francis just gave are the good ones. You're asked to to take on a lot of that and carry a lot of the water because you're good at that and that's fine and I mean we embrace it and we prepare for it and and we are as much to blame because we propose ideas that are bigger than our budget but are well within our intellectual capabilities and our leadership capabilities and then when these ideas actually get approved that means we have to actually do something. Do something and find this out. So that's why yeah it's right so I mean we end up being overachievers I think in many ways at the corporate level because of the proven track record of leading these large projects effectively. So a lot of this involves high tech was bang instrumentation and data and computation that's part of the signature. One other thing though and we talked about it in the last interview briefly but I didn't talk about one I didn't ask the appropriate question about one part of it that I think is really worth clarifying DNA sequencing the core technology you get this reference sequence all over you don't need to do anything more with technology right you've got your reference sequence. Well no this institute was heavily involved in almost a DARPA like. I mean I think people would say without Jeff Schloss the world would have been a different place and there was leadership anticipation and that's kind of a you can't force that kind of technological innovation to happen from the top. You can provide the resources that enable it and the vision that feeds it when it's about to make a breakthrough. So how do you guys think about that that's a different style of thing and what were the there must have been some explicit thought about what you were doing to push DNA sequencing technology per se. There was and as early as 2003 we started talking about this mythical goal of the thousand dollar genome and it helps I think to lay out a goal that seems almost impossible to achieve to get people electrified by what that would mean if you could do that. So that was part of it making it clear that we are not satisfied with where we are not by any means we've got orders of magnitude that need to be crossed to get to where we want to be and there's no reason not to get there so let's be creative and let's put a lot of money into the technology development to encourage wacky ideas. If they have any chance of success we're going to lay this out in a DARPA like fashion that we expect failure to be extremely common as long as there is an occasional success we consider this as money well spent. The other thing we did and we should have mentioned this already is by making big investments in comparative genomics okay we've got the human but now we've got all these other species that we want to look at and we want those to be high quality genomes so that we can really do as Eric Lander liked to say look in Evolution's lab notebook and see how every nucleotide has been affected by evolutionary forces that presented the concept of a huge market for sequencing machines because we were therefore talking about many many many genomes of different species and we were going on with HapMap which you're not going to find variation unless you do sequencing so we were creating a demand by making it clear that NHGRI was going to be spending a significant fraction of that half a billion dollar budget paying for sequence and therefore anybody has an idea about how to build machines that are a little bit more competitive than what's out there they're going to find a pretty receptive market. So all the pieces I think were in place and I think it's fair to say at that point maybe the government was the main driver of the technology advances these days as this has become more and more something that private sector themselves wants and invests in I think that momentum has gotten to the point of being sustainable even if we weren't making such a big push but our push is still awfully important for the early stage ideas. What's kind of the biggest surprise of where that's taken you this ubiquitous relatively low-cost sequencing technology stuff that you just didn't see happening that wasn't part of your five-year plan or a ten-year plan or whatever. Microbiome would be one of the things I would immediately list and the speed with which microbiome research not only became an entity and a recognized and respected field of study but seen it happen so fast that it sort of distributed so effectively across the NIH the different institutes that you almost don't even need a centralized effort. We did the human microbiome project and now we're winding that down and it could be wound down because it was so clear that it was getting taken up by all the individual institutes. I mean that happened much faster than I ever anticipated. That's one example. I would agree cancer I remember having a conversation with our sequencing center scientific advisors and I don't know was it 2002 it was probably around that time and proposing well maybe if we can drive the cost of sequencing down we could start actually sequencing individual cancers and finding out what's driving them and at that point Janet Raleigh was one of our advisors and she was like that'll never work you won't be able to make any sense out of it there'll be all this noise from because cancer cells are mutating all the time and she was strongly opposed which was pretty interesting it took me back a bit she came around obviously as we began to figure out how you would do this and that yeah one cancer sequence was going to be impossible to interpret but if you had 20,000 of them you could start to figure out what the signal was and what the noise was and that's pretty amazing that we got there in the space of well eight five or six years after having that first human genome we were deep into cancer. So one other thing that happens when you've got this reference sequence and you've got this now signature of hi-tech was bang data intensive that's your style is the other parts of NIH and the other parts of the world and the other parts of the research apparatus beginning to see the value in what's emerged from this huge project and are beginning to want to play in that sandbox that changes the role of this institute because it means there's a connection to all those other pieces what does that begin to feel like presumably that transitions beginning to happen even before the reference sequence is announced but certainly after that I think it's been mostly a good thing as long as everybody's playing by the same rules about data quality and data access I mean take the thousand genomes program which has been obviously a huge contribution to understanding variation at the most detailed level I think it's fair to say the push for that came a little more from the UK than it did from the US the initial sort of vision of this particularly from from Richard Durbin and obviously with a lot of organization that went along with this effort that we were a big part of but that seemed okay to me that we don't have to drive every part of this I'm sure we're going to talk about BGI here in a second because here here is a remarkable center in Shenzhen that at least for a while had the largest sequencing capacity in the world I'm not sure they do because they haven't now kept up with the newest machines but was that a threatening thing it was to some people I suppose and it certainly was a surprise to people who thought the US would remain dominant for centuries to come it wasn't that hard with some energy and some funds for BGI to jump out there and create an amazing center with amazing talent again I never felt like that was such a threatening outcome as long as they're playing fair I think the the issue of NHGRI's relevance relative to the rest of NIH as genomics spreads across the NIH you know really became important to consider the talent of Francis's directorship and then in particular when I became the director and in fact immediately when I became the director we tried to do portfolio analyses to sort of get a handle on you know how much money or other institutes spending in genomics and those are hard data to sort of come by exactly what he defined as genomics but it became pretty clear that by the time I was the director of the institute that there was more money far more money somehow being associated with genomics research being pursued by other institutes compared to us we were the minority genomics funders and that does make you pay attention to define your relevance you don't want to be doing with you know what everybody else is doing that becomes a fun challenge I don't think that becomes a threatening challenge I never took it as a threat but I do think the 2011 strategic plan which was the one that we finished on my watch the planning process started on Francis's talent of his watch I think the 2011 plan more than any other plan clearly laid out a vision for what genomics needed to be but also completely acknowledged that this was a vision that all of the biomedical research enterprise should be embracing and that within it NHGRI would clearly you know pursue some things harder than others but we would do everything we could to stay at the front pioneering out of it because that's always been our strength so Francis what do you think having been director of this institute had to do with your becoming the director of NIH and then both of you talk about this transition because you're now the former director of this institute but you're the top gun now at NIH and Eric becomes the director of NHGRI well I would not say that becoming director of NIH was part of my life plan at all it's not like this was okay I need to step out of this one in order to be asked to do that one by a time it got to 2008 I'd been in this job for 15 years of leading the genome institute it had been a great ride a lot of really cool things continued to happen but I was getting restless and feeling like I probably have something else that I might want to do but I don't know quite what it is I really wanted to write a book about personalized medicine and couldn't do that in my government job because it would be an overlap with my official duties and I was just restless and ready to try something else so I went to Zerhune and told him I was ready to ride off he tried very hard to talk me out of it shortly before he quit himself by the way which was interesting and then August 2008 that was sort of okay I'm walking out as we said into the white space not knowing what I was walking into because I had no other job lined up and I did not know that that would result ultimately in just about exactly a year being called back in a different role but so it went I was frankly quite excited about the prospect of Barack Obama as a president who cared about science so I worked on the science committee for his campaign and then once he was elected I worked on the transition team with Harold Varmas to try to be sure that everything was ready for inauguration on January 20th and I don't remember much about Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2008 because it was completely consumed by those transition activities but then inauguration day came I stood out there like everybody else and froze to death while waiting for the events to happen and figured okay did that now I better figure out what I want to do next and didn't expect really that there would be then a call from Kathleen Sebelius to say I want you to come and talk to me about this job but hearing from her and then hearing from the president that this was what they was hoping I would do it's pretty hard to say no and it was an exciting way to sort of broaden my own opportunity for a landscape surveillance and maybe bring some of the skills from the genome experience but also have a chance to learn a lot of new ones so in a way it's bringing the old team back together because the two of you used to hang out in the old nurses quarters right and when you were both starting your new jobs now you're on the transition team and in a way you're now the NIH director and he's an institute director we did yeah we did a randomized crossover trial and Eric for you how does this you become stepping into the shoes in a way of of Francis Collins yeah and big shoes talk a little bit about the succession of Watson Collins green yeah I don't know how green got in there that's a little intimidating um big shoes to fell but you know one of the things I would immediately point out is especially at the stage of becoming the director of the institute I think my assuming the Raines the Institute it was a very different circumstance than what Jim and Francis had yeah and and the reason for that is that you know when you and you explored this with each of them I mean when they were brought in in each case it was to run a project it was to run the human genome project that was the major focus when they arrived on the scene and you know when I was asked to become the director I was asked to come in and run an organization and I was asked to nurture the growth of a rapidly maturing field and that's very different circumstance than what what Jim certainly had but even what Francis had and I you know I think about what I had to do you know both organizationally and programmatically I mean organizationally it really was time to look at NHGRI in the current context of what was going on in genomics and how we were nurturing and funding programs and realizing that the structure of the organization had not changed since the human genome project and clearly the field was different we were different as an organization I would also say there was issues of transition at the leadership level and I had a I had to assemble a new leadership team because people were moving on or telling me they were getting near retirement and so forth and so I had to do a lot of changes to the institute organizationally and leadership-wise and to be honest with you that at times proved challenging I mean I think I just put my head down and said I'm gonna do this but there was some consternation to be honest with you by some of the people surrounding Francis in the leadership position being a little worried that why is this new guy going and tinkering with this institute that the NIH director used to lead I mean did he not know how to run at institutes so now it was why was it such a fixer-upper you know and I got a little bit of pushback every once in a while about some things but I mean it was never from Francis and in fact I think I told him about almost everything I plan to do in renovating the place and you agree with it and you all agree with it and in some cases you even said you know that probably was overdue I wasn't going to do that at the tail end of my directorship and it all made sense but you know so organization there was a lot of and I I just think in in Jim's case and in Francis case the laser focus was we just got to get this human genome project to be successful so I'm not saying mine was harder or theirs was harder was just very different I also think programmatically it was there were a different set of challenges that I had a face one we've talked about a little already was really better defining what was NHGRI's place on the NIH in particular landscape because everybody's doing genomics what are we doing unique that was never an issue earlier for Francis or Jim I think the other thing that I face I certainly felt this quite strongly was my main push early on is as visualized in that 2011 strategic plan was to start to move the Institute's research focus extending it beyond basic genomics and start to think about clinical applications and I walked into tension it's the classic tension between basic research and clinical researchers and and that's something that other institutes had been dealing with for decades but I was facing it not only with my internal staff I was facing it with my community some people being very against that or you know some people feel and I was going too fast others that I was going too slow most people were pretty unhappy what I finally concluded was these issues I was dealing with both organizationally and programmatically these were middle-aged problems that's what institutes have to go through when they're middle-aged and and Jim and Francis got to preside over an institute in in youth and adolescence and they didn't have to deal with a middle-aged institute which I I had to deal with and I continue to deal with it's just a different life phase of the organization so could each of you talk about one of the signature features of NHGRI has been a strong association with open science with a particular style of doing science that is we share we get stuff out as quickly as we can and we get it as broadly available as possible talk a little bit about how that works and what you see is the signal events obviously the Bermuda principles is one of the landmarks there but many many other steps so talk about how you think about that strategically as the directors of this place I'm glad you brought it up because I think in the view of long-term sort of historical contribution I think the open science attitude which was born particularly out of those conversations in the genome community is one of the most significant contributions this whole effort has made and has now spread into many different areas of biomedical research and certainly now as NIH director I see the evidence for that all around me of people saying you have to have your data sets available we're making that now a requirement not just for things like sequencing the human genome but for all manner of science that people are doing and it's it's become the norm it's sort of the the ethical standard is that you don't hoard your data you make sure that it's as accurate it can be but you put it out there and it's revolutionary in terms of how it empowers all of the bright brains that are out there to build upon what's being developed it's crowdsourcing in in the most appropriate positive way and all of that sort of going back to that day at Bermuda which I think we talked about before which arose and it might not have because the people who were there making those decisions had no real authority to do so but they did anyway on the basis really I think of of a moral argument that you're taking dollars that people have contributed to this effort to a public program and there's no justification for not putting the information out there so that it can be used for ultimate human benefit but we had Fort Lauderdale after that sort of the next go round of okay that now is the norm for DNA sequence but what about other kinds of large-scale data and the idea of a community resource project and the fact that if you were doing one of those you better make your data available the same principle applies that was a tumultuous meeting that almost fell apart but actually kind of got grabbed out of well on that point does it feel like we would have ended up at the same place anyway or does it feel inevitable or does it feel like something that was highly contingent and I you know obviously a parallel universe where there was no Bermuda would be interesting to see I think ultimately the case is so compelling for public good and I do think public good drives decisions eventually looking at our congress right now eventually seems like it could be almost infinite but for this kind of argument to not have reached this point eventually it's a little hard for me to imagine but it might have taken a decade or more to get there and a whole lot of hoarding might have happened and progress might have been impaired and science would have I think suffered and the public would have suffered so yeah I think it mattered a lot I think it was a huge part of why we all look at what the human genome project did and say that really changed everything and how many other institutes thinking about this the same time that you all were doing your reference sequence were they drifting in the same direction is what's your sense about that occasionally you know some amulated some I think sort of said yeah it's not practical or I don't I've got too many other things to deal with I don't think there was a universal commitment here's one of the points I would make because I might agree with Francis that eventually we might have ended up there but I'm going to tell you you know I I took over as director a little over five years ago and one of the things I inherited was a process to generalize data sharing across the NIH for all genomic data because they had gone from sort of Bermuda principles to Fort Lauderdale principles to principles for sharing genome-wide association study data for example the GWAS policy and it just started a committee process trans-NIH to get a conversion from GWAS data to all genomic data to be shared by policy across NIH intramural extramural and make it sort of so universal which I think is just so obvious the resistance the inertia to give so I think if we didn't continue to put huge energy into this you know Laura Rodriguez and I subcommittees and subcommittees and subcommittees of just you know carrying very heavy stones up a mountain weeks and weeks and meetings and meetings here we are in 2015 and we're just five years later we are just rolling out this NIH wide genomic data sharing policy I know for fact I can tell you that if we hadn't been carrying these stones up the mountain it was not going to happen in 2015 I'm not sure what have happened by 2020 so I think you know NHGRI and other converts that we have and I think we have far more across the NIH now than we had five years ago absolutely have to put the in it we just it's not a matter of if we're going to do it it's just how working out the mechanics how would you get this written into grant language how do you what are the legality it's all those operational things and it does take time and there is resistance and and and there's many micro examples where we've seen genomics communities merging with disease research oriented communities and we just say well of course we're going to share the data and there's pushback so I I don't believe it would happen nearly as soon if it wasn't for the push that started in Bermuda but that movement continues and we're not letting up and people could see it really made a difference it did result in more rapid progress and that created sort of a delightful contagion where other kinds of data that had not been made public now people began to ask well why not look at clinical clinical trials data I mean here we are having just put out this notice that all NIH funded in fact all us funded research in clinical trials is going to have to release the results in summary form 12 months after they collect the last data point shocking to imagine that and shocked a lot of clinical researchers to realize this is not just a suggestion and this is a requirement that I don't think we would be in that space with that kind of data if we hadn't first shown with genome data how valuable it is to just get over it this idea that you can hang on to your data for indefinite periods of time until it suits you and you grew up in human genetics where that clearly was not the norm well you could say that yeah the human geneticists were not exactly role models in many ways there were some of the worst offenders in terms of unwillingness to share samples share data share anything in fact in a way the two of you represent a generational shift with human genetics and then you're growing up at one of the epicenters of yeast and nematode biology that is this open science we share everything along the way I'm glad you mentioned nematode because I do think what was done with cl against was a really important sort of setting the stage and when we had that Bermuda meeting it was Sulston and Waterston who were particularly powerful in convincing everybody that you have a lot to gain by immediate release and you have no way of justifying the alternative so I wanted to we're getting near the end of time and I want to actually ask each of you kind of here's your chance if you is there a part of this story that just doesn't feel quite right in the previous accounts that are out there in the world are there things that um you wish the world knew about or go another direction what are the things that you think are most memorable or most significant about your respective periods as the as the directors of this institute I guess what sticks in my mind most is the ability to pull some of the most creative energetic brilliant people who would have been doing something else together to work as a team on these projects and uh yeah I do remember sometimes where that was not easy and difficult conversations had to be had but mostly I remember how impressed and inspired I was by how people who could have demanded to get all the credit because they had the skill sets in any other field that that would have been likely to happen they were willing to say no no the goal here is what matters we're gonna do this together we recognize that nobody succeeds unless everybody succeeds and have a chance to participate in that culture change for science because that hadn't really been done in life sciences before that I'll remember and now you see it happening much more readily but at the time it was pretty radical uh it was inspired what would be the story that you would tell that would most exemplify that that cultural norm shifting is that is that the reference sequence itself or is this other project that you're thinking about in that kind of collegial you know it's all of them but maybe for me especially because the sequencing and half map were ones where I really was in that role of trying to keep the team together and and that was not easy I mean in the dark days where congress was questioning whether there was a need for a public sequencing project anymore and the private project was making lots of claims about what they had accomplished but nobody could see the data so we were sort of at a disadvantage because our data was all out there and you could see what was done and what wasn't uh there was a particular moment where the public project leaders really were beaten down and almost ready to say maybe we should just say let them do it out there and eventually maybe the data will be public and maybe that'll be okay that was a very intense Friday morning and I knew that was coming and I had stayed up all night thinking about how to make the right kind of points about why this was historically so important and why yet wasn't fair the way it was being portrayed but why everything that people had worked for was actually on the brink of working because this was at the point where we were just about to really take off. Is this like post hearing in the house so may salara announces July the hearing happens is this in the wake of that hearing or a little it's six months after that with the sort of constant barrage of PR coming at us and many questions informally coming at us from the Congress about why are you still there that was uh challenging time but people got it and needed to vent a little bit and uh because my gosh these people worked so hard I mean what we went through uh trying to ramp up to a thousand base pairs a second seven days a week 24 hours a day from where we had started and constantly having to revise and make a new plan because the technology came along to make it so I mean what we put those sequencing centers through month after month just when they thought there was like a trajectory and then it got shifted again and they had to retool amazing dedication. On a whiplash I remember I mean I watched this because I had a fairly close view and it was a lot of whiplash but they seemed to tolerate it because of the laser focus on what the goal was and a willingness and it was a goal not just to say we did it but we gave it away. You know one of the untold things it's not a specific example but it's a pattern and I find especially as I talk to young students and trainees especially those who were like not even born when the genome project started and there are a lot of those now aren't there are read about the genome project and and projects like it and just think that there was this playbook on day one exactly what we were going to do yeah right there is I think one of the untold or maybe misunderstood perceptions of these large genomic initiatives whether it's the genome project whether it's hat map whether it's encode thousand genomes etc etc etc I mean whether it's precision medicine whether it's just this all and a lot of common fund projects along the way human microbiome project and so forth is the idea that when they get announced and even when they first get funded that there is just a clear path of what we're going to do and you know and I joke about thinking back in the genome project day one you know there I am a postdoctoral fellow in Maynard Olson's lab and you know we were terrified we had we had no idea how we were going to do any of these things and we had audacious goals both at the project level but what you're funded for but also the big project level but it's true for every one of these things is that you start and you really have no idea the fact that we put our names on a paper you know in 2003 that said we're going to get to a thousand dollar genome and if you would have asked any of the authors of that paper the three g's or fc you would have asked you know how are you going to do that we would have said we have no idea you know we have no idea and yet I think I think students will read look back on that and say oh yeah 2003 they laid out a plan for getting to a thousand dollar genome and they followed the plan and there they got to be but it's this it's a it's a consistent pattern with every one of these things you just simply lay out audacious goals you say a few things about how you're going to get started to reach them and then you figure it out and I got to say the irony of having this conversation on this day this is January 29th 2015 tomorrow morning there will be another audacious program laid out by none other than the president in the east room of the white house same place is where that announcement of the draft genome happened 15 years ago and again it'll be an audacious program where the details are very unclear and maybe people assume that we know what we're talking about well in general terms we do but most of what really has to be worked out is going to have to be worked out as we go along that's why it's fun actually you have to have nerves of steel though you're willing to announce audacious things and say you're going to achieve them and having no real idea at a detail level how you're going to do it but I think I think this institute and increasingly NIH has this track record this works and I think part of it is and I think it's the spirit that Francis was speaking to about the participants the Human Genome Project was that when you can point to a goal and you get people believing in it that they're willing to sort of come together and be flexible and nimble because you have to be and they'll rally around and work together to achieve the goal that's the genome way so the the high point slow points you told us a moment Francis and I appreciate your sharing that kind of that low point moment what are the compensatory euphoric moments that you guys can think of that are associated with with running this place a particular moment that just kind of captures this is why this is a fantastic thing to do I guess I will revert back to my roots as a physician and when something comes out of all of this that actually sheds a bright new light on a medical problem that was completely obscure before those get me pretty excited so when there is a kid whose strange disease was about to take their life and DNA sequencing turns out to explain it and not only explain it but explain it in a way that immediately suggests an effective action and that kid is now happy in third grade that that's like wow so can you tell us the story and I don't know if this is public or not but I'm sure there's a backstory for who was sitting in the box with the first lady and the so that was Bill Elder who's a medical student with cystic fibrosis and yeah that's that's another one of those moments of well you know how long has it been since the CF gene was identified 1989 I don't know does anybody know that in this one lap cheese lab and my lab banged away in that and it was so incredibly painful without a genome to guide you it would be so easy you know but now to have us go all the way through those many painful steps of trying to use that information and ultimately come up with an effective therapeutic and have it work so incredibly well for those people who have g551d in the mutation in CFTR and that's what Bill Elder has and here's this incredibly healthy looking medical student yeah who went from a pretty tough space that he was in now to in his view having a pretty normal projection of his ability to live a life that's pretty amazing and HapMap you know we started out this process of trying to discover variation in the genome is it going to actually turn out you can use this and where we early on in the process coming up and with the first what was it first 95 snips that people tried coming up with a very effective linkage for macular degeneration I mean it's like hey this is going to actually shed light who knew that that gene C4H was going to turn out to be relevant to this disease just those moments of revelation where you realize yeah we did all this work we built all this really cool foundational information and that was amazing in itself but it's starting to go somewhere it's starting to actually help people with really difficult medical problems that's the dream I would I mean the euphoric moments that I've had already in five years I would certainly say any of these examples where you see clinical home runs are euphoric for me especially as the person who I think has really worked hard to start to shift the institute's focus to include clinical applications of genomics and so seeing that relevance it validates it I have to tell you I have a lot of micro euphoric moments when I hear from members of the community when they say nice things to me and thank me because I have to admit following in the footsteps of Watson and Collins those are big big shoes to fill and at times you sort of sit there and say wow am I ever going to be as good as you know and it's at this institute has a lot of rich history and leading it as a little intimidating so when I hear from people in the outside world you know who come up and say nice things about what's happened to the institute my leadership of it I have to admit I find that extremely gratifying I'll tell you the third thing that because it in many ways it also represents a an expansion of genomics beyond a scientific discipline and that is it's relevance in society and I would say that one of the things I'm already incredibly proud of is the fact that we developed this partnership with the Smithsonian institution to create an exhibition on genomics which is at the National Museum of Natural History for 14 months and is now touring North America for five years and I'm proud of the exhibition but symbolically I'm proud of the fact that that it's been so incredibly embraced as an important thing to do because the relevance of genomics to society and that genomic literacy is now so important and to me not only do I think that's a great thing for the institute but as somebody who got involved in genomics on day one of the field as a as a young trainee seeing that maturation from you know this geeky scientific enterprise to sequence the genome to now making it relevant for medicine to now making it relevant for society I have to admit that that is going to be high on my list of proudest moments yeah Eric I gotta agree with you on that and along with that I guess another high point really was getting Gina the genetic information nondescript nation act passed that took 12 years of incredible effort on the part of lots of people with what appeared to be success always resulting in failure and then ultimately pushing it over the finish line and to be in the oval office when that was signed and then you knew it was really there that was a high point for sure and we had a great party afterwards and then all of these things that Francis and I just gave us highlights must be the reason why genomics gets talked about a lot in the oval office these days apparently and that that's got to say something too the fact that you know in just a little over a quarter centuries a very young discipline of genomics NHGRI has been the leader of it and here it is a major focus for the president of the United States in a real substantive and intellectual way that that says a lot about the field says a lot about the institute well thank you guys


What's good jobs your boy Ross back again with another video So we're gonna check out 10 best championship matches from the Royal Rumble pay-per-views, man Royal Rumble is literally right around the corner. So, you know, it's always good that the pay-per-view Hopefully, you know, it has a good of men's and Royal Rumble actual match and Having some matches, you know throughout the show that are actually quite entertaining. So I'm looking forward to Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens match. I think it's gonna be fantastic. I enjoy their their last man standing match From a few years ago outside of the botched ending that match was fun and chaotic And I wonder if it's gonna be on this list because that was a pretty good match, man They had a pretty good view So it's always good to have good matches sprinkled throughout the actual Royal Rumble pay-per-view So we're gonna check out some of the best championship matches from WWE when it comes to this pay-per-view appreciate all the love and support you guys have shown on the channel and Yeah, let's get right to this one Royal Rumble is WWE's best pay-per-view event. It's the most fun It's the one everyone looks forward to the most It has the most intrigue involved and it makes Sullivan feel all warm and cuddly inside But while the Royal Rumble matches are what most people tune into the show to see the Rumble event Has yielded an incredible amount of stellar matches of the non Royal Rumble variety as well I know the title of this video says greatest championship matches But for the sake of keeping this video a lot more uniform I'm gonna just take the time right now to give the Royal Rumble 1992 and Royal Rumble 2016 the flowers They deserve both as great matches for the WWE championship But this is a list for the non Rumble matches out there If we needed a couple more to fluff up the list and get it to 10 Maybe we would have included them but there is no shortage of great matches from the Rumble to give flowers to So here daisies and roses and tulips to you all tulips whoop whoop tulips whoop whoop I'm Tempest hailing from parts fun known and these are the 10 greatest championship matches from the Royal Rumble But before we get on with our list make sure of course like this video Subscribe and enable notary public loan if you haven't already fun list just like it and it really helps out the channel So just ring that bill ring it ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding Number 10 the Dudley's versus Edge and Christian 2001 back Here is the match that Adam Blampier refused to have not be on this list The 2001 Royal Rumble is one of the best WWE pay-per-views of all time And it does indeed have one of the best opening matches of any WWE pay-per-view The WWE tag division was still firing on all cylinders in 2001 with the epic game of musical belts being played between the hardy's The Dudley's and edging Christian yeah the latter of those two teams going toe-to-toe at the 01 Rumble the action is crisp The crowd is in Fuego. You get a title change which always fires the people up And the whole match is just filled to the brim with peak attitude era energy that just makes me feel so There may be better russled matches out there, but here at PFK HQ And the vibes in this match are immaculate well as long as you ignore the poorly aged Concussion selling from Bubba Ray Dudley, but hey it was a different much stupider time Number nine Chris Jericho versus the Rock 2002 Chris Jericho's reign is undisputed WWF champion is not remembered for many good things He beat the Rock and Steve Austin in the same night to win the title and then well Jericho never really brings up What happened next? Rain was pretty stinky with the focus in his feuds going everywhere but on him But throughout all of this there is one glimmer of quality which is crazy You would think someone beating the Rock in the stone cold in the same night. That's a legendary thing You would think that we kind of calipote him, but they didn't really go anywhere that it's funny The stone cold and the Rock was so over They're one of the few individuals they were just so over that people cared more about Whatever storyline they were involved in a lot of times if they weren't the champion They cared about their storylines more than the actual champion That's when you know you're mega over when the fans they don't need the championship to be on you to still want to see more of you It's it's it's kind of a crazy thing Wrestling in the form of his Royal Rumble 2002 title defense against the Rock Jericho and the Rock have always had very good chemistry together Whether it be as promo partners tag partners or opponents and even with copious amounts of interference and shenanigans from notable worst referee of all time Patrick as well as a belt shot nut shot and the most blatant feet on the rope spot ever Yeah, this is a really good match. This again has the kind of attitude era wackiness that gets 2000s crowd all hot and bothered and if the entirety of Jericho's reign would have carried the same energy Maybe people would have looked back on it a little more fondly John Cena versus umaga Some man. I forgot about this. Damn. It's a piece of umaga, bro. I don't lie to you Umaga was a very good opponent for John like he came off very very menacing like How we look at solo of Sakura now as this menacing threat or what not? It's the same thing with umaga. Like he's seen very dangerous and I at one point. There's a few times within this field. I'm like, yeah I don't know if John's gonna come out on top on this one, bro No, but 2007 was the year that John Cena was the man His track record on pay-per-view that year was incredible serving as the highlights of his year-long reign as WWE champion The beginning of that year, however, saw him go toe-to-toe with a man who never became world champion in WWE But absolutely should have the Samoan bulldozer fell to Cena at New Year's Revolution But stood toe-to-toe with Cena again in a last man standing match at the Royal Rumble a match that surpassed their previous Imaginable that match was not a finesse performer by any means especially at this point in his career But he damn sure could fight and a rough and tough weapons filled brawl with a monster This was unconscious with the ring. Oh, that's that's such a crazy visual I remember watching this. He took the top rope. He had to literally Show him out with a submission just to put him out. That's how that's how like Monsters Is my kind of fight that was shame that umaga never quite reached world title contention again after this match But this was certainly one of the best title matches of Cena's career to that point and a great way to kick off Cena's impeccable 2016 that she was number seven Kevin Owens versus Roman rain debate about whether to include Kevin Owens versus Roman Reigns in 2021 Their last man standing matches also very fun and includes the third best use of a golf carton wrestling history behind Sammy Gavara's brains being scrambled and Raven almost killing Russell mania x7, but that And this one does the referee also stops his count to help really escape defeat in that match, which is just absurd Yeah, they at the Royal Rumble in 2017 then universal champion Kevin Owens puts his title on the line against Roman Reigns in a no DQ Chris Jericho in a shark cage match They could have put they could have put that one and and I got the the match is confused because they did have another match At a Royal Rumble so I did get the match is confused They could have put that one on the list granted once again Even though there was no crowd for that Royal Rumble in the box ending It's still one of my favorite Royal Rumble matches as it was so fucking fun They could have put that one on the list, but this is another good substitution as well There are some nutty spots in this. Yeah, like Kevin Owens being pushed through the iron throne This was instead of being made of a thousand swords. It was made of a thousand chairs A superman punch with brass nuts and finally a run in from Braun Strowman to somewhat ruin the fun That's bad. Although it kept Roman from beating Owens from the title. That's good That's good, but it meant Roman ended up being the number 30 entrance in the Royal Rumble that night. That's bad match itself That's good Kevin Owens versus Dean Ambrose 2016 Quite a lot of time remember this match is on this list Here we have another example of one this time with Kevin Owens taking on intercontinental champion Dean Ambrose I don't think I remember this match. This match is memorable to me for a few reasons Among them are the excellent finish with KO taking a hit and bump through a tower of tables And big kev putting his hand directly in Michael Cole's face and breaking his glasses Which I'm choosing to believe was completely intentional and adds a full star of enjoyment This is just such a fun match The 2016 Rumble is a damn fine pay-per-view and this is the best match on the whole show The intercontinental championship has gone through more than its fair share of peaks and valleys during its lifetime But every once in a while the belt would end up on the right people able to put on a performance of the night and result In a truly fantastic match before the belt would inevitably end up back on the miss and oh god I've just kicked the miss fan hornet's nest and I'm gonna run now. Bye Chris Jericho versus Chris Benoit 2001 a lot of the time we say the top two or three entries in a list can mostly be interchangeable As they all come pretty close to being the best But on this list any of these top five matches can be argued as the best one and you will hear no argument from me That being said here is my argument for number five by 2001 We had seen a drastic shift in the way of the ladder match Thanks to the likes the hearties dudlies and edging christian their tag ladder matches were revolutionizing the stipulation But we hadn't really seen the same for the singles ladder match Hbk and razor Ramon obviously had their classics and the rock and triple h was something entirely different But neither was truly emblematic of the direction the ladder match was going by the early 2000s Chris Jericho versus chris benoit on the other hand Absolutely was and holds up much better in the modern eye than its predecessors Crisp and sharp and exciting the two christs has put on an incredible performance at the 2001 Over the intercontinental championship featuring the first use of Jericho's ladder-assisted walls of Jericho This is a damn fine ladder. I think I've seen highlights. Of course one of the best paid reviews I don't think I remember watching a whole match. I may have to go number four. I can check it out The 2017 royal rumbles world title matches are both excellent But this one is a cut above the other John sena and aj styles 2016 rivalry had seen styles solidly ahead of sena in singles wins Resulting in styles winning the wwe championship in the fall now at the stakes raised even higher Sena now looked to tie rick flair 16 world championship record that actually isn't the real record But that's a fact for another time. Yes. This match is perhaps the peak of john sena's style big move kick out lie there This is this kick out repeat. This is a fun match formulaic match But I'll be damned if that formula didn't produce some incredible matches This match in particular is so impressive with sena and styles never leaving the ring once during their 24 minute classic They're just taking the 50,000 people in the alamo dome on a ride complete with intense drama An excellent character moments like styles reaching for his title after he's lost Only to collapse back to the map when he gets handed to sena You could argue this is the best match of john sena's career and what a career he's had Hey, man, can we I I really do want aj to be the champ again comment down below Let me know if you think aj styles should get at least one more wwe championship run, bro However, they split the titles off roman if we're able to get aj styles as the wwe champ one more time I would be okay with it I would be a okay with it, bro. The dude is just No pun intended phenomenal in the ring, man number three curt angle versus chris benoit 2003 boy the 2003 royal rumble is a funny show You have wwe's worst match of the year in scott steiner versus triple h and then immediately afterwards You have wwe's best match of the year in curt angle versus chris benoit angle and benoit always had Absolutely insane chemistry the kind of chemistry where they could just get in the ring together and just grapple with nothing being called Nothing being planned ahead of time and it would still end up being by far the best thing on the show This match is the best of their epic shows the testament to how good they were in the ring, you know That that's that's really all it is, bro. It shows their Their their skill level is above many others. It just shows when you can go out there No calls you can just kind of get a feel do some grappling I don't know what to tell you that's that You can't you know, that's just something you got to have, you know rivalry with a crowd hungry to see benoit win his first wwe championship Only to be disappointed by angle not willing to give up his title I say disappointed loosely of course as the 15 000 in attendance in boston gave benoit a standing ovation after the match Which is always a sign that the crowd is appreciated a special performance Among them may have been triple h as kurt has said that triple h told him This was the best match he had ever seen when he got back through the curtain Maybe he was just amazed by the gap in quality between this match and the one he had just had Yeah That was a good one Oh, that was such a good one. I enjoyed this one, boy I enjoyed a triple h match that is Exceptional however, this is one neither triple h nor mcfoli were the top guy to carry wwe in 2000 But with steve austin on the shelf for an extended period of time and the rock otherwise occupied with his own path to WrestleMania trips and cactus jack were the ones to take the reins of the main event scene during the start of 2000 And i'll be damned if they didn't put on the best rivalry of the year Triple h had yet to fully prove himself as the top heel of wwe He had been wwe champion a few times and was well on his way But needed a true career solidifying rivalry to cement that position Enter cactus jack the hardcore legend and the perfect person to make triple h have to prove his toughness in order to remain Incredible and shout out to to mcfoli. He he's done the job for so many people in the business It's insane. He did the job for orton to show his toughness He did the job for edge to show his toughness He did the job for triple h to show his toughness He didn't really have to do too much for the undertaker because he just came off as an imposing threat But guess what?    I want you to understand. He took a pedigree handcuffed to some goddamn thumb tacks a pedigree wall handcuffed to some thumb tacks face Be the most integral moment of triple h's rise to the main event scene and it is by far My favorite triple h match of all time But in terms of matches at the royal rumble fantastic man finishes just shy of number one Brock Lesnar versus john sena versus seth rollins 2015 God awful put it in a hole set it on fire and bury it still screaming bad I forgot 2015 royal rumble event is it does have the best example I forgot that that bro that that match happened that same show I forgot Damn no this match is great.  This was the most perfect example of brock lesnar suplex city destroyer of all mankind run And the people were 100 behind him and his sheer awesomeness He had amazing spots like brock lesnar suplexing both of j&j security And once seth rollins hitting the most graceful flying elbow of all time and lesnar emerging from the grave to run wild And retain his title because unstoppable killer brock lesnar was at one time the thing we all wanted and then unfortunately And that's our list make sure I forgot that was that I it's so crazy because my mind wants to distance the greatness from the sheer utter Horribleness, so that's why I forgot it was on the same show I for whatever reason I thought that match was on a completely different show And maybe subconsciously my brain has separated that great match from this horrible ending of a Royal rumble because it didn't want to make the connection that this was all on one show Because I truly forgot it was on the rule on that same card Either way, I am okay with that being number one. That was a very very good match Honestly, you can honestly switch out the two. You could maybe put mc foley i mean mankind No, mc foley versus a triple h street fight match You could put that at number one and this at number two depending on your preference But I'm not okay with i mean i am okay with that being number one But comment down below. Let me know what's your favorite championship match from the royal rumble Let me know down below, man And do you think there's gonna be some good match good championship matches this year at this year's role rumble Like I said at the beginning of the video. I think Kevin Owens and Roman Reigns. I think they're gonna knock it out the part I think it I'm willing to bet. It's probably gonna be the match of the night I think they're going to knock it out the part once again, and there's more story here even before it's gonna I can't wait. That's one match. I am really looking forward to obviously. We know Roman still not losing but I am still looking forward to seeing how things play out But comment down below. Let me know those things man, and I appreciate all love and support and once again I am still your undisputed YouTube personal chair for the world. Appreciate y'all kicking me see our next one