MMA Fighting - #464 – Luke Rockhold, Colby Covington, Jimmy Smith, Mike Winkeljohn

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

Luke Thomas speaks to Luke Rockhold about his health, plan to move to light heavyweight, more (48:27); Colby Covington about his perspective on being passed over for a title shot at UFC 235, Tyron Woodley vs. Kamaru Usman, what's next for his career, more (1:36:12); Jimmy Smith about parting ways with the UFC, his next step, more (1:02:53); coach Mike Winkeljohn about Jon Jones' performance against Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 232, his upcoming bout against Anthony Smith, more (1:21:59). Luke also breaks down and analyses how formidable of a challenge Kamaru Usman is for champ Tyron Woodley on the Monday Morning Analyst. We also answer your questions on the latest news in MMA on Sound Off (1:52:36) and A Round of Tweets (36:42). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's the Mixed Martial Arts Hour. It is Monday, January 7th, 2019, and Caesar is home. Welcome, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas, and this is the mixed martial arts MMA hour right here on MMAFiting.com. Thank you so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it.

I hope you had a great weekend. It wasn't a whole lot of MMA going on, but the train rolls on, ladies and gentlemen, on the show today. Like LeBron's rings, not one, not two, not three, but four guests for you. Let's see, Jimmy Smith will be here at around 1240 at around 1 o'clock. Rockhold will be here at 120. Coach to John Jones. Mike Winklejohn will be here.

And last, but certainly not least, the man who appears who have been passed over for a title shot, Colby Covington will be here. Plus, you will be here at around 150-ish. When we do the sound off, we take your calls, as always, 844-866-2468. and your tweets as well, using the hashtag the MMA hour. So yes, I hope everyone had a great weekend. I have my cup of coffee here. I went to the local hipster coffee shop because that's all they have here.

And I asked them if they had any splendor, and they told me no. And looked at me as if I was asking for something that could kill rats. So instead, I had to drink stevia, and it tastes like garbage. So anyone who puts stevia in their coffee is a monster. All right, neither here nor north air. it is time to get to the first segment of the show. There was news that broke over the weekend. You can catch all the details on MMAFighting.com,

namely that UFC 235, probably going to be headlined by John Jones taking on Anthony Smith. John Jones still has to get his license in Nevada. But the bigger story in my judgment, although that's pretty big, is the co-main event. Tywin Woodley, your UFC World War Champion, is going to defend his title against the Nigerian Nightmare Kumaru Usman.

That's an interesting story. isn't it? I've got a whole lot of thoughts about it, but the first one is, how is Kamaru going to do against Tyrone Woodley? With that, it is time for the Monday morning analyst. Okay, boys and girls, time for the Monday morning analyst right here on the MMA hour. Let me take a sip of this rat poisoned coffee. Mmm, stevia. What losers drink. God, that is terrible. Who are these idiots that put that in coffee? All right, neither here nor there. Um, so as I mentioned, Kamaru Uspan is going to be taken on Tyrone Woodley, UFC 235 March 2nd, I think in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Why is that important? Well, for the reasons that Colby Covington got passed over, we'll talk about

that a little bit later on the show. But it just got me to thinking, okay, how would an Usman versus Woodley fight go? Now, this is not what I'm about to show you some kind of full preview. Normally what I do is I look at fights that happened after the fact and then piece them together. If I could be candid, I think I'm a little bit better at figuring out what happens. happened versus what will happen. I find most predictive analysis, frankly, to be wrong in MMA, even by people who are quite qualified to give analysis. It's just hard to know, but there are probably a couple of things we could point to that are at least worth keeping in mind. That's what I'm going to do today. With that being said, let me give a bit of a preamble here. I'm one of the

few guys. People look at numbers in MMA, but they look at them at a very cursory level, or you often see this rejection of numbers. Oh, what do numbers really tell us? in MMA. They're not reliable. These people are all uniformly wrong. It is true that you have to have some modesty about what numbers can show you. It is true that in some cases, they can't tell you much at all, but it is more often than not the case that they can illuminate in a lot of really interesting ways. There are so many variables in MMA that sometimes you can get lost. But I believe that the numbers in MMA provide a lot of direction. I believe that the stats are incredibly important and fight metrics work is often maligned in this regard totally unfairly in my judgment

even by people who are otherwise qualified to give analysis i am not going to be one of those people in so far as i am qualified their numbers are good their numbers work and more often than not it will lead you in the right direction if we can go to the slides here one gentleman i said his name last time let me show you here if you guys can see this is the guy that helps me out with all the numbers if you want to give him a follow on twitter mjc flip script. It is the worst Twitter name in the world. He probably thinks Stevia is delicious in coffee. He is a dumb man for putting this as his Twitter handle. But that being said, it is a, his feed, Michael Carroll, he works at FightMetric, is a treasure trove of interesting information. And he helped

me out massively with today's sort of first draft study of Kumar Usman and how he might match up well. So give this guy a follow. If you don't, I don't know what you're doing. Big thanks to Michael Carol, even though he has a stupid Twitter name. Okay? So, how might Kamar Ustman match up with Tyron Woodley? What are the ways in which that could happen? You might think they can knock each other out because they both throw big heavy punches, in particular Tyrone Woodley has a number of first round finishes in his career, right? His last fight was one such of them. So that's a possibility. In fact, even Kamar Usman, who's not really a finisher, but he has one knockout win in his career inside the UFC. He's one head and arm triangle as well. That's one way it could go.

But more often than, or more likely, I would say, rather, is that that's probably not what's going to happen. Let me set something up. Let me tell you about what the number say, about Kamara Usman, and then let's plug that into what some of the known weaknesses of Tyrone Woodley might be. So we'll do that by doing this. Here we go. These are all courtesy of fight metric. If you can't read these, let me read these to you. Here's a fact, here are some facts about Kamara Usma. Because you can see, I've got something approximating Nigerian green here. Forgive me if it's not exactly correct. 40 takedowns. He is already tied for eighth in welterweight history, which by the way is the richest statistical division for takedowns by far. 52% takedown

accuracy. That's fifth among active welterweights. His takedown defense rate 100%. 4.47 takedowns landed per 15 minutes. That is the fourth highest rate in welterweight history. We continue. Here are some more. Usman takedowns. If you can't read these, don't worry, I will read these out to you. He landed six versus Al-Hasson, I believe, no, not Razak, but the other one. Six versus Leon Edwards. Five versus Yakovlev. Eight versus Mech. Twelve against Dosanjos, by the way, these are all the most takedowns that any of these fighters have ever given up in a UFC fight. So one, two, three, four, five, including a former champion, when they surrendered takedowns against this guy, that's the most that they've ever in their careers done that. Keep that in mind. Let's keep going. One more

of these. In his last fight against Hafele Dosanjaf, that was from the ultimate fighter finale. If you'll recall, Usman landed 130 significant strikes and 12 takedowns versus Dosan. How good is that? Here's how good that is. He became the second fighter in UFC history to connect 100 plus significant strikes and 10 plus takedowns in a single UFC fight. The only other guy to do that was Kane Velazquez against Junior Los Santos at UFC 155. And that's what he absolutely melted, melted, excuse me, JDS's face over time. One of the all-time great beatings, truly, in UFC heavyweight history. He matched that with that fight. So what lessons can we draw from all of this? As I mentioned, this is a, this is not the, I never

presented these findings in any case, even if this was a more finished product. I would need much more time to do a tape study. I only had an afternoon. But I don't present these to you as the authoritative findings or the only findings or the best findings. I present these to you as my findings. I always encourage you to go find everybody else's and then draw your own conclusions. This is how I see it. So, when we're We take into consideration some of these career statistics and some of these career highlights, and there are more numbers we could look at. Here's what I have, and by the way, look at the tape as well.

Here's what I came up with, number one, elite output. The amount of output that this guy has, the amount of volume that he has in a fight is extraordinary. That's not merely true per round, but it's true over time. In other words, as each round passes, he typically has more offense. as the fight goes on. Cardio machine, and in the fifth round, he is throwing and attacking much more than in the first round, or if it's a three-round fight there. There's a couple of exceptions where that's not quite true, where there's a couple of fights where he gets from one to two goes up and if from two to three goes down. But more often than that, you will see the curve goes just like that. As the rounds go on, his output gets more and more. To the point, as we showed you in the last slide, he's tying Kane Velazquez for the kinds of beatings he's handing out in terms of mixing up takedowns with strikes. Elite output. He can put out so much offense

that he's literally out there either matching or setting records. That's important. Number two, range and stance. He does a really good job Kamar Usman does of cage cutting, right? He likes to push out in to people. We've talked about it,

fighters being behind the two black lines. He's very, very good at that. He excels there. If you strike with him in the center of the cage at Hafeld Dos Anjos did, He actually had some success there. It's not to say that he can't fight there. He can.

I think he's a very formidable talent. I think his boxing and his kickboxing is a little bit underrated. But to be sure, his best work, I think it's probably fair to say, is as he pushes out, cage cuts. And what I mean by range and stance here accommodating wrestling, he fights rule of thumb. I shouldn't attempt a double leg unless I can reach out and touch you. If you're right here, I can attempt a double leg. But if I step back and now I can't reach you and you're a foot away, that's going to not saying I can't take you down, but it's going to create some problems. It's a general rule of thumb you should be able to reach out and touch somebody. We'll think about reaching out and touch somebody this way. In other words, what he'll do is he will change his stance in ways to accommodate his wrestling. So he's a switch stance fighter, which one creates confusion. But two, whatever leg you stand forward with, he'll give you the mirror opposite and then he'll threaten a lot of single legs and then use that as an entry. point to maybe a double or a waistlock or maybe go back to the single. But he doesn't always do

that, but he likes, he tends to favor whatever lead leg you show, he'll have the same lead leg on the opposite side, and he'll do that as he accommodates his wrestling, which obviously is a big part of his game. And then the range as well, going back to the range, being able to touch you for a double leg, he'll touch you with his hand. So he's always playing in this range where you don't know what takedown's going to come or if a takedown's going to come or if a big punch. And by the way, if I'm If I'm punching you in the same range where I can take you down, these are going to be strong whipping punches, right? These are going to be the kinds of big power punches. So he plays with that as well. That's what I mean by range and stance accommodating his wrestling. He can strike. He can strike in the way that enables his wrestling to take over, at least his tie-ups to take over. He'll do that with his range. He'll do that with his stance switching. It's all in the service of at least mixing it up and probably more especially his wrestling. Three, he's a round winner. He does have some finishes.

It would be very, very foolish to look at his record and say, this is a guy who can't finish. He had a nice thing knock it over Sergio O'Me Reich, and I think he had a head on a triangle, and he's like UFC debut or somewhere right around that. He has got the ability to put people away. But there are certain people whose games are built to win rounds. I'll give you another example.

She too has some spectacular finishes. But when you really think about how well she does against the elite of her division, more commonly, she wins rounds. Yawani and Jacek. Yes, the finish of Carlos Baza was tremendous. Yes, the beating she put on Jessica Penny was legendary. But more often than not, what does she do? She just lapsed these people, like she did against Jessica Androge or pick your favorite Yonani and Jacek win. It's not a slight.

It just tells you what the kind of thing they favor. part of the reason why he's able to accrue these big numbers is because these fights continue. They go two, three, four, five rounds. And that's how you get these whopping totals of strikes or takedowns. It's because his game is built to control. His game is built to dominate. His game is built to put forward pressure. His game is built to win rounds.

And that feeds into the fourth. How do you get elite output? How do you get a thing where you're mixing up boxing and wrestling and you're winning rounds constantly? It's because you manage your resources really well. He has a phenomenal gas tank, but what you'll notice is he doesn't, I'm going to call him a risk manager. That is not the same thing as risk averse. Far from it. Dude, he will slug it out with you.

Go and watch any of his fights. It's not that he's afraid, but he is smart and he is calculated. He'll manage his cardio and he'll manage his. risk. Think about the times you've seen him punched in the face. Usually it's single strike and he's out of the way. Or he got up kicked in the face by Dosanjos, but then he just sort of passed guard and got on top. There are moments in a fight where you're going to take your licks. But by and large, people don't put it on Kamara Usman ever. Why? Because he's tactically sound and he's defensively wise. He makes choices that enable him and he makes

choices that disable you, and that sounds kind of obvious, but a lot of people don't do that in enemy. They kind of flip a coin and just see which way the cookie crumbles here a little bit. He doesn't do that. He manages risk by imposing a controlling round-winning skill set. He's got the cardio to match it because he doesn't spend it on unnecessary wild amplitude things. It's built for elite output. It's built for wrestling, and he puts it all together. Again, if you give me a week or two to really study tape, I could probably give you a little bit more, but I think this is at least a basic, and I would call it that, a basic framework to at least understand what you're looking at, what you think about, when you think about Kumar Usman, why does he win? Because he has a designed

game to win rounds. He has an extraordinary amount of output. He has this style of wrestling that can be confused with his striking and all works and service of each other. He has resource management, and he doesn't make bad defensive choices. It's hard to hurt him because he's used. He's used to usually in a space where that doesn't happen. He will sometimes bite down the mouthpiece and slug it out with you, but that's pretty rare. By and large, he makes smart decisions about his cardio. He makes smart decisions about the round. He makes smart decisions about what he can get away with and what he can't.

He's a very smart fighter. Yeah? Okay. There you go. So with that being said, as I mentioned, he's got this incredible output. All right. Now, what does all this have to do with Tyron Woodley? Good question.

So what are Tyrone Woodley's famous losses? The one against Nate Marquart, but that was in Strike Force, and that was so long ago. I just don't know what you could take from that, so I'm not saying it doesn't mean anything, but for the most part, I don't want to pay attention to that. Plus, Nate Mark Ward is totally different than Kamar Usman, so maybe not that one. You could say Roy McDonald, that'd be a good one, right? But again, you go back and you watch it, and Roy McDonald just has at the time this really imposing jab. He was able to get in his, you know, opponent's faces and really a creative striking.

He was just a superior stand-up fighter, both in terms of what he could throw and how he could manage the space and then manage the interactions between them. So I'm not saying he doesn't have some of that, but I don't think that'd be a very apt comparison. I'll tell you which one is the apt comparison. Ready for this? The apt comparison is, and we want to be limited in how much we say it's apt. I would argue, quite humbly, it's Jake Shields. Why? Let me read you some stats here off my phone if I can. Yes, this is from my friend MJC Flip de Script, worst Twitter name in the galaxy. Here's what he had to say.

Shields won that fight. Now that was one of the most boring fights you could imagine, but Shields did in fact win. He went zero for 18 on takedown attempts against Woodley, which of course is usually not a great thing. For example, Maya, I think went 0 for 21. But shields through 211 significant strike attempts versus Woodley and ultimately outlanded him 82 to 60. What are some ways that he did that? Well, some of them is he had a good jab. He had a good low kick. He just kind of stayed active.

Not necessarily tools that Kamaro Usman uses. But what is the lesson there? Tyrone Woodley, often, not always, but often, tends to back up and seed territory. That's a bad matchup when you go against Kumar Usman, who loves to impose in that regard. Now, Tyrone Woodley has a 95, 94.8% takedown defense ratio. That is very, very high. But it turns out if you can't take him down, what you can do is kind of overwhelm him with offense, either if it lands or even if it's just attempted.

Danny's over here taking pictures for Instagram. Hi, Danny. That's the idea. You can almost spam him into nullification. Now, again, I'm not predicting that's the way it's going to go. You're like, oh, look, you're saying it's going to be a boring fight? I would at least take that into consideration, but it's too hard to say. These two lions could slug it out with their big power and somebody goes down in 30 seconds. I am very loathe to make specific predictions. other than to say we have seen guys have success against Tyron Woodley through output. What do we know about him? Elite output.

That is something to pay attention to. Let's take a look at some of these things here for just a second. Let me show you what I meant by. This is the career of Tyron Woodley. Pay attention to some of these numbers. I'm going to blow them up here for you. So against Darren Till, boy, look at those stats. If you can't see him, 57 significant strikes for Tyron Woodley, zero for Darren Till.

Not a great number. Against Demi and Maya, 57 to Maya's 28. Woodley had 54, Thompson, 53. Very, very close fight, as you can see. Woodley against Thompson, 61 to 43, 8 to 3 against Lawler. He did get outstruck by Gastlam, or at least numerically, numerically outstruck, I should say. That's another interesting one you could bring up, but I'm going to pass on it for now. 13 to 2 against Dong Hong Kim.

You can see, look at here. Look at here, son. Look a ha, son. Look a ha. All right. 26 to 49. McDonald, numerically outstriking him. Again, you saw it with John Jones, too.

If you can just stay active against some of these elite competitors. These elite competitors, man, they thrive on activity. They're judicious with their shots, but they're frequent as well. It's just something you see over and over and over and over again. Let's see, let's go, for fuck's sake. Let's go crying out loud. Everyone clowns me on this stuff because of how old I am. 14 to 13 against Condit, but then he injured him.

22 to 5 against Koshchek. And then this is the big one here, as I mentioned before. If you look right here, right there, 60 to 82. 60 to 82 he had. He was outstruck, just got in his face and was active, active, active, active, take down attempt, take down attempt, take down attempt, take down attempt, take down attempt, active, active. Turns out you can beat a guy like that if you do it that way.

And, of course, he beat you here on pretty quickly. All right, now, as I mentioned also, what do we know about Kamara Usman's stats? Let's take a look at those real quickly. And these are just, again, a cursory glance. I encourage you to go to Fightmetric.com and really dig through the numbers. Look at this output. First of all, look at Woodley's output, right? I'm just going to read you these numbers.

This is his significant strike total, 57, 57, 54, 6. 61, 8, 27, 13, 26, 14, 22, right? So somewhere in the teens to the high 50s or so. Look at Kamara Usman. 1.30 in a five-round fight. 66, 50, 16, and that was low. But he knocked him out inside of a round in that one. 90, 71, 41, 48, 15.

Yeah, it was Haider Hassan that he submitted in the first round. So what am I noticing here by this? If I blow up some of these numbers here, I'm noticing that he has already you can see higher output totals. Some of the same, but 90, 66, 130, 71. These are above what you typically see from Timber and Woodley. He is much more active. He is cutting you off.

He is in your face. He is playing with stances. He is playing with range in a way that accommodates his wrestling, his big heavy power, his ability to close the distance, to press you up against the cage, and then he's got a whole world of things that he could do. Now, there's one issue about the takedown. As I mentioned, Tyrone Woodley has a 94.8% takedown defense rate, right? Like an absurdly good takedown defense rate.

So one way to beat him would be to take him down. Now, how likely is that? Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know the answer to that. Let's say he can do it. Great. But let's say it's a shield situation where you can't. can't, but you can at least close the distance on them and you can bang on them and you can punch

them out. That'd be something you could try, right? And again, Tyrone Woodley might go in here and, like, I'm just giving you one side of the story here, to be clear. Like, there's a whole other side of the story about Tyron Woodley, but that's one thing you could do. You could just get up on top of them. There was one fight where Usman was able to get takedowns that had a lot of difficulty, and it was the Sean Strickland fight. Now, when I say a lot of difficulty, I'm saying relatively speaking. Remember, he's putting up totals on all these other guys that is the worst performances they've ever had in terms of takedown defense. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about relatively speaking, and it's the Sean Strickland fight, which, by the way,

where is that? That was back in 2017, so not too long ago, but he was able to still get, let's see, two takedowns in that contest. So let's take a look at some of this, all right? What did you notice right away? He's got a lead foot on the left. I think he prefers Orthodox. I could be wrong about that. But he can fight Southpaw, no problem. What do you see him doing?

Right away. Right away, what is the lesson here? Whoop. Where is Sean Strickland? Number one. Number two. Look at his lead foot. Yes, he might be trying to get outside lead foot position,

but more especially what he wants to do is at least either fake to the near side leg or actually go after it. You'll see him fake a lot in this fight on that near side, and then a couple times go after or a couple times, actually he doesn't. But it's a big part of the process. He likes to be, why?

Because I'm literally closer to you if I do it that way. It also might like shooting that direction, but it just shortens the distance that you have to travel if you're already in that shooting position and they have that other leg forward. So just keep that in mind.

So what do we see here? Let's see, he looks like he draws out of punch, gets under it, and you see him go right for the takedown. This is what I mean. He steps on his foot too, by the way. That's kind of funny, right? So look, right away, going after it.

I'm going to try and muscle through these here real quickly. He kind of gets behind him, picks it. Look at the strength of this, right? You see him, the foot, if you're Sean Strickland, you want that foot on the outside of the hip, presumably, because you can either run the pipe this way, or he can just he-man you and then do this. And then he drops the arm.

Watch the right arm here. Watch the right arm here of Kamar Usman. It's going to come around the back and now secure the waist. And he does a ton of work from this position. So even if you can't get Tyron Woodley down, he loves this. He gets his hands together. He knees the body. He puts weight on your hands. Why is it important that he can put out a lot of output? Well, one, for all the reasons we already stated. Number two, I do think that the notion that Tyron Woodley doesn't have cardio is totally overplayed, but if I had to ask who's got better cardio, the evidence suggests that he has much better cardio, at least late. Now, if the fight doesn't go that late, who cares? So, like,

does Tyrone Woodley have a bad gas tank? I don't believe that. I really don't think there's a lot of evidence for that. Does he have the same kind of gas tank that Kamara Usman does? That seems to be a little bit less supported by the evidence. So they go on, and you're going to see this a lot. He's going to lean in this kind of position behind that rear shoulder to get him to put his hands down the mat because it's tiring, it's hard. Meanwhile, he'll throw all kinds of offense. You see him, watch here. Look here. Hang on now. He comes around the side. Boom, throws a shot. He loves this, and this sort of controlling of the waist and the hips all in your lower back is getting taxed at the same time. He's really good at this, right? Look at the time on the clock, 416, okay?

I just keep that in mind. He's doing, you know, just controlling him here, off balancing him, All kinds of stuff. I mean, we can go through all these different tricks that he's doing. I just want you to pay attention to the control, right? And here he is. I mean, he could scoop out his leg here and take him down. This is what I mean, by the way, when I talk about risk management, not risk aversion, risk management.

Do I want to, there's a great BJJ scout video talking about Ben Asker, and when he first gets to the MMA, he borrowed some, like, jujitsu fundamentals, about like, oh, the thing you have to do is take someone down, then pass guard, then get them out, because that's typically the way that the progression is shown to you as like these are superior positions. But it can be that in modern MMAA, that that's not really the best way to approach a fight

that holding mount can be hard and then you end up losing the position. There could be other ways in which to control. What they found is that letting a guy get to base or to turtle and then controlling the waist and then the hands, you can have much longer control periods as a consequence. Keep your eyes on the clock. Rather than just scooping his leg out,

He'll get on top eventually, but, you know, tiring yourself, just have this control position, right? Sean Strickland is doing his thing. Now watch, 406. I can't show you all this footage because it will get fucked up, but here we are 242, and he's still here. Is he really trying to take the back? I don't think so. And Sean Strickland has to get up and fight the hands, which, by the way, Tyrone Woodley would probably do earlier. But as I mentioned, every round gets harder and harder, gets subsequently more and more.

and more offense. So even if he's rebuffed early, if he can stay in the fight and avoid that big knockout power, and that's a big if, he can put himself in a position to win. So here he is still, you know, threatening the back,

again, weight forward, the whole bit, right? And Sean Strickland's going to lean up, fight the hands here. He's going to get this left elbow inside like that, and that's going to enable him to turn and then they separate, right? Or eventually here.

By the way, I want you to pay attention to something here as well. Look at this, right? What do you see here? You're going to see a lot of guys try to control Usman with hand control, which is usually the right way to do something. I'm not saying it's not,

but there are ways to do it. Tavern Woodley does it better than most people. We're going to take a look at that in a minute, but I want you to pay attention to that. Remember, again, he's one of the best, he's one of the best analysts in the game or she, whoever it is. BJJ Scout has a video about,

we talked about all the adaptations about John Jones. He talked about one a while ago. where in the first fight with Cormier, he was trying some frames, and he was getting lit up. Then he tried, God, what was the second one he tried? It was like underhooking, and he was getting lit up. But then he tried underhooking and wrist control, and he was stopped. Cormia couldn't control him in the clinch anymore. It's not that it's not valuable, but there might be a way to do it.

People try it on him, this risk control thing, and it doesn't really go all that well for them. You'll see. Let me just sort of fast forward here. Takes him down, and then we move along. Okay, here we are later. I just want to show you how the length of time and the ways in which he's not really super going for positions, but he goes for them enough to make you react

than he can go the other way. He can throw in strikes the whole time. He keeps control. He just controls around, right? Here we are. Southpawal position again, right? Here he is. Coming in, testing it.

By the way, look he's testing range. Hold on here, right? Let's see, whoop. Let's see, testing range, testing range. Bok, throws a kick a little bit here, backs him up, shoots in, same side. just as I told you before, right? Comes in here, and now Sean Strickland's going to get that near side underhook right here, which is nice.

It saves him from the takedown, but watch this, right? Let's just sort of keep going here. He eventually, this is the same sequence. Look at the time on the clock. It's about 20 seconds. He separates and Usman throws a shot, misses, cage cuts, comes right in, eats a shot on his way in. right backs him up now he's in the he's in the orthodox position kind of goes neutralish right then goes back to south look at this trying to figure out his range right there tapping see where

I'm at taps his way inside throws a punch strickland gets away he's attacking constantly but you can see the range is the same so strickland doesn't really know what to do with it here we are again same thing, switches stances like this, right? South Paul, then goes, Orthodox, then goes to South Paul. Here he is again, right? Because he wants to be near that leg. What's he doing? What's he doing? Going side to side, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to see something interesting here. He's going to box his way in. Watch him switch stances here. This is what I mean when I tell you he can strike a little bit. He throws over the top with a left from South Paul, steps into Orthodox, throws a right over the top, goes back to Orthodox,

and then shoots as he had shot from the South Paul stance every time. So he can play with it both ways. It all accommodates the wrestling, as you can see in the end. And then here, Sean Strickland gets a two-on-one to lift him. Watch, right? He separates. Bink. This is what I'm talking about. It's the same range for the takedown. Sean Strickland completely stuffed the takedown. But as he's separating, he's got his hands down and he eats a shot and then he crumbles as a consequence. So he ended up surviving there. But this is what I'm talking about when the range and the stance, they're hard to keep track of,

and they accommodate this wrestling that he can just take on at any moment or the range to strike with his... Look, this is not a small punch. Look at this punch. That is a heavy, hard distance punch, man. Those are his best punches. He doesn't come in there like a Max Holloway and jab, jab to the body and then circle out.

He kind of goes in there and just throws bombs, but only in these circumstances where he's sort of guaranteed to win. Let's go to put the thumbnail up, please. Let's quickly just move along from this. He goes against dos anjos. I don't know if I can. I can't really show you all this. Let's skip just a part of this if we can.

Let me see this real quickly because I want to make sure we have time for the tweets. Let's see. Real quickly, put it up. You can see once again, right? He's got risk control on this. the outside. You're going to see how this is not really all that useful. Sean Strickland tried it too, right? It doesn't really, yes, it's controlling him. He just moves it back to the point where you can't really control it anymore, and then he goes back to punching and you take the underhook.

It looks like something small, but you're going to notice a bit of a difference here very quickly. Thumbail one more time, please. Again, because we're short on time. I never have enough time for these things. I had so much to show. And then last, you know. Here's a situation, right? One more time, show me, real quickly. Let's say you can't get Tyrone Woodley down. He's, you know, you throw him down, he pops back up. Usman is the king of this.

Shots on the break. You saw him hit, Sean Strickland on the break. Look at this. Bink. And he's got, look at the flexibility here. Look at that. Bink. Hard.

Look at that knee all the way up here. Big, right? Okay, thumbnail one more time. Please. Last thing. This is the totals from the Shields fight. We've already looked at that. All right, go back to it one more time.

This is the last thing we'll do, and then we'll get to the tweets. You can see it here. All right, he did not take, Jake Shields did not take Woodley down, but Woodley went to a knee. Forget the exact circumstance. You're going to see Woodley try to post his hand,

or his foot, rather, on the hand of Woodley to break his hands apart or his hand off his foot, something like that, right? He's going to break it apart like that. Oh, yeah. He's got Jake Shields his hands, two on one.

So Shields puts his foot right here on the wrist to separate him, right? And then he pops up. I want you to see something here. Remember that wrist control I showed you before? Sean Strickland kept it on the same side. That's not necessarily wrong. Havel de Zanjos kept it on the same side.

Watch what Tyrone Woodley does. Let's get a better look at it right here. All right, I want you to see this. Look here. What is he doing? This is the arm, whoops, this is the arm of Tyron Woodley. Yeah?

This is the right hand of Jake Shields. He's taking it and he's pulling it across the body. If Jake Shields doesn't have this up, Tyrone Woodley's out the other side. One of the interesting things that Tyrone Woodley does is he doesn't mind going to the wrist, but what he does is he pulls it across the person's body, which affects their mobility in a number of different directions, and how they have to choose to use their free hand to then spend time controlling because this one is not in a position to then break free

and then come over the top. It's a cross, and now I have to use this almost strictly in a defensive setting. Why am I bringing this up? Because it's going to be a chess battle here between Kamara Usman and Tyrone Woodley. Tymer Woodley has 94.8% takedown defense rate. Amazing. Kamara Usman has 100% takedown defense rate.

My thought is they're going to be here, and whoever wins in these various spaces is going to be the winner. Can Tyron Woodley do tricks like this pulling the arm across to use to force a defensive shell to limit the offense and the output of Kumar Usman? Or can Kamar Usman bring the gas tank, the risk management, the elite output, and everything else to bear to win in this circumstance over time like Jake Shields did? Your guess is as good as mine. Please leave your preview in the comments or you can shoot me an email at Luke Thomas News at gmo.com. Thumbail one more time, one more time.

Very quickly. last thing on this. Okay, go back, please. Thanks to that guy. MJC. Flip Doss script. He's a white guy. I don't know what he's got this name for, but whatever.

Okay, that's the Monday morning end list. All right. Do we have time for tweets? I think we do. All right, let's do it now. It's time for tweets. Right here. A round of tweets on the MMA hour.

Let's do it. All right, clock starts when the first tweet goes up. All right, here we go. Bigger promotional malpractice, not having daily versus MVP. in England, or having Usman instead of Covington, fight Woodley. I would say Daily versus MVP, because if Woodley wins, you can still do Woodley Covington, and if Usman wins, he'd be champion, and then you could still do Covington,

because that would also be a grudge match of sorts. But yes, neither of those are the ideal scenarios. Next. Why foe you think the UFC is stacking 235 so much? do you think. It's the first, well, let's see. I don't know. It's the one first back in Vegas, by the way. Remember they took an event from Vegas going back there. They probably want to blow it up to make sure they have the appropriate amount of ticket sales and everything else. So yeah, that's probably it. Next, will Usman be Woodley's hardest title defense?

Man, he's had some tough ones. Yeah, he will be, I think, in the end. Because it's going to be hard for either guy to score on the other guy, I think, unless they just decide to throw risk out the window, which is not something either guy has typically done before. So I'm going to say, in all likelihood, that is the one. If you could turn the screen off too, that'd be great. Yes, I'm going to say that's going to be his toughest defense.

Next. If you are Covington, do you take a fight or hold strong? I think you obviously have to take a fight at this point. Now, we're going to talk to him. He might just decide at this point, Well, I've already lost the title fight in terms of being next in line. I might as well just wait until the winner comes out of that. But that could already exacerbate tensions between he and management.

So I could see a case for either of them. We'll talk to him here on the show, but I wonder if he feels a little bit more towards taking a fight now. Let's see. Next. Do you think the UFC is going back to their old ways and telling fighters you take the fight we give you or you won't fight at all?

Um, back to their old ways. Do they have a new way? It's all about leverage. They may have gone a different direction with fighters where they had to where, you know, Connor McGregor's like, I want to fight Nate a second time at 170 and they accommodated him. But that's not really the way they had historically done business. I don't think that was, I don't think this is so much a return to how they've done business rather than that was just a weird, aberrant and momentary departure. But yeah, look, they have a machine and they talk about all that. the time. The machine doesn't wait for anyone. They're constantly in motion, constantly putting content out there. They really favor fighters who accommodate those needs. If you fill in on short notice and you make weight, they love you. If you fill it on short notice and you don't make wait, they'll never give you an opportunity again. They like people who help them out to make these fight cards possible in the rate of which they do. And if you don't do that, yeah, and there's no union, you're going to be in the outside looking in. Next. Thoughts on Pettus versus Wonder Boy. Personally, I think Pettus is far too small for Wonder Boy. P.S., Luke, can I please be unblocked? Yes,

Havi Smalls, you can be unblocked. Petis is probably too small, but both are kind of in an interesting position and probably looking for a fight that wouldn't a loss or a win. A win could propel them, and a loss wouldn't necessarily be all that destructive. And I can understand that. So what I want to see it, I don't know that's at the top of my Christmas list, but it's not the bottom either. Next. Is the current lightweight division the most stacked in terms of talent in the history of MMA, all divisions included? Probably.

Probably. I have to think about that for a second, but probably. The peak of light heavyweight was amazing. But the current nature of lightweight is truly special. Next. If Jones is fighting on the 235 card, what is the point in rushing Woodley back versus Usman, when they'll probably be scrambling for a headliner in month of

two later anyway and do something like make till versus covington for an interim one in the case that john can't get a license they've still got another fight on there or in the event that he gets a license and then there's some kind of usada issue going forward they have some insurance so they've still got a paper view headlined by a title fight and an interesting fight nonetheless um but you're right they often rob peter to pay paul and then have to end up scrambling later so that's their issue to figure out. Next. Any guesses on the odds for both Jones versus Smith and Woodley versus Usman?

I have not seen them. You can probably go to Best Fight Odds to find out. I think Jones could be as high as minus 800, but most interested in the Woodley odds, minus 130, minus 140 for Woodley. Vegas never seems to give Woodley any respect. No, they certainly do not. I just did a whole presentation on Kamar Usman because I do think he's a super formidable challenge.

But the reality is, you're right. Woodley has, you know what, let me go to Best Fight Odds right now. Do we have Jimmy on the phone or what's the deal? I cannot hear anyone back there. We're going to rock hold. That's right. Rockhold. What am I saying? Very quickly, let me go to best fight odds.com. So, UFC 235, do they even have odds up?

Yes, here we go. Smith and Jones. Smith is at a plus 400. Wow, Jones at a minus 6. Good Lord. And then Usman versus Woodley. That's a little bit tighter. Woodley is the favorite, minus 170 to a plus 130,

Camaro Usman, give or take, some places have been a minus 160 or so. I'm not sure that's unfair. It's not going to induce a whole lot of betting, I don't think, but unless you were like a big believer in Usman, and I can see, I can understand why you would be, but that's a close, difficult fight, man. That's a tough one. I can totally understand how you would get numbers like that. I don't really have much of an issue with it, to be honest with you.

And then they've got what's off the card now, but they had Mazvedal and Diaz. So they had Mazvedal at a minus 180 and Diaz at plus 155. That's interesting too, although now that fight's not going to happen. Yeah. Hey, hey, I can kill a minute. All right, no problem. Good Lord. I mean, who are the people that put Stevia in coffee?

Murderers. ISIS. Terrible. It ruins a perfectly good cup of Joe. I'll share with you my opinion about the Colby and Usman thing a little bit later. The only thing I would say right now is Jones coming back this early to Nevada, assuming he can get licensed. I suspect that he will, is I love it. I love it.

I'll tell you why I love it, because we are living in this age of everyone jumping weight classes. And John, if you wanted to, probably could go back and say, I want to fight heavyweight, whether it's Cormier or somebody else. I bet he could if he really was adamant about it, even though obviously sometimes he can be a promotional headache for the UFC, but I got to tell you, just getting back out there, being active, standing a post, and letting all these contenders come on, whether you think they have a chance or not,

I think that's exactly the way to do it. I love it. We've gotten away from that in MMA, and I think to MMA's detriment, I love it when champions are active. and champions put their title on the line against all comers. And then after time, sure, you go and have your super fight. You go and do whatever you've got to do. But for me, the notion of him getting back out there and being active again right away,

giving back to Nevada after taking away the one event is music to my ears. Let me blow my nose here because I'm a disgusting human dying like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Thank you, boys, in the back. Sorry about that. I threw my back out last week. So that's why we didn't have an MMA beat last week. That's a true story because I am old and frail and dying. And then as soon as I throw my back out, I got sick.

So I spent all weekend on the couch just like, you know, hurt up in the game, son. It was terrible. It was terrible. But I'm here on the mend. Can I give a shout out too, if I may? A quick shout out to the YouTube channel, mixed. I think it's mixed. Molly Whoppery. I think I got that right. It's this guy with this weird, almost, it's obviously a put-on accent, probably designed to this guy's who is doing the, the content. You don't ever see who it is. You just hear the narration. And he did a video on this whole John Jones situation. I think it's called like the Pringle defense, the Pringle's defense. It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal work. Shouts to that guy or whoever that is. One of the more interesting. One of the more interesting.

and better YouTube channels that has come out in MMA in recent years. I haven't looked it through hardly any of these content, but I saw that one. I think I saw another one. And it was awesome. Really, really, really good stuff. By the way, in that video, he notes that the oral Tarita Ball study that Rachankov did had a subject person, a test subject of one person, one man who wasn't even an elite athlete. Like these excretion windows, I said this before and I got excoriated for it on Reddit.

shouts to everyone at Reddit for being wrong on this one. As I said before, when it came to Maldonium, Wada had no idea about excretion windows. They still, to this day, don't know much about excretion windows when it comes to marijuana. And it turns out with Oral Tarinaball, they also don't know excretion windows. Everyone assumes that Wada has all these white lab-coded scientists above reproach walking around, slamming down science textbooks that are the book of knowledge in totally inscrutable to people who are not smart enough to do it but utterly utterly thorough and totally exhaustive knowledge about these substances

and what you what you find out is that that's really often not the case in some cases it's not even close to true but even with things like oral turinibal they know very very little about this situation. Now, whether that makes you angry that Jones got to fight or are happy that he got to fight is up to you to decide. But again, as I said before,

this idea that they have this totally unambiguous set of facts upon which to draw conclusions, it's not even close to true. And as I mentioned, with marijuana today, we know it's still not true. When I first got into the MMA,

what was it, 15 nanograms per, God, I want to say, either centa liter or a milliliter, whatever the NG, I think it's NGML. Whatever was, the value was 50 when I first got in it. So if you were above that, surely you used in an in-competition window,

then they bumped it to 75, and then 100, 150. Now we're at 150, and we realize there can be all kinds of plausible circumstances based on a variety of factors where you can hit that number and not have used inside of an in-competition window. All right, let's get to this gentleman. Now we appreciate him making time for us.

He's the former UFC middleweight champion. looks to be headed to light heavyweight. He is Polo's finest, Ralph Lauren's finest, the one and only Luke, how are you, sir? Doing good. All right. Eating good. Eating good.

What's on the, what are you eating today? What's on the docket? I'm eating weights. Lots of weight. I've been lifting pretty heavy three days a week, and so that's what I'm eating. I'm eating weights. You know what I, someone told me?

I think it's true. Cardio training does nothing in terms of injury prevention. Strength training does. But if you're killing yourself to make middle weight, you can't really, yes, you had, you were in shape, but you couldn't really do a lot to preserve your body in the process. Do you believe that strength training will limit the amount of injuries you have at light heavy weight? I think not cutting weight. I think getting my body fat down to so low and your body just becomes brittle. The last stages of camp and started to fall apart.

So, yeah, having the extra strength, the muscle tissue to support everything, it's going to be a big part, no doubt. It feels good. I mean, last few fights, I've just, last couple especially, just it took everything out of me. In my last one, I've never, you know, as you get older, your body matures, your muscle gets denser, your bones get denser, and it's just harder to make the weight. So naturally, it's time. Has it affected your mood to go up to 205? It feels damn good. I'll take that.

I wasn't able to eat much of anything last couple camps. And, you know, my body's absorbing everything. So it feels good. I'm 225 pounds right now. I feel just the same, you know, athletically and movement. Everything's still there and just a whole lot more power. Now, you had mentioned you were lifting weights. I'm wondering in what capacity, right?

Because you still had some other injuries that prevented you from competing more recently. Can you give us a health update? I'm feeling good. I'm just getting by. The knee was a little more than I expected. And the shin, obviously, on the other leg, too. So I had a PCL and an ACL, small tear, like two small tears in each. And I've got stem cells in that, stem cells in my shin, that wound.

And we're on track. The shin's completely healed finally. There's still something, I'm sure, underneath. But I'm training. nothing's leaking. That's the key. It's been a big issue. So I'm training.

Everything's there. All my kicks are there. My wrestling's back. And I'm just putting into work now, finally. Now, are you in California or are you in Florida? Where are you right now? I'm in Florida. This is where the best training I can get right now is.

So I'm here. How is Florida? Florida's hot. Is that it? Is there? Are there fun people to talk to? How's Florida? It ain't California.

It ain't California, but, you know, sometimes you got a sacrifice and get to get where you want to be. And, you know, I got a great crew of guys that I wouldn't, I don't doubt myself from what I did. The team is awesome. And, uh, and I, I wouldn't look back. I go back and I see what's there and I love AK,

but it's just, it's not, you know, the, the type of guy. I need to work with. There's a lot of high-end competition here in my weight class and my guys. And so guys that push me, you know, every day. And it's just not, there's not the everyday training you need. I can get back there and everything else that complements what I'm doing here. The strength training and everything else.

It's a great crew guys. In a perfect world, which is not the one we live in, but in a perfect world, when do you think you'll be back? We're talking. It just depends on what the matchups are. Like I said, I was shooting for late March. We're looking like early April now. It just depends on what opponents fall where they may.

You know, I know John really wanted another fight really quick for some reason. So he somehow got this Anthony Smith fight. So we'll see. I know that a couple of the other top guys are matched up. And I think Tiago Santos and Jan Blagovich, I believe. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see where, you know, one of these,

Corey Anderson looked decent the other night, too. So I'm looking for a top guy. A, is a first quarter, so a January, February, March timeline for a return too early for you? Yeah. Yeah, I'm just getting into full training now. So I'm obviously moving up to a light heavy weight. I want to adjust to the weight on my weight's just getting up there. My strength's getting up there.

And so I'm going to get my body in line. I got some ground to make up for. I wasn't able to fully train and do everything. So I want to get where I want to be, and that's going to be at the end of March and potentially April. Now, you're 225 now. What's the highest you ever got? Like, how did you maintain your walking around weight for 185?

Because 225 to 205, that seems pretty doable. Were you at 225 to go to 185? No, I've never been 225. I've probably been 217, like, I've never, I've never lifted weights and tried to like actually bulk up and replenish and do my thing. So this is my first stretch into that and it feels good. It's making a big difference and work with Mike Barwis.

And it's been big, man. I can feel every, every bit of it, every pound. I'm throwing people around and I'm excited to get in there and test these guys. Yeah, I was going to say, what is it like now with a bit of the extra heft? And if you get the right kind of heft, in the training environment, what are you, you mentioned you're throwing people around in training. What other benefits have you noticed from it? It just, wow, there's just a little more everywhere. Realistically, it's the weight cut getting down to a certain point at 85, it just takes everything out of me.

It takes my power away when I start getting below that 2, 205 mark, and then obviously the weight cut, you can feel a big difference there. here is just a little extra everything. So I'm going to be just fine where I'm at, and you're going to see a lot more of it. Size up light heavyweight for me. Amplified. Size up light heavyweight for me. How much of a new lease on a possibility of getting a title

do you feel like you have? Do you really think that light heavyweight is there for the taking? Yes. Give me a sense of other than, here's what I'm wondering. At 185. Anthony Smith. Anthony Smith. just got a title shot.

Anthony Smith just got a title shot. He couldn't sniff a top 10 at middleweight. Now, how much of that, though, is a function of him also being depleted? Because you mentioned you were so depleted as well. Yeah, yeah, but I still made up for it with skill and what I do here. So you're going to give me the strength, give me this behind me, and watch what I'm about to do.

These guys, it's going to be fun. Give me a sense of what kind of chance you think he has against Jones None It'll be over and less than a round pro Wow That's why I don't understand why they make this fight Do you Do you think that when you get a chance

I'll just say it plainly Do you think you're the best guy to potentially face John Jones at 205 I don't see anybody else challenging So let's see you've got Corey Anderson of there How long does he last against John Jones? You could last a few rounds, maybe. Yeah. And then, of course, you know.

I think, Yon's probably one of the toughest guys there, I'd say. Like, just a tough, durable guy. And not very skilled in so many ways, but durable. Now, you mentioned you don't understand where Anthony Smith got a title shot, but what do you mean by that, like overall ability? Because you beat two legends, and then you beat Volcan Ouzdemeer, who's no walk in the park. It seems like not an unreasonable title shot to give,

even if the odds makers think it's unpredictable. Or rather predictable, excuse me. Yeah. What are the odds? Show me what the odds are. He's minus 600. That's a favorable odd. I'm just being real with you.

So we'll see. We'll see what happens, you know? So enjoy. I'm sure it'll be an enjoyable fight. Let me get your sense on what a fight between Jones and D.C. might look like at heavyweight. because we saw DC at heavyweight against Steepa unbelievable power

Jones doesn't want that fight Why Jones does not want to fight with DC at heavyweight He doesn't want to give him any advantages He's obviously taking what he can to build his confidence To fight him at mid at heavyweight So we all know he's tested dirty twice in a row now Three times I don't know what it is

But picograms whatever the hell they are He's obviously compensating trying to do something to build himself up. DC at heavyweight is a much more dangerous fighter. He's looser. He's moving people. I've seen him in the gym. Jones picked his words wisely on the mic on trying to bait D.C. to come back down and manipulate him back down to light heavyweight.

Jones walks around at 240. D.C. walks around at 240. Fight where you are. Fight where you naturally are. You're the baddest man on the planet. Stop trying to pick off guys. like Anthony Smith and stop talking about DC and champ champ, go up and fight the champ champ where he's at, where he is the baddest man on the planet.

If you want to talk about it, go up there and fight him. Otherwise, stay where you're at. And I'll come. I'll come to you. What did you make of that whole episode with Usada? I know you've been sort of an outspoken proponent of them, but a lot of people have been turned off. Where do you come down on that?

On what? What are they doing? They're doing nothing. So, I don't know. How often have you been tested? I've been tested a lot more in California. I've done, I think every test I did in California was urine and blood samples. Every test I've done here in Florida has only been urine, which is kind of disappointing.

It's kind of weird how that all falls, but obviously people are learning how to beat the system. and the system's not even working even at that. So what do you say to yourself? Do you even care at this point? I'm just going to get strong. I'm not going to compromise myself, weaken myself, and fight guys that are maximizing their potential. I just don't have it in me to fall in the stoop to those levels.

I'm going to naturally, I'm going to build up, I'm going to bulk up, I'm going to get stronger, and I'm going to do what I do. So whatever, I'm hard ready. Now you had mentioned a few names at light heavyweight. One name you did not mention, at least not right now, for obvious reasons, I suppose, was Alexander Gustafson. Do you have no interest in the fight with him or because he just lost? Who cares?

Or where do you come down on that? Alex is decent. I mean, he's obviously, he's got some holes in his game on the ground. And we'll see where it lies. We'll see where he falls back in and what the UFC wants to do. So I want to, obviously, I want to fight some guys on his way to the title and make a statement. When this year is over. Sorry, go ahead.

I mean to cut you off. But, you know, it just depends on what falls. And then there's a few options. I know we're talking to the UFC and we'll see. We'll see what falls on the right date. You know, I'm looking for one fight to put me where I need to be. So it's January 7, 2019. January 7th, 2020.

What are the headlines going to be about you? 2020. Yeah. Well, 20, what year is it? 2019? Yes. So this year, this day, one year forward. I'm probably being like heavyweight champion by then.

Just up there collecting belts, huh? I'm just moving up. I'm just moving up. Yeah. Hey, before you go, this might sound like a totally ignorant question, which if it is, feel free to tell me because I don't know anything. Is there surfing in Florida? Unless you got a jet ski, which I actually do.

Which I do. So what do you do? You just don't surf until you go back to California? I focus. I focus on what I'm doing here. I'm training. I'm lifting. I'm focused on fighting.

This is what I'm doing. I got a boat. I got a jet ski. I can get out and go fish. I like to go out in the Bahamas and go spearfish. That's my new thing out here. All right. Well, look, stay safe, bulk up.

If you do any amazing lifts, put them on Instagram so we can watch. And we can't wait to see you in the cage, man. We're looking forward to a 225 Luke Rockhold, or 205 Luke Rockhold on Way in there, I suppose. It's going to be interesting. Yeah, looking forward to. There he is. Luke Rockle, one of the best.

Thank you, buddy. All right. So, there we are. All right. For some reason, I thought that I, once again, this is what happens when you sleep two hours a night with a bad back. You just forget the order of things. I think I totally botched it on the rundown.

But okay, neither here nor there. We go from one guest to the next. He joins us also on Skype. One of the best analysts and commentators in the game. My friend and yours. The one and only, the Hursuit, Jimmy Smith. Oh my God, that's an amazing intro. I so appreciate that.

I'm doing well. How is sunny California? It is not sunny at all. It's raining right now. It does happen here. So it's gloomy and raining, man. How many days a year does it rain? in your neck of the woods.

God, it feels like maybe a week. It feels like that's about it. You know what I mean? So, you know, so it's pretty rare, fortunately. How do people garden? Do they just do totally ecologically unfriendly things? Everything is desert. Everything that lives is like desert plants that don't require any water.

That's what everybody does, man. All right. Well, look, let's rewind here a little bit for folks who may not know. You spent many, how many years did you commentate for Belator, by the way? way. Eight years, I think. Eight, nine, something like that. Yeah. And then M1? M1 was two or three years before that. I also did the infliction shows. Yeah, man, it's been, it's been about 10 years in the business. About 10 years in the business. You spent the last year commentating for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and that came to an end, right? So you are no

longer with them. Yes. So let's rewind, um, if we can sort of set the story here in as much as you can tell us. Um, I guess I'll just start with this one. What, what happened? Uh, very simply, it was your great, fantastic. We love everything you did. Um, we're going with UFC fighters for 2019. So that's it. I don't think I'm leaving out any syllables. It was literally that was the conversation. It was, we're, you know, loved everything you did. Um, fewer shows were, we're, we're, we're, going with UFC fighters for those shows. That was it. So are they doing UFC fighters for all their shows? Is that the idea? Yeah. Well, except Joe Rogan, right? Yeah, of course. Other than Joe, it's all UFC fighters. That's it. We had no issue with your performance. Everybody

loved you. But you didn't fight the UFC, so that's it. That's it. Yeah. I heard some weird stuff about some tweet I said about John Jones or some other crap like that had nothing to do with any of that. It was literally that. It was nothing you did. You were great. We have no complaints, but we're using UFC fighters for the shows in 2018. It's just a bit of a pivot. First of all, what was the tweet about John Jones?

I have no idea. I just had people tweeting that I had tweeted something about John Jones, and that was some stupid article that I ran across somewhere that was absolute crap. That's not true at all. Do you understand the pivot, I suppose? Yeah, I guess. You know, if you think about it, they have a lot of cachet.

They're closely tied to the UFC. The fans already understand who they are immediately. I understand it a little bit. But, you know, that's the choice they're making. And also, I mean, if you think about it, one of the things that's really interesting, when you look at the UFC's roster on air and in Fox shows and all stuff they did, it was kind of a rotating cast. So they use a lot of people that are, they can fight, and then they do honor a talent,

and then they fight again. And so it gives them a lot of people to use. There's a lot of rotation in there. And so that allows a lot of flexibility for them. What kind of report did you have with the other fighters there? Because one, you had fought but sort of many moons ago. Yeah. And then also you were sort of a bellator commentator.

It was a bit of a weird moment, I think, at least initially. But from the outside looking in, it appeared everything worked quite well. Everything was great. Yeah, no problems. Fighters like me. Producers thought I was great. Everybody I work with, Annick, Fitzgerald. They all love working with me.

Everybody in Fox Dex was fantastic. I had no problems with the, you know, a good way to look at it is the Jones Gustafson fight. The promo was all me, and I didn't work there anymore. I mean, I look at Daniel Weiss Twitter feed, and the promo for Jones Gus is one of the biggest fights of the year is just me talking. And I don't work there anymore. So it was weird. There was surreal moments like that where I was like, you know, I'm at home packing stuff because I got to move. And I'm looking at the promo.

And it's all me. And I knew at that point already, obviously, I wasn't working past the first. So, yeah, it was weird. But it's just strange to hear that, that, yeah, no, you didn't do anything. You're like, oh, so no problems with my work. Nope, none. Okay.

Thanks. All right. Yeah, a lot of moments like that. Did you have a sense that that was coming? Yeah, my first inkling was actually November 3rd. Third was my first big light bulb. I was supposed to do Cormier-A-Lewis. I think it was November 3rd with, it was supposed to be me,

Anick, and Rogan. And then I got an email about 10 days before. And they said, yeah, there have been some card changes. So we're moving the talent around. We want you to do the Moncton Canada show. And I go to my computer and I pull up the bout sheets. And I'm like, I haven't been any card changes. Something's up.

And so that was my first inkling that something was going on. And then, yeah, I worked a lot of November. I did, I think I did three, I did four shows between the end of October and the end of November. So I worked October, November a lot. But, yeah, I just, and also what people who aren't in the business don't understand is a contract for next year, it's only signed a one-year contract, takes about two months to really get done. So if you don't hear anything by mid-November, something's up. So, yeah, there were inklings before that. Someone might say, well, then why did you only sign a one-year deal, right?

I mean, that's, you know, I mean, a lot of these contracts are for often. Now, I'll clarify, I have signed one year deals before. I'm working on one right now. But I'm just saying, given the opportunity, a lot of these broadcasting contracts go a little bit longer. Why sign on one year deal? They're almost always three. That's kind of industry standards. Here's the deal.

And so one thing I want to make very, very clear, I took a big risk and I knew that. And what happened was I was my contract. with Belator was up and they wanted to kind of redo the one that I had. It's a long story, but the UFC came to us and said, look, we don't know where we're going in 2019. The ESPN deal hadn't been signed. So their thing was, we think he was really talented. We love to have him on the team. We think he's great. We can't do more than any year deal because we don't know where we're going. No one has anything past 2018. So I called around some people that I knew in the UFC, Anna and stuff like that, and said, what's going on? They go, yeah, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

We literally have no idea what's going on past 2018. Everybody's kind of in the same boat. And I went, okay, this is kind of a risk. I'm signing a contract for just a year. But I got to take the leap and try. I have to do what I can. And I took a big gamble I did. And here I am.

So yeah, that's why is that was their original statement. It was we think you're great. We'd love to have you. We don't know where we're going next year. They hadn't signed the ESPN deal yet. So they couldn't do more than a year. And so that's why I'm in the situation I'm in. It's weird.

Here's the thing. It's like, why, I'm trying to understand this. How, why sign a guy? I get the idea of deciding a guy for a one-year deal on a trial basis to see if it's a good fit. Right. But why make the pivot on the commentary side? Like, how important is it for the commentators to be UFC visible to the audience, right? Like, there's the thing I'm trying to understand.

It's like, like, Doc Emmerich, do I think, do I even know if he played in the NHL? Like, to me, it means nothing. Now he's the play-by-play guy, not the color guy. So maybe that has something to do with it. But I'm just sort of wondering, like, when does that become a priority so important that they have to make these kinds of personnel changes? What does it also do for them contractually?

Hey, when you're done, you'll get air time. What does the message that sends to people who are fighting? Right. If you're on the team, you will get air time. If you play ball, you'll get airtime. You might get a desktop. These guys don't have a parachute, Luke. They don't have anything at the end.

So it's another incentive is, might be on the commentary team. You might get, so even beyond what the fans think and how they do the job and all these things, it's also from their point of you, everything's in-house. You're using people who might be at the end of their career, might need a little incentive. What do you do? well, hey, you might get on the Fox desk a little bit. You might do this. You might do that. You might have something when it's all over.

So beyond what it does for the fans, and do the fans care? I don't maybe, maybe not. You know, they have to learn how to do the job on the job, which is hard. But it also gives the UFC another incentive for their fighters. And that's important. So from their point of view, it's another way to, it's another way to, it's kind of another carrot and stick for fighters is if you might get on the commentary team, you might do desk stuff on Fox or not Fox on ESPN.

you're done, stuff like that. How divorced is that from Dana White, though? Because, like, Tyrone Woodley, don't misunderstand me. I think he's a phenomenal analyst. He's one of my favorite when he's really in there digging into the details. But, you know, his battles with management are not exactly a secret. So, like, who's making these calls? I have no idea.

I mean, it's true. It's very funny in that people kind of, I spoke to Dana White twice in a year. I mean, when I got hired, we had a meeting, I met him. And then my last show in Vegas was the ultimate fighter finale, he was at the restaurant we were in. And I just shook his hands, hey, man, thanks. It's been a great year. And he went, thank you, you've been great.

And that was it. That's literally the only times I've spoken to him. People have this idea that he calls me at home telling me what to say in the next fight. It doesn't work that way, guys. You hear from your producer what's going on. Who's telling him? I have no idea. So I don't know, but people have this idea that we have a bat phone that Dana White can call

to him to have a show and tell us what to say. It doesn't work that way. Your producer tells you what to do. Who tells him? You have no clue. I have no idea. So, yeah, it is strange to me, too, that, you know, one second, there's this management conflict. And then I see that guy on air.

Yeah, I have no idea who makes those decisions. No clue. Now, I am certain I know the answer to this. But for the purposes of just making it clear, someone would say, well, if they're going with all UFC fighters, how is Joe Rogan still there? And the answer, I think, would be what, that Joe Rogan is enormously popular, literally has the most popular a podcast on iTunes sort of speaks for itself, no? Joe Rogan's Joe Rogan.

That, I mean, that's really, honestly, people in the UFC say that. Oh, that's Joe. Like, it's, there is, you know, the, the rules apply, the rules don't apply in that sense, where Joe's popular, the fans love him. He's Joe Rogan. He's an entity of him,

you know, unto himself. And so, yeah, it's, when they, when they told me, yeah, we're just going with UFC fighters going forward. Yeah, but all. also includes Joe. I mean, I know that. You know, so it's, it's, it's, he's an entity unto himself. And, and the fans love him. So he's in that spot. Yeah, he's an institution. I get it. I was just sort of making it clear that like, like, everyone's like, well, he's not a fighter. So, okay, yeah, there's an understanding there. So then looking back on the last year, how was it?

I mean, you seem to thrive in the role insofar as it was fleeting. Yeah, it was great. I mean, there was no problem at all. They used me a lot with the, especially with the promos and stuff like that. I really enjoyed working with the desk. All the producers were great. Everybody I worked with was great. I had no complaints at all, man. It was, it was absolutely fantastic. So, you know, then you got to just move forward. How

different was it from the Bellator experience? Granted, it was much shorter. Yeah, well, it was much shorter, but the nuts and bolts of the job really aren't that different. And our producer at the UFC, I mean, at the Bellator used to produce at UFC. So the language of the production is pretty much the same.

You know, you sit down the meetings, you get it, you speak this. It's almost, how can I explain? If you played for Bill Parcells and then you go to a different team and that coach learned under Bill Parcells, that's how it is. It might say things a little differently, but it's the same verbiage, it's the same language. And so I fit into it very, very easily. And everybody there knew who I was. And I had known some of them, at least by reputation. So yeah, it was an easy fit, man. Fair enough. Looking back on the experience, do you now regret taking the leap? Or was it still the right risk reward decision?

That is a really question. The information I had in front of me at the time, it was the right move to make. Period. It just was. There was nothing I could have done any differently that would have changed that. Yeah, I'd rather not start 2019 with no job.

That's not great. But everything I had in front of me, it was the right time to make the right leap. And it was a risk I knew at the time I was making. I mean, nobody forced me to sign a one-year deal. I knew the deal. And with the information I had in front of me, it was the right choice to make. And that's the only way I can see it, man.

Yeah. No, I think it's, I mean, look, even decisions that end up working not in your favor, the way you evaluate them early, it can be under those conditions are the only ones you can really understand them. So I certainly think it was the problem. Who says no to a UFC commentary gig? I mean, honestly, right? Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah, it was pretty much, you know, it was a move I had to make,

and the timing was right, and, you know, you've got to make that leap. And people who are critical to the UFC or anything like that, you know, I signed a one-year deal and they honored a one-your-deal. You can't ask for anything more than that. You know, I knew at the time I was taking a big leap. And, yeah, it didn't work out in the long run in terms of now, but, you know, you have to take those leaps sometimes, and that's what I did. You know, there's not necessarily a net, and sometimes you hit the ground, and that's it.

You keep walking. Folks have asked me this, so I'll ask you this. any opportunity to go back to Belator? No, not that I'm aware of. One thing people have to keep in mind, and the fan response has been great. I mean, it's been really humbling. It's been fantastic support I've gotten.

When you go to a promotion that already exists, Belator, they have to make either add you to a rotation. If you've watched the Belator show, they have a lot of honor talent right now, and they have to add you that mix, or they have to get rid of somebody. To get rid of somebody, unless this is the end of their contract,

January 1st, 2019, you have to eat the rest of their contract. People don't understand it. You've got to pay them because you can't just tell somebody you're out. You've got to pay them. So that's another huge expense. So it's all about timing and opportunity. And right now I don't see that. It could be possible, but right now I don't see that.

There has to be room for you on the team. And right now they've got a full squad. So has there been any response from other MMA organizations? Is there anything you can tell us about what could be in your future? No. The problem is another thing that, once again, love the fans. You guys are great. I got to call December 10th that I was unemployed in three weeks. December 10th to now, it's probably the worst time to find a job. What people don't get is nobody goes into December 15th going, God, who are we going to use in 2019?

They already know all these decisions have been made in November, October. So, you know, when we're calling around looking for it, a lot of the responses, yeah, we love Jimmy. He's great. We already know what we're doing in 2019. We made this decision in November. So it's hard because 2019, your roster is pretty much full in October. They don't make this decision now. They've made it a while ago. So the fans are messaging me, so she'd work for so-and-so and so-and-so. A lot of these decisions have already been made by this point in the year. So the timing was not great in terms of finding a game for 2019.

Obviously, we'll look and we'll find something, but that's been the impediment so far is the timing was pretty bad. I know. I get messages like this from fans, too, very different ones, but of a similar. origin, they'll be, they'll say things like, oh, look, what you need to do is get Connor McGregor on your show. And I'm like, I can't believe I didn't think of that. Okay. Why didn't I think of that? Oh, that guy. They think, in other words, they think we have much more control over these factors than we actually do. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I, you know, I was talking to a broadcaster who got released in the fall and he was told, oh, now you can do football. And he goes,

you know they decide that in the spring who does football. They don't decide in September who's calling football. So he got released in like September like, oh, you can do football now. And they're like, you know, that gets decided four months ago, right? You know, people don't understand the timeframe for these things. It takes a while to get going. But no plans to leave the industry, still confident at some point when this year winds down. You'll, I mean, what are you thinking for 2019?

I mean, everything's open. an option. It's, it's, it's, you know, I've been in this for, I've been in MMA for coming up on 20 years. I've been in broadcast for, God, since 2006, 12 years, 13. I mean, yeah, you keep going, because this is what I got good at, you know, this is what I learned how to do. This is what I've excelled at, is this. So, yeah, I'm going to keep plugging away at it, but I'm open to everything and we'll see what happens. All right. Well, I'll say this, who gave you the Shiner and please tell me it was somebody small and you deserved it. Oh, yeah, no, I completely deserved.

This is from the Long Beach Poly Wrestling team here in Southern California, where I went to high school. I've been volunteering with the team, and I was wrestling with the guys last week, and I got a knuckle right in the eye. So Joel at Long Beach, I'm going down there today, and I'm going to get this black guy back, all right? All right.

Well, Jimmy, if folks want to get in touch to you, what, Twitter, just the DMs are open? You bet, man. They always are. Jimmy Smith, MMA on Twitter, Jay Smith, M&A on Instagram. Love to hear from you guys. All right, Jimmy. Well, I don't know how you're feeling these days.

It's kind of shitty to lose your job right before the Christmas holidays. But, dude, truly you are one of the best in the industry, either on the analyst desk or cage side. I enjoy your commentary, and I am confident one way or the other. I'm going to hear it again sometime soon. So be persevered, be patient because I'm sure good things are headed your way. Thanks, Luke. Appreciate it, brother. All right.

Take care, Jimmy. There he goes. One of the good guys in the sport. Okay, what's the word on... On phone? Skype. Oh, we have them on Skype. Oh, this is amazing. All right. We go back to Skype. Look at this. Everyone's on Skype today. It's usually not the way it works. He's one of the best coaches in the game, and he's got his handsful. He already had his handsful.

He's going to have his handsful again on March 2nd when he tries to take John Jones into his first new title defense against Anthony Smith. Coach Mike Winklejohn is here. Hi, Coach. How are you? Hey, look, I'm good. I'm great. I'm a handful of the guys. I'm going to try to eat a frito with your early. So there you go. Sorry about that. I won't keep you too long for your burrito. Hey, first of all, let me say this. Congratulations on the win over Alexander Gustafson. Did that go basically according to plan? A lot of it. You know, I actually, I had thought

maybe by the third round, we would have worn him down a little bit. But, you know, John got got in there, got that take down a little bit sooner than I had thought we would. And once John gets on top of somebody, it's they almost always turn. And because they don't want the bloody mess from the elbows. And, you know, played out the way we thought. You know, one of the most underrated aspects of John, it occurs to me, is his ground and pound. In part because we don't see it as much these days.

We used to see it a lot more, I suppose. I don't know, back in the Brandon Verides or something. But the way his arms whip into position, it's frightening. Oh, yeah, he throws. That's Greg Jackson specialty there. My little brother is all about the ground and pound and throwing things at different angles. And John can roll the elbow.

So it's just scary because he can come in so many different directions at you at you, kind of like he does standing up. It's always a bloody mess. By the way, did you watch that Kat Zingano and, who was it, Katzangano and Megan Anderson with the toe in the eye? Oh, yeah, yeah. I immediately went, oh, shit, you know, I hope sure her eyeball was closed. Thank goodness.

It looks like it cut the outside of her eye and didn't catch the eyeball. So, or else she got winked. Yeah, so for folks who may not know, you had an eye injury from what, holding pads? Is that the idea? yeah you know fought forever you know for forever but never had something like that but to hold pad somebody pulled my arm down i was paying attention to where his footwork went was added and his tone that went across my eyeball cut it in half and make a long story short i'm blind now in that one

eye in that eye yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so it kind of worked are you are you allowed to drive absolutely i drive all the time yeah back-up trailers kind of sucks Depth perception-wise, but other than that, it's great. I still hold Mids, but I do. I have that map well, and it hasn't slowed me down. What can you do? Yeah. Is there any way to prevent that kind of thing?

Well, I wear goggles now when I'm holding Mitz. I know it sounds stupid. I look really dorky, but, you know, fool me once is the way I look at it. Yeah, fair enough. All right, so as I mentioned, I wanted to get you on because I thought that John's performance over Alexander Gustafson was phenomenal. You said most things went according to plan. What deviated a little bit?

Well, just the time on it. You know what? I thought we were going to have to pressure a little bit more. I thought Guston was going to give space, but he put some pressure on us, and John went back to a little bit longer space, moving away a little bit, kind of waiting for Guston, and then doing what we want to do,

which was break his legs down, break him down with hard kicks to the body and fill legs, to make it hard for him to move in on us and get to that boxing range, and then eventually make it harder for him to defend the takedowns. John's boxing appears to be massively improved. Now, he's an interesting fighter, right?

Because I was looking at tape on him. He doesn't, I'm not saying he doesn't throw combinations, but he doesn't throw a lot of combinations. He has, like, really interesting timing on these single shots, and they come from so many different areas. But the accuracy of his punches, and then the range, even moving backwards, it's super, super accurate.

When do you feel like he turned a corner in terms of his boxing? You know what? Striking as a whole is just starting. and evolve more and more and more. There's no doubt about it. It's all about being more comfortable in those ranges. Just time and repetition. You know, John was really more of a roster when he first started,

but I feel he turned into the best striker in the game because he's so unpredictable. And I think his kicks have gotten so much harder, so much better, that now people worry about the kick so much that the hands start playing out. So I think it all goes together. Yeah. What does he do that most other strikers don't in your mind? Attack from many different angles, good eyes.

He reads his opponent. He kind of knows what his opponent's going to do before his opponent does it because he watches so much fight tape. He's got a real high IQ when it comes to fighting and studying his opponent. He knows what they're going to do. I think sometimes before they know what they're going to do because I'm not sure if they understand the patterns they have as much as John does. I am told that he is a voracious watcher of tape in the gym. Sounds like what you're telling me is that's true. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Boy, sometimes he'll want to watch stuff in slow motion, which is like death for us. sometimes because we have things to do. But yeah, he watches a tremendous amount of film. We all do as a team, and it's a down and break it down and get together, you know, as a group and start looking for different ideas and start listening to each other as far as a good idea. That's a good way to do it. And nobody argues about their ways the best ways. It's as a group as a whole, we've got such a good group of guys that coached together that I think that helps John out quite a bit.

How rare is that dynamic where you have a fighter who is fully engaged, engaged on tape, fully engaged on thinking through tactics as well as a team that facilitates that. Is that, in boxing, that sounds pretty common? It feels like an MMA that's a little less common. I think it's a little less common for a lot of reasons, but the gym as a whole lot of what I've tried to do is bring it back to everybody's helping each other out that much more. And John's that guy, and he'll help out anybody walking in the door. So that rubs off because he's willing to help.

I think the other coaches want to help him even more. And everybody checks their ego and just helps. helps each other, and we learn a lot from each other and from each other's eyes. All right, so he's taking on Anthony Smith. Size up Anthony Smith for me, from your vantage point. That tough, you know, just just, just big, big balls, just keep going. He has to go to come back. I think the scariest thing about him is just that.

It's just, as you saw in his last fight with Bullcon, it's a, he was behind in my mind, the type of thing, but he knows how to survive and then find the right time to do something. I think he started hurting him with body shots and then of course he had the takedown there at the end but I think it's his ability, his mental toughness to survive and overcome that's his greatest strength Okay, in terms of how

In terms of threats that he offers any opponent But in particular, John, when you identify his threats besides the durability What would you say they are? Well, he's good a lot of things. You know what? It's definitely his long-range punches The problem of that, the crux of that,

he's got John who's even longer. He has the ability to throw punches at different times. He's his straight right hand. I think it's really, really effective, especially in his counter mode against John. That's what I'm worried about. And then, of course, you know, he can take people down.

There's no doubt about it. I just think he's going to have a hard night with John Jones because I think John's better everywhere. But I think it's his boxing skills. If I thought anything was going to be scary, it would be that. He's definitely great everywhere. and so we have to be on our toes.

But he's got to do with John's length and John's ability to adapt. Can I follow up on that ability to adapt? That is one thing that I have noticed from him that appears to be quite interesting. You go back and you watch the Cormier and the Gustafin the first of those fights. He's a different fighter from the first to the fifth round.

If you're going to beat John Jones, you have to take away that ability to adapt. How do you do that? How do you take away that from a guy? You have to be all over him, right? Yeah, you'd have to be all over making John react to you, but that's why John fights with long-range shots one at a time.

He's consistently hitting people like you're talking about before, where they're reacting to him. So he's always a, he's always a leader. What we learned from the first fight was Guston was actually you brought it out in one of your things that you did as far as the breaking down the fights. You were, you came to the genius thing in that you saw that Guston was trying

to punch through John's kicks. In the first fight, John wasn't kicking hard. And that's something that definitely wanted to change this fight. And And John did, but John learns from the past, and he goes, he don't do that again. We had to think about what Guston was doing in this fight and how to be one step ahead of his thought process. Now, what's interesting, I got to tell you, I love it that John's coming right back for a lot of reasons. Just selfishly, a guy, a champion defending his title, even if people feel like the contenders are overmatched, I don't care.

Just like a champion who's active and really gives that opportunity to those contenders. So for me, I'm all in on that. But from your vantage point, do you like the quick turnaround? Oh, absolutely. You know what? It keeps John in the gym. He's focused more than ever. We used to have quite a few fights.

You know, then things slow down a little bit. We have all these dumbled suspensions, which is kind of irritating itself. And thank God, Dana White's got balls to do the right thing. But with that being said, I'd like a quick turnaround. And I think it's good for John getting back in the gym, keep developing the skills, and stay on top of his game. You know, I had heard that John had sort of like a boxer approach where these boxers, you know, they come up boxing from their youth.

So by the time they reach full adulthood, they don't have to constantly be in the gym. They have these camps and they sort of peak. They might stay in shape, but they don't, they don't, they don't, just hardcore train all the time. And then John was kind of doing that. Like, I guess the question I would ask is how much, realistically, how much better could he get if he maintained a steady gym presence, unobstructed by God knows whatever. I think he gets a lot better.

Again, he needs those distractions. Everybody does in life so you don't get burnt out on whatever you're doing. But it's the constant repetition that I think will help him out even more. He does a lot of reps already. But that's where we're going to start getting one punch, one kick knockouts.

That's where they're going to start coming and the proper timing on his takedowns. So the constant reps will definitely help. No doubt about it. But everybody needs distractions because otherwise you find yourself getting kind of a kind of lazy with your training a little bit and kind of complacent.

But John's all in. He's fired up, and that's the difference with John. When he does train, he trains hard. He shows upon time. He works his butt off. He stays late. And he trains harder than anybody else in the gym. What was Fight Week like with all the craziness from your vantage point?

Outside. It looked like John was enjoying it. I didn't get there Friday. I'm that guy. The other coaches, I got a great team of guys that go in. and they can do it all in themselves. They were there for the day-to-day antics, but he did a good job.

So you've reached the peak coach status where you get to show up just for the fight and then you don't have to worry about all the other madness? You know what? I've always done that. You know, sometimes I get in trouble with that, but maybe I'm a jerk, but here's the deal. We have some, they have a lot of guys in the gym. So if I was to spend the whole week with somebody in the fights

and the next big do that, I would never be able to train the fight. fighters behind the scenes. So I've always been the guy that has stayed behind. You know, while the other guy is... They got plenty of conferences that can those type of things. Before we let you go, I really appreciate your time here. The notion of moving up to heavyweight, it seems like it's inevitable. Let me ask it in this way. If you had total say, if you had control over this process, which we know, Johns' own guy, when would you advise a move to heavyweight. Not right away. Honestly, I always just say wipe out this light heavyweight

division. Just stay on top. Just stay active and show your greatness out there because I think John already is the best pound for pound of all time in the sport. I think he's got a lot more to offer. But after you clean it out, then move up to heavyweight for the big fights, for the big money fights and put some money in his bank account and show everybody you can do it to heavyweight as well. When you hear the arguments that like, oh, he's only good because of all. all the PED stuff. And look, I don't know what the truth is. I'm just going to say this.

His fight IQ, to me, the tape appears to be conclusive, that his fight IQ is through the roof. But when you hear those kinds of things, how do you respond to them? Well, there's not much response because if you already hate John or if you already don't like, if you're one of those haters, I'm not going to change anything.

If you like John, you like John. So I've kind of given up on all that through experience. But I think that you saw I need to change to their reference ranges because we've been something that can't help you. I mean, something's going to show up in our environment that everybody touches.

Who knows what John had done before the past far as eating something the wrong time, touching somebody in the wrong way we'd have given their dogs some kind of hormones not to go in heat. I mean, I don't know. I'm talking through my butt right now, but it's just when things don't matter,

why they even talked about. And that's kind of what I'm irritated about. He should have been suspended the first time, I believe, yet alone the second time. But of course, if you hate John, you're going to jump on it and make excuses. At this point, there's nothing we can do about it, but just go forward and just keep dominating fights. Coach, I got to tell you, I can't wait for March 2nd. John Jones is going to defend his title against Anthony Smith and Nevada.

Best of luck at that event, and I'll be watching and appreciate your time today. Yeah, thank you, sir. I appreciate your time. Enjoy the burrito. I will. There he goes. All right. And then last but not least, what's the word on Mr. Covington back in the back?

So is he close? Do we have him? All right, Danny's getting him on the phone right now, apparently. This ought to be interesting. I feel bad for what happened. All right, let's go to him now. He is the man with the plan. He is DJT's number one fan. And he's got his belt right there.

Joining us for Coconut Creek, Florida, is the, I guess, are you still the interim champ, Colby? What's your status? I'm officially now the people's champion and America's champion. Fair enough. Wait, okay. Is Donald Trump not America's champion or are you guys co-champions? No, we're co-champions, but Donald Trump's the Great American Winning Machine.

Got it. Okay. All right, man. Let's figure out what happened here. How did it come to be that Tyrone Woodley is fighting a UFC 235 against Kamar Usman? When you came on this show, I think just a few weeks ago and told us, You were ready to go at 235. What happened, man?

Shit, man. I'm still trying to put the pieces together and figure out why it happened. But, you know, I think there's some things going behind the scenes that people don't know about yet. So I guess, you know, some managers have a little bit more pull than other managers. And, you know, UFC wants to devalue their products. You know, I'm the number one fighter in the world. I have a belt that got wrapped around my waist by Dana White. I was promised November for Madison Square Garden.

with Woodley. I was promised January in California with Woodley, which they ended up canceling the show for. And then all of a sudden, Woodley's healthy for March 2nd, and I'm getting passed up for a guy behind me. And I could understand if that guy behind me was like a bigger draw, maybe he does bigger numbers, but it's not

even close. He doesn't even compare to me in terms of numbers. The guy's coming off eating my sloppy seconds, and the guy just beat two guys that are coming off losses. So the guys shouldn't even deserve a title shot, but, you know, if the UFC wants to dumb it up their fans and devalue their brand, so be it.

They're going to burn their own flames. Let's walk it back a little bit. We spoke, again, about a few weeks ago, and at the time what we were waiting on was to figure out how healthy Tyrone Woodley was, because if he was healthy enough, you two were going to fight at 233. I guess he had some wrist issue, so then they were going to bump it back to 235. From that point, when did you figure out that this was not trending in your direction? Um, you know, I, I never thought that it wasn't trending in my direction. I know that Woodley was refusing to fight me and he didn't want to fight me. And, you know, he kept delaying the inevitable that I'm going to whip his ass just like I did at American Top Team. But, you know, all of a sudden, just one day everything swept from under my feet without any notice. They kind of just, they didn't give me any heads up. They just, you know, they just pretty much screwed me, plain and simple. And really, they're not just screwing me. They're screwing their fans, man. I mean, all their hardcore fans that, you know,

that have been buying their products since, you know, since Matt Hughes fought Sean Chirk back, you know, who knows when, when they sold 40,000 products, all those fans that have built this company that's helped it rise to the $4 billion company that it is today. I mean, they're shitting on all those fans. They're shitting on the rankings. They're shitting on everything. And it's just not fair, but it is what it is. That's like.

How did you find out? I find out through my manager, Dan Lambert. You know, he said, hey, man, you know, this ain't right. We try to get sit-down meetings with Dana White. We try to get sit-down meetings with UFC brass. Hey, let's talk this out, man. This can easily be resolved. Let's just figure it out.

You get everybody else meetings. I'm the one person that will not give a meeting to. So, you know, that's unjust as it is. You know, it's unfair to me if they wouldn't give me their meeting and hear my reasoning of why is this happening to me. I just want to face to face with one of those guys and then tell me, why are you not getting this fight? And explain to me the reasoning and have that.

valid points. Now, you mentioned that some people have powerful managers, but you've got Dan Lambert, right? I mean, that guy almost bought the UFC. He's no small fry. So what, how is he not able to influence this to the point where you get the fight? Yeah, it's, it's pretty sad, man, because Dan's one of the most influential managers slash gym owners in the game. The guy, you know, passed up buying the UFC and let Dana White buy the UFC back then. And I mean, the guy, I mean, He's had so many champions through American Top Team. He continues, I mean, he has the new double champ, you know, and Amanda Nunes. He's got so many fighters in his stable.

And he continues to produce some of the best talent the world's ever seen in mixed martial arts. And, you know, that just shows that if he can't get the job done for me, when I'm number one in the world, I have a belt wrapped around my waist. I did something that no fighters ever did in the history of the sport, go to the White House, and hang out with the sitting president. If he can't get that done, and when this is already a blockbuster, built-up main event between me and Woodley, you know, I mean, it helps loss for all these other fighters. Think about all these other fighters, Luke. Think about these middle-of-the-road

fighters that are working their way up. I mean, they're being promised certain things. I mean, if I can't get a title shot when they promised me a title shot, all hopes lost for all these other fighters. I feel sorry for them. Just to clarify, if they called you and said, we changed our minds, can you fight at UFC 235? In terms of your health and your readiness, you could do that. Absolutely. I was ready to fight in January in California and fight Woodley then. I was ready to fight November. You know, the only time I couldn't fight, Luke, is back in September in Dallas. But I couldn't fight because they offered me the fight on six weeks, and I was already getting nose surgery. I couldn't breathe out of my nose. I had mucus, blood draining down my nose into my lungs.

I mean, I was at literally 30%. I was fighting RDA, not even at my full potential. So all I did is ask for an extra two months instead of six weeks because they backed themselves in a corner in a matchmaking hole. And now they're trying to hold this against me. But I find it funny because, you know, Dana White's tone, he changed his tone real quick. He was like, he heard from the UFC doctors. You know, Colby's not cleared.

He can't fight in September in Dallas. You know, and then he changed his tone. He's like after the Woodley Till fight, he was like, okay, Colby's 100% fighting Woodley next. That's the next fight to make. And then all of a sudden everything's changed. Now they're trying to hold it against me. Colby's not taking fights.

That doesn't fly in the UFC, blah, blah, blah. But let's be honest, Dana, you don't got the balls to release me. If you're saying all this stuff to the media, then release me. But you ain't got the balls. So it appears your relationship with Dana has fractured a little bit. Yeah. I mean, we never really had a relationship, you know. I brought him to the White House.

You know, I did some things so the UFC could go to the White House and put their little on their documentary. UFC in short 25 years and there with Trump and stuff. They wouldn't have went there if I didn't win this belt and asked to go there and call my shot. So they should be thanking me for that. But besides that, you know, me and Dana White have never had a relationship. I've never once talked to him on the phone.

I leave him to talk to my manager, Dan Lambert. I'm focused on training every day, Luke. I'm focused on the process, on the evolution of me as a fighter. I don't care about all the political stuff, all the stuff that goes behind scenes. All I care about is fighting. You know, I'm not here to fight for you. for money either. I don't fight for money. Every time the UFC office might some, I just take it. I've never asked for more money. Not one time in my career. I fought Damien Maia for 30 grand.

I mean, the number two guy in the world I was fighting for 30 grand. So I don't care about money. It's not about the money. I mean, this to be the best fighter in the world, to put on entertaining shows, and to please the fans. That's what it's all about is the fans. And they're shitting on all their fans. So, you know, it's just, it's sad. You know, it's they want to, they want to, they want to, they want to fool the people and think that they can, pull this fast one on the people, but really they're just pulling a fast one on their self. So what do you think is going to happen at 235? Who wins? Woodley or Usman? Oh, Woodley for sure. You know, you know, Usman's a scrub, man. He's, he's, he's not relevant. No one cares about him. You know, people don't want to see him fight. You know, he's, he hasn't even beat a guy in the top 10 that's coming off a wing yet, Luke. You know, I mean, the guys being two guys

that are shells of their former selves because I left those guys in full blood. I retired those guys. guys, I took their souls. They don't, they don't want to fight no more. They're done. After they lost to me, they hung it up. They're like, I'm done. I'm just going to take a couple checks and right off into the sunset. So, you know, it's not going to be competitive. You know, Wiley's going to run through them. And then we'll see what happens next. Who knows? They're probably going to try and screw me again and pass me up for someone else. But the thing is, is there's no one else, Luke. There's no one else at the top of the mountain. I'm the only one up here. Who else is there? Yeah, so this puts you in a really weird position. So do you wait for the winner of that?

Do you take another fight? What are you, have they told you that you get the winner of that? Like, where are you right now? Where am I is, you know, promises made, promises kept? I'm not taking anything less than a title fight. I don't care who's in the title fight. I'll fight anybody.

It doesn't matter who you are. I'm the best fighter on the planet Earth today. No one can stop me, Luke. Mark my fucking words. You heard it here on MMA hour. I will not be stopped. No one's going to beat me now that I'm 100% healthy. And I'm getting better every single day.

You haven't even seen my full potential yet. I'm 30 years young. I still have seven, eight years of competitive fighting to beat all these little soy boys, all these little snowflakes up. So, you know, I'm going to say, wait until I get what I was promised. And if I don't get what I promised, then, you know, then they're going to have to make a decision. They're going to have to start, you know, I don't know, release me. Do you entertain that? Like you'd be in favor of that if it came to it?

Yeah, absolutely. But they're not going to do it. They realize my value now, Luke. They realize how valuable I am. They know that I sell. They know that every single fighter in the Walthaway Division wants to fight me. They know that I'm the draw right now at Walthaway. I made this division relevant, Luke.

The only reason people care about Woodley and care about Ouzden is because they say my name. I'm the relevant one in the division. No one cares about anybody else. They just want to see me fight anybody. Doesn't matter who it is. So, you know, they're screwing the fans over and they're screwing the people. And the people who make their business run. So it's a big fuck you to the fans.

You mentioned that Usman has a powerful manager. He does. It's Ali Abdel Aziz, who's a very powerful manager, very successful manager. Do you believe that he just has a better relationship with Dana than Dan? Yeah, absolutely. Ali is a little dirty rat, and he has done some things for the UFC that they owe him favors. So that's the only reason this fights coming together. This has nothing to do with snooze.

This has everything to do with his manager. in no way, shape, or form, is there ever a time where you put the number two fighter above the number one fighter when the number one fighter is ready to go? And especially when the number one fighter has a belt and the number one fighter went to the White House. So, and the number one fighter does the biggest numbers and is the biggest draw. So, you know, this is a direct result of his manager. You know, he's sucking the UFC off and the UFC likes that. So they're going to do him favors.

Well, it was, I believe, reported by my colleague Errawwani that Zerner, that Zawking, reason why they went in a different direction was they just didn't like the fact that you were saying no to anybody but Woodley. And so because Uspin was fighting anyone at any time, they said, well, this guy's more accommodating. He also has been, you know, climbing his way through the ranks. Let's just go in that direction. Is that what you had heard at all? This is what I say to that. No one, like, I haven't heard anything like that. You know, they can, they can say whatever they want. They're just trying to feed the media and the people something, because they don't have anything.

They can't give him anything, Luke. They can't say because he's a bigger draw, because of this or that, because he's not. He's not a bigger draw. Everybody wants to see me fight Woodley. No one cares about him. They only care about him when he's talking about me. Otherwise, he can't draw 20 comments.

No one cares. No one's engaged or interacting with him because the fans just don't care. You know, he's a liar. I'm a man of my word. I'm truthful. Everything I say has been honest, man. I always keep it real.

And maybe that's why the UFC, doesn't like me because I keep it wrong. They like the shady people, the people that lie to them and that. But I'm not that guy. I'm a trustful guy. I'm a man of my word. And when you give me your word, I'm going to hold you to your word. You mentioned the surgery and that you had blood and whatever else going into your lungs. Can you give us a sense of what actually the problem was? You actually hadn't talked about that previously in the show. What was the issue? And I guess why did you need surgery for it? Yeah, I had a deviated septum and I had chronic sinusitis. I mean, it was the worst it had ever been.

Like the doctor has, by the way, this is not my doctor. This is the UFC doctor. The UFC doctor said, this is the worst case that I've seen in 20 years doing this business. I've never went and had to use two machines. I've always just used this one machine in the 20 years. You broke this machine with your one surgery and that's never happened. So as soon as the UFC was precky, me in that fight and then they figured out, then they heard from the UFC doctors that, that how serious this was. That's when Dana changed his tone. He was like, okay, yeah, Colby's getting the next title shot. So this is a serious thing, Lou, that, you know, I don't, I don't fake injuries. I showed up to every single fight. You know, all I wanted was an extra

month or two to get ready to get healthy. I didn't want to go into a title fight, not being at my best. You know, I want to show the fans and I want to show the UFC my worth, and I can't do that fighting at 30%. So, you know, also, you know, I was on the phone with Jeff Newebner whiskey and you saw it every single day because I'm an honest guy. I'm trustworthy. You know, I'm not like John Jones who's cheating and failing three steroid tests. You know, I was on the phone with Jeff New Whiskey. Hey, man, I need to get a TUE, man. They're putting me on all these antibiotics. They can't figure out what this is. I got to do the surgery so they have to give me all these medicines, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, I was in no shape to fight in September in Dallas. It wasn't going to

happen no chance. So, you know, if you want to punish me for not fighting in Dallas and turning around on six weeks notice when I had surgery and on every antibiotic and cocktail underneath the sun, then that's cool. That's your business decision. If you want to keep fucking up your brand and moving shows from one city to another because a guy failed his third steroid test and he's hitting pregnant lady's hit and run, so be it. I'm the ultimate professional, Luke, show up on time, make weight, you know, do everything they ask to me, fly all around the country, fly all around the world, do whatever they want, whatever they want. So, you know, no big deal. If they don't want a hardworking, you know, a guy like me, then so be it.

You know, where's your balls? Show me your balls. If you're so man, you're saying all these videos that you don't need me and I'm not worth anything and this and that, then let me go. So if they asked you to be on standby, make wait for that welterweight title fight, would you do it? I'd say standby on this, bitch. So suffice to say a no is the way you would treat that. All right, so look, you're sticking to your guns. Not going to come back to fight unless it's for a title, huh?

Sticking to my guns, Luke. Ain't fighting for anything less than a title. I already got a title. So, you know, I'm already the champ. I'm the biggest draw in the division. These two scrubs and jabronies that are going to be fighting in March, they're going to be calling my name. They only want to fight me.

They know who the biggest paycheck in is and who's going to make them the most amount of money for a loss. So, you know, I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere, Lou. I'm just getting started. If you think that I've reached my potential, you haven't seen anything yet. I'm still 30 years young and still getting better in martial arts every single day at American Top Team. My best is yet to come.

I'm standing my guns. I'm not fighting for anything less than what I was promised and what I deserve. And that's a title shop. All right, Colby, well, I hope you get it sooner rather than later. I do believe you've earned it. I'm sorry these circumstances have played out the way they have. Thank you for making time for us. And we look forward to seeing you hopefully sooner rather than later.

Appreciate you, Lou. a lot, man. Have a good day. You too. There he goes. The other great American winning machine. All right, without a moment of rest, let's get to our next, and I believe final segment, it is time for the sound off. All right. I need to put, let's go to our board here. I got to put some freaking nasal spray in my goddamn nose. Because I can't breathe at all. Join now by the a hit to my empanada, the Ataquipa to my pan. Oh, the queso fresco or whatever it is. To my chocolate. Here he is.

One and only. The two... Come as you say rain in Españo. Julia. Yeah. You're that to my Bogota. All right. Danes Sigur is here.

Danny, how are you, sir? Doing well. You? Do you enjoy your weekend with no M.M.A.? Yeah, it's nice. It's always nice to get a little break from M. But, you know, the news was busy. It was pretty busy, wasn't?

It wasn't much of a break. By the way, how Colombian is this freaking studio? We've got the Hamas thing. I know. I know. We've got the thing and then the other thing. I just keep you in the word thing. Like, it's going on that stuff.

How were the calls today, sir? Probably the best batch of calls we've ever got. He got a ridiculous time. They're still coming in. Yeah, let me say the one thing. You got excoriated and I got excoriated because you put the best question at the last time, like, what's the moral case for potentially using PEDs in sports?

And you put it last, and everyone was like, oh, my God, that's the one we wanted first. So don't you be tripping me up with the order of these questions? You know, you just got to go with what you're feeling, you know? All right. That was that. All right. Let's hear it.

What do you got? All right, well, you know, John Jones versus Anthony Smith seems to be the biggest topic. There's tons of topics, but that's one of the big things that's going on in the news. So let's discuss that. All right. Hello, Luke and Danny. My name is Tintay from Texas. And am I the only one that finds Jones versus Smith matchup boring? I've seen enough Jones title defenses, and no one in division interests me except Reyes, Santos, and potentially Rockhold to face Jones.

I'd much rather see him go to heavyweight and face JDS. What are your thoughts? Ooh. Here's the point I made. I made it to Mike Winklejohn as well. Anthony Smith, I mean, I'm not saying it's this incredibly overwhelming case, but it's a pretty clear case that he's your top guy. If your champion is active and he's giving opportunities to top contenders,

that is the way that divisions are supposed to run. I am not going to get in the way of that. Whether or not you think they have a really great chance is kind of irrelevant. That's how divisions, become divisions through this natural process and this natural order. Count me in favor. Because by the way, oh, Anthony Smith has no chance. Really?

Did Matt Sire have a chance against GSP? This is a sport of craziness. Give opportunities to the deserved. Couldn't agree more. I've been saying this. I feel like we've entered an era and, you know, maybe this caller probably, you know, goes under that classification. But we've entered an era where all we want to see is super fights.

all we want to see is fun fights, but how about we just get the title, you know, defenses going? Like, that's how Anderson Silva became Anderson. Defending the title, Demetra's Johnson, GSP, right? It was never always like, oh, let's, who's at 155 or who's at 170? Let's see what we can do as far as super fights go. Let's just get the title defended. I'm kind of sick of the super fights a little bit. I don't know if you are.

I don't want to see John Jones go to heavyweight at least not anytime soon. Let the light heavyweight title get defended. let's get contenders, you know, fighting for the title. And then if super fights come up, good. But if not, let's just get the title defended. Agreed. Keep them in rotation. Keep them busy.

Love it. And it just seems like everything's stuck, right? With John Jones coming back, it's so refreshing just knowing that the title is going to get defended again. Yeah. Keep telling me him being around is bad for the sport. Keep telling me that. I swear it'll come true one day, I promise. It's exciting having him around regardless of the controversy.

It's great. All right. Well, that question brings us to another question, which is John Jones' eligibility to fight in Nevada, right? Hey, Luke, this is Darien calling from Dallas, Texas. How about some Cowboys, by the way? Fuck the Cowboys. My question is, why do you think the UFC is so quick to rebook John Jones in Nevada, considering what this happened with UFC 232?

Is it a great favor of the commission? What do you think it is to put pressure on them to get him reinsets as fast as possible? Thank you. I don't think it has anything to do with the commission. I think it's got everything to do with the fact that they owe contractually Team Mobile a certain amount of shows. Certainly as a return to the fans who could be nearby. Look, they took a show from Nevada. The least you could do is put one back, right?

And what I mean by put one back is they weren't expecting Jones to be back. Now he's back. He wants to go in there. He has to get cleared. We'll see what happens. But yes, I think it's to get rid of that issue ostensibly. And then go back where you were supposed to go, fight where you were supposed to fight, draw at the gate, put another title fight on there, and put on a decent show.

Yeah, I think it has everything to do with giving back to that state and the various people involved, whether it's commission or fans or a combination of both. Yeah, they definitely own a Nevada big fight, and, you know, they took away John Jones while they're bringing him back. Hopefully it gets cleared, but there's definitely an issue there. And, hey, even if he doesn't, you know, Tyron Woodley could easily headline that card, and the card underneath is really good. They're stacking it up. So I think there's a contingency plan there in case, I don't know, things go wrong.

with John Jones or, you know, the whole process gets, you know, prolonged. Yep. But, yeah, pretty good card. All right, well, let's go to the welterweight division. We just had Colby on. So let's talk about... He was interesting, huh? Very interesting.

I've never... He's always sort of in the side of Dana and the UFC. Yeah, not this time. Not this time. Quite the opposite. I was surprised to hear him say the things that he said. Yeah. Hey, Danny.

Hey, Luke. Jake Hong from Orange County. Two-part question. The USC recently booked Tyrone Woodley. versus Camaro Oussman at USC 235. Do you think they dropped the Woodley Covington fight because of the UFC 229 pre-fight hype and the post-fight brawl

and everything that went down with that? Also, do you think that they had no need for Woodley Covington anymore since the return of John Jones, something they didn't have until a couple months ago? Anyways, thanks for taking my call and later donks. We are dunks.

So it seems pretty clear that the issue was that, you know, hey, you know, Colby was playing ball with the UFC. They didn't want to accept any other fights than a title shot. The UFC didn't really like that. And then on the opposite end, you have, you know, Usman, who was, right, a replacement opponent for the Till Woodley fight. And he's just been fighting everyone that, you know, Argentina, he's been going anywhere.

Yeah, where they tell him to go. Chile, right? Yeah, Chile. Yeah, so I think to get to the point, like, why did they do it? Well, having Jones as your headliner enables you to have some flexibility with your co-main event. And whether Colby's theory is that Camaro's manager They owed him favors or something

I don't know anything about that But that's his story Ariel's reporting that it was because Hey look this guy was saying I'm only gonna fight one guy and that's it And Camaro's like dude I'll do whatever you want It seems pretty plausible to be quite honest with you So there's that theory as well

Whatever the case was the return of John Jones Does give them some flexibility One way or the other with this one So whatever theory you want to buy into What was the other part of the question? I forget. Basically, like, why that fight is happening and not, you know, not Colby. Oh, yeah.

And as for that one, you know, beyond it, I just feel like the UFC really values people that say yes to them a lot. Hey, can you take this final short notice? Yes. Can you be there and make wait? Yes. Can you do this on this? Can you accommodate this ferocious schedule that we have? To the extent that you say yes to that, I think they over time.

And by the way, here's the other thing that it's a lesson that winning that belt. It's not that ranking doesn't matter. It does. However, you being number one matters for the moment you get it and then there's a short window in which being one matters. At some point, it no longer holds the same relevancy. In other words, when you're hot as a stock, think about stocks rising and falling. If your stock is rising and then you hit one, that's that coinciding moment where you can do a lot with it. But if you've held one and then other ones are moving around you and you're just sitting there, they'll pass you by because, yes, John being back enables you to have some flexibility in that co-main event, but also John being back two, three more times the year enables them to say, yeah, we don't necessarily need the Colby versus Woodley fight.

I think that it would be a good one to make, but yeah, it gives them some flexibility. And in a way, I think this caller made a pretty good point with the whole UFC 229 incident. There's been a lot of controversy, the UFC has gone under a lot of controversy lately with John Jones drug test, the whole UFC 229 stuff. Yeah.

My guess is that the Woodley Covington fight would bring some controversy as well. And it'd be nice to get just two guys that are in it for the competition rather than, you know, have the fight be about some outside stuff as well. And I think also John Jones, I think, you know, he's also a bit of a wild card, although I feel like the Anthony Smith fight is a lot more, more chill, if that makes sense, than say, like a D.C. rivalry or anything like that. Yeah, but hold on. I don't buy the theory that they're doing this to protect themselves against an ugly fight building. No, no, I don't think that's entirely the option, but I think that's, I don't think that's entirely the look, but I think that's definitely something they might think about. It's less of a headache, less of a, you know, stress, I guess. I don't know. I don't buy that.

I think they like that kind of thing. All right. Well, let's talk about Kobe and what he does next from here. All right. Hi, Luke and Danny. This is Jerry from Sacramento, California. Sacta. My question is, being that Woodley and Usman is all but official, what's next for Covingtonton?

Thanks for taking my call. Saludos. Saludo, so we heard him here on the show. Looks like he's going to stick to his guns and wait for that title shot. You know who else did that and eventually it worked out for him? Tyron Woodley. Yep. Boy, Tyron Woodley, you know, you remember that back and forth he had with Usman last week?

Yeah. Like nothing signed. You're playing yourself. He resists these guys. Then he ends up fighting all of them. And I say it as a credit to him because, dude, he's fighting tough guys over and over again. But he always has this weird, like, it's done when I say it's done thing, which is true. That is true.

But he ends up fighting him. Anyway, I don't quite get it, but all right, this is kind of funny. Yeah. I feel like that's also why fans are probably some fans don't really like Woodley all that much. Because the whole thing is like, whoa, he refuses to fight people a lot. He's fighting everyone. But he does go out there in the media. He does go out there on social media and, you know.

Say no, no, you know. And I feel like that's what stays with the fans. But if you look at the facts, the man's active and the man's fighting the top. If you just looked at his record, you'd be like, God damn. It's just everything else. Yeah. So what's next for Colby? I mean, do you really think he'll sit out?

For a while. For a while. Yeah, he's going to want to sit. But it's dumb, man. I'm not dumb. That's not true. Let me take that back. I recant.

It's not dumb. But I do think it's questionable. Because, like, Diaz sitting out, it's like, I understand Diet, you're talking about Nate. I understand Nate Diaz wanting to sit out because why would I take a fight where I have so much to lose and very little to gain. But at some point, yes. absence does make the heart grow fonder, but you're losing valuable time in which to make money as well. And I don't know. I get that sitting out makes sense, but sitting out for a prolonged period does not. People forget about you and they move on. Yeah. I mean, who else is out there, Ponsenio, as far as contenders, like he can fight as the number one contender spot?

Who? Colby? Yeah. Yeah, that. I mean, again, you get the winner of Woodley versus Usman is another one. Yeah, I don't know. Also, don't forget, you know, Robbie Lawler and Ascran are fighting. Who knows what happens there? If Lawler gets a good win, he might jump the line. Who knows? Ben Ascran versus Colby Covington would be phenomenal. That would be fun too, yeah.

All right, let's talk about another fight on that card as well. Pretty good fight. Interesting way. Ramona fellas, this is Charles Jalen Ware, calling out of the ATL. Joe Woodrow. I just read yesterday that Cody Gargrant is said to finally. let return at UFC 235.

It is smart for him career-wise to remain in the same division where he just got TKO and back-to-back losses to the current champion. Most careers are never the same after that, and how can he, you know, rebound

from there, or can he rebound from that? History tell us most fighters are never, ever the same after that happened. If you take him up, God bless him. I'm not sure that's entirely true.

Garburn fighting Munoz. Yeah, I love it. I don't have any... I'm not saying it. Yeah, well, I'm not saying, oh, let me think about the very best fight I can make at this point. I think it's a very good fight for Garbrand.

If Garbrand's not... Yes, of course. If Garbrand's not careful, it could be a bad fight for him because Munoz... Munoz, for folks who don't know this, Munoz has the best guillotines, maybe in M.A.

His guillotine series and setups from front headlock, he can get guillotines from the back. people don't realize that. He'll try and take your back and put that one hook in against the fence and then switch to a guillotine. He's amazing. He's amazing with that. So you've got to be careful with that guy. Don't misunderstand me. It's not a walk in the park, but I think it's a very winnable fight for him. We'll see what happens with flyweight. Remember, he was less than Demetri's Johnson on the same time they had the same fight night in terms of their fight night wait.

So he can go back down there. And I just feel like, yeah, dude, what is he supposed to do? Mote forever? He lost. It was terrible. Everyone knows that. But he He checked out for a bit. Seems like he's ready to check back in. This is as good of a fight as any to check back in. I love it. I think it's a good fight. It's an exciting one for sure, but I do think it's a bit risky for him.

Munoz is no joke, man. He's a top contender. But it is a good situation in the sense that he wins. He's already relevant. He can be one fight away from a title shot, depending on how things go. But I also a bit surprised, keeping in mind that he weighed about just as much as Amitres Johnson did, you know, after Wayans. surprised he's not dropping a flight weight. I mean, it seems to me that flyweight for like, say,

like last month we were like, okay, flyweight's gone. 2019, it's going to be over. But I feel like the UFC hasn't really closed the book on flyweight. I feel like they're waiting to see what happens with Sehudo and Dilleshaw. Also, you know, you got Joe B out there campaigning, you know, to continue the division. I feel like there might be something there. And if Garbrand, you know, he's a big name goes on to flyweight, we know he could probably make flyweight and, you know, big, make big waves there, he could probably, you know, keep that division around, don't you think? Yeah, but you got to figure out if FlyWare it's going to be around. Yeah.

And by the way, if TJ wins the title down there. Well, that's the gambols you got to take now before they pull the plug on it, if they do. Well, I mean, why make preparations to drop to a weight class if you don't know it's going to be there? But, I mean, if it's, if you can make it and maybe switch, you know,

the UFC's mind on the flyweight and then you be that guy, I feel like there's value there. I don't know. I mean, I think he will look for some kind of assurance that it's going to be there before he would put that on his body. By the way, do you see that video that came out of T.J. Dilleshaw? I didn't see a video, but I've been seeing... In the stills? He looks thin.

I'll put it that way. He looks thin. And I've said it for like a while since we've been talking about, you know, DJ and Dillishaw for a while. Now it's obviously with Sehuda, but, dude, 10 extra pounds at that weight. It's not like it's from 1, 2005 to, you know, 195 or something. It's already from 135 to 125 to 125. Those pounds get, you know, they get tough, man. It's nearly 10%. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. It's a lot. I mean, we're how many weeks, two, three weeks? Yeah. He's already looking quite thin. Yeah. Here in Brooklyn.

Yep. Your neck of the woods. Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Brooklyn. Yeah. BK. All right, next.

All right, let's now turn the clock a little bit and talk about some stuff still pending from UFC 232. You know, talk about Cyborg. This is Bert from Philly, and I'd like to know where Cyborg goes from here, considering that, I believe she only has one fight left her in her contract anyway, and I don't think Dana would want her to possibly get the belt back and then leave. And also, given that she probably doesn't really know how to improve from here because she hasn't had to change her game very much. Thanks a lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, that was the last fight on her contract. From what I've read, I think she's got one more. Is that right? Yeah. I've sworn that was the last one. That's the reports that I've read. All right. Well, to be honest, I have not looked into it, so I cannot.

Let's assume she's got one more fight. Do you get a rematch or where does she go? Yeah, we had Conan Silvera on the show last week, and he was like, why would she get an immediate rematch? Which is the right thing for a coach to say. Yeah. I just don't. I cannot fathom any other scenario other than that one unless there's some kind of injury to Amanda.

That's the only way. How on earth do you make any other fight in that division with her? He talks about her skill set. I don't think her skill set is the problem. In other words, even if she fights again and maximizes her skill set, she could lose. But she didn't even come close to maximizing. She just brawled. You see cyborgs video that she pulled out with Clarissa Shields, the Olympian coming back?

They're like, why did you brawl with her? Why weren't you just jabbing with her? Yeah. Even then she might lose, but that will be a much better estimation of how far she can go. Right. She didn't even come close. So to me, it's tactics and strategies, not abilities. Right.

There's still questions around that matchup. It's not like, you know, we saw, you know, cyborg get out box for, you know, five rounds or anything like that. You know, the whole plan, and Amanda Nunez said this, the whole plan was to get her crazy. It was to hit her hard and get her, you know, get her fired up. And, you know, it was effective. But interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised if maybe, you know, Amanda goes and defends the 135 belt. And in the meantime, maybe they do Cyborg versus Megan Anderson. And then the winner of that gets a crackout at 145. I don't know. I also feel like this is a very similar situation. to TJ dropping down in the sense that it could also kill the division

if they decide they don't want to be in the cyborg business anymore. I mean, are they really going to keep $145? I have a hard time seeing that. Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. I mean, I guess there's another way to go, but given the ability where you finally have a chance to promote Amanda Nunes, why you wouldn't do that with a second cyborg fight

feels to me like, again, promotional, no practice, good sir. Take that one home with you. We got one more? Yeah, let's do one more, and then I'll run like an effing main. Anyak, Uptown. Cool. I know you touched a little bit on this, but, you know,

let's talk about this was also in the headlines. Pettus Thompson. Well, weird a match-up. What's up, Luke? My name is Christopher Black, and I'm calling from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. My question is the simple one. What do you guys think about Anthony Pettus,

calling out Stephen Wonderboy Thompson? He's a big boy, and Anthony's coming off a loss. So what does that look like? Thanks, guys. Are you about it? First of all, are you about that fight? I didn't give it much thought, and I guess the answer is yes. Really?

Sure. Like, I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other. People are like, oh, my God, I hate it, or oh, my God, I love it. I'm sort of in the middle. I don't hate it. I don't love it. I'm fairly neutral about it. It seems somewhat intriguing.

Here's the thing I've noticed about jumping weight classes. There's often reminders you see people do it, you're like, oh, right, that's why there's weight classes, right? but the one sort of equalizing factor that I don't think we really appreciate enough is like why is jumping weight class so hard in boxing because offensive power is muted by the size of the glove relative to MMA. So in MMA, we see these guys jump weight classes

McGregor goes to 155, Nunes goes up, D.C. goes up. You're like, holy shit, look at these guys' power. Look at their power. The glove enables that, I feel like. So to me, when you have two strikers, it's not as crazy as if you had like two wrestlers where they were like relatively like Gagard Musassi versus Roy McDonald's like they're very similar in skill sets in terms of the overall well-roundedness, but one's just bigger.

I know how this is going to go. Same thing with Shevchenko. He fought her three times. Those are two strikers too, but you'd at least seen that one play out. Maybe Thompson goes in there and smokes them. I don't know. But the lack of the power being muted from the gloves at least makes it relative. I mean, again, I'm not going to, if they make it great, they don't find.

But I'm moderately curious. Yeah, I'm not at all. No. No. You know what? Thompson's a big dude. I mean, when he fought... No, he's not small. Yeah.

When he fought Woodley, I think he probably looked bigger, or maybe not muscular, but just, you know, frame-wise. Yeah. And we got Pettis who not too long ago was fighting Max Holloway at 145. And, you know, granted, he had weight issues and he had a hard time making the cut. But I think he still went in at, like, 146, 147. So fighting at 170, I just think it's quite a big bite.

And plus, Pettis has been looking great. I feel like, although he's been losing a bit, I feel like his attitude towards fighting changed a bit, and he's now like, you know, this sort of fan favorite I'll go in there and brawl, you know? And man, lightweight, there's just tons of killers out there. There's tons of fights for him to be in that I think are quite exciting. So stay at 155, man.

Yeah, again, I think it's probably the right call. By the way, wasn't there supposed to be a Justin Gachie fight? And then that faded? Yeah. I mean, that was the fight to make. And I guess they moved on. I don't know what happened. But, yeah, I was like all about it.

See, that's a fantastic fight. Exactly. Look, look, I think the real answer, keeping a 155. I'm just saying sometimes there can be reasons to think even with a size disadvantage, somebody could go up, but then, you know, I'm not going to hardcore advocate for it.

I want to do a longer version of this, but we I woke up Sunday with one guest, I go to bed Sunday with four, so we ended up not managing interviews about it. Yeah, you know, they're great. I'm not, I'm not upset about it, but you know, when you've got 8,000

jobs like I do, it's hard to manage. We could literally do an hour of these questions. Yeah, I would love to do that. I want to do one all sound off episode. I think it would be kind of cool. We get video messages recorded and stuff too and play them. It would be kind of fun, right? Yeah.

All right, man. Well, there'll be an MMA beat this week. I guess I'll see you there. Yep. And good job with the calls and everything else, and we'll talk. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. I just want to quickly say, I got some messages on Twitter.

Apparently, you know, I didn't seem too excited when you announced. Yeah. Boy, you looked like. I would just say this. First of all, the lighting didn't help because I would. was like in the shadows. I was like, Danny, I'm going to be a father. He was like, yes, the robot known as Danny Sigura approves. Also, by nature, I'm very chill. And also, I already knew the news. So it wasn't like a big shock or anything like that. And I didn't

know you were going to announce. But I am excited for you. And congrats. I'm getting Gita. I told Danny a long time ago. I told him right when I knew at the three month mark. So, but thank you. You did get torched a little bit for that. It was kind of funny. I did. It was all right. He did. He did. He did. In fact, actually, no. All right, buddy. Good job. And I will see you on Thursday. Sounds good. As always, keep the calls coming. 844-866-24-68. Keep the tweets coming using to hashtag the MMA hour.

Until next time, donks, stay frosty.