MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 2023 Mid-Year Review: High & Lows | Predictions Check In | Fights to Make | Ep 458

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

On Episode 458 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian do a mid year check in for combat sports. The boys start by discussing the highs and lows of the first six months. Next up they revisit their 2023 predictions. How are they looking six months in? The guys also give three fights they want to see in the second half of the year and what storylines they are watching. As always we close out Wednesday's with Fan Submissions. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, it's the 28th of the month. Cash your checks and get up, everyone. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Luke Thomas, and welcome to a Wednesday edition on this 28th day of June, the year of our Lord, 2023. Thank you for being here.

We have a lot to get to. As I mentioned, my name is Luke Thomas. I join you from the capital of the Estados Unidos right here in Washington, D.C., but of course, I am merely one half of your hosting duo. That donk over there is also one as well you know him as the king of connecticut my friend and yours has he showered today probably not it's brian campbell hi brian campbell the good news is uh yes luke the bad news is it was the

first time in two and a half days because that's what this life is all about luke okay all right the semi-washed kind of life lu, but the good news is, you know, the fans took the hit that they were given of MK and they bumped again and they bumped again. So we're back. We're banging. We're ready. Uh, what do we call this? The mid-year and review show, Luke, is that what we're doing right now? I guess something like that. Yeah. So basically here's the deal. We know that there are some fights this weekend. And honestly, if you look at that card for Saturday, the main event doesn't blow you away. Okay, fair enough.

And it's in the Apex again, which I know a lot of people are going to be upset about. But there actually are some decent fights on that. We're going to give you a full preview of that on Friday. But to BC's point today, let's do things a little bit differently here. We're at nearly the halfway point of the entire 2023 year. So we want to see what has gone right, what has gone wrong, what's on the path ahead, and look back at some of our predictions from the end of 2022 to see if we're on the right track. If we're not, that's sort of a thing. That makes sense, BC?

Yeah, that makes sense to me, Luke, as your co-host. I just hope the audience has bought in, but some of them, the P1s at least, they just want to be injected. They don't care what we're talking about, okay? Yeah, that's probably pretty fair. They don't really care, but that's what we're going to be doing here today. Oops, one more second here. Okay. Reminder, thumbs up here on the screen if you're using YouTube, all that good stuff. You can see all the socials down there. You can follow us. Let's see. Oh, we should remind folks, there's going to be a show Friday, a live show. We'll have some program for you on Monday. And then, of course, the end of next week, BC and I will all be together

and we'll be doing the prelims for the Jerron Ennis fight as well as doing a post-fight reaction show for UFC 290. We will not be in Las Vegas, unfortunately. But we will be having live coverage for you. Just to say, and as we explained last time, we're always in our hotel room no matter what. Yeah we explained last time, we're always in our hotel room, no matter what. Yeah,

you're right. We are always in our hotel room, but hashtag not our call, Luke, you and I did. We did think we were going to IFW, but you know, maybe next year,

but even if we were at IFW, where would we have done the show? We would have done the show from our hotel room, you know, or maybe the sports book at the park MGM. We, but, but not with this budget, Luke.

I don't know. The future is female, though, Luke. I will tell you that. Happy to report that. Yeah, it's definitely not us. I can tell you that for sure. We had our turn. It was a nice turn.

I'm likely letting us know that pregame preview will debut on Sunday with Chuck Mendenhall, UFC 290, Luke. Excellent. Very good. Happy to hear that. So there you go. We'll get you ready for UFC 290 with the great Iceman himself,

Chuck Mendenhall. BC, how are you doing otherwise? Everything okay? Yeah, yeah. I'm doing good, Luke. I'm just itching. I'm itching for action. You know what I'm saying? I want to do it. We got big action. This summer's going to be awesome for combat sports, so I'm fired up. Let's go. You know what I'm saying?

This week, let's go. I'd like to welcome Lukeke to our show uh new cbs sports um social uh artist uh cody uh hunter biden cody's brother luke armenian to the core okay so uh so welcome welcome hunter yes okay that's a weird intro but all right, that's a true thing he stated. So welcome. Just the same. Yeah. All right. So on the show, here's how this is going to work.

We'll talk about the highs so far this year. We'll talk about some of the lows. We'll look back at our predictions, which ones are right, which ones are wrong. We'll talk about fights we want to see in the second half of this year. And then the biggest storylines heading into the second half. And maybe some fans will have around at round at the end, all right? Very good. Very good. BC, let's remind everyone, Showtime.com is the label that pays.

Showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial if you'd like it. You can keep it. If not, you can bounce. Have you talked to RJ Dunkelgangbang? Because apparently Morning Combat, that store, is bumping again, but I haven't heard from him. I'll reach out to him today and get up to speed, but so happy to hear that. Look, I heard he's created his own company, and so happy to hear that he is ready to bang

and that there's big things coming. We've got to get that Average Joe art merch on the site and sell it. Here's a quote from producer Mikey Morms, Luke. Talk to RJ this morning. Big things coming. That's a threat to the people right there, and I hope that morning. Big things coming. So that's a threat. That's a threat to the people right there, and I hope that they take that threat seriously.

But you can get this cup, this hat, this face, morningcombat.store, whatever you want. All right. You know, for several months, BC, the only thing I've been anticipating big in our lives is us being fired. But if merch making a rebound is part of that story, then I'm actually even happier you

know well look it's you know there's some tough times in this business right now but you and i we're champions look i mean we're undefeated head to head against some of the biggest names in this game okay you know i'm talking about coming to a close here pretty this is an award winning shit show thank you yeah it really is um yeah and of, for today's fan subs, Friday's Dead Wrong, morningcombat at gmail.com is going to be the place to get that, all your emails in. All right, BC, with that in mind, let's get this show started if we can. As we indicated, we'll start with some of the combat sports highs thus far.

So BC has picked three of them. I have picked three of them. Now, BC, you picked so many ones that I would have gone to that I don't think my list is nearly as good as yours. Although I do think some of the things that- Well, that's why I said to you so early so we could collaborate, Luke. I know, but if we're going to be doing different ones, then collaboration doesn't really work. I'd rather do all my MK work seconds before the show starts. No, no, no. I did some work last night in terms of research and then this morning as well. I just

had a hard time picking the ones that mattered as much. So for those reasons, I would love for you actually to go first. Cause I do think your list is better. Certainly on this account, you go first and then I'll go second. Tell me what is on your mind as the highlight so far this year. All right.

The number one highlight for me as a combat sports fan in 2023, so far has been my favorite thing in the world. Daring to be great but it's come from boxing this time luke we have had an overwhelming amount of big fights the threatened tees obviously have so much more to come which could make 2023 a special year if they all get laid out but we talk a lot about that new spirit that's approaching and it's in and i like to say it's the young American fighters. And why do I put that as just American?

Because it does seem that around the globe, hammers from other countries are willing to fight anyone at any time. But there seems to be a new spirit in American boxing of young rising stars wanting to take the big fights now rather than then, despite the hurdles that can get in the way. A big showcase of that was without question. Gervonta Tank Davis against Ryan Garcia on Showtime pay-per-view in April. It's great in all that, that it exceeded pay-per-view expectations, but it was more to me about how that fight got made.

The chances Ryan Garcia took with the weight clause and all of that, and whether or not that has directly chain reacted and been a contagion to start other things, the momentum that it brought seemingly has caught on because we're finally getting Spence Crawford, finally. But Luke, on a whole, it's not just what Ryan and Tank did. It's not just what Spence and Crawford are finally doing. We have just a gluttony of big time unifications and in particular undisputed championship bouts.

That is just, I mean, this is, this is as good as it gets. We could, I mean, if we close the year with Fury and Usyk and, and Beavol and Betterbeave, I mean, it would just be unreal. But even as we stand right now, I mean, you know, Jermell Charlo versus Tim Zhu probably later this summer for the Undisputed Championship at 154. But across the board, it's just all of these big fights. It's Inoue rising up to a fourth weight class and Stephen Fulton Jr. saying, yeah, I'll welcome you on your first fight

and I'll come to your network to do it. There is a lot that's going on this first half of the year that is atypical in the boxing business landscape. If you're asking what's the fuel for it, I don't know, Luke, because, you know, I've covered boxing on a serious level for for, you know, almost 15 years now. And I used to believe in the every other year theory in boxing. They have a really good year, but you got to expect a bad one next year that's just how it goes but I do think post-pandemic we are now on what is looking like the third straight good to really good year in boxing with the potential to be great maybe that's more of this pandemic hangover of people wanting to make the big fights now out of necessity after sitting around and not collecting the typical checks, or maybe it's the collective spirit of what I talked about American or not

the younger fighters, the older fighters, they want to make their legacy in the ring. They don't want to debate about it in barbershops. They don't want to be faced in a bunch of nobodies. They want to make the fights that matter. It has all colluded together to make this an incredibly fun year as a boxing fan, but it's that spirit of what we want the most. It's a violent business. There's a lot of money to be made. I'll never begrudge somebody making certain choices for their own health and safety. But what gets you into a sport like boxing is watching the best take on the best

and take chances in doing so. That's the spirit of the 70s, 80 early 90s and on a smaller level it appears to be coming back so that's my biggest highlight of the first half of this year and I've got a I've got an h on from here to handover Luke about it you better believe that all right yeah here here I certainly second everything there I'm going to go a slightly different direction actually a pretty different direction although I certainly echo your sentiments. Again, BC's list on this one is going to be better than mine, but there's a few things you really should not look the other way on. And the first thing I'm going to mention is the Athletic Commission

in Colorado making some moves. So the big one that they did was just in May, it was pretty recently, when they had one championship bring their rule set to the United States. Now that had been set in motion previously when Colorado decided they were going to accept different kinds of rule sets in their athletic commission apparatus, but that is a huge, huge moment. I really don't think folks understand the significance of the 10-point must system not homogenizing all of the MMA content,

which if you have the same rule set everywhere, it's going to be very difficult for any other promoter to ever really stand out. By doing what they did and allowing one to safely bring their event, you know, safely being a relative word, obviously, but bringing their event to the United States, I think that has opened the doors to some real possibilities of getting different kinds of MMA. I think better kinds of MMA. I think their rule set is better than the 10-point must system. I think their judging system is better than the 10-point must system. It's a huge cue, but it's not just that, BC.

More to the point, the guy who runs the commission there, Tony Cummings, is trying to do something, for example, where if a fighter wants to challenge the wisdom of a referee decision or even a bad judging decision that he wants the athletic excuse me he wants the abc the association of boxing commissions to then appoint a separate athletic commission to oversee that and potentially overturn results or at least get some kind of better situation adjudicated that the fighters don't have enough ways to question the decision making of the athletic commission that is regulating them there. They're trying to do other things at this upcoming meeting to facilitate growth and better rules in the sport.

They are really out there cracking the whip on this very old way of, and very set in stone, you know, bureaucracy way of doing business. They're trying to go out there and lead by example, change bad rules. And I realize they've got an uphill climb. I'm not saying all of these things will work, although we obviously already have the new rule set. But some of the other things, who knows if that's going to come to fruition. But a commission doing this is, in my lifetime, unheard of.

Unheard of to be this ahead of the ballgame. I am excited about what Colorado is doing in their state and what they're trying to lead in the rest of the nation. Well, this, this progressive state, Luke Colorado, uh, we're also later this year celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first UFC card, which took place in Colorado. So a great history with the state, but I like that. It's not just history from being extra liberal or outlaw. They're still making very sound decisions that I think is needed. So, I mean, do you still feel like there's going that?

I mean, didn't you one time say that you felt like there was pressure on the state commissions not to bend to allow other outside rules by the UFC? Was that a statement you said? Dude, Mark Ratner has been explicit that as long as Colorado is allowing other rule sets other than the one that they like, they're not going to bring the UFC back. I mean, it's very clear threat from the UFC. Either keep the same rule set or we're not going to visit you. And Colorado was like, okay, see you when we see you.

That's a big gamble that they made. This feels like from the UFC, it's like one of those, like I compared it in the past to a Vince McMahon power move when other promoters would try to go head to head to his wrestling pay-per-views in the late 80s. He'd threaten the cable companies that if you carry them, we'll never run ours with you again and all that. But what is the justification from a non-stuff-the-other-people's-business attempt from UFC in fighting this? They claim it's unsafe. They claim it's unsafe, that it's a bad rule set that's bad for fighters and that they can't willingly do business with commissions

who are going to allow something like that. It's all bullshit. I mean, there's not a ounce of truth to it. They're not. So I'm trying not to be ignorant here. It sounds like the UFC is fighting some battle that if they put a card in Colorado, they have to use other rules. They don't have to use the one.

You're saying they do. No, no, no. You're correct. You're 100% on the money. So who cares? If you go to Colorado. Who cares? Exactly, right.

If you go to Colorado and you want to use the old rule set, totally fine. Like, not a problem. If you want to use the one rule set, you can do that too. They just give you the option. That all this is is the option think about how much of a lockdown yeah that they want to keep if by saying we're not going to visit colorado because we give promoters options wow boy that's really saying something you know if i if i'm tai chi palace though i'm like heard a lot of fucking empty promises in the past dana okay you know what i mean i mean you know. You can't fight there unless you're COVID positive at the moment.

You have to actually be there at the moment. There you go. There you go. I would love to do a documentary on the unfinished promise to Taichi Palace. I mean, they were, you know, they were Chewbacca like Luke. They're like, you know, you got to bury a body. We'll drive you. We'll help you shovel.

You know, they were ready. And now where are they? What are they doing? Nothing. Yeah. By the way, Mikey is asking, hey, couldn't the UFC be arguing that you shovel you know they were ready and now where are they what are they doing nothing yeah by the way our mikey is asking hey couldn't the ufc be arguing that like you know we did all this work to get sanctioned we don't want to move backwards but like it's a fair question but my my response would be i don't think you're moving backwards i think you're moving forwards and that's what they don't like but as long as you can use the rule set with your promotion, who cares? Who the hell cares? Right.

Unbelievable. Go ahead, BC. Number two. All right. Number two, Luke, on my highs this year. A lot of our staff has been very high this year, to be fair, Luke. But I'm going to focus specifically on UFC 287. I believe that was April 8th of this year. And that's a high water breakthrough comeback

moment from one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time. And I'm, you know, I think we're okay saying that. And that's Israel Adesanya, Luke regaining the middleweight championship. The it's, it was, is movie. Like the script, you know, it was like movie script, like in the way that this set up and played out you know to have Adesanya on the wrong end of that rivalry for so long and then we finally get the the big UFC meeting and he gets stopped in the fifth round after you know looking like he had the fight controlled and in the bag looking back on this Luke specifically that fight week I want to go back and listen to our shows because we all doubted Izzy. You know,

even if you were picking Izzy, you still had this, like, is that just his boogeyman? That's always going to get him this monster. You know what I mean? At the end of the movie, this boss at the end of the video game and what is he did on a emotional and mental journey to seemingly block out all the noise. He didn't do a ton of media ahead of that and come back and handle his business and have one of the all-time most incredible in-the-moment celebrations that just put the exclamation point on top of that. You don't have to be an Izzy fan. I mean, you can be a hater too, but you can appreciate what we just saw. It's it's,

you know, if he had lost that fight, would it have, would it have slowed down for a bit, the ceiling on his all time greatness for sure. Short term, but he didn't, he rose to the occasion and,

and fix and righted the wrong while also scoring his first official win of their rivalry. And the fact that that rivalry isn't like over is so exciting to me down the road at 205. But if it is over Luke, like Marquez against Pacquiao, he may, you know,

he may not have won them all, or that may actually be the only one he won, but he won the one that mattered. And he did it the most convincing, most satisfying way. It's rare when we can pause the journalist side of us and just be humbled at the human spirit, right? Peña against Nunes won like that.

This was a different element of that. But let's never overlook, even as a great champion and respected pound-for-pound fighter, what Adesanya had to do internally to get back and deliver that moment. Much respect. I thought that was one of the better finishes, moments, feelings I've had covering the sport in a while. And BC, you know, we had a debate, I think,

before the last International Fight Week. So not the one coming up, but the one we went to last year about whether Izzy was popular. And you and Chuck were kind of like, well, he's there, but he's not really there. And I feel like after that fight, he might actually be really there. The amount of embracing he was getting from sports figures and other popular figures in pop culture really kind of took, went into overdrive there,

which probably means I'll never get a chance to sit down with him again. But you know, that happens with every single fighter in my career, I suppose. Luke, nothing has happened between you and Izzy.'re fine dude you're fine all right yeah i got a feeling that it'll be a long time before i talk to him you always think people are out to get you in the end i think i don't think people are out to get me but i definitely don't i definitely don't think people are out to get me but i definitely don't feel like i've made sort of this one i don't feel like i've made a lot of strong relationships in the business, but okay. Neither here nor there.

The point being is Kevin Nash used to say about pro wrestling Luke to young wrestlers. Kevin Nash used to say, do you want to make friends or do you want to make money? Yeah, I want to make money, but I don't, I don't want to make enemies either,

but the point I'm trying to be here or there, anything or there, the point I'm trying to make BC is that was one of the most triumphant moments in combat sports I'd ever seen. Truly. I mean that to your point, you raise all the things you said about having his backup against to make, BC, is that was one of the most triumphant moments in combat sports I'd ever seen. Truly, I mean that. To your point, you raised all the things you said about having his back up against the wall. And, BC, let's talk about another component of here. You mentioned not doing media.

Dude, social media was filled with memes about him being dog walked. And, you know, like this was the guy who had his number. And no matter where he went, he was going to be all of his accomplishments were going to be upended and he still found a way to overcome all of that and do it and did it by the way in dramatic fashion by inviting risk now it's a much smaller thing bc but like when charlo beat uh the who's the argentine guy who was in his face they had to have a rematch remember like charlo didn't like stick and move charlo just met him in the middle basically it was like well i'm just gonna beat you where you're

strong and fucking did it and did it like it reminded me a little bit i mean obviously is this was much bigger than that but it reminded me a little bit of that same kind of spirit just a triumphant a truly truly truly triumphant moment in a fighter's career. Amazing to witness that. Truly amazing. All right, for my number two, BC, we've talked about this a lot. No need to beat a dead horse, but it is worth reminding now that we're six months in, some of the amazing things we've seen. This is an easy one.

Folks, how about the rise of Mexican MMA? Now, of course, it's been on the rise for some time. It didn't just happen in an instant. But then this past six months, we saw Brandon Moreno recapture the belt. We saw Alexa Grasso capture the belt. We saw Yair Rodriguez get the interim belt. He'll now try to unify that in just a couple of weeks, even less than that, a week and a half. So we're really at the stage where there's a maturity in a marketplace that is undeniable. Again, going back to what this marketplace is, it's arguably the most important market.

Again, there's a little bit of debate about that, but just in terms of how important is Mexico to boxing, you can't have boxing without Mexico. It's just impossible to conceive of just given how many great fighters, great rivalries, great stories come out of that. And then on top of it, we've talked about it before, man, when you go to Vegas and you see the Mexican boxers there, and then you watch the Mexican fan base respond, like I've never seen that in MMA to the same extent in the United States, obviously going to Mexico is a totally different story, but in the United States, I've just yet to see that. And I feel like we're going to get closer to that now with how well some of these Mexican fighters are doing. We're talking about a rock ribbed fight community

in every way. Like you want Mexicans as part of your fight family because they're only going to make it better and through from top to bottom and watching how good they've gotten, watching how developed this market has become and how senior their fighters now are in this in this in this game is really just a joy to watch welcome it and i think by the way bc it portends more growth in other parts of the world all of it very exciting well well said i obviously agree with you it's been a great revelation this first half of the year but like cynical counter punch time do they need yair to win to inflate back the aldana flat tire or am i just an absolute jerk luke it was a flat tire a really bad one you know do they need that to reinflate it even then they're

still gonna have two champions and brazil has none so i'm well if yeah so yes i would still say uh i would still say they're doing pretty great yeah it was it's been it's been fantastic to see number three luke on my highs for 2023 in combat i won't belabor it because it just happened and we we loved it we blew it up but amanda nunes retiring on the terms in which she did. Now, certainly they're on her own terms, which is what makes this so extra special. But to go out with a dominant performance against a dangerous fighter, and for as much as we say, you know,

Aldana didn't have the night she expected or we expected, and there's probably a lot of regrets mixed in there. You know, Nunes was a big part of that. I mean, let's not overlook that. And, you know, had Aldana stepped on the gas, who knows, right? Would that fight have gone in her favor? Would she have gotten stopped here? Nunes came in and finished off her career the right way.

Had already regained her title, but didn't want to retire until she beat a, a big, a big tough test in its moment. Well, you know, the injury to pain you open that door up, but you add in the family dancing in the cage, even John Annex, incredibly TMI comment about Nina being pregnant with the second child. And that's, that's, that's Amanda's eggs. Luke, those are Amanda's eggs.

You're damn right, Luke. They're championship eggs, to be fair. I hope I don't get fired for that. But it's a love. And the whole point is this. As much as like, you know, the Adesanya win and the aforementioned Pena title upset remind you of the human spirit in there.

We endure so many unhappy endings in combat sports. And a lot of times, by the way, that's tied to the hunger of the athlete who can't stop wanting to be great and wanting to do this, even when it becomes a detriment. The way in which she has navigated this run, when you trace it back to coming to the States with zero money and no place to live. It's, it's beating the game. She beat the game and she won. And to get there, she had to be every famous name in the history of women's fighting that was eligible or willing to fight her to do it. An incredible resume and incredible run, but it's weird.

It's like, you know, if your favorite great fighter gets knocked out cold in their last fight in a fight that they shouldn't have been in, will that affect their legacy and resume? Because it's the last thing you remember? Will that slowly fade? Over time, Luke, that stuff kind of slowly fades. We don't, you know, we make jokes about the Lava Shack right now, but in 15 years, we'll be talking about the BJ Penn high moments. To have Nunes go out with that taste in our mouths of just family, success, perseverance. It's like, dude, that's so rare to get something wholesome in this game, in this game meaning combat sports. It's never wholesome, never.

And if it is, Lukeke it's probably infused by performance enhancing drugs luke to be fair right which i guess is wholesome at this point we've given up caring this was wholesome as shit this was apple pie this was the american dream to be fair from a brazilian legend um i i want to bring it up and i want to give it what it deserves because that don't come around too often. No, no, it doesn't.

And again, this is something we've really noticed. You get guys like, uh, who do really, really, really amazing things in their career. And they,

they get talked about in the Pantheon of, you know, the best ever. And then even among the best ever, some of them have much better retirements than the other ones, much better exits is what I really, what I mean, mean not the post-life although that's part of it too and i think bc there's like i mean i don't know if you could really grade how they retire as part of their resume i think that begins to get strained a little bit like oh they retired

like habib retired undefeated you know and like on a win and you know a title defense and then he got out um you know does that really like the fact that he got out without much problem do you want to grade that just component of it as part of their overall record probably not but i will tell you bc i think it does say something about these people i think the ones who retire like habib like george st pierre like am Amanda Nunes. They are operating at a different level than the ones like Penn who were at the highest level. I mean, truly when he was on top, he was on top, but then he had this dramatic fall. He couldn't manage his affairs in nearly the same kind of way. Peña, excuse me, I should say Nunes, excuse me, never succumbed to that kind of thing.

And I do think that speaks to her overall, you know, record and strength as a fighter a fighter but then her record and strength as a or i should say her strength and her abilities anyway as a person tip my hat she did it about as good as anyone could ever imagine it going man what a what a great run she had moment great moment young and if you're young reagan luke the the daughter of this power mma power couple like your scrapbook is going to be you running around the cage when you're a little kid celebrating well well you know what I mean like that's a that's a hell of a moment Luke I mean did you get that moment inside the foreign affairs office in um in uh Qatar at all to you know watching your dad slay no I did see my dad took me on one diplomatic trip one time and I went to uh

I went to uh Israel I went to Jordan I went to Egypt uh swam in the Dead Sea um did you get to see him be a badass was it the opposite of that great wonder years episode where Kevin goes to work with his dad but then he gets his watches his dad get like bitched out by an angry boss no but I did get to ride in a bulletproof car that was pretty cool all right all right yeah did your dad really have the doors really heavy ironically did your dad ask the the taxi driver to stop by a rental property he had there and uh and cut her to check it out on the way back from doing that luke or no no no no he didn't do that this time but uh you think he's ever listened to a show I don't think he has I don't think that's our show no no yeah

put that in the low light uh last but not least BC for me on combat sports highs so far listen what do we have coming up at the end of about a month from today actually a month and a day basically from today we're gonna have Spence Crawford now that's in the future so we're talking about the past but one of the reasons that – many reasons why that fight is significant, but one of them is it's basically to decide who the pound-for-pound best is in the sport. It's like one versus two, depending on how you want to size them up. Folks, that's what Volkanovski versus Makachev was. Now, that's a little bit different because one guy was coming up a weight class.

They're not – it's not apples to apples. But I just mean you got to see two guys battle basically in their primes for the number one slot in the sport in uneven circumstances given the weight as I just mentioned but we just cannot take that for granted you're just not going to see that very often for any number of reasons both guys you know could be very far apart or in terms of weight class or ones at the beginning of their career ones at the end you got them both basically speaking in the same weight class in the same sort of prime of their career and ones at the end. You got them both, basically speaking, in the same weight class, in the same sort of prime of their career. Granted, you got a controversial result, but I just want folks to never, ever,

ever take for granted the moments in fight sports when one fights two to see who the real number one is. You must put reverence on that. And for all the problems that matchmaking might be having now, that was a fantastic moment. a great fight. However you saw the decision, I am extremely grateful we got to see a contest like that. And how about this, Luke, when we're talking about, like, these are our high moments of the first half of this year.

There's a high within a high there. Just Volkanovski's performance. Like, you know, that's the greatest win in a fight that he didn't win in a long time that we've seen. And normally when we give somebody a greatest win for a losing performance, it's sometimes because a heart or just enduring something within the fight and staying competitive. No, he actually had a case to win that. Right. And so I still have a number one pound for pound despite the loss with Machev number two.

So that shows where we're at, you know, in the value of that performance to show up, not be dominated in the wrestling, and make a fight like that. And to close on the boxing part, we could close 2023 in boxing with three fights, including two in one week, in which the winner, based on how good they look, could end up being the pound-for-pound king. And that's Fulton In new way on July 25th, a new wake already currently my number one pound for pound,

but Fulton's right there, you know, nine, 10, 11 area. And then how about Spence Crawford and even fury Usyk, Luke, both of those heavyweights are in a lot of people's top 10 pound for pound.

It's rare for heavyweights to like, to get there and then linger. If they fought and it was a great fight in the winter, you know, you can make that argument too. So that rare dude that's really rare what a time what a time to be alive i hope we get volk islam 2 at lightweight next year with volk fully moved up and we'll see what we got here it'd be it'd be a hell of a fight for hardcores all right with that in mind we've talked about the highs bc thus far in the first six months of the year let's talk about some of the lows because there's been

plenty of those too as there would be in any year so bc go first give me a low from combat sports thus far in 2023 i got two words for you luke power slap baby right i guess that's three with an exclamation point at the end. Okay, it would be a little bit petty if nothing else had happened and power slap debuted and I'd just be like, this was the worst moment because I think it's the stupidest sport ever. And it is, just so you know. And it is hard to look over the moral justification from a promoter who should be underplaying the level of violence in his own sport. And yet is putting out a non-defense sport in which you're getting concussed

every time. But the real reason why this is my number one low moment of this year, Luke was how it tied into the unfortunate situation with Dana white and his wife on new year's Eve, you know, disgusting, but they were drunk and it got out of control. I'm not justifying it.

It was what it was but the fact that that did almost nothing to affect the launch of power slap and we all remember how everyone dana came out and addressed it right with mma media which i still think was was big and strong and he did great there but you know nobody else with a pulse connected to that wanting to even comment or put out a press release i mean they could have put out the most bullshit press release of just we're monitoring the situation. We're doing our own investigation. They're like,

we're not, we're just going to pretend that didn't happen when you tie that. I mean, you could not have, it's comical, but it's really obviously gross and sick that that domestic dispute would happen like right during the build to, to promoting this.

And like we said, that everybody would try their best to just move forward and be like, yeah, it was, you know, it was untimely, but let's get back to the slap. You got Wolverine next week or you got the other fat guy, you know? No, no, this is, this is absolute bullshit, Luke. I mean, it's such an insult to the, to MMA and to the fighters themselves. And, and, and that I just, I cannot believe the balls of Dana. And then you throw in how they've used the social channels on UFC to flood it with this.

The whole thing is such a weird misstep for a company that love or hate the decisions and the tactics to get here. Lorenzo, Frank and Dana got here and now Ari and they did an incredible tactics to get here lorenzo frank and dana got here and now ari and they did an incredible job to get here yet this is like such a weird blind spot to me that they're just like yeah let's put millions into this who cares about tbs we got rumble zone here on rumble sports okay let's do it this is is about freedom. Yeah. That was pretty gross, right?

I mean, I just, I just, you know, Dana, watch this out there. Live in that punishment. You know what I mean? Like, what's the punishment? I have to live this way. Yeah. Well, he seems to really be suffering, you know, really out there. Just life kicking his ass. You know, he's only got 500 million in the bank, a house with three pools and an army

of sycophants to tell him everything he does is great every single place he goes. So you got to feel for the little guy. You know what I mean? That's really what this story is about. You got to feel for the look. All right. For my things that are not going great so far, some of the lows. Guys, what the fuck is going on with Conor McGregor is really just the only question I can ask.

First of all, we're fresh off the Ultimate Fighter where he's lost every single fight. He's 0-5 in the house, which by itself doesn't necessarily mean anything. Because it could be the way it's veterans versus the new guys. Dude, I'm just going to interrupt you. I saw a couple episodes and I stopped. I gave up. But here's his coaching style. It's like, punch him in the fucking face

right in the face like that's you know and meanwhile you know he's wearing like a tight ass three-piece suit while doing that or he's wearing the ufc fight kit it's just so bizarre and then you know chandler's like in sweats down on the mat coaching wrestling techniques and strategies and connor's just coming in guns blazing of like you know tequila white lightning luke wow yeah listen i'm not even mad at the way in which connor's living his life in terms of just partying like if he's like the partying side of it that's his right to do i mean if he made all the money in the world wouldn't you want to party something to a degree maybe not as much as him but i'm just saying like i don't mind that he's enjoying

his life but it really is just creating a bunch of weirdness they booked a show and a face-off with no fight signed at all so we don't know what the hell's going to happen with any of that he didn't enter the usada testing pool by the requisite timeline to be back by this year unless the ufc is just going to wave that which they still might but we don't know what the story is with that plus there's this whole thing that happened in miami heat which i guess has gone out of the headlines i don't know what the fuck is going on there but none of it none of it is leading to a place where he made his fortune to begin with which is inside the cage when he's on and at the top of his abilities guys he's a delight to watch i don't have to tell you that what he did to eddie alvarez at ufc 20, BC and I were there that night. It's a special night in the history of the sport. Truly,

I mean that. One of the most incredible performances I've ever witnessed in my life. He was on top of the world. And so again, we've discussed this previously. Maybe he's just in a different stage in his life and he doesn't want to do this anymore or I don't know. These are questions for him to decide. But the weirdness of how much the UFC wants him to be around, juxtaposed with how much he clearly is not really all that much desiring to be around, makes for this strange relationship where we're always asking, what about Bruno, but he's not there. It's just not a great thing for the sport right now.

I mean, to be fair, we just went through a similar thing, but different with Jon Jones, where for three years we're like is he gonna fight a heavyweight like what's going on and it was you know there were some dark moments in that too but it's not like a direct comparison but yeah everything you said luke um i'm not saying by the way bc i'm not saying he's not coming back i mean that's also on the table everyone says he is chandler's telling media that he's optimistic the fight will happen in the next six months it's like mike unless they wave that it's not happening but look i'm almost like it's laughable but i'm almost prepared and ready and almost welcoming them to just come out and just be like oh no he he got he started his thing a couple months ago it just

wasn't public you know and then you thought i'd be like yeah we're good you know or like you said just just give him the bro Lesnar UFC 200 treatment. The rules don't apply here. We want this celebrity back in there. But it's just weird that we don't have answers, real weird. And Luke, to be fair on that Miami Heat story, I think didn't the accusations kind of fall apart in terms of the accuser and there was like video and pictures of her with Conor later in the night? So here's my read on that.

You have to be careful with TMZ because remember what TMZ did with Dana. They didn't release the video until they got a comment from him rather than just like putting it out there, which they normally do. So again, I mean, they went to the police. To my knowledge, the police haven't done a goddamn thing, which kind of maybe that tells you there's nothing to this.

I mean, you know, the idea that he would be falsely accused at some point seems very fair to take into consideration fair enough we're just the point that we made previously was would it surprise you given all the other accusations i mean are they all false that seems a little hard to believe too but the point the point there is you never know who strategically leaks stuff to tmz to sway public opinion one way or the other. This is getting hot and conspiratorial of you, Luke. You don't normally do this. No, TMZ is known for being a little bit cozy with some of their own sources.

Oh, I thought you were doing the UFC is leaking that to force Conrad to sign for less. No, I wouldn't even be necessarily what I'm saying at all. In fact, it could be the Miami Heat that leaked some of that stuff to get the to get the league off of them. Like, yeah, it's just too weird and too unknown to know. So unless nothing happens, I should say if nothing happens, then yeah, maybe Connor really did get falsely accused. Fair enough. I'm just saying it's so weird that I'm just taking a step back to seeing how the how the things shake out. OK, I agree that this is a monster sort of what's the category we're looking at right here, Luke?

The lows. Yeah. This is a monster low in terms of not knowing, but also watching it happen. Like I get that there are people like, yo, that accusation fell apart to a degree, like vindicate him. I'm still coming back with why is he going into a restroom with a bunch of chicks at halftime of an NBA

game? What do you do in those restrooms, Luke drugs or sex, right? I mean like what was going on, you know, like I urinate in the men's bathroom. Overall. Yeah. Overall I'm saying it's just a really bad look and a continuation of our concerns where it's not like at the age he's at, we're necessarily, you know, all feeling like another title run is evident. No, not even close, but it does tie into the second half of his career in terms of like giving it away, Luke, right? You know, that, that great drive by trucker song outfit by Jason Isbell and the refrain there

is he's telling the favorite lessons he learned from his grandpa or whatever. And it's, you know, don't give it away. He's saying that in response to John Lennon saying that the Beatles are bigger than Jesus, but it's sort of like, you know, don't, don't fail on your own, right? Lou, Lou's on the field. Don't, don't, don't give it away, man. Connor has given away Luke the second half of this, of this career. And it's not that he didn't make big money or become an all-time crossover superstar. He's, yeah, he's done all that. The Floyd thing, just getting there, by the way, is that's a one in a million opportunity moment and it kicked maybe that kick-started this new generation of circus and crazy fights

but that's it was impossible that that could happen the way it did and it did these are all big moments but there's also like a responsibility to your craft that it visually looks like he's failing right now in regard to that which makes makes us ask ourselves, why should we care? When the reality is we all want to care. I mean, for the most part, Luke, unless you have a distinct grudge in hating him, you want him to come back. You want him to be in big fights and you want him to have a chance to win. MMA is so much better with that guy on top.

He's a rare star that births generations of new fans. We want you to get your shit together. It's not even close to together right now. Not even close. Not even close, Luke. That's disappointing. All right. BC, we are not going to make it if we don't move this process along.

So let's hit number two. Look, I'll sacrifice length for passion, Luke, okay? That's not what you said at the pre-show meeting. That is definitely not what you said at the pre-show meeting that is definitely not what you said at the pre-show meeting we were projecting luke we were projecting of how long the show could be but you know you get me and our projections are wildly off the mark yeah that that that sums it up luke um okay my number two sports lows in combat for this first half of the year yeah tyson fury what. What are we doing here? Fight Alexander Usyk for the Undisputed Championship. You know how rare, you know how, like,

we've never had a four belt in this modern last 25 years, whatever how long it's been of this kind of four belt era, which is hard to have an exact starting point of what that is because that fourth belt, it took a while for boxing to sort of fully recognize it. It's all bullshit anyway. But what do we always say? If we could have a heavyweight division with a lot of fun guys

in it and we can end up having one undisputed champion, the face of the franchise, what could that do for the sport? Well, you got your chance to do it. There's nothing in the way promotionally, network-wise. Both guys unbeaten. Both guys future all-time greats. We're going to try to declare who's the best of this

era. And as we've talked about ad nauseum for Fury, if he beats Uic and and let's say then retires or takes easy fights the rest of the way he hasn't accomplished enough on its own to win this argument but he's going to have arguments tyson fury for for where he actually would fit in top 10 all-time heavyweights i mean just you know and it could be really high, how high you want to argue that, because how are you going to beat that size in any era? But man, he acts like an asshole a lot, Luke. And I don't mean like he offends me with the things he says.

I mean, he's just offending the position he's at, in my opinion, by not going out of your way to make this fight happen and by constantly deceiving us with the tone of the videos. And I want Francis. No, I want the mountain man. No, I want Fury. Or I want Joshua, but it's got to be tomorrow. Like, it's just all bizarre. And then we got a third Chisora fight.

What are we doing here, Big Tice? All right. I don't think you can fight in the States anymore because of Kinnahan. But that's not even in equation of why this fight with Usyk hasn't happened. So let's find all the money in Saudi Arabia and let's do it in equation of why this fight with Usyk hasn't happened. So let's find all the money in Saudi Arabia and let's do it in December because history demands it. And I think ultimately so does your legacy. We want you, we want, we want to have that argument for you, Tyson, that we covered boxing during the era when one of the four or five best heavyweights walked

this earth. I want to have the proof of having been there so I can make that argument. You know what I'm saying, Luke? Arm us with that. Show us how great you can be. This is not a question of him not wanting it, Luke. He's always like a leverage-based businessman publicly mixed with being a wild personality. But get this shit over with because this is the most important part of your career. Get it over with. We're going to favor you to win anyway. Get it done.

I agree. For all the good things we said about boxing in 2023, the heavyweight division and Tyson in particular have been a grand disappointment thus far. Still, only halfway in. We'll see how the second half goes, but I certainly share your sentiment. BC, for me, this one's real simple. It's the Musk versus Zuck thing, and I know we've beaten it with a dead horse, so I'm really not going to belabor the point. The only part I wish to remind folks is the UFC does, and listen, carnival fights are a part of combat sports.

They really are. Sometimes in a very obvious way, like the Full Metal Dojo guys over in Southeast Asia, or even getting back to Pride, booking Hong Man Choi, or or, you know, you can getting back to pride booking, you know, Hong Man Choi, or maybe that was dream. I can't remember anymore.

But in giant Silva's who pride book, excuse me. But also, you know, hoist fighting Aki Bono on K one on New Year's Eve. Like this is all part and parcel of the game, but it can be corrosive over time. If you're not careful with it.

Not that I think that that's really the situation. Here's the only thing you have to realize like why are these two guys even in consideration for this like two bozos who have no relationship to the fight game other than they're just fans uh it's because they're tech oligarchs like that's the whole that's the whole gimmick and my view is the only reason this is so appealing to people. Yes, people might watch it no matter what, because it is sort of car crash unusual. But the bigger story there is it's happening in a landscape where actual big, real super fight fights, excuse me, are not happening, right? The real super fights are not happening. Francis and John got away, you know, and that could still be made tomorrow, but it got away in the way which the

UFC has done business this is filling that void because there's nothing else that's left so like there's so many layers to the fight game the good layer is really the UFC has a very like the UFC 290 is a great card like all that kind of stuff they've really they're still they still have got for the most part but the big, the really transcendental stuff, the Conor stuff, the Ronda stuff, the next level stuff, all of that has been kind of removed, at least so far this year. And now they're trying to supplement it with this, which, again, is fine in the larger context of the goofy fights that happen in MMA.

But I just want to point out something. If Francis versus John was headlining next week I don't think there would be nearly as much bullshit talk about this as there is right now there wouldn't be nearly as much attention paid to it because you'd actually have something real tangible right in front of you that actually matters and really appeals to the hardcore fight fan inside of you to satisfy that because that's not there. We're now looking to this sugar high gimmick to get us by. I hate that there,

there is somewhat of a stigma from at least a portion of our audience who are like enough with the, you know, BC and LT versus Dana white. Like we're sick of that. We're sick of this bullshit. We're sick of this tone, but dude,

how tone deaf of a year has Dana had? That's why this becomes an inevitability in the show dana could have been one two and three direct things he was tied into to me this also kind of you know it also plays into that luke it's that like that shameless lust for this fight rather than trying to make within the organization the biggest fights you can or at least show us that you're trying to make that you know instead it's constant derision for the fighters and nobody wants to fight and you mix that with power slap you mix that with everything it's just it's really it's been a weird ass year for ufc and mma in general like oh on a whole is the is the matchmaking

actually as bad as we say at times you know you can argue it isn't that we're just getting sick and tired of the all the bs that's going on with the ufc colluding together now personally i do think the matchmaking is taking a solid step down and could have been a part of our concerns in this top three but my number three on the things i'm most i think is our biggest low unfortunately plays right into what i'm talking about it's dana versus Francis. And it's, it's not that, it's not even to me about like who won and you can't have the opinion that like Francis screwed up or Francis should just take the money and fight John and do for his legacy. And if that's your opinion, like I get it.

I disagree, but it's just the kind of grossness in my opinion of, of Dana and how he's going to constantly frame Francis from here on out, you know, and, and it's just like the, the, the fake news element, but also like you're, you're also trying to crush his spirit and his advancement. And don't forget also trying to make a Tyson Fury, John Jones fight happen to potentially try to block out an Nganou boxing opponent. It's like petty and it's all that stuff, but it's also purposeful

because Francis succeeding would be the worst thing that could happen to their control of fighter pay and leverage, right? You don't want to create a unhappy group below you that want to become free agents. But Francis slipped out through the pipes, literally the Shawshank ship pipes that he had to crawl through to get out of there, Luke. And then what did they do? They readjusted the contracts to make it even harder. So the fact that this is still playing out, like just let Francis be, he's going to, you know, win or fail based on your expectations on his own, but he's going to do it his own way. And congrats to him having Dana really on the front lines of this battle. It just felt gross. It really felt gross.

Let me just say one thing in defense of us. BC, because maybe I'm missing something. If there is consternation about you and me versus Dana as some kind of editorial slant, someone tell me which promoter BC and I have a cozy relationship with. Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy, consider yourself warned.

Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. Which one would you say, BC? Would you say Chachere? No. Would you say Scott Coker? No. Would you say Don Davis or I mean we have a relationship with with Scott but it's not it's not no it's not cozy we're not texting like

we're who are we clearly favoring in that regard instead of Dana White that's what I'm trying to get at nobody there doesn't it doesn't exist like Dana is in charge of the biggest fight promotion by a mile 90 of the market so of course he's going to get 90 of the biggest fight promotion by a mile, 90% of the market. So, of course, he's going to get 90% of the criticism. I mean, that's just the way that it goes. It's like if we were really buddy-buddy with Coker or Chachri or somebody else, I would be a little bit more understanding of the pushback. But we don't have a relationship that would editorially justify what they're saying in any way.

Like, it doesn't exist. So that's the thing I want folks to realize. It's not like we're, like like favoring one over the other. That's not what we're doing. I mean, look at the end of the day, if you want to say, oh, but you guys with Showtime boxing and Bellator, some of that is, is it's the relationship. It's it's you get it right.

You know what I mean? Like our parent company owns it. Like we also really, when the fights really matter, play it up extra special because they really matter. But you want to hit us with that. Okay. That's what, you know,

everybody's tied to somebody, but I am happy that we were try our best. We may get it wrong. Our takes may be tone deaf in your eyes in, in, in at somebody, but yeah, I feel like we,

we force everybody to stand trial. I mean, look, you got to have critics in it to, to kind of cut through some of the BS because every statement we do here, especially from dana and the ufc only comes from dana and you do have to always gauge that with a you know but that's every industry with media like they try to make it seem like like the mma media right now is is the most

intrusive and aggressive any media has ever been no the mma media is trained to shut the hell up and post selfies of themselves and try to be like that's like that's like it's just unix is what they are is really the reality of it yeah it's just total bullshit but um i just want to point out that like you know this this idea that like we're out to get him and we're not doing this to every other promoter it's like i don't know what the fuck you're talking about okay last but not least for me bc this is a simple one but i just can't believe it's as bad as it is how about officiating issues constant and this is this start on the me, the boxing side. How about that horrible stoppage by Tony Weeks in the Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso fight? That was awful. Then you had the Mark Nelson stoppage just over

the weekend in the J-Rock fight. That was terrible. The scorecards, do I even need to go through them again on the boxing side? They're just utterly, you can't even believe what you're getting. On the MMA side, I mean, do I even need to continue with that again on the boxing side they're just utterly you can't even believe what you're getting on the mma side i mean do i even need to continue with that now the stoppages in mma i think are a little bit harder to get right than they are in boxing i'm a little bit more forgiving and i've seen what people say it's like well i think even dana said this and i think a lot of people agree and i understand why which is you know hey like show me a sport where people aren't really discussing their officiating issues with their with their with how it works. And I'm like, right. It's true that like in any system where you're introducing human judgment into how things are adjudicated, there are going to be questions about it like that.

There is conversation to me is not really any kind of rebuttal about whether or not we could be doing this better. In fact, the whole point we're trying to say is we should be using the dialogue to get to better results. That wouldn't by itself eliminate the problems, but you might get a little bit better. And I keep going back to this. The NFL has a process by which they try to change the rules every offseason to get them a little bit closer to more of a targeted, desirable place that works for everybody. And of course, there are problems with that as well i'm just kind of pointing out we are however far we are into the boxing uh history we are we are you know

30 plus years into ufc history or almost basically at this point and uh certainly you can argue in some of the broader sense maybe officiating has gotten better i would i would say especially so in mma but our process for improvement is either bad or non-existent which makes very solvable problems continue and i think that's really what folks are homing in on so for all the progress and there is a lot the the continued officiating issues in boxing in mma common denominator is what athletic commissions really tells you what, that there is a, a lot of shit to work on. Yeah. I mean, that's the,

that's the biggest way to, to, to lose fans. I mean, how many times as a boxing fan, if I tried to get somebody into a big fight and the fight I thought was awesome, but it had one of those boxing decisions and people are like,

why am I going to invest in this? Why am I going to put my time in it? If I feel the system is rigged now, Luke, sometimes I am here to tell you that ain't a robbery it's just bad officiating bad officiating though still kicks people out the door and for and tells them not to come back so we got hey commissions can we fix this issue yeah right yeah right luke yeah i mean what am i saying all right bc topic number three let's do a 2023 predictions check-in now. What we did was at the end of last year,

we did like a weight class by weight class kind of prediction to see what would happen. You can imagine most of these are totally wrong, but some of them actually came out pretty good. Now, in the interest of timing, BC, I'm going to go through this a little bit quickly if I can, but we'll start with 265. I thought Jon Jones would not reach the heavyweight title.

You thought Francis would resign with the UFC with KOs over Jones and – oh, you know, resign, excuse me, with UFC with KOs over Jones and gone. Boy, we whiffed on that one, did we not? Yeah, we stuck the horn on that one. I also threw out there it's not finished yet. Blade's getting a number one contender spot at heavyweight. We could still see him. He's on a, isn't he on the streak right now, Luke?

He's going in the right direction, correct, Curtis Blades? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I also said Fedor would come back after his retirement fight. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, Luke. Good Lord, no, no, don't, please don't. All right, so for 205, this part, one part I got right. I said I would get up to three of the current top 15 retiring. Glover retired.

We'll see. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. Onkolaev ends the year as champ. We'll see. That still remains to be seen. How about this one? Anatoly Malikin defends both belts.

Now, he has now the heavyweight championship, and he has the light heavyweight championship. Now, maybe from a timing standpoint, he won't get there. We'll see. But you thought the winner of Tashara versus Hill loses to Onkolaev. and he has the light heavyweight championship. Now, maybe from a timing standpoint, he won't get there. We'll see. But you thought the winner of Tashara versus Hill loses to Ankhalaev. No, that is actually not a thing that is happening or will happen, I guess. I guess it could.

I could still win that. I don't know why that's a red already on Mikey's list. If that's the next fight and Ankhalaev wins. But look, is Jamal Hill training? He looks like he's a little rotund on Instagram. Is he like sucking it out to try to trick us? I think my man's been enjoying championship life. How about that? He's been enjoying championship life.

Go get it. For 185, I thought Robert Whitaker would retain the title because, again, I was a little bit unclear at the time. But that Robocop would find his way into the top 15 that proved true that proved true i think fleetingly but it did prove true you thought uh izzy and pareda too would happen that's true and that potato would stop him not true not true not so fast my friend no no uh for 170 i thought rakmanov would move into the top three we'll see that that's still on the table

uh and that christian lee wouldn't hold on to welterweight title i don't know if that's going to happen because we'll see if he comes back or whatever i thought sage northcutt would never come back he not only came back he won bc yeah and that connor would fight chandler 170 which is still potentially on the table you thought homestead would win the welterweight title. That's out. Masvidal will get a title shot. That's out. McGregor returns to 170, only fights once. Poirier moves to 170.

Both of those, BC, still on the table. Everything's falling apart for me in these. Luke, I did want to ask you... No, I forgot it already. Yeah, forget it. Keep going. What am I doing? 155. I thought Makachev would finish the year as champion.

Again, remains to be seen. But so far, so good and that usman numegamedov would win the lightweight grand prix against remains to be seen but so far so good you thought top five at 155 gets overhauled completely and that charles olivera turns back into a pumpkin yeah no boy did that tune change for me over the last few months, right? The champion still has a name. Oh, I wanted to ask you quickly. In pro wrestling, if this was a story they were trying to tell, that McGregor couldn't be cleared medically or, in this case, drug testing,

they would just do an unsanctioned match, and the wrestlers would come out in jeans and boots and taped fists, and it'd be mayhem. Could the UFC just do an exhibition fight? McGregor versus Chandler. I mean, can't they just get around it, Luke? I think exhibitions still have to be regulated. Okay. So I guess, I guess you could.

Dude, what the hell does Connors popping for? If he's waiting this long to enter the program, like what is he pissing? Green Luke? What color? He's just, just pure trend. Just pure trend alone. The whole time.

BC at 145. I thought Volkanovski would end the year as champion. We shall see. And you thought Ortega makes one more big runs in the world. One more big run on the way to a title shot. We'll see this one. You got right. You said Ilya Tepora gets a top 10 fight and cleans out. I don't know what that means.

Aldo isn't done. Yeah, I don't know either. Aldo did retire. So that part's going to work out. Yeah, they're not doing too well, although Ortega may come in and kick some ass and surprise all y'all. So at 135, I think both of us are still kind of wait and see henry suhudo reclaims the belt that could happen it's possible we're waiting to see what happens with sergio and then

andrage is champ by the end of the year that's not looking too great but maybe bc you had chito vera stays being sean o'malley kryptonite which could happen we don't know patchy mix keeps winning this year yes you're very much on the money with that one and you said aljo marab stay friends and don't fight looking pretty good for you at bantamweight i'm on i'm on a roll up bantamweight thank you i probably said that the beat would come back and win the championship though luke i probably said that for featherweight we're just forgetting yeah i probably did yeah you probably did uh i said at 125 figgy goes to bantamweight that's true well did he he didn't debut yet. I think he's still back and forth, right?

So remains to be seen, but is looking good. Remains to be seen. And then you thought three different fighters become flyweight champions, which is still possible, just not looking all that great. I didn't have one for women's 145, but you wrote Kayla's last year with PFL, no UFC women's featherweight title by the end of this year. That's looking pretty good. Yeah, Yeah. That, that'll, that'll turn, that'll turn that around. You, you put not available, Luke, which is, uh, it's, it's a good answer because neither are the

rankings ever. And now this division end title is default. Do you think NA stands for not available? Yeah. Where I come from? Yes, it does. Yeah. It's not what it stands for it stands for not applicable but okay um you know yeah okay luke i mean you know we my public school education look probably looked a lot different than yours just just say i also went to public school all my life i just want you to know that oh you did two different high schools one was like a like an all-boys school like dead poet society and some no i went to two ordinary american high schools one was like a like an all-boys school like dead poet society and some no i went to two ordinary american high schools one was valdosta high school which is great for football and one was marietta high school which is not great for much uh yeah but you you were like i'm actively

going into the direction of the debate team and the math team you know what i mean like that you know i was like i graduated i graduated high school with nearly 30 credit hours before i even went to college because i had so much ap credit so okay this is a true story there's a true story uh my guidance counselor was in her last year of her career and she had stacks of diet coke like 12 packs that went all the way to like the ceiling in her office i had to alert her halfway through my senior year that I was on pace to be one half credit short of graduating. Now that wasn't because of poor grades or whatever. That was because I purposely tried to take

the minimum amount of classes you could and still graduate so I could have all study halls, Luke, and I could be a social superstar. And I was also lazy, but also Luke, what ended up happening was they, they gave me community service credit for something I had done. So that filled that gap, but, um, that's a great, I barely made it under the way it's set up. You're like, no, I had 30 college credits in the book already. Yeah. I had a year of college done before I ever went to college. The thing that, the thing that only worked out for me was people do it, use it different ways. But for me, because I had so many credits that there was

never a single semester of actual college where I had to take more than 12 credit hours. I was always normal as 15 or even higher, 15, 18, some even do 20. I never took more than 12 cause I never had to. So that was pretty great. Uh, but, uh but but but to be fair not that I can rival you and shove it in your face how many chigs did you fog Luke that's the right that'll sum up that period of your life okay you know my body counts not super high but I bet it's higher than yours oh yeah yeah you know Luke you know what I would often do fumble on the goal line you know oh you know in that sense you and i remember that one game tiki barber had like four fumbles i'm like that was one night for me in college that

was one night history yeah history won't say that i was some gross dirt hall who had no game i mean i had a little game in the right moment but what his what the box score won't indicate luke was that i was you know the the the live odds had me scoring the live odds had it had them you know my minus 700 this thing will end positively luke but i found a way to you know i've never told you there's three stories i've never told you two of which happened at william and mary where i had epic fumbles but the most epic fumble i ever had was actually i was visiting my buddy who went to georgetown at the time i'll have to save that oh you know what i'll save it for the next um there you go og rsd yes it is truly like you if i tell you the story you're gonna be like you're the

dumbest motherfucker i've ever heard and you'd be right you'd be right actually you went very well yeah yeah i could do i could say more but let's hold it let's hold it back. So for 135 women's, I thought they were going to make Amanda versus Valentina 3. That didn't happen, obviously. And that you thought Nunez takes two trilogy fights in 2023, one with Peña, one with Valentina, home stays ranked. So you got the home stays ranked part. Can I ask you something real quick? Why the hell has UFC not fixed this Holly Holm July 15th main event against Mary Buono Silva?

When when like aren't you taking the risk that Holm loses? Who are you putting in that vacant title fight? You know what I'm saying? Like just I know they're doing it probably because it was already announced in and they're using Holm star value to try to sell that as a main event. But like, dude, that's that's a bad that's a really bad main event shouldn't you jump in and like try to fix that or save holly for i don't know am i wrong to think holly versus juliana for the vacant bell just is probably the move i agree but welcome to the maria bueno silva era yeah the Maria Bueno Silva era. Yeah. How about that?

BC, for 125, I thought Erin Blanchfield would earn a title shot. Now, she's not quite there yet. Mikey marked it green. It's not quite green. Well, if she beats Tyler Santos, she would, in theory, be right in there. It's looking pretty good. You thought beings to – this is what Mikey literally wrote in the fucking thing. Beings to rival 115 as best women's division. I think he meant begins to rival one 15 as a woman's best division,

which I would say is pretty true. Yeah. That, that, that, that worked out very well for me. Cause look at the, Hey,

by the way, did you see Tatiana Suarez is dumbfounded by Rose's decision to move up to one 25 and fight for row thinks it's a bad idea and said she was hoping to have gone through Rose to get a strawweight title shot on this comeback. I did not. That's interesting. Yeah. I guess we'll have to see.

Let me finish this real quick. 115, I thought Zhong Wai Li would remain the champion. Again, we'll see how that goes, but so far so good. You thought Rose would win the title. Now, I don't know if you specified, well, I guess you did specify a 115, but now she's a 125. Still, I think if she does win a title this year, I would give it credit. You also thought Nate Diaz. This is general ones.

Nate Diaz boxes Jake Paul. You sold that. That's actually going to happen. However, you thought Tank versus Ryan would sell a million pay-per-view buys. That proved to be true. You thought the James Krause situation. BC says UFC cleans house with anyone related to the buys. That proved to be true. You thought the James Krause situation, because he says UFC cleans house with anyone related to the situation. That proved to be true.

So far, it remains unclear about whether a big women's match will happen in boxing, which you thought would happen. And we both agreed Habib becomes 2023 Coach of the Year, which I guess could happen, but he's kind of taking a step back, so I don't know. He's taking a big step back, it seems, right? Yeah, one of us thought it was going to be the Dana White white slap league is over before it starts that's not true it's still going in some form and that fate i think i thought fader might upset baiter on cbs which is absolutely fucking false wait is that a win that's a win for dana then because we actively said although i thought it was going to be more about the bad pr

of it but we actively said that power slap would would come and go not come back after a first season. I even thought at that point, like what did it even survive the slap that Dana had? We were right that it wouldn't last on TV, but we were not right that it would go away completely. So is that, that's a win for Dana, right?

He went to rumble sports. I'd say mostly. I mean, they were paying him 2005 prices to Luke. And dude, I'm still getting emails about it. I don't ever get emails from UFC PR staff, but boy,

when there's something slap going on, they don't ever forget about me. Let's see, dude. What if we created a theme song and prevent and presented it to Dana? Like, like we have friends in the music scene. What if we got Oteel and John Gourley from Portugal,

the man, and you know, those metal guys that listen to our show that, you know, and the death world, Luke, and we created like slap it, the dick now slap it and we'll have apathy come in and give like a hot rhyme luke or vinny paz i mean if we pull our resources and create the ultimate slap dick

theme song i'm sure if it sounds a little bit like uh taste the pain or face the pain luke if it sounds like like new metal 2001 ish we might be able to do it face the pain taste the pain or face the pain. Luke, if it sounds like, like new metal 2001 ish, we might be able to do it. Face the pain, taste the piss all the same. All right. Uh, let's see.

Last but not least, I thought Jaron Ennis comes on in 2023. We'll see how he does next week. Um, so we'll go from there. All right, BC topic. Number four,

we're almost done here. Fights to make in the second half of 2023. So now let's look forward to the rest of the year. Give me some fights to make in the second half of 2023 so now let's look forward to the rest of the year give me some fights to make in 2023 well i we've already said it enough you know why usic versus tyson fury for all four titles we got to see it to close the year i don't care who's paying we got to see it and it does by the way feel like we we have a good chance of doing that even if that card doesn't turn into to Wilder versus Joshua and the co-main and in Ghanu in the first fight, like you hear a lot of back and forth. Who knows? I only care

about that main event needs to happen. Thank you, Luke. I'm going to throw in this for the UFC. It's not going to be likely the way things look heading right now, but the UFC fight that I want to see that's not been signed or announced Luke, it would be Israel Adesanya against Hamzat Chemaev. I think that's the last matchup in that division that would really matter to me as a fan to get me all fired up for Izzy to do before a potential move. Now, I keep saying the move to 205. It could just be my head and my mouth and not hearing God's lips and ears aren't anywhere near that.

He may stay there longer. But if he did, man, I really think the UFC is airing, even with that big weight miss by not putting the full motor behind chamayev and rushing him to an opportunity here even though he's only had what one middleweight fighter too i guess kevin holland or maybe that was a catchway i don't know anymore luke what that counts as the whole point is that chamayev has that special thing let's if he's going to fight middleweight and not welterweight, then let's do it, and let's do it right now

because you've got to figure out who might be next or who might be fighting for that vacant title. Will DDP, Luke, become the African world champion? I don't know. Probably not. Diamond Dallas Page? Yeah, exactly. Why are we not kind of going in this direction? Got famous because of yoga?

Yeah, that's a good debate we had on pregame preview. So, look, quickly on Shumayev, I read a comment from him this morning, I think to a podcast, I'm not sure, that said he's negotiating an Usman fight at a catchweight. And I don't hate that fight at all. I don't. Even if you used it as sort of a, like, you could still come out of that fight and fight in either division but really you could but you wouldn't be like upset if the ufc

announced that izzy's next fight is shemayev right wouldn't that's that's a big deal that's a there's so much intrigue on that fight why are we not doing i mean hate it is a strong word but like again i i don't need to see like him like beat five contenders, but could you beat one first? Could you beat one? Okay. Okay. So you're okay with the Uston fight? I don't think that's unfair.

Stick with the Uston? I mean, it's weird. Like, he was linked to Paulo Costa for a while, and then it did look like he was going to go to Welterweight, and now I'm not even sure where he's going, Luke. Yeah, fair enough. All right. For me, this one's pretty simple.

I think BC has convinced me that win or lose after next weekend Volkanovski is going to go to 155 again there are some ways where that's obviously not going to be true but probably I think it is true and so in that case here's the one I want to see BC I want to see Ilya Teporia versus Max Holloway I think that might be the fight to make to be honest with you now of course if different things happen then we could change it up but I think that's just an absolutely amazing contest. I think it's a very difficult one for Max. I think it's a difficult one for Teporia. It will tell you if Ilya still has some things to work on

or if Max is still able to hang on to a relatively high top spot there, obviously just under Volkanovski himself. So that's the one I want to see next, I think, is I think that's the fight to make it 145, a fight to make an MMA. All right. And just to close, Luke, I'm only arguing for this for Tremayev, which is to just blow up the meritocracy and push him forward because Adesanya is beating everybody else. And because he's the rare guy, I think you should do that. All right. That's why I said that.

I also had Gervonta Davis, Devin Haney on my bingo card here as a as a boxing fight. I'd love I don't think it happens, but I'd love it to close this year. Back to you. Yeah. Lastly, I was, yeah, yours were Usyk Fury, Izzy and Hamzat and then Gervonta and then Devin Haney. For mine, I mentioned Ilya Teporia, Max. The one I want to see is again, he has to win next weekend first, but I want to see Jaron Boots Ennis fight the winner of Spence Crawford. Now, whether that will happen remains to be seen. Remember, on the Spence Crawford side, they have a mutually enforceable rematch clause,

so either guy can trigger it. So that, you know, who knows what we're going to get with that. But in the event that there is no interest in that, I think Jerron Ennis, assuming he wins this weekend, would be the fight to make. And then BC, I'm not even saying I want to see this fight because I think it's the best fight that could be made, like far from it.

But just for what it would do to the sports, I want to see Francis fight Deontay Wilder. I've said it before. Of all the boxing fights you can make with an MMA crossover, that one makes the most sense. Wilder was in the headlines yesterday because he wanted to give Andy Ruiz a 70-30 split. He would take 70, Ruiz would want a

30, or as I say, Ruiz would receive 30. And Ruiz and his dad were like, no, no, it's 50-50. Andy, Andy, Andrew, listen to me. It's not 50-50. You're lucky if it's 70-30. Deontay is a much bigger name. For sure, that would be the fight to make if you could talk some sense into Andy Andy Ruiz I don't know who else he could get that kind of money from or even 50 50 from that would matter but so if that's not going to happen hey I don't want to see Francis versus Derek G Zora I mean yeah it's you know great for Francis if it happens Francis versus Deontay make it happen yeah I can't I can't fight on that Mikey's giving me a real-time dead wrong remember I questioned if Curtis Blades could still be a number one contender this year and if he's on a winning streak.

Yeah, I apparently forgot that Sergey Pavlovich just sent him to. Oh, yeah, he sent him to the land of wind and ghosts, didn't he? No, I will take that back as a clear L. Thank you. All right, BC, last but not least, topic number five, biggest storylines for the second half of 2023. We're halfway through. So between July 1st and the end of December before January 1,

give me the biggest storylines happening in the combat sports world. I'm watching. I don't want to say I'm just, I'm watching with a keen eye what's going on in Saudi Arabia with boxing. You know, it's been a couple of big years for both Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia and bringing big time events. And I know specifically with Saudi Arabia, there's, you know, there, there's a sports washing element.

There's certain elements. Look at the whole live golf situation that have people on easy. And I get that, but look, they have created a, a seemingly legitimate promotion, a boxing promotion there. They signed Alexander Usyk. Again, there's some feeling from some people that that was the only way he could have inevitably get to Fury was by doing that in terms of how the business people behind the scenes may be aligned. Not so sure about that. You do hear some Daniel Kinahan stuff now, and then you never know what's really true

and how connected all that is. But there's also rumors that this promotion wants Devin Haney and has met with him and wants Deontay Wilder, whether or not like it's hard to know, right. Until they get a bigger public profile, like what their intentions would be. But I think there's two things to look at in terms of the greater Saudi Arabia thing,

but they're both connected and they're connected by money and money moves mountains in boxing. And I mean, this is prize fighting money. It can be the great equalizer. It's why Don King and and bob arum you know in the 80s and 90s could hate each other that much but obviously put it all aside when the money mattered and you could make the really big fight that's always the great equalizer in the in the in the hardest ones and if this super card comes off in

december and again as i said earlier it could be great if it's a triple header and we get all these huge fights. It could be awesome, too, if it's just Fury and Usyk for the Undisputed Championship. Either way, I get some concerns and questions. When WWE went over there, there was a lot of concerns and questions that they're taking blood, money in the sand, you know, as we would say, calling their pay-per-views that. And say, you know, with the human rights violations and all of this and, and, and the women's rights, like how cool is this? Some reason I boxing fans, we don't tend to care as much because boxing tends to hang out in that side, right?

It's the red light district of sports as Bert sugar once famously coined it, uh, or, or in famous, I'm sure somebody coined that earlier before him, but he used to say. So they might just be here for a while as like the big destination. I'm not saying to take over Las Vegas, but it's going to be interesting to see how many big fights end up ending up there, not just because certain people can't travel to the U.S., but because the money they're offering is so outrageous. Remember $85 million to Anthony Joshua for the Ruiz rematch to go there. It's going to be interesting to see if they can continue to use money.

I get what they're trying to do, create a new image for that land, make it a travel destination. Abu Dhabi's done that. Do a lot of things there. But they're circumventing the process because they have more money, and they're making the potential here of making these really huge fights that maybe weren't happening before. It's a moral dilemma in that in some ways, there's also a moral dilemma watching boxing. But when you do watch it, you watch it to see the really big fights. promoter or just large site fee destination has a bright future and how much we'll care about the

other stuff luke if they keep delivering on the big fights i gotta tell you the whole golf oil world getting involved in sports more and more is actually a massive point of concern for me i mean you mentioned everything that's already happened in boxing. Again, I think I said it on Monday's show where you have Monumental Sports, which is the company that owns the Caps, they own the Wizards, they own the Mystics, and some other stuff as well. And they just took, I think, $5 or $6

billion from the Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund. So that's growing all of a sudden. And then you have this whole thing with Live Golf, which, by the way, regulators are going to break up. Everyone thinks PGA and Live is now a thing. Trust me when I tell you that's going all of a sudden. And then you have this whole thing with live golf, which by the way, regulators are going to break up. Everyone thinks PGA and live is now a thing. Trust me when I tell you that's going to get broken up, but okay.

They're at least attempting that. And now this, like they're attempting that on that side and BC, you know, Leo Messi is a, like an official ambassador for Saudi Arabia, but he did say so. So this is like not really the best way to put it,

but he did say something like, why didn't I take that $1.6 billion deal to go play over there and he was like some things are more important than money now of course he's still making ass loads of money so it's not really the fairest thing but like the reason i bring that up is to say like some of these guys and other pro sports are going to make even in the united states or europe exorbitant sums of money that they're not going to really be interested in playing in saudi arabia or whatever the case. But in prize fighting BC, where the name of the game is get the bag and then get out, I mean, nothing is built more for sports washing than combat sports. People don't care who they're getting money from.

And you have a situation here where people have, in this case, from the Saudis or whoever, extraordinarily vast sums of wealth that they're willing to just give away in ways that even top European or North American or Australian promoters or whoever couldn't even touch. Yeah. I fear that they're going to have a huge role in the fight game going forward, but it remains to be seen how, you know, I mean, they wouldn't be the first time Luke.

I mean, I'm not just linking boxing's long history with like the mafia controlling it at some point. And, you know, I mean, I'm not just linking boxing's long history with like the mafia controlling it at some point. And, you know, I mean, Las Vegas in terms of U.S. is like our most wisely spaceport. It's like the place with no rules that you go. I don't know if Saudi Arabia can grow to that level, but I don't think people are going to put up a fight about it at all. Yeah, I don't think they are either. Again, if you're a poor person who's been fist fighting for a living and now you get a chance to make i'm just going to make up a sum 50 million dollars

like what am i going to say to you to make you turn that down it just seems unfathomable but okay um i'll make this one quick bc for my biggest storyline very very fast we've already talked about it a lot in the lay of the land but i do think tyson fury's next move is really really critical and the only thing i want to drive home one more time is for as good as this year has been the heavyweight side has been really missing i think if the heavyweights have a decent second half led by tyson fury you know either shitting or getting off the pot one way or the other uh i think it could really help things obviously would really help it if he contributed by fighting usic or somebody that somebody cared about you know francis or whatever uh But he has a chance to make, to your point, a really strong year for 2023 magic by

getting out there and fighting Usyk. So there's still some salvageable territory, BC. We just have to see what he's going to do. Yeah. My number two, Luke, that I'm following is, look, the Bellator potential sale here is interesting on a lot of levels because their roster, you know, especially from a critical standpoint, in terms of quality of fighters, is pretty damn high. I mean, I don't think everyone truly gives them the full credit in that regard, especially the younger fighters that are coming up and the champions with these dominant runs from, you know, across many divisions but if pfl buys them luke that is an entirely different discussion in my opinion than anyone else because now you have the opportunity the potential merging two very good secondary elite global mma organizations but still underneath ufc and joining powers i think that that really might be the outside of developing a pay-per-view division and delivering pay-per-views that people want to buy that's still the jury's still out on paper on pfl if they can

do that to maximize the potential that they're trying to create here but if you double the quality of your roster with an acquisition like that you know you're gonna have a lot of legitimate fight make big fights to make. And, and we haven't seen that in a while, someone really knocking on UFC's door. And it's not again, the wishing that somebody comes up and takes their share. No, it's, it's UFC's only going to be as great as they can be when they have reason to same thing with WWE, which is why when AEW rose up and I was still covering that sport or that entertainment genre, it like oh let's see what this can do to disrupt the business and make people bring it it's a reason why i'll always hold 2013 in my heart as a boxing fan so close

because al hayman brought his fighters to showtime and it was like war between the two big networks and it was great as a boxing fan to see last minute, huge fights subbed in like Broner versus my Donna out of nowhere. And you're like, damn, this is fun. I wonder what the MMA industry can look like in a year and a half. If this happened and could they become a new strike force level of just can't, you have to watch it. You can't miss it. It'd be really fun to be, to be a part of covering it up on the way up

and seeing how UFC responds. Maybe that's the 90s wrestling fan in me of the WCW-WWF rivalry, but what did that rivalry produce? Both sides going for it every time out. The money's got to make sense when you do that, and PFL's willing, it seems, to risk it all, go all in on it. This would be the power move. this would be the next power move it's a it's a huge huge power move but think of the entertainment loop that's going to come off of that the questioning the scrutiny that's fun when

you're in this business that's fun i think the fans would enjoy that just the same i i would argue that no one can be strike force in a world where ufc is this big right i just you know they're not it doesn't work that way the ufc was always been big in the time since i've been covering it but um it wasn't nearly as big then as it is now and when i say big i mean just popular i mean like the actual market share. It just doesn't work. However, the spirit of your point I agree with completely. The UFC is best when the UFC is forced to compete. That's the best version. That's when they roll out the big guns. That's when they try.

That's when they really white glove. And when they white glove something, they do it better than anybody else. That's just the reality. So what I want is someone to kind of kick them in the rear a little bit. Obviously, you'd get better fights by combining those rosters that's a thumbs up but to the extent that they could attract talent and force pay up and like you know now the ufc wants to cut counter program and we're gonna make the best card we can to dunk on those fuckers that's when yeah that's when you get really good ufc so uh i i share that that that

sentiment for me bc biggest story storyline I'm paying attention to, how about Nate Diaz's future? Now, he fights pretty soon. He fights on my birthday, August 5th. So I'll be curious to see what happens in the Jake Paul fight. But BC, I'm kind of, I don't, we're still, what is it, six weeks-ish out from that fight. I know that the fight's probably going to do decently. I thought, you know, backul was fighting anderson silva and we were there back when jake paul was fighting you know uh whoever the fuck um uh tyron woodley for the second time i thought man an 8ds fight would be huge and i still think it will do well i don't know exactly how well it will do i remain i want to be very clear about this agnostic on that i think you

know in general i think 500 000 is possible, but I don't know how likely, but if he gets like knocked out BC, cause he's talked about going back to the UFC and fighting Connor. And it's like, well, of course that would be a big fight. I mean, make no mistake, but where is Connor getting back to the thing we were asking earlier? And, you know, I know a lot of folks think that Nate might go in there and tune up Jake. Listen, I'd be cool with that. Like Nate's a great guy and has been, you know, a, a delight to cover in his career.

But I think folks are kind of sleeping on Jake Paul a little bit. Like Jake knocking Nate out. I don't know if it's likely, but it's definitely, definitely on the table. And if that happens, what does that do to return to the UFC? What does that do to his stock?

Or conversely, BC, how about this? Let's talk about the other side. What if he goes in there and just absolutely fucking starches jake paul in like a highlight reel kind of finish what would that do to the legend of nate ds how much harder would that be to get him back into the ufc like there's a lot of different ways this could go i feel like good point because he's already full carol level and you know as an anti-hero but like also like he's been getting

love lately and it's you know rightfully deserved but if he damn i mean if he if he had stopped jake paul or even just beats him luke there's going to be like a victory lap element here that we that anderson silva tried to that that was kind of cool in his own way but yeah i i do wonder though about that nate and connor trilogy in light of the questions we have about Connor right now. I think the questions about Connor, by the way, make the likelihood of them fighting a third one increase because I think for both, it's sort of like that safe landing. They know it's probably the biggest cash out they have left. And also that you can really get that competitive spirit back by trying to win the rivalry. But Luke, sometimes when fighters wait too long to finish a rivalry or to deliver the inevitable rematch that we all wanted, in this case, it would be a trilogy to decide it all.

It can really be too late, right? Think like Leonard Duran three, for example, like a classic one where you're like, oh shit, man, we didn't really need that. Look at that. That's not fun at all. Even triple G Canelo three ended up being like that and you know not as bad but still kind of feeling like that do you still think connor and nate if it happened late next year could get the public hyped on a nostalgic level for that and forget about like the two of that like the two of them don't need to show us that they're still great could they put forth a promotion and then a fun enough fight where you'd be like man i'm glad we finished off this movie trilogy that was yeah i absolutely think that i mean we have memory

hold this but folks keep talking about like oh so great when chuck fought vanderley ladies and gentlemen that was not the way we discussed that fight at the time at the time when that fight happened we were like happy to get it but we were both like yeah both these guys are a little bit long in the tooth it's not the same as it could have been back when we were supposed to get it many moons before folks forget that the UFC brought Vanderlei Silva over uh to the UFC when he was still signed with Pride to do a face-off with Chuck and that fight never happened and then eventually Vanderlei had to leave Pride or Pride dissolved and of course he got signed by UFC but you get the point I'm trying to make is by the time that fight happened, it was well past not expiration date,

but ideal date, like no doubt about it. Now you're talking about a third fight between guys. I'm just pointing out as long as Connor doesn't completely implode or things go super poorly for Nate, I think as long as things are just okay, they absolutely could run that back. It wouldn't be what the first two were, but it would still be something that the public would want a hundred percent,

a hundred percent. So the only way if it doesn't happen is if it's like cataclysmic on both ends. I guess my fear is that it would happen. We'd all be jazzed for it, but it would just feel sour. It would feel expired. You know what I mean? You never want that feeling you never want that i mean i i honestly once they started trading once they started trading i think folks would look past it i really do i do i mean i'm not saying give me give me give me your last big uh storyline for the second half of 2023 uh it's a scare you got to watch this closely

it's the ryan garcia versus oscar de Hoya court battle. And I say scared because like, this is not where you want to a new division full time. And he had already missed a huge chunk. I think it was two years, right? When he, or was it a year and a half, something like that. When he had the mental health setback and the wrist injury, he's, I don't know how many big fights he's going to win or lose, but he's going to be fun to watch. There's potential here. If this court thing goes in dark places that we won't get to see him fight at all. But there's some questions also within that of, in my opinion, does Golden Boy have the

money to, and the want to stretch this out into an elongated battle? Think Andre Ward versus Dan Goosen. Now, in that case, Ward went back to the well two more times and ended up losing, I think, three court decisions against Goosen, who felt he had the contract backing him up here. And I'm not saying we don't have access to the contract. I would assume that Oscar is going to have some potential leverage here unless Ryan's team could prove that they didn't live up to what he wanted as a promoter. Either way, if you go down that road for Ryan's side, it would keep him out of action, which

is not good unless freedom is the only thing he wants. And that's what kept Andre Ward still fighting for that. Cause he just wanted that freedom so badly. And for Oscar, I don't know if they have the money to do that. If they have the money to go through that, because while you're using all these resources to fight Ryan, you're keeping him out of the ring, which means your big meal ticket is not producing for your promotion oscar's been acting erratic that's nothing new but you know him to come out and tweet let's make munguia against benavidez it's like well what does that mean um you're gonna tell the zone that you're gonna go to showtime again like you know it's probably not gonna happen that way right and on that fight's not

big enough for a two network pay-per-view-view, nor would you assume Showtime would do that. By the way, can I just say, BC, I thought that tweet was so fucking weird. It was. Especially after a day where you just had Berlanga win, and then Berlanga and Hearn himself were like, yeah, a Munguia fight would make sense. They're both under the zone. And this fucking guy's talking about David Benavidez.

I was like, Oscar, what are you doing? Yeah, you had asked me on the show the other day, why is Oscar being so aggressive toward Eddie Hearn? And afterwards, we were texting, and I think it's because Oscar was building toward cashing Munguia out against Canelo in another big payday. And look, Oscar does the big fights well. Obviously, you can argue how much behind the scenes he's actually doing

or was it his team. And a lot of that big fight history does involve Al Heyman working with him too. But, you know, he does. I think Oscar loved being back part of a huge fight again in Tank versus Ryan. And I think Oscar inserted himself aggressively there in a good way for the promotion when he talked trash at the press conference and kind of created a little bit of buzz. And I'm sure that was what he wanted to do with Munguia, get to Canelo. You have to believe that's why Berlanga's team signed with Matrim and went to the zone, chasing Canelo.

Yeah, you could still do Munguia versus Berlanga, but I don't know how willing Eddie and Oscar are to actually work together if it's not something huge. And I bet you Oscar's anger is probably fueled by losing that Canelo fight and being pissed that Eddie, who kind of stole him from oscar but not really right the oscar uh versus canelo relationship had blown up um and either way it's like a really bad look but i think oscar's decision making in public statements lately seem to contradict you know like the where he should stand as a zone contracted promoter promoter. I don't know, but if he keeps Ryan out of it, I mean, you know, will they end up settling and Ryan can go his separate ways?

I don't know, Luke. I don't know how, how much golden boy can, can go down this road, but if either side decides to go down this road, Ryan doesn't fight. And what's, what's fun about that, Luke? What's healthy about that? It would be terrible. It would be terrible, but I guess we'll see. Last but not least, I wrote the fake news problem

as the one I'm sort of paying attention to, but it's really a little bit more than that. You guys know I have an issue with the way, it's not just MMA, it's boxing too. All it takes is for a powerful person in combat sports to say anything, just literally just say it, and then it gets repeated as a headline everywhere as if it were true.

This is a monster problem where you're just turning into a stenographer for powerful people rather than checking them in any kind of way. But the problem goes much deeper than this. It's something BC and I have been talking about. The rise of the influencer media is replacing journalism, and it's happening relatively quickly. And if you're a fighter, you have a couple of choices here, right? This is on the boxing side or the MMA side, you see a little more pronounced on the MMA side, where you have two choices. One, you can create your own platform, you see so many

of them creating YouTube channels. And now they're interviewing each other. And now they're doing their own news breakdowns, or whatever the case may be, they actually don't rely on the media for this service. And of course, they get to say and very, you know, carefully curate whatever information they want out of there. And they get to keep secret whatever other information they want, because they're the ones controlling the shots. And by the way, that's like, they're right. I mean, there's nothing essentially unethical about it, but you're not getting truth. I mean, you're very, very far from it. And on the influencer side, all they want is access. They don't care at all about pushing buttons. They don't care at all about getting to the truth. They just want you to say, hey, look who we have next to us.

Let's have some fun conversations, get a couple of interesting stories, and we're going to blow this up. And so it removes utterly any need to challenge these guests, any need to challenge the narrative. Like all these shows Dana White goes on, like no one ever really challenges him. Pat McAfee just gives him carte blanche to say almost whatever he wants and so why in a world where fighters are doing this for each other or influencers are doing this for fighters what is the role of MMA media especially when they're not actually siding with what is important to tell in terms of the truth, just being stenographers for the powerful. It creates a very, very murky and, frankly, troubling situation. BC, you and I have had conversations about this privately.

Like, what actually is the purpose? Not like the role in a theorized way, but the actual function of combat sports media these days, I don't have a clear sense of it because you can get airing of press conferences. You don't need them for that. Now, I will say on the boxing side, the boxers don't seem nearly as aggressive about launching their own platforms. I mean, Anthony Joshua does and stuff like that, but your rank and file guy doesn't, whereas on the MMA side they do so it's not quite as pronounced on that side but between influencers between the weakening side of media and then between sort of media

tools being accessible to fighters for them to create their own platforms which again i understand that uh truth is not highly valued is it truth is not really all that important, is it? But I don't think that was necessarily valued to begin with. It's just that sports media held a different place. Even back when Dana and the Fertittas in the mid-2000s were, you know, aggressively trying to get attention on their product, the way to do that was through the media. Obviously, newspapers held a much different standing even then compared to now. But, you know, even with the internet sites, like Dana was very aggressive,

making friends with guys like Kevin Aioli and really working with them to push the sport, because that was probably the best way to do it and working with TV and all that. And now that's changed because of social media, for sure. And I'm not here to cry, you know, oh, poor is the role of sports media. But as long as sports media can still deliver clicks and attention and has an audience for that i think what we're both referencing is that um was it the was it an awful announcing story luke somebody had a story about the state of of you know media and an interesting stat that the nfl

currently pays 1 000 different influencers000 different influencers to share publicly about the NFL, which is interesting. And by the way, just a point I want to make here is, do you think any of those 1,000 influencers are saying anything about concussions? No, no, no. Like nothing. They're not doing any of that. But here's my point. I never felt like promoters ever were running after media as a way of like, you know, let's stand trial and be honest. And, you know, no, that they went after a system much people, how people acquire their news and all that. Like it's obviously social media change, like ridiculously, I'm fine. If people go through influencers or fighter themselves to get the content they desire. But if you are also wanting

coverage from these outlets, you can't be then, you know, if these outlets are media journalistic homes, you can't be mad at them then trying to do their job when just by covering you in any form, they are succeeding in why you reached out to them to give you coverage and a bigger platform. completely pushed out because of the combination of fake news and and i mean eventually like people are going to you always say people are going to want the truth and they're going to find a place where they feel like they're getting it eventually right right but like if john nash wasn't empowered by bloody elbow who took their own editorial prioritization to do cover that kind of stuff if they didn't do it where would you get any of this coverage of fighter pay it just wouldn't exist because none of the other mma sites are going to do it not Where would you get any of this coverage of fighter pay? It just wouldn't exist because none of the other MMA sites are going to do it. Not one of them.

They're not going to do it. They're not going to cover it. And so, and by the way, that's not a lucrative beat either. It's like, that's a very, you know,

it's a very important thing to cover, but it doesn't pay the bills. What pays the bills is, Hey, look what we got in studio. We got GSP in studio. Let's ask him a bunch of fucking stupid questions about UFOs and dinosaurs. And then you're on the next way.

And there's no other attempt to get, I mean, like you know he's be squeaky clean from what we can tell but you know what i mean like there's nothing in the way of pressing them beyond the boundaries of their comfort everything is comfort zone media the entire process about it and like if you can get media to replace the ones that were asking non-comfort zone stuff and covering in a non-comfort zone way to just go the ones who don't do any of that why the fuck would you use any of these people why the fuck would you care about anything they have to say and if you're a fighter why would you come on and get interviewed by me when you can go onto another fighter's platform and they're not going to ask you any of that same shit so like there's a real again this is just you can't stop the way the earth is changing you have to kind of understand

it i'm just simply saying um if you're interested in people who aren't beholden to powerful people's narratives this is an incredibly scary time incredibly scary yeah that's fair that's absolutely fair i mean but you know at the same we've also adjusted. I think a lot of us, especially people who are forward facing and have shows like this, like, look, I came to terms a long time ago on the idea that I'm an entertainer. Now, do I, do I believe in journalism and its importance and its access and it's all that? Yeah. Like, of course, of course. And there's times that we are journalists, but we're also critics and we're also dick joke tellers and entertainers, Luke. So how big is the market for dick joke tellers and sometimes journalists who because like lots of fighters are bitter at us for things that we say and don't want to get interviewed with us?

How lucrative is what we're doing versus if we just dialed it back and then gave an open platform to whoever the fuck was popular didn't push him at all we would get much bigger interviews we'd get much bigger if we gave milk boys style coverage right or like that level of sort of like connected to the brand yeah we would get huge interviews and huge traffic and probably make a lot of money but maybe our maybe a core of our fans would be happier because it'd be all positive that fight was great oh my god you know i love those kinds of chats too but yeah i don't know i don't know luke i'm just trying to feed my kids all right yeah i mean listen i mean we do we do well what we are doing i just don't know about what the future is of media and we're gonna have to figure out our place in it because just the way things are going everyone is just saying

i don't give a shit about anything other than what powerful people say and present to the public i want to provide access to that and i'm not going to get in the way of anything that they say like i'm going to let powerful people present the world as they see it without any challenge that's a that's frightening if you ask me yeah kill whitey right kill fucking whitey all right a, that's frightening. If you ask me. Yeah. Kill Whitey, right? Kill fucking Whitey. All right, BC,

that's it for us on this end. Now it's time for some fan subs, my friend. Yeah. Morningcombat at gmail.com is your access point. Mikey more miles on the end of that portal. And you send us your artwork and other weird shit. And we love it because it gives you a chance to be heard,

to be seen. I see you people. People are weird. And I love love you it's called fan submissions you've got male viewers luke shout out to our uh continued outing of female viewers in the wild that we have had of late it's been great right yeah more i don know. I don't pre-read these. There we go. We'll hear from Joel here. He says, hey, Donks, my job involves a lot of overnight travel, which keeps me away from my life at home.

The only upside is being able to watch MK in my hotel to keep me entertained while missing home. P.S., yes, I did watch some aggressive BBC on BBL action immediately after this episode. Joel from Atlanta. My God. Did he just tell us what he yeah i guess he did uh this is joel from atlanta and he says in parentheses not gross marietta also if your favorite porn and you're a straight guy starts with a description of the other actors dicks and not and not the woman's side of things you know reconsider some like any flavor they want my kids i don't mind them i don't know i don't mind that but it's like it's like it's just

weird for a dude to be like dude you're not gonna believe what i saw you'd be like oh bbls or like you know whatever yeah no dude caught that bbc well luke i've always well yeah that's a good point i've always thought it you know must be weird for any like, you know, female, for example, in a high position as an athlete or host on TV thinking, oh, I wonder if I'm just fueling gross guys' material. But how do you feel that for this guy, Joel, we were the appetizer for his material. We were the, you know, the Spanish fly that got him to that. I don't want to be that role in his life. I don't want to be the warm-up band for his grossness. No.

Listen, I'm trying to save money for Tukey's college fund. I'll take what I can get. All right. All right. All right. I hope you're in somebody's material, Luke. That's what I hope at the end of the day. That's got to be a compliment to you, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Let's hear from Pat. He says, Hey, Luke in BC, I submitted this right before you guys went on your vacations and I never saw it pop up. So I'm resubmitting. I'm guessing I didn't get featured because I couldn't provide proof that I was a Jan six attendee and therefore was automatically DQ'd by your staff. Hopefully that requirement has lapped since my first attempt. Longtime fan of the show in spite of Brian. And I really appreciate your chemistry and energy or Luke's that lack thereof and your knowledge. It's an enjoyable listen.

And if I make my, it makes my commute more bearable, but I wanted to submit this tattoo. I wish I could claim credit, but it's a piece I found on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. With the recipient's blessing, I wanted to submit this for Luke's consideration because I was blown away and I wanted to hear Luke's take. Yeah, I mean, that's a 10 out of 10. That's about as good as this. I guess he's obviously a fake character, but I guess this would be portrait realism.

That is about as good as you're going to get that is extraordinary tattooing the shape i mean look at the look at the like the middle horn right the middle horn between his eyes up top look how that casts a shadow in front of itself from the light hitting it i mean obviously you have to put that in but like the furrowed brow you can see the wrinkles on his lip. The shading is brilliant. This is about as good as tattooing gets, that 10 out of 10. So the artist is DJ Tambe, T-A-M-B-E. He works at-

This man has gross ass armpits. I will say that. And his armpit hair connects to his nipple hair, which means he should be executed. But that tattoo is a 10 out of 10. Back to giving the artist credit unless you want to interrupt his name again dj tambe he works at bad apple tattoo in las vegas and the guy who's getting it is rod 888 on reddit wow shout out to that okay uh interesting tattoo

luke i wonder if that get helps him um recreationally does he listen i i told you the jedis let themselves go when i was at a awesome con i was you know they had definitely packed on a few lbs on the quarantine uh so maybe a darth maul tattoo will get you something who knows i don't know okay hi uh this is from eric hi lt and in the staff in bc this is eric from phuket thailand again. Phuket. I want to summarize an insane weekend. Friday was dinner event with Tyson Fury. It was underwhelming, but luckily my buddies and I are buddies with John Nutt,

the CEO of Full Metal Dojo, which puts on Fight Circus. And we got chatting and he told us we needed to go to Fight Circus 7 the next day. I asked if we could do mushrooms at the event. Without skipping a beat, John asked macro or micro. I said, we'd find out. out so my what are we reading here so my buddy and i walked into fight circus as they're announcing

that fury would be arriving then i noticed all the midgets and clowns who are part of the show not just part of my imagination i stopped giggling enough to see a shirtless bob sap just hanging out in the corner of a very loosely guarded VIP section. Side note, Sapp wore nothing but basketball shorts and a smile. Eventually, the fight started during the one foot in a tire boxing match. Yes, exactly what it sounds like. I looked behind me and it was Sharaputin Magomedov standing over me. In the most broken English, he told me he thinks his first UFC fight will be October.

How's that for a scoop boys? Roughly as Jim beam and sodas would six of them later. I walked in on Bob sack, taking a leak in the unisex toilet. And I was in, I was like, Oh fuck. So I'm sorry,

Bob. And he just laughed and said, ain't no thing, my man, I'm almost done. Then I walked out of the toilet and there's Bob doing an interview with a, okay, where are we going with this? With somebody from Thailand, Luke.

I've included a pic if you don't believe me. You know what? It's amazing what you can do just eating chicken and broccoli, you know? Yeah. Then Tyson Fury, Big John Fury, and their squad squad arrived and to his credit, Tyson was all smiles. He was super friendly to everyone and he seemed to generally enjoy himself because it was nuts birthday. Tyson sang him a song. And at one point I'm trying to process the site of Bob Sapp, a clown,

some midgets in John nut, all dancing in the ring to Fury's cover of American pie. Again, I have picks to prove it. Luke, is this the script to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? What's happening right now? I don't know. Although I will say Bob Sapp looks like whatever drugs he's taken, they are great.

Okay, so Eric closes with saying, so yeah, just an average regional MMA event with Bob Sapp, Tyson Fury, Magomedov, a few ladyboys, clowns, and a bunch of midgets. And one MK donk tanking it all in. Keep up the good work. And P.S., please rip me a new one for those stupid faces I'm making in every pick. I was a bit too far in both events. I think he means he was talking to aliens, Luke, during the filming of those.

Yes. Yes. Here's Mike., during the filming of those. Yes. Here's Mike. Thanks for the content, guys. Thought it a bit ironic, the strong opinion LT has on Zuck versus Elon. Zuck. Yeah, this is his thumbnail.

All the best. Oh. Okay. Wow, sorry, guy. Sorry, guy, that we teed up your fan sub and uh mikey's computer uh just crashed so luke let's wrap up the show all right we'll finish all right well this is just came to an absolutely catastrophic end yeah we'll finish these fan subs on friday's episode but luke even though it went a lot longer than you hoped, I really think we produced, you know,

lemonade out of some gross-ass lemons today. Yeah, we did. We did. We had a bunch of fan subs. Oh, he says he's back. We might be able to get back. I really hope we can, because this is just...

What the fuck is going on here? BC, you want to talk? Just kill time. Oh got it all right all right we had a tech let me look at it we to be fair we it's not like we have technical difficulties all the time and it becomes like the reputation of our show and our existence on this planet right i don't know who to complain to to fix this problem because we have only complained about this 8 billion times. And yet here we are. So I don't know. I don't really know what to say actually. Yeah. Thank you for, for partnering with me through this show, Luke.

I think we delivered. Okay. The plane landed now Now, you know, the tires were balling. The plane didn't really land. It just kind of fell out of the sky. A lot of people died, but it was a better way to put it. Okay, the plane landed like Leonard Skinner did, right, Luke? Just to be fair, it was a very historic moment in rock history. All right. I would say that we'll show the rest of these fan subs on Friday,

but I guess there's no guarantee that'll happen either. so i don't know when we'll ever show these to you so yeah maybe maybe it'll be like uh you know the world's greatest mystery what did happen with the rest of those fan subs i don't know mikey said see this is this is what my why my wife always tells me don't text important details to her because she'll read my tone wrong but you can read the word wrong is he saying he's close or he's saying close because it's no he's saying close he's saying close he's saying close that shit okay all right uh oh he says it's working now it's back it's working now all right all right all you gotta do is turn it off and then turn it on again mikey. Come on. You got to blow on the cartridge. You know what I'm saying?

Oh, Jesus. Oh, boy. This is definitely a fever dream, right? That is bizarre. What was the other one you just showed, though? That was the last one from the guy at Phuket. Phuket. phuket and now we have to show phuket phuket oh uh now we have to show uh mike's uh elon versus zuck thing yeah so i'm gonna be honest i had a lot of people dm me wanting me to out you and do a big debate saying how hypocritical of luke to sell his own video on his own channel

with the same thing he's deriding everybody for wanting. No, I'm not wanting the fight. I'm using that as a way to explain to people that we should not be putting any further interest in it. But it is a little hypocritical for sure. Yeah. I mean, I would make fun of you if I didn't have an only scam.com channel with my pipes, you know, but it's, I love it. I getcom channel with my pipes. I love it.

I get to connect with our people. I actually really enjoy it. Thank you. I mean, I have to use whatever fishing rod I can to lure people in, but once you get there, I'm trying to give you a different message. Yeah, use stronger cologne, Luke. You'll have more friends. Let's go over to No Name Has a Photo for us.

Reminder, record of UFC fighters over 35 oh i wish i know who who submitted this some guy i mean that's just too good it's just too good it's just we gotta find out who did that who dm me that that is a brilliant fan submission. Blowing up your head too, Luke. That's just... Throw it up one more time, Mikey, if you can. I'm sorry. It kind of looks a little bit like Laura Sanko. I thought it was. Is it not? No, I don't think it is.

I don't think it's Laura Sanko, but that is fucking hilarious. That's a great shot. It's really good. Amazing. All right, let's hear from David Appleton. He says, BC recently suggested I needed a redemption story after being so lecherous in London. So I wondered what I could do to get back in the King of Connecticut's favor. I came up with the idea of saving a poor neglected dog. Let me introduce you to Nala, who was used for breeding in a kennel for eight years before I gave her a real home.

The poor mutt has never been in a house and can't walk up or downstairs, as you'll see in the video. Incredibly, they called her Lola at the kennel, like Luke's sorely missed canine companion. My kids wanted to change her name. I briefly entertained the idea of naming her Lolita, but thought better of it. So here is Coach Nala joining forces with former student Manon to make a man of me. Alan W. Okay.

Okay. All day. Really every day. You know how to do it, Al. I don't have to tell you about my strategy. It just wouldn't be a fan sub if one of our viewers wasn't doing blackface. I was going to say, what has you more concerned, the outright blackface from Appy there there the fact that he has his students on camera helping him with these bits well i mean hey appy put the put the camera on me for just a second here ready appy please stop mowing your yard with scissors please stop doing that oh dude him wearing the underwear over the front of it is just brilliant i mean this guy is this guy is great also what the fuck was he doing with the upright rose sitting you ever see that he was doing this yeah oh yeah he was getting

getting ripped from manon um it's interesting look he picked a rough week to push this content out with the jared fogel doc grossing everyone out and you know putting us on alert that there's people like appy on the earth but he's my favorite of those people luke i have to say he is doing a very good thing with the dog i was very very i agree i agree shout out to nala oh he closes by saying hey uh alan w and average joe are i see you coming on but i'm going to go out swinging p.s luke often complains about long fan subs but rather than be a bitch about it you know who you are i have decided to keep all my efforts down to less than a minute that's what i say to all the girls i mean the guy's got a gift luke you just gotta you gotta you know you

gotta deal that one's pretty good that was actually really good the black the blackface thing i could have done without but uh you know what are you gonna do all right let's hear from alan w luke he's been on a run of sorts lately he says last week's elon musk versus mark zuckerberg grant was absolutely insufferable here is a depiction of the conversation if i took place in person at the bomb shelter p.s these are ceos of trillion dollar companies and are beholden to the respective board of directors and shareholders and then my fight is so asinine and such a waste of time that they absolutely run the risk in devaluing their companies and their positions as CEOs. How would you not question their judgment and leadership competency if they actually fought? Remember, PayPal fired Musk as CEO. And I still love you, BC, which is Alan referencing, I think

the risen problem we had, Luke. The big thing here that's great is that the computer uh the risen problem we had luke yeah the big the big thing here that's great is that the computer in the bottom right hand corner is playing solitaire yes that's that's great now can you read that luke i i lost that ability to read it's literally what we were saying it's actually uh it's actually what we were saying i mean at least the top part is i don't know about the bottom part but the top part is actual quotes that we said on the show. Okay, it's me dressed up there like a CEO saying I like it extra sloppy. Elon versus Mark has a chance of happening and it would do stupid numbers. Luke comes back, get the fuck out of here with all that, dude.

It's two guys using dickheads like us for extra media. Yeah, it's basically the same debate. Okay, thank you. done alan we don't have time to show average joe art mikey's saying i guess we don't mikey could be underwater at this point luke yeah it's possible it's possible all right i guess we could show average joe art stuff on friday no mikey says he has not received anything from oh he didn't get anything from joe okay all right very good there go then i withdraw the criticism good sir just all right is that it for us that's it i'm not here any longer

that's it all right thanks to everyone who watched we'll be back on friday we will do a full ufc preview to get you ready for that and uh We'll have some stuff for you on Monday for the July 4th weekend. By the way, pregame preview on Sunday. Pregame preview on Sunday, so don't forget about that. All right. Showtime.com is the label that pays. Showtime.com, 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce.

Then there is morningcombat.store and then morningcombat.gmail.com. Follow us on all the socials. Yes? BC, anything else I'm forgetting? I don't know. We got other shows this week. We could just talk about it then, right? Well, this show is just ending on the worst note ever.

I mean, let's just... Let's have a cold one on me, Luke. Yeah, there it is. All right. brian campbell i'm luke thomas thank you guys so much for watching we appreciate it back on friday thanks to mikey morms on the ones and twos helping us out and uh yeah that is it we'll talk to you guys on friday and until then may all of your gains be loyal