MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 14: Jedrzejczyk vs. Waterson, Cain Velasquez MMA Retirement and Brock rematch…sort of | Weidman vs. Reyes | MORNING KOMBAT | Ep. 14

Episode Date: October 15, 2019

BC is back from Jamaica mon, waxing poetic about the lazy river and Red Stripe. The guys get into UFC Tampa and discuss if Joanna Jedrzejczyk is ready for the title? Cain Velasquez announced his retirement from MMA but also announced a rematch with Brock Lesnar? What? We preview Weidman vs, Reyes, cover another boxing tragedy as well as Errol Spence Jr. surviving totaling his Ferrari.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Oh, it is Monday, October 14th, 2019. It is time for Morning Combat. Hello, donks. My name is Luke Thomas. I'm the host of this program. Back from his sunny vacation south of the border is Brian Campbell from CBS Sports and many other places. How was it, good sir?

South of the border? That implies Mexico. I was in Jamaica, you know? You know what I'm saying? You know what part of Jamaica I was in? No, I do not? South of the border. That implies Mexico. I was in Jamaica, you know? You know what I'm saying? You know what part of Jamaica I was in? No, I do not. Right near the beach. A boyee!

No? You're fired. Okay, all right. Did you watch any MMA or pro wrestling while you were gone? No, not while I was gone, because they like to get down down there. Contrary to popular belief, they will pass the duchy to the right side as well. Isn't it duchy? You know, it's your flavor, however.

You know, you say tomato, you know what I'm saying? I say... Incorrectly? I say young J-Check, yeah, all right. Well, welcome back. We miss you. Thank you, sir. Chuck did a great job.

Chuck is fantastic. He even took off his hat, which very little people get to see that side of skin from him. Yeah, that's like Darth Vader taking off his mask. I know, and it was just as scary, by the way. And shout out to Chuck. And nobody touched Dick, so we had a great episode. Well, we missed you, just the same.

And, of course, we couldn't go 30 seconds without you making reference to genitalia. But we have things to get to, including UFC Tampa, Brian. So let's start where we need to start. Saturday was a great night for Ioana Janjic. She got back in the win column. She had a win previously against Tisha Torres. But, of course, her last fight against Flyweight did not go so great against Valentina Shevchenko. Well, here she was, absolutely dominating Michelle Watterson,

who, to her credit, fought about, I think, as valiantly as she could have. She tried even to the last minute to put something together, but she was totally outgunned. The narrative, Brian, after this fight is, is the boogie woman back? We know that she finally is in her, I think, I won't say her natural weight class, because if you ask me, she's actually more of a tweener. We don't have a 121 weight class, but if we did, that's actually the best spot for her. She certainly doesn't have the pop for 25. Let's not try to forget that.

Not the pop for 25. And then at 120, excuse me, at 115, she really is killing herself to get down there. And dissected this week, when you get a chance to watch it, because I know you're... Professor Salt-N-Pepa's back, yeah. Well, here's the one thing. I went back, I looked at her Giuliana Lima fight. She just... You can't imagine how much

physically smaller she looks. Like, an American top team under the work of Phil DeRue, she's really put on a ton of muscle mass. Okay, but the point being is, you know, is the boogie woman back? And I'm going to say no,

but hold on. I'm not going to say no. Like, it's never going to happen. It's not true. Here's what I want people just to understand. One, her weight class issues are not going to go away, right? Which isn't to say she can't make it. She made 115 and a half this

past time. But I want to point out, every time she has to cut weight, it is going to be a struggle for her. And some of those weight cuts are going to be easier than others. If she has to travel to certain places, now maybe not Poland, but if she has to go to some other place, God only knows. Because many fighters you know, they go to Brazil, they have to figure out how they're going to eat food, where they're going to cut weight, where they're going to get their water from. And obviously it's bottled water, but the point being- What's they're going to do now when there's no drug testing, right? 2013 Belfort? All kinds of stuff. It's really different down there. So to me, anything that doesn't go right for her could really jeopardize it. That's not a small consideration. Now, did she look awesome? Was she utterly dominant? Yes. Is that a championship caliber fighter? Absolutely.

I guess my only point is, Zhang Weili is an incredibly tough customer. And if you look at the way Janjacek fights now, as opposed to how she fought earlier in her UFC tenure, she's a round winner. The math justifies this. Her average fight time is 19 minutes long. Her average, average fight time is a four-round fight. She's actually a better fighter now, and she's harder to beat, but she's not so much of a finisher in the way that she used to be, which I think is utterly fair. She really was never a finisher. She was super early.

Outside of that ass kick, and she put on what, penne? Penne, and of course, Esparza as well. But the point being is this. I think that the jury is out. So I'm not saying no, like affirmatively no. I'm saying let's see some more evidence. If she beats Zhang Wai Li, that would be incredible. How many UFC champions outside of heavyweight, where you had the Coutures and the Sylvias and everyone rotating,

have ever done that where they lost a belt and came back and got it? It's like GSP, Matt Hughes. Not many other fighters have done that before. So that's what I'm looking to see. For me, jury's still out. What about you? She's back. And like this show, like me in this chair, I'm back, baby. She's back with a bang. Now, some of y'all might get with this and some of y'all won't. But listen, you know, the next line. My point on this is you remember when Buffer's announcing her name, okay? There used to be a swagger with the boogie woman that defined her. That swagger was gone for a couple fights, all right?

It wasn't just the fact that she lost her title. And say what you will, every fighter's got excuses. Maybe she's never going to beat Rose Anamunis. Maybe that's the wrong striking style against her. And she's probably never going to beat her career rival Shevchenko, and certainly not at 125. But the swagger was gone. Remember her creating sort of fake

argument situations like Rousey did ahead of the home fight just to try to get herself fired up because she couldn't get in Rose's head. Or the props at the weigh-ins.

That swagger that she used to have was back. When Bruce Buffer or not Bruce Buffer when Joe Joe Martinez when Joe Martinez

fantastic Joe Martinez was announcing her name I don't know if you looked closely. Some of these moments don't mean anything to people but it does for me.

She had a face on her. She did. The boogie woman was back. She was basically like, fucking fighting. It's all the same. Like, it was there. And I don't know, maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but when I saw that, I said to myself, I think there's going to be an ass kicking.

It's a matchup against Watterson, who is tough as nails, but it's a matchup that young J. Chook should win with her striking ability, her accuracy, and her length. But it was the swagger and that toughness that seemed to be back and I think when you start really looking into her personal life and reading closely the interviews and she gave a real detailed one with Mark Raimondo, your former colleague now at ESPN where she really opened up about that stretch of losing the title in the fights that followed, about the people in her camp and her personal life that she welcomed in that were only negative to her in the long run and again look, it's it's an excuse. All fighters have excuses. But I think in this case,

when you look at that, you look at the awful weight cut she had ahead of the first Rosnami Unis fight, it seemed that her head got big. She became a champion. She was becoming somewhat of a crossover star, certainly in Europe. And she wasn't necessarily doing the same things and preparing the same way. She seems back. She seems better for have gone through what she went through. And by that performance, I thought it was perfect prime. Boogie woman, young Jay Check, overcoming the broken right foot, just being a high volume, high energy, five round banger in there. It was fun to see. And really, you look at the future now. 115 is a division that always delivers. I love it. The fights are great. The personalities are great.

They're almost in line if you're UFC to create potentially your sexiest matchup possible. What's that? And this is no disrespect to Wang Li's... Zhang Wai Li. Zhang Wai Li, who may end up being the star of this division in the long run. We're going to find out. Yeah, don't forget that. But if Ioana comes back and can win back that title, and she's certainly the biggest star

in the division, and then you get Rose back up out of the bullpen, and you do a trilogy fight, normally you don't do a third fight when one person wins the first division, and then you get Rose back up out of the bullpen, and you do a trilogy fight. Normally you don't do a third fight when one person wins the first two, and specifically so dominantly as that first fight, but to have Ioana potentially come back as the champion, I'm just saying there's big business ahead, and she seems mentally to be wired in a way that tells me, Luke, that she's

gone through the fire. She went through some stuff, but what's crazy, and maybe you're going to say this, is if she didn't make weight this week, that's over. If she lost this fight, that would be over. She would become a celebrity name who is aging, but for whatever reason, she bit down. She made that 115 or the 116, got us there. She's right back in line where she needs to be.

This fight, to me, was a real indication of how the UFC felt about her, which was they were a little uncertain, too. Think about the other venues that she had fought in. She fought in on the Ronda Rousey card. She did fight on the Ultimate Fighter card, but that's because she was the coach on the Ultimate Fighter. They've put her on big platforms, the Conor McGregor card as well. They've really given her a push. This time, they put her in ESPN Plus, not because they didn't believe in her. For crying out loud, they put her in the main event, maybe a number one contender's bout. But I think they wanted to see, is she back? Is this somebody who has a little bit of swag left? And you're right, I did see the swag when she showed her teeth

and it said Polska on the mouthpiece. I remember... And she gave a couple of sexecutioner looks. Trust me, I was with you. I was like, okay, dude, please don't misunderstand me.

She looked awesome. I devoted my whole dissected to her this week. I haven't done that for a female fighter in a long time. And you're missing something else, too, about this whole thing.

Yeah, bring it. If she lost her title, if she spends time away, goes to another weight class, loses, comes back, and then recaptures a title, she'd be the first woman in the UFC to ever do that, which to me is historic in its own right, quite literally. But more importantly, remember, we're talking about the strawweight division, the division that moves the fastest.

Now, Tatiana Suarez is on the injured reserve, but she eventually, we think, is going to come back. If Ioana Jacek can recapture the title, that would be huge. And then you start beating some of these other contenders, which I maintain is a new way she's fighting, not like brand, brand new, but that sort of evolved to this particular stage. That's huge. All I'm saying is, also, she was widely expected to beat Michelle Watterson. Now, she made weight, and she did it, and that was awesome, and she did it with swag. That's the difference. The only thing I'm pointing out is I just don't want everyone to be like, all right, she's going to be champion again.

Dude, she's in a very, very tough division. She has a lot of women. Takedown defense was on point, though. Everything was, dude, what was not on point? She outstruck her in every dimension. The takedown defense was on point. Even when Watterson managed to find her back, she found a way to wiggle out of it. Dude, she looked great.

She looked great under any circumstance. But, like, this re-coronation, it hasn't happened in the women's divisions ever where you lose a title and out of it. Dude, she looked great. She looked great under any circumstance. But like this re-coronation, it hasn't happened in the women's divisions ever where you lose a title and recapture it. Jon Jones did it. Randy Couture did it. GSP did it. Matt Hughes did it.

Listen to those names. Are we going to put her up there? We might. I just want to see the evidence first is the only thing I'm saying. She fought head-to-head even, if you will, in the Rose rematch in which she sort of... Oh, heading into the fifth.

I had a 2-2. Great fight, by the way. If you don't realize what a classic fight that was, they don't talk about it enough with everything that happened to Conor and Habib that weekend. But how do you think she would potentially match up with Wei Li, Zhang Wei Li, if she got the next call? It's super interesting because people don't realize this.

Many fighters coming out of China are not very complete. They have a couple of things they do really well and they got so many just utter gaps. Dude, she doesn't. She fought in Kunlun Fighting Championship and a bunch of other shows. Whoever did her matchmaking and whoever did her grooming to bring her to this stage, she's bad at nothing. The key is, Ioana Janjic, I think, is quicker, has longer reach, is taller. Wei Li Zhang, or Zhang Wai Li, is only one inch taller than Michelle Watterson. Remember the height differential in the clinch? I think that's going to play a big role at the same

time. You know who's also a good clinch fighter? Zhang Wai Li. So to me, it's like, this is why everyone's like, oh, she's back. I'm like, she might be, but she has a tall order in front of her. I would be very, very cautious. You mentioned Tatiana Suarez. That's a tall order. And another one right after that. So we'll have to see. What a damn good division. Really, outside of lightweight, this is the best division. It's a super sick. All right, let me ask you about this one. Chrome Gracie.

That striking style. First of all, he says he won. I was like, what? But okay, he thinks he won. He did. He won if there was a BMF title on the line. He won that in this. Yeah, his resiliency under those body attacks was remarkable.

Okay, that striking style. His striking style to me, Brian Campbell, it's like self-refuting. It's like, I'm committed to these principles of martial arts, and I'm also going to compete and win with them. They show you why you can't. Okay, how much of a liability is this going forward? This fight is so interesting, because I could come at you with a completely damning take against Krohn Grac You know, you blew it. You fought a stupid

style. You barely went for takedowns. You barely put your bread and butter on the table and went after it. And I can also make some hipster argument of why this will help him in the long one. But first and foremost, good Lord, he fought like a Diaz brother. I mean, this would have been the equivalent of him getting stopped by TSA and they find a joint. They'd be like, oh, I guess you're hanging out with Nick and Nate again. I mean, it was basically a mirror image. I don't know if this was the initiation to their camp where like, you got to go off into a big fight and just fight a wrong style and be a badass. But the thing is he did that. He walked down Cub Swanson for three rounds. He didn't land the bigger punches, but he showed you that he has

major league striking. And that was a big question coming in. What does that mean? Major league striking? Maybe not, Maybe not elite power, okay? He's certainly got the backbone and the balls, and he showed me, at least, that he's got really good technique, he knows how to put punches together, and he goes after it. I'm not saying that... No, when you watch this, had you had an edible beforehand? I had not had one beforehand. So let me put it to you like this. I see your reaction is sort of looking at me like I'm crazy. Because that was the last thing I would say. Coming in, we looked at him as potentially

a one-dimensional fighter, right? A name. One of these Marco Madsen guys. Can they evolve? Can they become a thing? He basically picked up his biggest weakness in this fight, went out there, and did it for the entire three minutes. Wasn't on the level of his opponent, yet did not take a step

back when it was just like, I'm going to live and die by this sword. I don't know if he's trying to prove it to himself. I don't know if he's trying to prove it to his haters. But I came out of that fight going, hipster take or not, he's going to be better for this performance in the long run. Because I think he dove headfirst into the deep end of the pool, into a skill set that he's not strongest in or stronger in that matchup. He did pretty damn good, Luke. He did pretty damn good in that category. He wasn't smart in the long run,

but this showed me he has a closer opportunity to be a more well-rounded fighter than I would have thought. See, I don't think so. At the age he is given, it's not that he doesn't have tremendous athletic ability. Like, if you ever watched Krohn, here, here's a recommendation for you, for everyone watching. Go Google, I think it was when ADCC was in China, find Krohn-Gracy's match with Gary Tonin.

Find Krohn-Gracy's match with JT Torres. We're talking two of the all-time best. He won them both, by the way. And he won them with old-fashioned jiu-jitsu. Not super barambolo, inverted this and that. He actually beat JT Torres. He had full guard on him. He had an overhook on one side and just whipped into an arm bar and got him. JT Torres is a multiple-time

medalist out of Atos. Beat him that way. He has employed that reality, which he is so good at, into martial arts generally, and he got torn to pieces for it as a result. Now, you're pointing out he showed resiliency, and he showed, I would say say by the third round from the clinch and shorter range he put some combinations together. I will give him credit there. But these Gracie's have these delusional ideas about what the value of Gracie Jiu Jitsu is in terms of martial arts generally. And when you employ

that at scale, it blows up in your face every time. This is well established now. My thought is, if he wants to learn from the Diaz brothers who can actually box really well, yeah, he can go really far. If he keeps to what got him here at this point, he's going to be what he's... So you weren't impressed by his stand-up? And again, I'm putting it out there, it's a bad idea.

We saw the result. Was I impressed by his stand-up? I was impressed by his resiliency. His jiu-jitsu is god-tier. It's unbelievably good. But was I impressed by it? No, I was not. Dude, consider the difference at 145, another jiu-jitsu guy, Ryan Hall.

He has different entries, and folks want to get away. And then on the feet, he outstrikes them. Doesn't take hardly any damage. It's the opposite approach, and I feel it's better for longevity, and I think it's better for upside, too. That, to me, is the better approach. That, to me, is the guy at 145 who's a jiu-jitsu specialist who you should be celebrating. He's a free spirit.

I was going to use the term free spirit. You used the term delusional, talking about the overarching thing of the Gracies that say our jiu-jitsu is better than anything. We're going to live and die by it. Yeah. I almost felt like he completely flipped the script, did a ballsy move and said, you know what? Cub Swanson, a veteran, older but he's still tough. The guy can strike. I'm going to go into that cage.

I'm going to beat him at what he does best. I'm going to do it with swagger. I'm going to do it with balls. No matter what happens to me, I'm going to keep coming forward and keep walking him down. And I'm going to prove to everybody that I can strike. And you know what? He lost, but I think he did pretty damn good in trying to prove that point. Is it a valid point to prove? No. Was it smart? No. But it seems he's got that free spirit side of him. If you see his reactions on social media after this fight, not just complaining about the decision, but just sort of, you know, being like, you're not me, you don't understand.

I think that's what he was trying to do. And I think that's, in the long run, going to prove something to himself that when he puts that package together, Luke, and he leans on that striking more to set up the submission game like you're talking about. But this is the point. Is he? Is he going to do that?

Well, everyone's talking like this evolution is inevitable. Is he committed to striking and learning how to strike? Even what Cub Swanson said afterwards at his post-fight scrum, he's got to humble himself and learn MMA, right? If he's going to keep doing exactly what he's doing, you kind of already know what his ceiling is. But what I'm saying is do what the Diaz brothers did. Really work on your hands.

And then I think his ceiling is extraordinary because his chin is good, what I'm saying is do what the Diaz brothers did. Really work on your hands. And then I think his ceiling is extraordinary because his chin is good. His body resiliency to body attack is unbelievable. Yeah, can we pause and just put that out there? That to me was the most impressive thing. I couldn't believe it. That was absolutely ridiculous. His ability to no-sell body shots like that.

And these weren't taps. These were Cub Swanson digging in, biting down, and going for it to liver and it was it was like nothing happened that would that to me was amazing and then again people are frightened of his jiu-jitsu as well they should be that is so good no one will ever catch up with that including the great ryan hall who's very very good obviously so to me it's like i'm not asking for much tighten up that other stuff and the world is your oyster but if it's just going to be gracie jiu-jitsu with that horse stomp as an entry, dude, you're not going to beat good fighters that way. He may never end up becoming well-rounded. It may be his own fault, but he's a free spirit.

I feel like fight to fight, he's just going to do what he wants in there. It's certainly going to be fun to watch. It's probably not the smartest for his long-term win-loss column and evolution, but I don't know. I still came away from there seeing a lot that I think can be applied positively to the future. I hope you're right, because if he can evolve, hey, all bets are off.

It looked like he had the edible before the fight. If what he showed us is what it's going to be, you've already seen the limits of it. Now, one more thing. James Vick. I talked to him yesterday. Four losses in a row, three by first round stoppage. Brutal ones on top of that. He even said going into this fight, like if I lose one more time, I'm going to get my walking papers. I didn't ask him about it. I got the health update.

His teeth are fine. His jaw is fine. A CT scan came back negative, but he thinks he tore his knee. He's going to get an MRI. Where does he go from here? He's going to have to go where he should have went after that third straight knockout loss, which is to take time off and really, A, decide if you still want to be doing this on this level, and B, he's got fundamental flaws. And we've talked about it on this show after his last knockout loss. Doesn't move his head enough. There seem to be legitimate fundamental flaws in his defense and the way that he fights that this may end up continuing to happen.

And the fact that he came back from that last knockout loss, his third in a row, and comes back in, what, two, three months? Moves up in weight, seemed a little bit desperate. It seemed way too soon. And then to lose like that, you say where he goes from here. I mean, I'd certainly like to see the take some time off and really look at an approach, but it might be over already because those are some tough ass losses. And they're not freak losses losses maybe one or two are I ran into something but it's becoming a trend his chin is there to be hit and each time he's getting hit with these violent shots he's done this is not a good sign for a very talented guy who just what a year ago was a sneaky top five potential title contender at that loaded lightweight division

tough to see this turn but I don't see how you can keep absorbing these and just be like, hey, let's roll the dice, we'll do it again and see what happens. Yeah, when they announced this fight, I was actually kind of worried for him because Nico Price, like, do I think James Vick is more technical than him? I do. But Nico Price scores from every position. Like, if fighters want to ask, hey, who's a guy who, no matter where he is in, what kind of position he's in, he scores damage on his opponent, it's Nico Price. Hammer fist from the bottom, up kicks, in weird transition, elbows. It was a tough fight for a guy who I think

works better against other technical fighters, but different conversations. How about that sound, though? The sound? I asked him about his teeth. I was like, how are your teeth? He's like, they're okay, believe it or not. I was like, wow, because that was terrible. All right, so then we move on to somebody else. Speaking of leaving MMA, if it comes to that, he is leaving MMA. Cain Velasquez, your former UFC heavyweight champion, is done. He has notified the UFC. He is officially retiring. He has withdrawn from the USADA testing pool.

He will now, what do you want to call it? Just say it, Luke. He's going to go do the wrestling over in WWE. I guess, correct me if I'm wrong on this one, Brian Campbell, he's going to face Brock Lesnar at the end of this month. October 31st in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia. Which, by the way, real quickly on this one, because I'm going to pitch it to you first.

That whole, like, ooh, it's controversial to do WWE or any kind of sporting event in Saudi Arabia. Boy, that died fast, huh? Because before, correct me if I'm wrong, the previous, it's called Crown Jewel. They've had two to three events so far, yeah. But it was like the number events. It wasn't the good ones. They're bringing the previous is called Crown Jewel. They've had two to three events so far. But it was like the Nubber events. It wasn't the good ones. They're bringing the heavy hitters for this one.

And everyone's like, yeah, we don't care about the human rights abuses anymore. Okay, but forget about that for just a second. I know Joshua and Ruiz are going to be there in December. What do you want to say about his MMA legacy? First, I want to pause and say it's pretty remarkable that we're in this third boom period in pro wrestling and everything's hot right now and pro wrestling made it into this rundown on this week's show. I never thought we'd see that. Well, I came in from the, here's the thing, and I'm doing a bit.

I don't know what to say about on the pro wrestling side, but there is an MMA conversation to be had. All right, there is an MMA conversation. But you can have whatever, say what you want. What's the big takeaway? The big takeaway for me is remorse about what could have been. And you could say, look, he's 37. We may have already known what wasn't going to be because of the consistent injury streak. But I still believed.

I still believed that what I saw in his absolute prime before that, or really in the midst of that insane stretch of one injury after another that pulled him out of the cage is the best heavyweight fighter I've ever seen. And I know we're going to lose subscriptions because people are going to go, you'd put prime Kane up against prime Fedor? I think maybe I even would.

Certainly, though, within the UFC banner, the best heavyweight I've ever seen, better than Katora, better than Miocic, because people are going to go, you'd put prime Kane up against prime Fedor? Yeah, I think maybe I even would. Certainly, though, within the UFC banner, the best heavyweight I've ever seen, better than Couture, better than Miocic, maybe better than Cormier. And we never saw him get to really show that. And it was the injuries. It was the layoffs. Luke, he's had three fights in six years. I mean, we really have to remember that.

If you go back and actually do the math and look at the stretch, it's like missed 13 months, came back, knocked out Travis Brown. Missed 33 months, comes back. And then we know the sort of heartbreaking for Kane way that he lost to Ngannou before the fight even started. We never really got to see. But what's crazy is because he was so good in that initial rise, running through Brock, knocking out Big Nog, just really doing big things, we suspended our disbelief that this wasn't going to be a tragic tale. At least I did. I mean, even up to the point where just on his comeback, he's 37. We know heavyweights age late.

But I'm still like, don't worry. He's going to come back. He's going to figure out health. He's going to get back in there. And he's going to show you. Because you can't un-teach the cardio. He's got the wrestling. And he's tough as nails.

But we never got there. And he's a two-time UFC heavyweight champion. So this isn't a sob story. This isn't a tragic story. This isn't somebody that partied their way out of their legacy. But, Luke, you can't sit here and tell me he didn't show you in that brief prime that he was special. He was certainly next, next level

and still going to be an all-time great, going to probably make the UFC Hall of Fame, all that good stuff. And from a personal standpoint, now he can put the heartbreak and the injuries to the side, make a ton of money because wrestling is hot, and he had multiple suitors. WWE threw a crap load of multi-year money at him, and now he can be in a scripted environment where they don't script in the injuries and the tragic heartbreak. But for me as a fan, and for me as somebody who rates legacies, this is a tough pill to

swallow. Quickly, how much do you think he's making? It's hard to say. I haven't dug too deeply in the dirt sheets. But considering the competition, AEW, which just launched as a rival to WWE right now, they were after him. New Japan was after him. So I'd have to think it was just an offer he couldn't refuse.

$10 million? Not that high, but in the millions. $5? Enough for him to say, why am I going to go through these training camps, get these injuries, potentially get these losses? I mean, look, one thing I'll say, the heartbreak he must have endured while going through this, that must have been hell. Knowing what he brought to the table. You think I'm overblown at all?

Did you see the same thing in him as a fighter in his prime? No. If you missed it, it's hard to explain. If you didn't see Cain Velasquez, here's what was so funny. When he retired, it made news in MMA headlines. It didn't make the news I thought it would. And it kind of broke my heart to see that a little bit, to be quite honest. Dude, if you didn't see Cain Velasquez as he was running through everyone, I got to tell you, when he was on Bodog Fight, I remember talking, I don't know if it was to Crazy Bob Cook or somebody else, I remember them going,

dude, this is the guy. This is the guy. And you know this story too. Every manager you talk to and every trainer you talk to, they say the exact same thing. And then you watch them compete, and you're like, maybe they were on to something. And then he makes his UFC debut in his third fight and just ran through everyone like a freight train. By the way, he had the hidden weapon. I mean, he had five-round heavyweight cardio, which is not really a thing. And also, to be a Mexican-American, and here's what I want to explain to people. When he beat Brock Lesnar, UFC 121 in Anaheim, you can go see reaction shots of it on the internet. It was akin to, imagine, yeah, it was like when Adesanya beat Whitaker, except imagine everyone was on

Adesanya's side. It was a little bit, I dare say, of McGregor beating Aldo, where you had this reigning king, not in the same way that Aldo was, but somebody holding a title, and then this young upstart challenger, not really beating him, demolishing him under a rack. Well, let's talk about forgotten narratives. Let's remember this narrative. When Lesnar beat Shane Carwin and came back from the deep, dark depths of hell at UFC 116, he became, for a brief period, a folk hero in MMA.

It was one of the most remarkable comebacks ever. It was like this guy just walks into the sport, wins the heavyweight title in his third fight or whatever, and then just gets up from hell against this beast in Carwin who we didn't really know had one round PED cardio at that point, possibly. Don't sue me, but you get my point. I came into that fight going, yeah, Brock will figure it out. He'll find a way.

And then you get that sober reality of, no, this guy has no flaws. Yeah, and it was never close. And then to look in the crowd and to see all the Chicano and Hispanic Americans bringing the house down, you thought at the same time, when Izzy just beat Whitaker, you thought, wow, dude, he's about to do amazing things in the sport. Or when Gregor beat Aldo, same thing. You're like, oh my God, this is the takeover. That is where Cain Velasquez was. And don't get me wrong, the most important fights he had in his career were the trilogies, obviously, with JDS. But again, on that big stage, he gets knocked out because of injury, but he didn't deliver on Big Fox. And then he goes away because of all these injuries. I remember I got so nervous after this one. When he beat Brock, I remember it was Dave Meltzer

out of Yahoo reporting he had torn his labrum and his rotator cuff. I he beat Brock, I remember it was Dave Meltzer out of Yahoo reporting he had torn his labrum and his rotator cuff. I had just had, not too long before that, labrum surgery in my shoulder. And I remember, dude, it took me a full year before I felt like myself again. I was aggressively rehabbing three times a week. I was like, dude, he's going to be gone for a while. Sure enough, he was gone for over a year, and then constant other injuries all the time. All this is to say, if you're a superstar, you have two periods in your career, Brian Campbell. One is your race to the title, and one is what you do with it.

And that first period, flawless. The second period had its bright spots, but it did not deliver on the promise. And that's unfortunate because he looked to have all the things you want a fighter to have. And if you're going to be completely protective of his legacy, if you're some kind of super fan, I mean, you can almost argue away the two losses in his prime. The JDS loss on Big Fox, he had a big time injury coming into that. I know so did Junior as well, but that was sort of almost

flukish in the way it ended. And then the C-level Kane moment against Verdum. Yeah, he got his ass kicked, but it certainly coming off a really long layoff at that point, wasn't the full-on prime active version, and that guy never came back. And when you consider that Daniel Cormier, now one of the greatest of all time, being the best friend ever, apparently, or maybe being a shrewd businessman, by the way,

moved to another division to allow this guy to reign because he would say in interviews, yeah, we wrestle every day and that guy kicks my ass. I mean, what could have been Luke? Also last thing on this to have a heavy, now people tried to make it Chris Areola, but it really wasn't when Cain Velasquez, again, after beating Brock Lesnar to have a Mexican, again, a Mexican American, whatever you want to call him champion at heavyweight, dude, he was a unicorn. He was a total and complete unicorn. The UFC must've thought, Oh my God, we hit paydirt.

We're going to take this guy to Mexico. We're going to open that market. We're going to capture this Hispanic origin audience, whether they speak Spanish or whether they don't. We're going to cross worlds. The promise was so great. He's going to be our Julio Cesar Chavez. That's what they thought.

And they took him down there to Mexico, and he couldn't make it the first time out. And then when they finally did, he lost. It's just so crazy. That's why there wasn't big fanfare when he retired. He it the first time out. And then when they finally did, he lost. It's like, it's just so crazy. That's why there wasn't big fanfare when he retired. He never had that true charisma. It's what makes people question. The fans who got here after McGregor and Rousey, they don't understand Cain Velasquez at all.

And he certainly never lived up to what he could have been as a superstar. Didn't own the moment with the microphone, which makes you question him going to wrestling. Now we find out he's a natural. He can do moves in a wrestling ring that smaller luchadors can do. That's why he's going to have a chance at lasting. But look, I know that we don't talk wrestling on the show, so here's my big moment.

Thank you, Jesus. Okay, we the people. Shout out to Jake Hager there. Are you rock hard with him? Yeah, I got a phoner just like- By the way, I went back and listened to that. He never said phoner. He said straight up boner. No, he said phoner. Dude, we played- I had to look up Urban Engineering.

We played it on my radio show. He flat out said boner. He up boner. No, he said phoner. Dude, we played it on my radio show. He flat out said boner. He said boner. Oh, shout out to Jake Hager on that one. So as it pertains to wrestling, because we're never, ever going to have this chance again, because you'll donk me out of this show if I try it. I will, yes. Will you care?

Now, you are a wrestling hater, but there's going to be a lot of casual or lapsed wrestling fans who are now being offered by the WWE the Brock Kane rematch. It's going to happen in Saudi Arabia. It's going to happen under BS Wrestling and all that. But that's creative matchmaking. That doesn't necessarily suck, right? Would you care at all to see what happened, to watch it, to watch a stream, to cross streams, to do anything involving it? I'd rather watch my family killed in front of me. No, you don't mean that. No, no, I absolutely mean that. You're like, oh, you're not a pro wrestling fan. I prefer the term adult

actually is the word I would choose. No, I won't. It's like with Rousey's thing. It's like, look, if that's what you like, you like. But for me, no. It doesn't mean anything. So that Tyson Fury also showing up. Oh, would you watch a Cain Velasquez, Brock Lesnar chess match? Like, no.

And I'm not going to say he's nailed it. He came back. I don't know if you saw him shirtless. He probably wants to hit the gym with the brown pride tap before you really gonna are you gonna body shame because you know Vince McMahon sitting there going hey buddy let's can we can we get on the can we get some candy for the big man can we get on the juice here can we do some things here but what I'm saying is here Luke all right I want to be the bad guy but I also don't want to deal with your stupid games about this people are gonna kind of care about this I'm not I, dude, I hope he's successful.

I'm not anyway, I'm just saying it's not for me. You're asking, is it for me? No, it's not for me. Okay. But dude, if it, like, is that pay-per-view going to, like, well, I guess they don't sell it to the MSOs anymore, but is it going to be highly watched? I suspect that it will be, right? Isn't Brock still hot?

Yeah. Not as hot as he once was, but still relevant, right? And you got the Tyson Fury element. By the way, but going to Saudi, I think with the boxing match going there, it's kind of allowed people to take a step back and it's now becoming normal.

Yeah. But it's also because WWE was shameless in their doing it. Like, they were just straight up like, this is for the money. I'm surprised they didn't have beheadings in between matches to appease the Saudi government.

It's like when you're in grade school and you sleep over somebody's house and you're like, wait, your mom, dad, and your dad's girlfriend all live under the same roof and it's cool? And they're like, yeah, it's cool. That's just basically what they're presenting to us. After a while, I think the same thing with the... You know the steroid users in baseball, Luke, that have admitted it?

Right? The zombies, the pettits. We're just like, they're good dudes. They're good folks. But it's like the diehards, the Maguires, and the others who just won't do it, won't fight. I thought Maguire eventually admitted it. Yeah, he probably did. I gave up on baseball.

All right, let's talk about one of the other events that happened over the weekend. It was one century. Did you watch it? Pieces. Pieces. Okay, same thing. Pieces for me. There were some bright spots, but it was a lot of them.

I watched the Brandon Vera fight. That was really good. And I watched the Demetrius Johnson fight, and he looked amazing. He was capturing a title the whole nine yards. And so there was something that I saw pop up on Twitter, if I may, Brian Campbell, which was in capturing the one championship flyweight grand prix title. Did you see the belt, by the way? The belt is as big as he is.

No, that's the UFC belt. The UFC belt, which, by the way, I think is big, is modest by comparison. Yeah, Jay, in the back, can we get updated photos here? This thing was enormous. In any event, the question is, does he belong still in the pound-for-pound debate? I'm going to say... I want to pause you and ask you a qualifying question. Please do. When you say

pound-for-pound debate, do you mean pound-for-pound top ten fighters in the world, or do you mean pound-for-pound king number one? I don't understand the difference. Oh, you mean is he number one, or is he ranked in the top ten? From moving from UFC to one, and kind of going off our radar, does Demetrius still belong in the race for the pound-for-pound king

or should he still be considered a top ten pound-for-pound king? Oh, I don't know how you could possibly take him out of the top ten. However, should he be long number one? That's the one that I saw people saying. He clearly deserves to be king. I think if you took him out of the top ten, you would be just disqualifying yourself from this conversation. That's just a given.

He's only been in one for, what, about a year or so? I didn't, frankly, I didn't think he lost the rematch to Henry Cejudo, to be honest with you. Can we put those cards on the table right now? You have to respect the decision, and then what he did against Dillashaw, and especially what he did against Marlon Marais, has been so impressive by Henry Cejudo. He absolutely should

have earned everyone's respect by now. I thought Mighty Mouse won that rematch, to be quite honest with you. I think those three judges are who we blend for this triple C cringe era right now going on. Maybe so, but here's the point. Name me two of the opponents he's beaten in one. Yeah, that's the problem, right? He's beaten three guys in a row without Wikipedia entries. That's not an exaggeration.

Has that become the Mendoza line here on trying to decide if somebody's... Again, here's the issue. What you don't want to do is you don't want to recreate the old Strikeforce debate, which is either it's UFC or it's trash. And then you see all the Strikeforce and WEC guys come over, and they are wrecking shop. And to be clear, some of these one guys could come over and absolutely beat UFC fighters, and some of them could and probably will come over and contend for titles.

Bibiana Fernandez, I think, who's their champion, could have easily won, maybe, or certainly contended for a UFC bantamweight title. So this is not what I'm saying. At the same time, I watch a lot of fights. I've been watching fights a long time. I think the fighters, the Danny King gods, the guy he beat over the weekend, the Yuya Wakamatsu's and the Tatsumitsu Wada's. I think that these guys are talented fighters, and they're giving him tough outs.

I don't think they're the best fighters in the world in that weight class. And I think unless you're fighting those guys, fight in and fight out, for the most part, you can't be in contention for number one. That doesn't mean, by the way, that he's not the most talented fighter still today. It's just that beating those guys doesn't tell you that. The reason why I have you clarify that,

I agree, he cannot be the pound-for-pound king anymore. It's just the nature of the beast. It's taking a consistent step down, we think, in competition. It's harder to judge against. I think he's still in the middle of that top 10. He's currently not in my top 10, by the way, because I know people

are going to kill me over this, only because my CBS Sports, they prefer to do UFC only for SEO purposes. Wait, not even Bellator? No, it's UFC. Wow, that's a revelation. So anyone that's going to now Google search and be like that Don Campbell, but he would be in the middle of my top 10.

But I want to ask you this question, how this relates to what this does to somewhat, it's not penalizing his legacy, but it's putting him sort of off the radar going to one, getting out of the UFC bubble, getting out of the mainstream American. Although let's not, like this off the radar going to one, getting out of the UFC bubble, getting out of the mainstream American, although let's not, like this was a big move for one, right? Finally getting a live card on TNT, which we can get into, was a big move for them. They're going to make a US debut. It's not big until I see the ratings. Then it's big. Okay, but they're going to get there. But as of now, for this year that DJ's been there, it might as well not be happening or happening in another world, right? What does that do? Because I feel like it already has dampened his career legacy.

Because let's be honest, before the loss to Cejudo, he had rightfully, I thought, entered that upper room that I always talk about. That top table. That top four or five guys. The Anderson Silva, the GSP, the John Jones, Cormier before the loss maybe still, and Johnson and maybe Fedor. You get where I'm going with this. I feel like since he's lost that fight,

which, by the way, had two injuries during that fight, and I thought he kind of got a screw job on the judges and didn't get the guaranteed rematch because UFC traded him, does this take him out of that all-time great conference? No. Does it put him down into that next tier of the Aldos? The only thing you're allowed to do is to say, in looking at him,

who is he fighting and what can we discern from that? And the reality is there's a lot of mystery around it because we don't really know. There's not enough crossover. Folks who think one is a modern-day pride, it is not for one reason, well, for many reasons. One of them is in the pride era, there actually was a little bit of crossover

to be able to tell what was happening. And it was just clear pride had better, for a time anyway, Pride had much better talent. Obviously, they got drained out and the whole thing collapsed. But this is not the same scenario, in part because there is this sort of division and this firewall between them, and in part because these guys have not faced anything

we've ever really known to be, for the most part, not entirely, for the most part, not a credible challenge, but some kind of real discerning signpost, some kind of thing you could look at and say, aha, that's a real achievement. Other than now they fought Demetrius Johnson, you can measure them against that. I guess what I'm trying to say is you can say reasonably, you're fighting these guys, we just can't say you're number one, but are you allowed to personally believe he's the most talented fighter alive? Yes, you are. You are absolutely allowed to. I don't think that's, you are. You are absolutely allowed to.

I don't think that's crazy at all. You just can't say if you're fighting dudes like this, I'm the king of the world. You are removed from that conversation at that point. And by the way, it's like Anderson Silva. Do these losses take away from his legacy? When you get to BJ Penn territory, and you're outside the Lava Shack fighting,

well, that's one thing. That's Roy Jones Jr. territory in boxing. When you get to where it's so far past the line. But Anderson Silva, that streak he's on is the most impeccable streak for a championship fighter we've ever seen. I mean, I know Demetrius beat him, but for me, the Anderson Silva one's better. Point being is at middleweight. At middleweight, how about that?

That's the most impeccable thing we've ever seen in that division. You can't take that away from him. That's what's interesting about this upper room debate. Look, it's highly nerdy. This is next level nerdy. Oh, it's highly nerdy. This is next level nerdy. Oh, it's super nerdy. Fill some podcast time. But some people get there and it's concrete forever.

Anderson Silva is a good example. You can almost do nothing short of losing 10 in a row BJ Penn style to get yourself out of it. But sometimes when someone enters it under a hipster debate, which Johnson at that point was a little bit of a hipster debate. Good Lord. He was, you know, we'd never seen him lose since he went down to flyweight. He was killing everybody. He was great. Yeah, I thought he deserved it.

But when someone's close and tentative, I feel like the first chance we get to remove them from there, we do. And I feel like maybe subconsciously we've all just sort of said, okay, DJ was there. Now let's pull him a step down. And I don't know if that's fair,

but I think that's kind of what happened. Well, look at what's happening to Askren. He was undefeated before coming over to the UFC. He has that controversial fight with Lawler, then obviously gets viciously KO'd by Jorge Masvidal. The point was, when he was over at one, the whole argument was he has not been properly measured. Now, I'm not saying that that division at 170 over there is the same as what he's fighting.

Obviously, in Asia, you have access to a much broader array of lighter weight classes. But I guess the point is he's come over, and he has clearly had tougher fights right away. It's not to say that some of those guys he fought there couldn't come over and win. It's not to say he won't beat Demi and Maya. But here's the other point. If he loses to Demi and Maya, which I don't know that he will, but let's say that he does, now you have to reevaluate that trade as well. Who got the upper end of the trade?

Because when he was riding into that Jorge Masvidal fight, you were like, oh, man, UFC really lucked out here. I mean, one got a ton, but UFC got someone that was much more their kind of guy, right, with the brash loudness. He's not been so brash and so loud recently. And then if he goes in there, and again, if he beats Demian Maia, forget it. But if he loses, I think a lot of people are going to say, ooh,

that trade needs to be reevaluated. It's just interesting with Demetrius and look, this may be, same thing with Cain Velasquez going to pro wrestling.

Career wise, it's probably the best move DJ could have done. Going to make a lot of money, going to be able to add on to his legacy in certain ways, whatever he wins and the defenses

he can put together with one. But as a fan, I lament his going because I wanted him in that greatest of all time category because I felt he deserved it. And I felt the way he could have cemented it was to move back up to Bantamweight and

take on a truly career defining challenge. Look, he had done something that's super special. He had proven in UFC flyweight that he could not be beaten, usually twice around for these guys. Then the loss happened. We never got to see him run that back loss, run that loss back and then move up and try to see how great he can be. Yeah, well, here's the deal. He wanted to go to one to try something new, to make some cash, to not have to deal with the UFC rigmarole.

I'm happy for him. I think he's doing great over there. And he won a title, by the way, the size of a Buick. And I want to do shout-out one because when they're in the spot, they're almost in the same spot PFL is for me. There's so much damn MMA to watch. Good Lord, there's so much damn boxing and pro wrestling to watch. I sometimes don't want these things to force me to have a reason to watch them. This one double card this weekend was.

They did get on my radar. And sampling a bit, even considering the tragedy going on in Japan with the typhoon coming up. And the earthquake. What we thought would be a small crowd. Did you hear that crowd pop when Vera lost? Sure. Who did he fight? The old Lang Syne?

Yes, the old thing you sing on New Year's Eve. Yes. The pop was insane. It was. No, it was a big show. Are you trying to get out of here? I know. Jay is in my ear.

All right, let's move on to the next one. I'll go to you first on this one if I can, Brian Campbell. This upcoming weekend, I believe, I think it's Friday if not Saturday, UFC Boston, they're going to go back to Beantown, the most racist city in America, and they're going to have a main event. I just threw that in there to be a hater. People are going to get better. All right, here's the truth, though. They're going to have Chris Wyman taking on Dominic Reyes in your main event at Light Heavyweight. He is moving up to Light Heavyweight. He's looking for that greatness, looking to try to recapture some things that

have been lost since that, well, a couple of losses in the middleweight division, most recently to Jacare. All right, I'll ask you, Brian Campbell, what's on the line here for either gentleman? Oddly enough, I think a title shot is on the line for both, as crazy as that sounds. Because if you're Dom Reyes and you lose, if you win, I think you get a title shot. It's a thin pool at light heavyweight. The UFC does not seem ready right now to bump up a Johnny Walker to that top five level. We're close. We're getting there. We're going to find out how great he is.

But as things stand now, we know it's been hard finding Jon Jones' opponents. They didn't reward Blavich with a title shot. They instead put him there. How are we going on that pronunciation? Blachowicz. Blachowicz. Jon Blachowicz? Jon Blachowicz.

Yes, I am, Coach. Mike Krugiewski. For Dom Reyes, this is certainly a chance to, in my opinion, leap over that group, get a big win over a name. And if he loses, it's just sort of go back to the drawing board. For Weidman, I think it's almost all or nothing right now. He certainly has a name that that division lacks in terms of who can we – what's a sexy B-side we can keep Jon Jones busy with, right?

That's the perfect name for that. And certainly he's been going back and forth with Jon when me sitting at home is going like, Chris, do you really want this smoke? We're going to find out. But there's so much Chris Weidman can lose. I'm not going to say he's going to lose his career with a loss here, but when you consider he enters this fight, having lost four out of five, all four by knockout, pretty much all of them by devastating knockout,

and now moving up in division, which is somewhat, somewhat can be seen as a desperate move, one last chance. Well, because of the lack of depth in the division, he's kind of being put in a really good opportunity here. But Luke, if he loses, it's over. He's 35 years old with a name, and we figure out what's next for him. Yeah, you look at the situation with Luke Rockhold. Now, he not only lost to Blachowicz, but he got his jaw broken, so he had to take time out no matter what. And we went over it and dissected. If you look at the Luke Rockhold at middleweight, I know making weight for him there was hard. It's what we need more weight classes.

Like, in reality, there should be like a 195-pound weight class because I think that would be better for Luke Rockhold, but it doesn't exist. It'd be a bad idea. But I'm just saying, if we were to fit people to their natural space, maybe Chris Weidman would go there too. But the thing about Luke Rockhold was

you knew that that weight cut was killing him. And I know, I've heard from Ray Longo that the weight cut is hard Maybe Chris Weidman would go there too. But the thing about Luke Rockhold was you knew that that weight cut was killing him. And I know I've heard from Ray Longo that the weight cut is hard on Chris Weidman. I don't know that like is, yes, if you go up a weight class and you get a win like Anthony Pettis, is 170 right for him? Is that the right weight class? Not really. But he got that huge win over Wonderboy, automatically reinvigorated, right? So it's a great thing. So if he goes up there and beats Dominic Reyes, bam, like you mentioned, title shot. I mean, the whole new conversation about him. On the other hand, I don't know that the weight cut was the reason why he was necessarily losing.

And Luke Rockwell just didn't look like himself at 205. He looked like a much slower, plodding kind of guy. He was flat-footed, whereas he used to be. Well, his body is a wonderland. He looked great. No, no, no. He looked physically imposing, but he wasn't mobile. And being mobile with his feet was key to everything. At 205, he was kind of flat. So I'm wondering exactly how Chris Weidman is

going to look. Now, on the bad side, Dominic Reyes has super fast hands, is a natural at that weight class, right? He's going to fit real well in that space. On the other hand, Chris Weidman is probably a better wrestler and a sort of a bigger guy in terms of brawn. But the thing about it is that I'm thinking about, who is the underdog in this fight? I didn't see the odds, but I think it has to be Weidman. It's Weidman. No, not by far, but he is the underdog.

Dom Reyes came back down to earth against Vulcan. I don't think he deserved that decision. It was a close fight. It was close. And it wasn't a plus performance like we had seen. He was rising. Dom Reyes was starting to show you that there's something there. He hit the skids there against Vulcan.

But he's got to be a heavy favorite. Because here's the thing. I think Weidman and Rockhold are such a natural comparison because of the rivalry, because both late in their careers making this move up to 205, just seeing what can I do here. I think when you look at Rockhold, although he just lost and there's a lot of questions, I think he has that plus ability where I said to myself, okay, I think he can swim at 205. I think he can do it. Me too. I think when you look at Rockhold, although he just lost and there's a lot of questions, I think he has that possibility where I said to myself,

okay, I think he can swim at 205. I think he can do it. Me too. I think he has offense. I don't have that feeling for Weidman. I don't think he's going to be able to really add much to what he can do at 205.

Yeah, but also again, going back to Rockhold, you thought 205 was a solution to whatever problems he was facing. It's not clear to me that 205 is a solution to the problems that Weidman is facing. Even though he's big.

There's deeper water there. And also, again, when Rockhold was dying to get to 205 is a solution to the problems that Weidman is facing. Even though he's big. There's deeper water there. Again, Morocco was dying to get to 185. You think, okay, you lighten the load there. He'll be just more of himself. I think some of that will apply to Chris Weidman at the same time. You fight guys who are naturally fast at that weight class, I think it's going to be a bit of a problem. He has to wrestle, I think, his way to it. Now, if he gets that win, he gets that title shot, again, I think it could change the narrative in a number of different ways. Because you lose to Jon Jones, you can always

write that off, no big deal. And if you don't think Dom Reyes is on the verge of a title shot and you haven't looked at the rankings in a while, he's an extra in that Toyo Tires commercial. If you make it to that level, to be honest with you, no jokes aside, that means they have plans for you. Hey, Toyo Tires gave me a fresh new set of tires. I ain't hating on them. Did you get Ngannou in the front seat? I did not get Ngannou in the front seat. Lastly, but not leastly... Are you getting monster feedback in your hair? Not to remove the fourth wall, but I can't hate them all. Did you get Ngannou in the front seat? I did not get Ngannou in the front seat. Lastly, but not leastly... Are you getting monster feedback in your hair?

Not to remove the fourth wall, but I can't live like this. Well, I'm looking at the clock. We're just behind. But the point being is, no, I... But these... They give us earpieces. They never work. They're literal hearing aids that don't work.

I feel like I'm at a... Yeah. All right. All right. Let's keep going. Lastly, but not least, we'll go to you first on this one, Brian, as well. Oleksandr Usyk, part of that Ukrainian front across different weight classes that are tearing people up, he made his move to heavyweight.

He was supposed to fight one donk, and that fell through. What's his name? Batram? Takum? Carlos Takum, and then Usyk got hurt. And then it was supposed to be Spong. I had him on my show, but then Spong's cougar gets loose. He gets in trouble for that. He pops positive for stuff, although his most recent

Vata test came back clean, which is interesting. Anyway, he gets yanked from the fight. He ends up fighting Chaz Witherspoon, destroys him in seven rounds. What did you think of Usyk at heavyweight? Because now he's the mandatory WBO challenger for the winner of Ruiz and Joshua 2. You really can't take anything from this performance.

Yeah, exactly. Look, Chaz Witherspoon is one of those opponents who can do enough to survive, and he did for a while here, but is not impressive. And here's the thing about Usyk. He's a Swiss Army knife for this division. He's a potential kryptonite.

He's 6'3". No, he doesn't have heavyweight power. But he is sort of a bigger weight version of Lomachenko, a guy who he came up in the amateurs with and his friends with. He has the ability to set up his punches and punch from angles and a quickness that you don't often see at heavyweight. This would have been perfect in

this DAZN main event to make a big splash, to grab the microphone afterwards and be like, yeah, I want the winner of AJ Ruiz. And just this week, Usyk had come out and said, I want Wilder and I'll outbox him for 12 rounds. Problem is he didn't take this platform and look spectacular. Yeah, he got a stoppage win. Yeah, he won every second of the fight. Yeah, he did a somewhat typical Usyk performance, which is take two to three rounds, figure it out, and then walk you down with those angles, throw change-ups, throw different speeds, and just eventually you saw the damage on Witherspoon's face. I did see a lot of people watch this and go, oh man, that fight sucked. Usyk's going to suck. No way he's going to be able to fight these big guys. Look, take a step back and relax on that. This guy is special.

This guy has true craft. We are in a division with bangers, big bangers. Tyson Fury certainly is a pure boxer with hand speed and can do special things, switching stances and all that. But Usyk is as natural and pure as a boxer as it comes if he has the toughness and the chin and the backbone, which, by the way, he showed in that World Boxing Super Series Cruiserweight Tournament against Amiris Bredis, against Gassiev, big-time punchers. He was able to walk through hell in there.

He's going to be a problem for these guys. He has the potential to disarm the big names at heavyweight. I know everyone's going to say, what about the size? What about the chin? Let's find out. There was no chance we were going to find out against a Chaz Webber. Yeah, did he go out there and wow you? No, he did not go out there and wow you.

But people always get late replacement A-side expectations wrong. They always think, oh, you're the A-side. You're fighting a guy who's totally unprepared. You should go in there and just march him down, which sometimes of course happens. A lot of times we've seen it over and over with A-sides. They're like, I don't know anything about this guy more than I could find on YouTube for a couple of days. I'm going to be a little bit conservative. Now I know your point, he typically reacts this way anyway, two to three rounds of fact-finding before delivering on what those facts are.

But to me, it's like, would it be at all surprising if you found out his training staff said to him, we're going to be careful in this one. We know we can get the finish. We know we can get the win. There is no need to press the gas. And as a consequence, they're like, oh, he didn't look all that great.

He didn't look all that great, I think, by design. He was designed because what would be the worst case outcome? To lose. That would be the one you have to avoid. Or let's give another outcome. Let's say he goes in there and destroys Witherspoon and shows every craft and tool in the book. If you're those big name heavyweights, I know you mentioned he's in line to face the winner, but the big name heavyweights are not going to be looking to fight him.

This is almost perfect case scenario. He kind of moved the chains. And here's the deal with Usyk. He's only going to look great when you come after him. Tony Bell, you did in that last cruiserweight fight that was on the zone. Usyk got a sensational knockout that he really took a couple rounds to set up. He's a bit like Shevchenko. That's only going to happen if you come after him. So if he wins these big fights against the heavyweights, it's not going to be spectacular. It's going to be technical, but it's going to be brilliant. Let's see if he can do that. And last but not least, he got seven or six and some change rounds of heavyweight activity,

which I think he probably said, hey, I now got some experience in this weight class. I'm good to go. All right. With that out of the way, it's time now for where you ask the questions. It's time for DMs from donks. How are your DMs these days? Very clean. I'm a happily married man.

I really have nothing to say about that. I've asked Luke Rockhold about it. Won't show me the DMs. I've asked Ryan Garcia about it. You know who did show me his DMs? It was Colby Covington. There's a probably. Well, no, no, no.

It's not about the girls. Dude, you might realize how much. You should look at his. This is a true story. I looked at his DMs. It was like death threat after death threat all the way down. Think Donald sent him any? Well, this was pre-MAGA. Well, this was after a Brazilia or a Filthy Dump,

pre-Don and the MAGA hat. It's like a lot of angry Portuguese in his DMs, bro. It was wild. All right, this comes to us first, I think, from Melanie Darling. Yep, here we are. Brian Campbell, a concept for fun. The UFC does an all-women's fight night. Who would you want for the main card?

Which championship fights would you want to see? Any active female fighters currently in the UFC is up for this femme fight night. Wow, femme fatale hair. This is interesting. It's like, why don't you just watch Invicta? Yeah, yeah. Why don't you? All right.

I love this idea. I think it's progressively time. I don't think it would be gimmick or cheesy. We certainly have multiple divisions in UFC. We've got great names. There's plenty of fights we want to see. This wouldn't come off as one of those like WWE, let's make good and have a nice public moment.

I think they do this, and I think I need Nunes Shevchenko III in the main event at Bantam. I'd love to have JJ in a 115 title fight in the co-main. Zhang Weili, you're free, right? You're free, all right. Where else do we go from there? Well, you got any off the top of your head? You want to fill out the card?

You know, if you're going to do that, I would feel like you'd have to have Rousey on the card. She's not fighting. Hold on, you've got to pay her the money to come back. What if it's Gina Carano? She would take that fight. Yeah, exactly. Pay her the money to come back.

It's like the person who ushered all this in to be a part of a one-night kind of only thing as a celebration of women's MMA. You don't think they could figure out a way to do that? Who do you think fights first? Ronda Rousey or Travis Rousey? Travis Brown? Ronda.

Okay. Her services are more in demand. That's true. That's true. Right. You would need a name to put on there. Like, you're not going to get Cyborg back, but you would need sort of a fun attraction. Amanda Nunes?

Well, Nunes would have to main event. She's the best woman. Yeah, you'd have Nunes, Shevchenko, all the champions, basically. You have three of those. And then you have to fill it out with some other interesting ones. I'm not sure. I mean, there's plenty of great fights. Does our inability to answer this question make us sexist?

No, we just supported... It's not like I said, suffrage, good lord, I mean, come on. And the suffrage of women. Yeah, you could be on this card once you serve Luke a sandwich. Like, where are you going with this? Yeah, but we can't name anything. I could name plenty. Look at the 115 top 10. I mean, you know, it could be Tatiana.

These are not inspired choices. All right, we move on. This goes to CamRouse93. What do the UFC do with Francis? Because DC and Stipe are scheduled and even, Evan, after the fight,

what the fuck? After the fight, he would still have to wait for the winner to recover? And what happens to the belt if DC wins and retires as champ? I don't know. Does this autocorrect? Did he mean even after the fight, did he have to wait to recover?

Yes. Okay. He's trying to say, do you keep Frank Ngannou in the bullpen to keep him fresh because he has worked himself into another title shot, or do you keep him busy and against who? And the answer is Derek Lewis

because the first fight never really went anywhere. That's interesting. Now, the argument would be to counter that, if I could play devil's advocate, you'd be killing off a contender. Lewis is, if we're really being honest, no longer a title contender. Wow, that's a bold claim, Brian Campbell. Well, I mean, it's true. You came back from Jamaica just full of that smoke.

I'm ready, all right? Full of that smoke. You'd have to give Vunganu quasi-main event title money and just say, okay, we're going to keep you busy here. Go out and prove what you didn't prove the first time, right? So I think if DC wins and then gives the title up, I think you do the Stipe-Francis rematch. That is true. That would be...

Because, yes, you would still favor Stipe probably, but Francis is also a different fighter since then. I think he's recovered to a degree. But you're right. Any of those mishaps against Lewis or, not mishaps, but the losses against, well, okay, it was a mishap against Lewis, but Lewis or Stipe. Where's JDS right now? Was he coming off of a loss?

Yeah, didn't he lose to Francis? Didn't he lose to Big Francis? That's right. Anyway, alright. This is from Emaya82. What should BJJ-centered fighters like Krohn and Brian Ortega focus on,

improving their striking or takedowns? Brian Campbell. Both would be ideal. No, no. Brian Campbell thinks that Krohn Gracie is a finished product who has nothing more to learn. I showed you a big bag. He showed you I'm going to go. Yeah, that's great.

That's not how you win fights, quite evidently. He's an artiste. He's not really a fighter. I mean, he's a Gracie. You know what I mean? He's probably out surfing right now. He don't care what you think. Yeah. Connery Gracie getting his black belt, by the fighter. I mean, he's a Gracie. You know what I mean? He's probably out surfing right now. He don't care what you think. Yeah.

Connery Gracie getting his black belt, by the way. Shout out to him. I mean, look, you can argue in both directions. I would want a guy to be able to strike, and I think you give Ortega

a lot of credit. He evolved quickly in that when we had those original questions of, well, you're fantastic on the ground. Well, you're training Halle Berry for a movie off-site. You know where I'm going with that.

And he's come back, and he's proved, I can smash with my fists and I might be smashing on the set too. Get the fuck out. You are a disturbed individual. Well, Brian Ortega has good striking. Now he has

we're like, oh, well he lost to Max. Okay, well he lost to Max for crying out loud. Max is a very good striker. What you notice about Brian Ortega's striking is when it's offensive, it's good. It's just that there's defensive issues to it. But that typically happens to Brian Campbell just as they mature. As they get better, you'll notice, we talked about Ioannidis and Jacek and dissected.

She was an accomplished striker before she got to the UFC, but to me she has a little bit more defensive sensibility. She gets hit way less than she hands out punishment. And so to me, it's like Ortega's already on the path. Like, just give him time, give him the right matchmaking. This one against Chan Sung Jung is phenomenal, right? His defense should come along if he keeps going the way he's going. For Krohn, it's like, it's the Ryan Hall question again. It's like, well, Ryan Hall, by the way, he does train wrestling. He actually entered a freestyle tournament in Canada years ago. But the key for that is he basically said to himself,

look, am I going to out-wrestle these donks at 145? I'm basically not, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to find unorthodox entries, which set me up for my kind of submissions, and then when we're on the feet, I'm going to play distance, and I'm going to make you wary of me at all times through contact, and I'm going to set you on fire at kickboxing range. I don't know what Krohn needs to do. It's a question of how he wants to fight.

If you think he can build on the striking and I think he can build on the striking, that's the way to go. I realize Krohn could, if he can work the striking thing out, he can begin to lull people. Where are they going to go? I guess he's a striker now. You're misinterpreting me. My only argument about Krohn is if he decides to not do anything, his limits are pretty knowable.

If he decides to do something, he can be incredible. He can be a championship contender. And by the way, go back and watch Ortega-Holloway. I know Brian Ortega's face fell apart, and I know Max was willing to walk through hell with him. Ortega was coming on with the hands. He was coming on. In the third round, yes. He was coming on.

In the fourth round, though, he was just getting eaten alive. But in that third round, you're right. He was tearing Max. He arguably lost that round, Max did. But again, it's a question of what do they need to improve? Well, you can improve everything, but you have a limited amount of time, and you have to figure out what you want to do. The question is

how do you want to fight? How do you want to fight? And then make some choices. Alright, this comes to us from Spatial Analysis, Brian Campbell. Do you think a UFC or any other promotion has the obligation to step in and stop the fight? Well, we're going to do this on odds and ends, but we'll do the obligation to step in and stop the fight. Well, we're going to do this on odds and ends.

We might as well do this now. We'll do it now. Step in and stop the fight when the referee is clearly unable to see or understand the circumstances inside the cage. Let me set this up if I may. So I looked this up. I think the guy's name was Andrew Glenn is the referee. They're talking about the Mike Davis-Thomas Gifford fight, which took place on the prelims of the UFC Tampa card. If you guys didn't see, here's how it went. Mike Davis beat Thomas Gifford from pillar to post in all three rounds.

It took about three minutes for the announcers and everyone watching at home to realize that this was going to end badly. This is completely one-sided. Davis is lighting him up at will. And Trevor Whitman made a good observation which is that when you get hit and it looks like you have a loose neck where it pops like that, that's when the ones are really landing. Michael Bisping, to his credit, the entire time was alarmed by the whole thing. That referee, Andrew Glenn, was supposed to, I don't know if you noticed, Brian Campbell, was supposed to referee later in the night and got

pulled because of what a bad job he did. It was unconscionable. I have a lot of ideas about this one. I'll let you go first. Yeah, this, look, one thing, boxing's got a lot of problems, and people are getting hurt left and right. We're going to talk about it on this show, and we just had a couple deaths recently, but boxing's starting to realize a little bit more. You see much more towels being thrown in boxing than you do in MMA, and you see much more,

hey, I know you're not on the verge of getting stopped here, but we're going to jump in and stop it. You've taken too much punishment. I don't see that in MMA. It's MMA's, I guess, credit or luck obviously doesn't have the same terms of long-term really bad situations of deaths in the cage or right after. But moments like this are going to get us closer to it. And you not only have to rag on the ref, don't you have to rag on the coach for continually? So here's the deal. Gifford showed insane heart. And the thing was, he would get lit up with five, six punch

combinations in which you're thinking that would knock out anybody else. And then he'd almost look like he was back in, not back in the fight, almost winning it, but back in attempting some kind of takedown or some kind of submission, which unfortunately gave him more life. Yes, I feel like the commission needs to step in in those type of moments. If the referee is either not noticing or isn't perceiving what we're watching at home there needs to be an adult in the room we're seeing this in boxing I don't know if you saw the first Deontay Wilder Luis Ortiz fight they're gonna be rematching November 23rd one of the big issues in that fight was after Wilder got knocked

around around seven and almost dropped and stopped they stopped the start of round eight and did a health check on him and it took about 30 seconds the doctor came in. Crowd's booing, saying, what are you doing? You're giving the bigger-name fighter a chance to recover. But that was a New York commission change to the rules, so they didn't have another Magomed situation where you have some real tragedies in the ring. I think it's time to...

I don't think that ruins the sport or takes from it when it's so obvious that someone's one-sided and is not going to win this fight. Here is where we are on this one, and this is the thing that everyone needs to wake up to. We are in a place where a guy like this can fight in the UFC. The commentator knows it's messed up. By the way, it wasn't just Michael Bisping. It was Trevor Whitman as well. The audience at home knows it's messed up. The commission knows it's messed up because they removed the referee from ever being involved

in that fight night again. So even they clearly were alarmed by his behavior. And yet, I've not spoke to Mark Montoya. I'm trying to get him on my radio show today. We'll see how that goes. They didn't do anything. His father didn't do anything. The fighter himself, I don't know what you expect, which all tells you one thing. Someone's going to have to die before anything changes. And I hate to put it in those terms, but you cannot rationally convince these coaches or anybody else who is involved in one of these situations. You go back to the Raquel Pennington situation. She literally turns to her corner and says, I quit.

I'm done. Right? And they put her back out there. She gets her nose broken broken and then she loses. And then they go on a media tour right after that and say, no, no, no, we understand the fighter better. If you understand the fighter better, you are actually in some ways a worse position

because you have this irrational belief in their upside. You're like, you love a person so much, you think so highly of them, you cannot soberly, clearly, you cannot soberly assess what they're capable of doing. Now, Mark Montoya is, I have such high respect for him. I hope to get a chance to talk to him later. This is the point. I've talked to Brandon Gibson about this too. There's a couple he wants back. You talk to Greg Jackson, there's a couple of times they didn't stop a fight, they want one back. I suspect over time, Mark Montoya will come to that because he's smart and he's rational.

This is the other thing to consider, Brian. It's not bad coaches who are doing this. It's the very best ones. Brandon Gibson is one of our very best coaches. Mark Montoya is one of our very best coaches. If even they aren't doing this, what that tells you is there is a massive, massive culture problem that we have that will not be remedied until tragedy strikes. That is exactly where we are headed.

These coaches become like fathers. And in boxing, you have a lot of actual father-son combinations. His dad was in the corner. And the trainers, the fathers can be the worst advocates for their own son because it's such a macho mindset. I'm sorry, no, he can do this. But it is normal in boxing for the commissioner to jump on the apron between rounds, overrule the referee, and wave off the fight. I don't ever see that in MMA.

Yeah, here's the other problem, too. I was going back and listening to some of the instructions that the referee was giving. There was one time where Gifford was getting banged on, and I remember the referee saying, get out of there. But actually, that's not what you're supposed to be saying. You're supposed to be saying, improve your situation or improve your position. You don't actually have to flee the situation. He was totally out of his depth.

What did he take, 157 strikes? And here's the other part. They kept saying, well, if he gets them on the ground, he's much better. Not really. Mike Davis had knee on belly, which is like, the boy Derek in the back will tell you this, knee on belly is what you do to white belts who show up day one, and then he was elbowing him from knee on belly, dude. That is like big brother, like I'm going to steal your girlfriend at the prom move.

And then in the end, when he was banging him in the third round, he had him in leg drag. Leg drag is like, please put me in side control because I have no control what's happening over my body. Your legs go one way, your shoulders go the other. He had him in leg drag. Like, there was, it'd be one thing if he was taken to the ground, Brian, and then taken to the back.

He'd be like, all right, well, I mean, there's something there. He was getting dominated everywhere. Everywhere. It was a complete and total failure of everyone. And look, Darren Elkins wouldn't have a career if you stopped fights early, right? There are moments where a guy, usually though a slugger.

That's the thing, Luke. Usually it's a slugger that you give leeway when he's getting dominated because you're like, look, one punch can change everything. I don't think it's that same situation with a submission expert. I don't think, like, it's not as easy to just land. No, submissions are hard to do. That's why there's so few of them. So it's not, you know, anyone that wants to argue, well, you can't have comfort behind dramatic wins if you police fights this way. Well, you also can't have long careers or life.

And if we had our own MKADCC tournament, I think Kinger's tapping you. He might. I'm old and frail and tired. But the point being is, lastly on this, this is not somebody being like, oh, well, if the best coaches are doing this, then maybe they're not the best coaches. No, no, no. This is like weight cutting. It's pervasive at all levels of the game to the point where the best coaches, and Mark Montoya is among our very best, are still not immune from this.

That's really the consideration. And then lastly, too, go back and listen to what he's screaming to Thomas Gifford. Gifford wasn't listening to any of it. It's like your guy's getting beat up. He's getting dominated. He's getting dominated in the own scenario where he's supposed to be good at, and he's not listening. It's like if you don't stop it then, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't know what to tell you. Just real quick, did Mike Davis look great or just favorable matchmaking? Dude, he took that five on five days notice. He looked awesome. All right, DennyBondFan007 says, what is the definition of a donk? I find myself using it but would like to know its meaning. What do you think it means?

I know what it means. Donkey? Yes. This is not some Asian racist remark. No, it comes from, no. I know you're Qatarian, so I don't know what you call people. Qatarian? Yeah.

Is that a word? You grew up in Qatar, bro. In Doha, yes. Yeah. But I'm not Qatarian, if that's even a word. What are you, Romulan? You're a Qatari hero. Come on.

Qatari hero. So if you ever play poker, you get these guys who show up to the table. And, for example, they might go all in and get lucky, but then they ruin the shoe. They're called donks. And then you get these tournaments where you get full of them. They're called donkaments. It's short for donkey. But anyway, I got it from these guys called the Sports Junkies in

Washington, D.C. They're my radio idols. They're still on. And they essentially introduced me to the word, and I picked it up, and here we are. The donks. So now it's time for... Here's the best part. Now is the time on the show where we do slapstick, which is Brian Campbell's

enduring contribution to the show. This is where Brian scours the globe for the best highlights that you haven't seen. By the way, I think it looks stupid when I look this way, so I'm going to look at this monitor. All right, Luke, we want to find out, have you seen this shit? And we're going to start unboxing this week. Friday night, Hartford, Connecticut, my backyard. Just like Muhammad Ali, Luke, they called him Cassius Chaney, that is.

First round KO improves to 17-0. Good looking, unbeaten heavyweight promoted by main events. But did you see the way that fellow went down and the ghost removed him? His head moved like a bobblehead, like this, right? He has taken his soul, Luke.

Watch this again, Jay, if you have that back there on a replay, unless we, how's our production? Oh, by the way, it aired on Fight Pass, too. That's cool. Yeah, Chad Dawson, the main event, he, yeah, here we go. Here we go. He's going to double jab, right?

Pop, pop, bang. Oh, did you just, I had the Roxbury right there. See him shake, do the little Harlem shake? Yeah, he did the old Harlem shake. Wow. You know what? We're up here mocking dudes getting viciously KO'd after talking about people not throwing in the towel.

Yeah, we're no worse than that. We are terrible people. Yeah, we're no worse than that. We are terrible people. Yeah, all right. Well, hey, Luke, let's talk about protect yourself at all times is a theme. Let's go to Bellator kickboxing. Oh, dude, this referee. Dude, this referee. Did you see this?

Yeah, this is Jade Joran. Isn't she a John Cavanaugh product? And this is her kickboxing debut, Bellator kickboxing. Watch the referee. This looks like Floyd Mayweather, Victor Ortiz. We're going to shake hands? No. The referee gets in the referee. It looks like, this looks like Floyd Mayweather, Victor Ortiz. We're going to shake hands? No. The referee gets in the way.

He's to the side there, but I think he was distracting. He caused that. There's no question about it. You do have to protect yourself at all times, but he gave the illusion that we're going to separate, and she pays the price here. Good looking KO, though, for Jade. No, is the John Cavanaugh person the one who won or the person who lost? Who won.

Who won. By the way, Bellator kickboxing, they give you the finishes. person the one who won or the person who lost? Who won, who won. By the way, Bellator kickboxing, they give you the finishes. This is like Bob Craft at the massage parlor. I mean, this is not bad, right? Are they going to change

the name to Orchids of Asia kickboxing? Oh, wow, wow. Hey, Luke, Halloween's coming up. Number three, have you seen this shit? Here's the winner already.

We're not even at the 31st. Winner of best costume. Is that an outhouse? It is. Check that out. Oh, my God. This is like ghetto Dorf on golf. You're going to have to be 35 or over to understand the reference.

But, Luke, check that out. How do you like that? I used to, when I was in the Marine Corps, they would have outhouses in 29 Palms out in the desert, the Mojave Desert. Yes, oh, yes. And they would make you use it. You couldn't actually use it in the field in certain scenarios. Oh, God, the sweat. You would lose 15 pounds in that thing because you have to wear all your gear on to go use it.

I once went to Bonnaroo, you know, the outdoor festival in Tennessee. You went to Bonnaroo? Oh, yeah, 2005. No wonder you're mentally disturbed. And I didn't want to drop a deuce because it was like 3,000 degrees in the thing, so I waited until the last day. Yeah, I lost some pounds there. That was a really weird story to share online.

Yeah, you must have had some blood in your stool, too. Yeah, that was really gross. All right, hey, let's keep the train rolling here on Have You Seen This Shit? Oh, this is from two weeks ago in Australia. Remember Aviv Gozali from Bellator? Watch this left hook. Did the fake high five to open the fight and then went in for the Imanari roll? Look at Nadia Qasim doing that high five.

Bang. The thing is, though, they actually, if you watch. And then you pay for it right there. Yeah. By the way, she needs to go to a victim. Instant karma right there. Watch this. They actually touch, and then she kicks. So it wasn't a fake, but she did. she does not, she needs to go to a victim. Instant karma right there. Watch this. They actually touch

and then she kicks. So it wasn't a fake, but she did. It's not a fake. That's dirty. That's dirty. I would say it's dirty, but it's on the borderline

side of dirty. So second round, by the way, she came out and tried the same thing again, but her opponent, her opponent who's who's came right there,

put up her hands like, hell no, hell no. Yeah, this is one of those fights where it was like, the UFC Tampa card was better than this card. Like Australia has Robert Whitaker, and then it's got...

Hey, I follow Nadia Qasim on Instagram. That's great, but I don't know the UFC for her. She's kind of sneaky out there, right? All right, hey, next, last one here, Luke. What is wrong with you? You know that one-hit wonder by Soft Cell? You know that song, Tainted Love? Tainted Love.

Yeah, yeah, well, this is going to remind you of that. This is tainted. Also, the is going to remind you of that. This is tainted. Also the key word here might be taint. Luke, you're going to have to protect yourself at all times. You want to prepare for anything that can happen in life. Are these these monks that do the nut sack challenge? Or in the streets. Oh my God, Luke, get ready for it.

You never know what's going to happen. Oh! This is a metaphor for me and my life in my 30s. Luke, you got to be prepared for anything in life. People can roll you up, try to change your oil. That is how you get tough for it. Right?

Yeah, but he didn't, I mean, he didn't roll up for it. I mean, that wasn't a surprise attack. He was like, come at me, bro. Oh, he's ready.

He's like, I'm going to strengthen my grundle. This is straight up what he's doing here. Come at me, bro. These people, aren't these guys eunuchs? I don't know.

It looks like a Keith Van Horn mom. In which case, it's all a sleight of hand. But how do you come back from this, Luke? Do you know what that must feel like? Dude, this is me asking girls out when I was in high school. That guy looks like Joe Sun. Wow.

It went about that well. Oh, wow. Hello, Marietta. Right, Luke? I don't want to hear it, Bartleby the Scrivener. Parting your hair down the middle like a 19th century bank teller. Yeah, man. Is that all we have?

That is all we have. Have you seen that shit? That is all we have. Have you seen that shit? That is all we have. I actually have not seen that. By the way, where are the beers you promised? Dude, I'm just coming back. Do you know how much

Red Stripe I drank? So good. By the way, Red Stripe is the worst, and I told this to a Jamaican guy. Is it the worst best beer? It's the worst beer ever to have anywhere but Jamaica,

and it's so damn good in Jamaica. Now, does it taste better in Jamaica? It's so crisp, clean, clean. The Irish are always like, Guinness is really good, which it's not, but it is better in Ireland. That's so crisp, clear, clean. The Irish are always like, Guinness is really good, which it's not. But it is better in Ireland. That part is true.

I've done, like a lot of people have in the past, you vacation in Jamaica, you're drunk on Red Stripe all week. You're like, this is going to be my beer. I'm going to love it. Then you go home, and it's probably been bottled in New York State. And you take a drink, and it tastes like somebody pissed right in your mouth. Now, how many? This, though, fantastic. 10 a.m. every morning on the lazy.

This helps smart people. Because when I think Red Stripe, I think Red Hook in Brooklyn. No, no, no. Red Stripe. So you sit on the Lazy River at this resort in Montego Bay. They have a bar on the Lazy River. So I'm sliding by at 10 a.m. grabbing a Red Stripe.

You're Cartman on the Lazy River out there except you're drinking. That's like your Casa Bonita, right? I don't know where you're going with this. Do you watch South Park? I gave it up after the original run. I quit drugs when I came here.

Oh, it got better. It got better. Yeah, that's your Casa Bonita. Yeah. All right, then. I believe we have one more thing to do,

which we were going to do the other thing on, but okay, odds and ends. What do you got for me on odds and ends? It's relevant, actually. Yeah, it is relevant. We talked earlier,

it's funny that we talked about the realistic tragedies in these combat sports, specifically boxing with the head injuries. And then, of course, we're playing, like you said, have you seen this shit? And we're celebrating knockouts. But this weekend, we had another one with Jason Day, a boxer on the zone who ends up in a coma. And it's, you don't know what to do in this spot.

To be really honest, right, as a journalist, as a pundit, as a fan, we just had two deaths in the ring just recently. In the same state. In the same state, in the same week, basically. And a lot of people criticize, like, when these boxers get hurt, and they don't die, but they're compromised for life, that we forget about them. And I think we do, Luke.

And I think we do that as like a defense. Because if we're being real here, it's hard to recover from this. We know the realities as a fan just as much as they know the realities and the dangers as competitors. And there's no right answer whenever this happens. There's no fix. There's no anything. Because this is the sport that we watch. And we watch it because we love the violence. We want to go so close to the fire and enjoy it. We pray for these Fight of the Year candidates. We celebrate these one-punch knockouts, and we celebrate these wars over 12 rounds,

and then it gets a little too far, and it becomes hard to deal with. And I just want to give you a quick story. I was on the set in L.A., PBC face-to-face. Deontay Wilder, Louis Ortiz are going to have their big heavyweight rematch in November, and while they're arguing back and forth, Wilder's like,

I said it before, I'll say it again, I know it's controversial, but I'm prepared to kill a man in a ring. And then Luis Ortiz comes back, and he's like, I'm prepared to die in the ring in this rematch, and it's getting hot, and it's getting heavy, and me sitting there like, yeah, man, we got a fight, we got a war, and they're like, I promise, somebody's getting knocked out. And then I go and check my phone and see this, after that's done. And it's sobering. And

I don't have the answer on this. It doesn't make it, and nothing ever makes it easier. There's no way that you justify what we do. Yet we watch and we cover and we report on this and we make a living off this. And so do the fighters. And it sucks. I think if you're a fan, you have to be honest with yourself and you say, I accept that I watch something that causes people's death and ruins their lives. You have to say that because it predominantly doesn't right. It's not that most people die or something although there is an enormous amount of destruction that it causes to people's lives but their personal life and may ruin their ability to have a financial future depending. Some it enriches.

But you have to just say that. Because if you're in denial and you say, well, I don't like that part of it, well, nobody likes that part of it. But if you're willing to say, I will watch it, not because of this, but in spite of it, you're still complicit. You are complicit to a degree in some of this. It's why you have to force, to the best ability you can, safety protocols and fair matchmaking and holding people in power to account and not accepting what promoters just say to say it. You've got to have short memories, too. And it's unfortunate.

You have to kind of forget these. Or if you focused on it, you wouldn't want to watch this anymore. Right. If you really focus on it. And the other part, too, is you mentioned those two deaths. Like, they're obviously tragic, but we also try to put safety protocols and, like, you can't turn pro until you're 18, which I think benefits. But you look at, like, high school football,

you've got kids out there dying every year from just utterly preventable conditions like heat exhaustion or heat stroke. You had that kid, Jordan McNair, out of University of Maryland. You know, just utter malfeasance and negligence on the part of the coaching staff. He just died. But it doesn't, I mean this is a brain that, this is a game, which by the way you play at the peewee level, that causes an enormous amount of brain trauma. You just have to say, I'm okay with it.

And once you begin to do that, you should feel something when you say that and it should make you want obviously less of that to happen and to be really kind of righteous about people throwing the towel, about what commissions are doing. Because you can't save everyone, but the idea that we couldn't do a better job, I mean, we quite clearly can do a better job. But I think I've gotten to a point where I'm like, we're all hypocritical in this.

Yeah. We're cheering for that. We're cheering to get so close to that fire. And that's the great stuff. I mean, I love the X's and O's. I're cheering for that. We're cheering to get so close to that fire. And that's the great stuff. I mean, I love the X's and O's. I love the sweet science. But it's the wars. It's the drama. It's coming back from something. That's the catnip for us.

That's why I always say it. It's like, dude, we recruit athletes. We make them train athletically. We put rules. We put best practices. We put science behind it. But fighting is not a sport. It is not a sport. Fighting is something that happens across the animal kingdom for territorial rights, for mating rights. We have removed it from that situation. And then what

we have done is we have made it out of entertainment. And then we put some safety parameters on it. But at its core, this is something that species do for survival, for supremacy, without really concern or thought about the implications of it. And look, this isn't the first time we've had this debate. This isn't the first time we've had a near-death or something scary, but it just... You have to understand what it is.

Every time it gets harder to deal with. Like, if you have a wild tiger in your house, you have to understand what that... It's not a cat! And by the way, it is true. The fighters to deal with. If you have a wild tiger in your house, you have to understand what that is. It's not a cat. And by the way, it is true. The fighters, they do get forgotten about.

The ones that either die or survive but are never the same and we move on to the next fight and that's the... And next week, you'll do...

Have you seen this shit? I will and I'll be forgetting about it. By the way, I don't want to go the whole show without mentioning this. The accident for Errol Spence Jr., the unified welterweight champion who flips his car in Dallas at 3 a.m., gets ejected from the vehicle, and miraculously comes

out with what? No broken bones? Facial lacerations. And was in, you know, was in not critical condition, but was, you know, was in a serious condition. And, you know, he hasn't spoken publicly yet. PBC had put out a statement, but it's a miracle that he survived. When you watch the footage of his car flipping, it's insane, and it's almost there's an argument being made that because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, it actually saved his life because he was ejected and wasn't involved in the multiple crazy spins. All things considered, and I don't know, I haven't seen the investigation, and was there drinking, I don't know anything like that but this was a miracle

that he's going to be able to If you watch the footage that they have it was a nearby bar that just had an outside camera sort of a still shot and then you see the light coming at the end of the road and then it just goes ass over tea kettle and this, was it a Ferrari? Yes. That just gets ripped

to shreds. It looked like Optimus Prime had chucked it down the street. I mean, you couldn't believe it. Miracle. You know what just killed me about that, too? We had a discussion about that on my show. It turns out my producer drives without a seatbelt. It's like, who are these?

I mean, I don't want to victim blame Aaron. I'm so happy he's okay, and I hope he gets back to having the life and the career that it set out in front of him. But it's just irresponsible not to wear your fucking seatbelt, man. What are you people doing? Well, I mean, there's an argument

that he was saved because he didn't, which I guess I can understand. Okay, but on balance, these are not coffins that people are strapping themselves into. But I don't know

if he'll fight again. It seems like there wasn't long-term damage. Who knows mentally what's going to happen from that, but what a wake-up call, if anything, on a reminder for all of us. That's insane. Last but not least, Bellator had a show.

You mentioned Bellator Milan. They also had Bellator 230, which, by the way, did not know it was a thing until after it happened. But it should be noted, there's a gentleman who's making a bit of a name for himself. He's won the Sambo World Championships a couple of times. He was a gold medalist in 2015 and 2014, actually in 2017 as well. His name is Vadim Nemkov. And here's how you should know his name. You're like, wasn't that the guy who beat Phil Davis in Occupied Palestine?

I'm teasing. Wasn't that the guy who beat him in the Israel show? It was in Delta 209. And it was. And I actually talked to Phil Israel show? It was in Bellator 209, and it was. And I actually talked to Phil Davis, and he was like, dude, he was just too good. Here's what he's done since going to Bellator, because he stumbled a couple times in Ryzen, but he beat Felipe Lins by KO. He beat Liam McGarry via leg kicks TKO. He split decision, Phil, it was a close fight.

And then this past weekend, Bellator 230, he beat Rafael Carvalho, the former middleweight champ, coming up to light heavyweight. He rear naked choked him inside two rounds. So keep your eye on that guy, Vadim Nemkov, over at 205 at Bellator. He appears to be a legitimate, legitimate talent. Oh, and this Friday in boxing on ESPN, I don't remember if it's on the Plus or regular ESPN, but this is a

hardcore fight. It's a light heavyweight unification fight. Artur Beterbiev versus Alexander Vodcik, who's trained by Teddy Atlas. And it's the perfect matchup of Slugger and Beterbiev, who's 14-0 with 14 KOs against such a technical fighter. Vodcik was the guy who stopped Adonis Stevenson and unfortunately sent him for a while into a coma, into some bad times. He's recovered, though. This is going to be one hell of a fight. It's under the radar.

It's for hardcores only, but this is going to be a good one. So that'll be on Saturday? That's Friday night. So Friday night, you've got your combat sports. It's going to be one hell of a fight. It's under the radar. It's for hardcores only, but this is going to be a good one. So that'll be on Saturday? That's Friday night. So Friday night, you've got your combat sports. It's going to be done on ESPN Plus if memory serves. And then, of course, you're going to have UFC on ESPN. It's on the Boston Show. All right, Brian, welcome back, my friend. Yeah. I will be off next

week, but they're going to have a... Oh, programming note next week. Tell them. Luke will be on vacation. He's got many years of anger he's going to have to let go. Hopefully there'll be some alcohol involved. I don't know what else you do. Special time for one week only. Next week, next Tuesday, October 22nd, we'll be doing a Tuesday episode. Myself and the man with the damn hat.

Chuck Mendenhall sliding in these DMs. The crowd loves him. The crowd wants Chuck in this seat and me out of here. They love him some Chuck Mendenhall. Well, who doesn't love Chuck Mendenhall? By the way, not as many 90s references. You were slipping today a little bit. No, I'm trying to get a little more professional.

You had like three or four. All right, all right. I was running hot and hard. I went to Jamaica. I let it all out for a week. Now I'm back. I'm very corporate. Now I'm very good.

Well, welcome back. I will be gone next week, but then the show rolls on. And then... You going to shave while you're gone? Fuck no. I'm not going to shave for a long time. But then when we get back, it's going to be UFC 244 fight week, my friend. We're going to bring it.

We're going to bring it. Or Canelo Kovalev fight week, depending on your perspective. What a week. What a week. It's going to be a big one. So we appreciate you guys watching. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed, liked the video, subscribed to the- Yeah, please subscribe.

Tell your friends. Let's get these numbers up. You want more MK? Can I finish this? No, it doesn't have to just happen in this bomb shelter. We can take this thing on the road. We can go places. That's right.

The more you subscribe, the more the options begin to open up for us. So tell folks about it. We know a bunch of you already have. We really appreciate it. All right. Until next time, for Brian, I'm Luke. May all of your gains be loyal. We'll be you next time.