MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Adesanya-Holloway Striking, McGregor Reaction, Usman vs. Burns | Luke Thomas' Live Chat, ep. 62

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

Today on the podcast, we'll preview the UFC's card this weekend headlined by a bout between Alistair Overeem and Alexander Volkov, review the lessons Israel Adesanya's and Max Holloway's striking teaches us, what to make of Conor McGregor's reaction on Instagram to his UFC 257 loss to Dustin Poirier, preview the UFC 258 welterweight title clash between Kamaru Usman and Gilbert Burns plus much more. ---------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn 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: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Hey everybody It is Thursday, the 4th of February 2021 And it is time for episode 62 Of the promotional malpractice No, that's what it used to be called Now it's just called the Luke Thomas live chat My name is Luke Thomas, I'm from CBS and Showtime

Appreciate you guys joining me today. We'll get to whatever you want to get to, whatever topics you listed. Those are the ones we will talk about. I saw some stuff about Adesanya and Holloway and some stuff like that. I saw some other things. So we'll get to all of the good stuff therein. Please, if you'd be so kind, give the video a thumbs up. Hit the subscribe button.

We're very close to 78.6K. I like to get over that hump, if you don't mind. So help us do that. And what else? Yeah, just do that. Send this to a friend. I don't know. Open a cold one.

I look like a bag of dicks because I just came from the gym and I am tired. So that's it. That's it. That's all I can say. Without further ado, let us get this party started. All right, and there we are. So thank you for joining me. We will go about, let's see, an hour and 15 minutes, give or take. And without any further blabbering, why don't we open the show, shall we? All right. I'll have a little sip of this Powerade Zero, and I've got some water here as well.

I am old and tired. All right. All right, first question. With Burns presenting a submission threat, how likely is it we will see Usman approach the fight similar to how he approached the Colby fight? Boy, that is an interesting one. If you think about where you've seen Kamaru Usman, is it loud enough? That could be a little louder maybe, right?

A little higher. Check, check. Yeah, it's a little bit better. If you think about where you've seen Kamaru Usman, I actually had a conversation today with Rashad Evans about this. He and I, I'll have a video. You want to bring this up just a little bit? I'll have a video with him, I think out a little next week. I'm not sure exactly when it's coming out, but we just talked about Kamaru Usman, how he met him, what he's good at, what are the things he's worked on, how the development went, blah, blah, blah. And if you just look at the math and then just the tape either way you've just never seen a lot of guys on kamaru's back um and you've never seen you know you never

seen him underneath a lot either uh the fact if you look at his the one loss he has on his record that's to the brother of uh alex casares right broy. His brother, Jose, is the one that choked out Kamaru on the regional scene many, many years ago. And Rashad was telling me, like, since that day, he's been working like a maniac on his submission defense. To the point where he'll even train with Jorge Santiago or George Santiago. I'm not sure how the Brazilians pronounce the name. And puts the gi on., like the whole nine yards, like really works on every part of his jiu-jitsu. So, you know, between six years of training with Gilbert Burns and that, you know, and then the reality of what the tape has shown, which is that you don't really see him in compromised positions, I tend to think he'll be conscious of it, but I don't think he's going to be as afraid

as folks might imagine. He probably knows what positions underneath Gilbert is really good at. You know, if you put him in half guard, is he good at inverting? Is he good at knee shielding to getting back up? Is he, you know, is he good at arm drags? Is he, where does he really thrive with what you try to do? I tend to think that, yeah, this is not going to be a takedown fest in the way that the Dos Anjos fight was.

Dos Anjos is a submission threat as well, but not in the way that Gilbert Burns is. Gilbert Burns is a legitimate world champion at the black belt level and athletic too, athletic as all get out. I mean, the guy is really, he has to me what I would call the most dangerous style of jiu-jitsu, which is you might find better gi specialists and you might find better no-gi specialists. You might find better point specialists and you might find better like sub only specialists but if you have to have one style that translates well to all of them it's his right because he is quick he is athletic he is technical he is patient

he has a great balance he understands the very technical and finer points of off balancing you know he just has a kind of style that it can work in any format. So again, you'll have somebody who might be better than him in any one of those particular forms of practices, but then they go to another kind and their game falls off the cliff. Like that's not Gilbert Burns. He doesn't really have that. So I tend to think you're going to see a little bit more in the standup, but not where those two guys were like desperately afraid of being underneath

the other guy. Frankly, also here's the other part about it. Kamaru has a 100% takedown defensive rate. Now, we saw Tavern Woodley had historically a really great takedown defensive rate up until his last few fights, and including the Gilbert Burns fight where Burns was able to take him down a couple of times, maybe even a few times, but certainly took him down more than once. Is he going to try and waste his energy that way?

Is he going to be more accommodating of it? If, in fact, you do see submission attempts from Burns, are they the kind that are somewhat low risk? Which is, a lot of times, if you go for a heel hook, that can be risky because you need two hands to apply it. It means you can't really defend yourself. But if you're doing it through an inversion where you're coming out the back and then the only really way to get out of it is to get away and it forces a stand up, I could see a lot of scenarios like that. I just have a hard time seeing Burns find his way

to Kamaru's back unless something is kind of wrong with Kamaru, like the prep was off or he was injured or something. I mean, how can you spend six years with a guy and not know what to avoid? You know, that's a long time to train with a person, you know, that's a long time. So I think you'll see a lot of striking in this one, but I do think eventually Camaro is going to go for the takedown and then just be very careful and cautious on top. And then I think he's going to use that to kind of offset the striking and off balance, I should say the striking of Gilbert, right? Because if he doesn't know the takedown's coming, yes, he might be a threat underneath, but if you can control him on top, right,

for as little as it lasts, then he knows he's not going to get a whole lot going with that. He can't off-balance you. He can't find his way to his back. He's not going to get pounded out there necessarily, but he's going to lose the fight there. And so he's going to be a little bit more desperate on the feet, right? So I think it's going to look a little something like that,

at least in terms of what Kumaru is probably planning as a strategy. I'm sure Burns has something to say about that as well. Will you guys ever fix the delay between the videos playing and when you and BC actually watch the video on Have You Seen This Shit? Your reactions are always delayed because I assume you guys are watching the videos on a delay. That is right. It has been this way since the first episode. Well, no, not the first episode because the first episode was in studio, but I mean, you mean first pandemic episode. And I've emailed the show about this before. Yes, it was ignored for a very good reason. It's a little awkward for the viewer when the punchline in the video happens and we see you two react to it five seconds later. Right,

so here's the deal. In order to get the crisp look that you guys see on there, I'll show it to you. This is what we use. Let me see if I can see here. This, this is a, look at that auto-focus on that Sony a7 III, bitches. But this is the unit that we use. It's a live view. Newscasters, your local newscaster will use this downtown. This sends a signal back to the studios, uh, up in the great Northeast that looks as crisp as you see it on your screen. The problem is they can send us these units, which by the way, are insanely expensive. In fact, the company that sent us this Malka who makes the show, they make Brendan Schaub's show, they don't even own this gear. They rent it because it's crazy expensive. And so you're asking, well, what's the point of that? Well, it sends a prettier signal, right? I mean,

it makes it look a lot better than it otherwise ordinarily would be. And they have the receiver, this is the transmitter, they have the receiver on their end to take the signal and they can, you know, it looks normal on their side. The problem is they can't send us that unit as well. That would just be, you know, beyond the point of cost prohibitive. So the way we are able to see each other during the show as we watch on Zoom. So the Zoom link is behind what the live view can show. And as a consequence, there's a delay. There's no real good answer to fix that. You can do the whole show on Zoom, but then it'll look like shit and they won't have the same production elements that they need. They need this live view to put in some of the lower thirds and everything else that they do through their software system.

And, you know, it creates for the delay. But to me, it's like, it's not ideal. Certainly, it's pretty far from ideal, but it's about the best case scenario, given what we're trying to do and given that we're trying to have a certain look for the program. I know there's probably a lot of fans being like, oh, I would sacrifice, you know, some pixels to have that a little bit more aligned. And I understand that, but it's a little bit against what the company who makes the show is about. So, um, there it is. This is what, so if you ever see a newscaster downtown,

hi, I'm live on location at blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Look in their backpack or look what the cameraman has, and you'll almost always see this live view. Do you think Holloway and Izzy are proving that others can become UFC champions with great striking and takedown defense and relatively limited wrestling? Or are they both very rare exceptions to the role of needing to have great wrestling and jiu-jitsu. Yeah, it's a little bit more the latter. The reason why is because they, I mean, two different kinds of striking there, although they're both sort of step and sliders rather than bouncers, right? But here's what you have to understand. One, Holloway's takedown defense in the open is just outrageously good and his takedown defense along the fence line uh as equally good if not better so they're just hard to take down period I don't know exactly how great the offensive wrestling is of Holloway but

suffice to say we don't see a whole lot of it but you might be asking oh can you just do that with striking and limited wrestling well a couple things I would ask. Number one, can you strike as well as Holloway? Because if you can't spend that much time on the feet and have that much of an advantage over your opponents, you might need to have some takedowns. It just so happens that Holloway, who may have the best chin in all of UFC, 24 fights, never been put on his rear end

with one punch or even a series of punches, which is just an ungodly chin, and obviously has his own ability to work through adversity and put it on other people, he doesn't necessarily need offensive wrestling in that way. But I could imagine that there being a significant drop-off where you do. Consider Frankie Edgar.

Frankie Edgar's got really good striking, but you know it's at its best when he's able to mix in the takedowns or at least a legitimate threat of takedowns. If he doesn't have that, the success of the striking alone tends to, in its more recent forms, struggle a little bit or, to bare minimum, not be as effective. That's not the case with Holloway he doesn't need any of that right and same with Adesanya they don't need those threats of the takedowns they're so superior there that if they can just work on their defensive fundamentals that they're incredibly good at just leaving the game there. That's just not true for the overwhelming majority of fighters. And it's not going to be true for the overwhelming majority of fighters.

Number one is the first thing I'd say. Second is, they do have very good, particularly Holloway, has very good takedown defense. But the other part of that is, they're very good about making sure their opponents, they've got to work to get them against the fence line, especially Adesanya. You got to work to get inside of the range. Holloway throws enough volume where it's a little bit easier to get, you know, I'm saying easier.

This is all, you know, still very difficult. But relatively speaking, it's a little bit easier to get inside because if you're constantly throwing, you're going to find a moment in between them. You might get battered for a big portion of that, but the door is opening more to find your way inside. Adesanya, obviously, a little bit more reserved in his volume relative to Holloway. So these guys, it's hard for the people to navigate that space on the inside. Gastelum did a little bit of that. You saw him.

He was able to sort of go side to side. He was pretty good with it. There's been some other ones too. Vittori had some success with it as well. The question is, would they today in the modern version of Adesanya tend to think it would be a lot harder for them? But the point being is you can even take someone who has good wrestling and that navigation of space becomes a lot more difficult.

So my answer would be, you know, is their offensive wrestling as good as their defensive? Probably not. Defensive wrestling is a little bit easier to learn and comes first. Wrestling is a little bit like the – I don't want to overstate this. It's a little bit like the opposite of striking in that way, where when you learn to strike, offense tends to come a little bit first, tends to come a little bit easier than defense. Whereas in wrestling, defense tends to come a little bit first,

tends to come a little bit easier than offense. It's easier for me. Certainly, this is true of everyone I've ever trained with. It was a lot easier to learn how to sprawl and stuff a double than just have a lights out double, you know? And of course there was always gonna be an exception. There's always gonna be some fucking stupid athletic guy who, you know, could go and eat, you know, five burritos loaded with fucking pork fat and then still have rock abs and be shredded. Yeah. That dude could have a sick double. But for most people, I found that defense came a little bit earlier than offense.

Now, at this point, these guys are senior fighters, so I don't think it's exactly that way necessarily. They're so new in all of this that defense is still first. Anyway, long story short, I'm not going to say they're very rare exceptions because you're starting to see a little bit more of this, people getting much more comfortable on the feet. So there might be something to be said about a something of a trend, but you shouldn't be confused. Those dudes, you know, deep waters, buddy.

They did not adapt to the darkness, buddy. They were born in it. Looking at them being like, oh, I need to take down the fence. I'll just keep defying the feet. Motherfucker, you better learn how to strike real well. You better make sure that every time someone is standing across from you,

they are terrified. Because if that's not the case, it ain't going to go well for you. They calling me. Okay. Let's see. Arnold Allen versus Sadiq Youssef has been scheduled. I think these two could be future top contenders.

Anything in the fight will play out. Allen is a little bit more... He uses his well-roundedness more, which is not to say Sadiq is not well-rounded. He is. But Arnold is a little bit more deliberate about using it. And Sadiq takes a little bit more risks early and to me is a more vicious striker. Actually, he's considerably more vicious of a striker. I also

think he's heavier handed. So the question to me is, if Allen survives early, and there's a very good chance that he does, does Yusuf fade late? Or can Yusuf hit another gear? You saw Yusuf in the fight with, who's the guy out of Alpha Male who, you know, who got tats and big-ass earrings and shit? Feely. He came out strong against Feely. Feely faded a little bit, but then rebounded to a degree in that third.

You're going to need to see something like that. And I think Allen is going to be looking to put it on him late. That, to me, is where the fight is going to be won or lost. I tend to think Yusuf is going to have his ways a little strong. But I tend to think Yusuf will probably do well early. And then the fight even may do well in the second round. What happens in that third? That's where the fight's going to be won or lost.

The one knock on Sadiq Youssef is, I mean, he's so special as a fighter, right? He's very talented. Young guy, smart, athletic, fucking hammer when he hits. I don't know that he apportions his offense for longevity yet. That's sort of the one thing. It's like fatigue management is not something he takes as seriously as maybe he should. And why would you? If you hit hard, dudes fall. You just kind of get in that mode. There's going to be a degree of refining. I think as his technique gets more refined, he will get better at knockouts without having to make it such a application of force. More an application of just consistency.

And I think then he'll get better at fatigue management. But there's another way to learn fatigue management, which is the hard way where, you know, you just sort of go too hard early and then someone who you may be better than, I'm not saying you're necessarily better than Arnold Allen, but let's just pause at a scenario where somebody that you're just a better fighter than them, but they were tough as shoe leather. And then they were there in the third and you weren't,

and they put it on you. That's a bad place to be. So to me, that's the lesson. And also, if Allen can take Sadiq Yusuf down and hold him down, put him in compromised positions, because I do think he's a very good grappler, trains a right haul, there could be something there, a bit of an X factor worth exploring as well. I may save this one.

Since you hate it when BC says he's the sauce, how would you break down the relationship between both of you professionally and personally? Well, we have a great relationship. Also, why do you hate the sauce metaphor? Actually, you know what? I'll table that last one because we actually talk about that

in the next documentary, which I know you guys are like, oh, I don't give a fuck. I want to hear now. I know, but then it kind of ruins the documentary, which I don't really want to do because people put a lot of effort into it. So that part gets answered in the next one.

I'll save that one. How would you describe a relationship both personally and professionally? It's a really good one. It's actually not really the one you see on air certain ways, which is why in some ways the sauce metaphor doesn't work because when we interact in person, he's much more demure and I'm the one who's a little bit more outrageous. And then it flips when we hit the record button. But yeah, dude,

like here's the thing that a lot of people just don't seem to realize about us, or maybe they do. And it's worth just saying again, which is that we have very different backgrounds and very different tastes and things. And yes, in that sense, there's a pretty big difference. But one thing that unites us, aside from the fact that we both love combat sports, is, you know, I, you know, and this is not some, I don't need people to like shed a tear for me or him, but he and I are both motivated by the fact that professionally we've had long stretches where we felt like we were overlooked or, you know, didn't get the opportunities that maybe we should have or could have. And that has motivated us in a certain way and affected our worldview certainly professionally in a certain way about ambition about goal setting about work ethic about the

industry and I took a different approach than he did in terms of answering that in ways you guys know but there is that real underlying professional similarity there is There's a bond there. If you look at his Twitter bio, it says, daring to be great. He means that. He really, really means that. He means that somebody who got a lot of feedback in his life growing up being like, yeah, we want to go this direction, not the direction of you,

and it really irked him. In some ways, I'm sure it did make him better. In other ways, I'm sure he was right when he says he shouldn't have been overlooked. I feel the same way. In some ways, when you get overlooked or you get passed over, maybe there was some good reasons why you got passed over and you should reflect on that and use that not to be bitter because bitterness will just drag you down and exhaust you eventually, but to work on your deficiencies, but also that you don't take someone's word for it. Like,

Oh, they said you're not good enough. Does that mean you're not good enough? No. It means that they might have some part that is not utterly dismissible, but they might have judgment issues as well. Who says they're the, they're the best judge of something.

Um, and so that has, I think, united us in terms of our, uh, the place we find ourselves. Plus we're not too far apart in age. Two white guys, 41, dads.

There's a lot of demographic overlap there as well. So he plays up, I work in a factory town. He never worked in a factory. I did. That kind of shit is just sort of cosmetic fun differences. I would actually argue what unites us. There are some real differences, but what unites us is much more foundational and profound.

Should Dan Hooker consider a move to 170? No, I don't think so. I mean, the guy was at 145 and then Bam is at 170 or huge. Does Brad Riddell have more, less, or equal success versus the upper echelon 155 as Hooker did? We're going to have to see. I think he just had a kid, so congratulations to Mr. Riddell. He certainly is a superb kickboxer. We're going to see. We're going to see. I don't know. You know, I don't do a whole lot of prognostication if I can avoid it in the fight game.

I certainly feel like he's got a lot of the tools, but I need to see some consistency and I need to see some consistency, and I need to see him. He's got a fight coming up, too. Who is his next fight against? I saw this announced. There's a bunch of these guys have. All these city kickboxing guys. Damn it. Oh, you know what? Maybe it was on this page. Yeah. So you've got March 6th, you've got Blachowicz-Adesanya. Then you've got Kaikara France versus Bonterin. That'd be March 7th.

And then you've got, oh, maybe not. You've got, oh, I guess if he just had a kid, he doesn't want to fight. Then you have this dude, I can never pronounce his last name. He trains at Fortis. His first name is Kennedy. And Zetch Kiu, please forgive me, I don't know how to pronounce it, versus the guy who just came off Contender Series,

Carlos Olberg. I guess not. I guess he doesn't have a fight coming up. But he does have a significant ability. This person writes, big booty Latinas drop Luke's entire intellectual facade and he turns into a caveman. Listen, we all have our weaknesses, my friends. That is mine. All right. my friends that is mine all right when fighters get the whole spelled wrong power arm and leg tattooed like a vittoria or tavaris different kinds get the japanese versus the polynesian uh how much does that work meaning influence the vision of the opponent hiding the power hand and leg?

Well, usually that's a function out of the hand of the shoulder being hidden. So what you want to be able to do is see. Now you can't see the shoulder here. You want to find an angle where you can see it. If you can see the shoulder, then you can begin to make judgments about what's coming or not. I don't know to what extent a darkened arm, so to speak, plays into that, but that's what you're looking for. Less so the hand.

I mean, you want to look for that too, obviously, but really you're paying attention to what the shoulders are doing, by and large. Let's see. As Connor achieved everything within the sport, he set out to, he slowly toned down his trash talk. With that being said, do you think if Colby was to ever win the welterweight title, he would do the same? God. I doubt it. I doubt it. Conor achieved a lot more than that. Conor didn't just achieve a title. He achieved two at once. He achieved enormous fame and fortune he's the most popular fighter we've ever had like his i mean his life it didn't just change it completely transformed and not overnight it was it was uh incremental but you know in major in four years he went from something to nothing i mean it's just such a whirlwind you know um. I tend to think, I mean, Colby just, well, before he sprayed the block, right,

where even Grandma was getting hit when he was doing like Star Wars spoilers and shit like that. And now it's a little bit more directed with a political tone. I don't know what's going to happen with that exactly. You know, Trump is out of office, but Trumpism is not, so to speak.

So maybe there's a way to keep that kind of thing up. I tend to think another change is due, where if there's anything, he's just a little bit more selective about how much he speaks. You know, he doesn't do quite as much media as he once did. So there's something to be said for that. But I, the idea he would tone it down and become like, Connor has become almost like an elder statesman. I don't,

I have a hard time envisioning Colby in that role. One never knows, but I, you know, asking me to guess, that seems off. Who leaked the Barcelona Messi contract? I'm going to guess Barcelona. Can we assign BC the homework of having to give at least one of the Deadpool movies a go?

This person writes, I hate superhero movies too, but those are admittedly amazing. Reference, a girl who hates superhero movies. Yeah, I would love to. I would love to. I'll bring it up. We haven't done a homework assignment in a while. One homework assignment I want to do is create a Spotify playlist and have people vote on his versus mine see which people like more and then you know because they're going to be wildly divergent there's and really it wouldn't even tell you which one was better per se more than

just you know whose tastes are we more aligned with in terms of the audience but I do want to do something that's a little bit more co-mingled yeah I'll yeah, I'll, I'll bring that up with him. I'll bring that up with him. Uh, favorite Chris, the crippler Lieben moment. It's gotta be when he had those two fights in like a two week period and one of them both. Um, and it was just, you know, fucking balls out amazing. So when was that? He had, let's see. That was, yeah, he had one against Aaron Simpson, which he won in June 19th, second round TKO. Aaron Simpson, you know, decorated wrestler.

And then July 3rd, so two and a half weeks, maybe three weeks later, something like that, he triangle choked Yoshihiro Akiyama. And he had a knockout of the night against Aaron Simpson, and then he had a fight of the night against Akiyama. Because if I recall correctly, Akiyama had rocked his shit. And he still found a way to come back and triangle choke him. Those two back-to-back fights were fucking great. Another one was his fight with Terry Martin, which was on the Thomas vs. Florian card.

He had a bit of a back-and-forth with Terry. Terry Martin was a tough motherfucker, man. He had a bit of a back-and-forth with him. And then he hit Terry Martin. I think it was a right hook. It was a hooking punch and Martin went like, you know, totally spread wide open. Boom. Dunzo when he hit the mat and you know, Lieben's face is all fucked up from the fight and he's walking around all fucking mean mugging. It was great. It was really, really great. It was a great moment, great moment by him.

You know, he had some great wins along the way. You know, had some notable losses too, but that was a big one. And of course, he knocked out Vanderlei in like 20 seconds. So that was big. All right, what do we got? What do we got?

What do we got? Do you think that Gilbert staying with the camp that trained Usman for so long gives him a better advantage than Usman going to different camps and learning things that Gilbert would never dream he would learn? This is such a great question, and it's insanely difficult to answer. So let's think about this, right? So I spoke to Rashad today and I asked him why he went to Trevor. And what he was telling me was everyone knows the story is that, you know, he didn't want to be there at the same time as Gilbert was. But the other story was for some time he'd been looking for, you know, another gear to hit and he had taken everything that Henry had could teach

him and had taken it to, you know, I mean, he won a fucking world title with it. It wasn't like Henry led him astray. I mean, Henry did a great job. And of course that's all the work that Camarda did. I just mean the partnership was very fruitful. I think that's a pretty fair way to put it. Very, very fruitful partnership. But the way Rashad explained it to me was he was still looking at that point afterwards for how do I level up? What are some ways I could shake things up?

And so the fight with Gilbert, I guess, was the catalyst to make the move. But apparently, there had been a desire to do that maybe beforehand, which is to say he, I think, has forever left that team. I don't know if that's the case. But just to say that it's not strictly a function of this fight, and no more, no less. And so you have to ask yourself, what does Trevor Whitman bring to Kamaru that would be really important and to me the answer is and I bought the I want to give a shout out you know I say this I say this to people ask me if I've trained yes I trained for about 10 years overall right

I do not train now I'm 41 and you know with COVID and in my age and everything else there's just no real time but this is my this is my view on how to understand how to fight. Obviously, you have to do it. But if you just want to train to get some of the basics down, there is no substitute for training. There's no substitute for it. You have to do it if you really want to understand fighting. However, these kinds of videos can always be a good complement to other things.

It's not a substitute, but it can be a good complement, especially, and here's where it's really valuable, to get an insight into a particular coach's way of doing things. Or not even a coach, like whoever's holding the video. Oh, here's a guillotine series by whoever the fuck. This is footwork drills by blah, blah, blah. Whoever it's about, you get a sort of insight into how their combative mind works. So I got the Trevor Whitman one. And you can see this through Justin Gaethje. But you just don't realize how much.

And I watch so many striking videos and so many striking tutorials. And I've been to striking seminars and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all of them share the same ideas to an extent, but the emphasis, and I cannot be clear about this, the emphasis that Trevor Whitman puts on footwork and what footwork does for your angles, what footwork does for your balance, what footwork does for your ability to cover or distance either forward or backwards or, you know, away from the target or towards the target, I should say, not really linear. What footwork does for essentially everything and setting up your offense, I don't think I have personally

witnessed a coach who emphasizes it as much as he does. Which is to say that there aren't any. That's not the claim. But I've seen a dozen striking instructionals from strikers or coaches. None, none, none, none are as footwork intensive as him. That doesn't mean that their feet are always in motion, like they're doing dominant cruise drills. That's actually not the point. Although, you know, certainly your feet are going to be probably in motion more than someone who's like a, you know, work on these five combinations kind of a

thing. But in terms of anchor stepping, slipping, rolling, step overs, carrying the hip, you know, switching, shifting, you know, everything, dude, he is so big, so big on footwork. And he's got a whole system built, and I'm about halfway done with his instructional. And again, that's probably just a fraction of the shit he teaches them and beyond. I mean, I'm 1%. But it does give you a sense. So you're asking, what could Kamaru pick up from that? You've seen it in Justin Gaethje. In fact, Justin Gaethje is his training partner in this video. And so Gaethje executes everything that Trevor Whitman asks him to do. And you can watch Gaethje do it. Dude, it's impressive.

It's extremely impressive. Again, watching that doesn't mean you can be like Neo in the Matrix and be like, I know Kung Fu. It's not the point. But it does give you a window in. If I watch another person's instructional on their foundations of striking, footwork will play a role, to be sure. They all know that. They all know hit him at angles, and you have to be balanced underneath yourself.

They know all of that. But the way in which he emphasizes footwork as a core foundation for everything, it is significantly more pronounced with him. I don't know how quickly Kamaru can absorb that. It took some time for Justin Gaethje to absorb that, including through losses. But if you're asking what he might provide relative to other coaches, the emphasis of that and then using that with his wrestling, to me, is probably what I'm going to be looking for most. To what extent, because he's always been a bit of a step and slider, which I think works for what Trevor Whitman teaches. He's not the kind of karate style, bounce, bounce, blitz kind of guy. That's really not what he is.

He is much more about bringing what works from boxing in MMA. And when you see the depth of detail on footwork that that guy teaches, it's another level. It's several other levels. Again, so if there are other coaches who teach that level of detail with footwork, God bless them. But I've not seen a whole lot of evidence of that. I see a lot of step this way and step that way and make sure your feet are under you and balance this way and balance that way. All things that are very important, but it's a lot of let's work on this combination, let's work on this combination. Whereas Whitman is like, okay, let's work on some combos,

but first let's work on what position you need to be in for the combos to work and where your feet need to be and why your feet need to be there and how you can develop a footwork system that enables you to never get out of position to have your weight under you to be both offensive and defensive when you need it and to be in a flow state the whole time it's everything starts with the feet and then works up whereas a lot of times everything works you know where here's our end goal about where we want to be and the feet play a role it's different it times, everything works, you know, where here's our end goal about where we want to be, and the feet play a role. It's different.

It's like the feet are just sort of part of the equation, which is, in this case, they root everything with Trevor Whitman. You and BC ever thought about doing a watch-along live stream during a UFC event? Yeah, we've talked about that. We've talked about that. I don't want to do that. Um, if we're not in person together, cause I just feel like it'd be weird. That's something that you should be like, there should be another person in the room with you. Um, you know, if, and when we can get these

fucking vaccines and we can move on with our lives that way, I'd like to have people in the DC area come to my house or something and we could film that. I'd be much more... There's good people who I know who could do a good job with that. I'd prefer to have BC if I had it, but if he's going to be in Connecticut, I'm going to be in DC. I'd rather just have another person here. You once mentioned taking the world's biggest L on a military base. Are you ever going to tell us that story?

I think the agreement was if I got to 200K on my personal channel. So you guys put me at 200K and I think I'll tell that story. What was your reaction when reading Conor's breakdown of his fight, especially the part where he blatantly starts promoting his recovery spray in the middle of it. It's just, even after reading his breakdown of the Habib fight, this felt somehow even more detached from reality, even when thinking from the perspective of fighters needing to have that belief in themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to make of that in some ways. It almost felt like...

You ever watch either on YouTube or Instagram some famous influencer? And they're telling... This video is about skin care or fucking hair cutting or whatever. And then the middle of it's like... And this is brought to you by NordVPN or whatever. And then the middle of it's like, and this, this, you know, is brought to you by Nord VPN or something. And they go on some long fucking tangent about the sponsor of the video. And, you know, it's like,

these are people who are basically living completely vacuous lives. Like their whole goal is just celebrity for the sake of it. I don't think it's what Connor's doing, but it reminded me of that a little. It felt like an influencer just selling some shit and using something that would otherwise grab your attention to do it, which was obvious. But the people who do that typically, again,

is that they live these vacuous lives. And I was like, Jesus, really, Connor? Like, you know, what do I make of it? He has a good attitude, you know, about the loss, which I guess is good. It's like, I don't know what to make of it. On the one hand, do you want to overreact or feel like you're overreacting and say that because he's taking this almost influencer approach

to a pretty serious moment in his career that he doesn't have this burning desire to fix maybe some of the problems that got him there. I think that's one interpretation. Another one is, listen, the guy's hustling, he's making cash, don't overthink it. He still wants to go out there and put it on him. The only way to really tell in this fight game is people will say whatever they want, they will do whatever they want, and there can be red flags. This one was a little red flag-ish. It's just what they show you in the fight. I mean, everything else means nothing.

All the shit they say at press conferences, all the shit they say in interviews. And sometimes they can be right in the interviews, which we've been over before. That's why I'm hesitant to do them. I mean, to me, Poirier strikes me as an honest broker. You know, he's not going to say things he doesn't believe or he's not going to make exaggerated claims for the sake of media attention, not in a hugely significant way. So I like talking to him. But in general, all that stuff means nothing. It means fuck all. The only thing that tells you what is actually happening with them and whether they take it seriously is what happens when the gate closes.

And then the bell rings and then they go. So if you got a weird feeling from it where you didn't detect a burning desire to fix what was wrong and that what you really came away with was this guy was hawking a product, yeah, I got that feeling too. Does that tell you that even though there's a trilogy, he's automatically going to lose because his head's not in the game anymore? I don't think that's a totally unfair reading, to be honest with you.

But there's just no way to know. We have to see. We have to see. but if he goes out there and you know he gets flattened again yeah I mean at that point you can just say either the game's passed him by or he's more interested in being a salesman and listen man

I don't even say it like it's pejorative you know if you don't want to do it anymore you don't want to do it anymore you know you can't you can't

you can't make a guy want to do something this fucking difficult. And it's not like he didn't achieve a fuck ton doing it. I don't in any way judge somebody who, if that's the place he's in, we'll have to see. So I don't want to overly, you know, this is a fucking end of Conor McGregor. I don't want to get into that space. But I did read it being like,

okay, not the typical way somebody who wants to be a champion takes a loss. You know. Hey Luke, what are some surprising little-known early career bouts that current and former UFC fighters have? A good one that I know of is that Jorge Masvidal's first professional loss was to Rafael Sonsal at lightweight in 2005. Boy, that's a great example. I haven't looked that up, but that sounds right.

Also, what are some recent, within the last few years, fights that have had outcomes which really surprised you? Not necessarily just upsets, within the last few years, fights that have had outcomes which really surprised you? Not necessarily just upsets, although you can include those, but maybe fights that played out stylistically in a way you didn't anticipate. That's a little harder because I've seen so many. But you know a fight I watched the other day? You guys know the AKA trainer, Crazy Bob Cook? You guys know Crazy Bob Cook? I mean, he's the bald guy who's been in the corner for every AKA product.

Koscheck, Fitch, Velazquez, Rockhold, fucking Cormier, all of them, you know. Any one of those guys, you see Crazy Bob Cook out there. Bob Cook had one fight in the UFC, and it was against Tiki Gosen. What's interesting about that fight is Cook was a Frank Shamrock product at the time, and Gosen was a Tito Ortiz product, and this was, I think, after, if my memory is right, this was after the Ortiz-Frank Shamrock rope-a-dope fight,

where Frank Shamrock kind of let Ortiz hammer him for a little bit, Ortiz gassed, and then Frank Shamrock came back around to put it on him. And then Gosen and Crazy Bob Cook fought. And Gosen nearly stopped him. And then they go the second round. And then Bob Cook got him down, passed him out, and then choked him out. But what was interesting is they were playing the next generation of talent angle. The UFC was, which I thought was pretty smart. But Gosen is now a manager and Bob Cook is now a trainer, you know, so fight game comes full circle. Tito is a fucking city counselor and the worst version of it you can imagine.

And Frank is doing whatever the fuck Frank is doing. I hope not leaving any more dogs in airports. All right, let's see. I know this is a hypothetical stretch, but if Kyoji Horiguchi, Demetrius Johnson, and Henry Cejudo were to rejoin the UFC's flyweight division, combined with the new talent of the know, probably. Although, would it be better than Bantamweight? Maybe.

You'd have more established talent, I think, at the top with that. But I don't know if it'd be as deep. Same with featherweight. Lightweight, not so much. Welterweight, debatable. Middleweight, you know, not the best. Lightheavyweight's a mess. And then heavyweight, you know, sort of top-heavy.

Yeah, it would certainly be in the conversation at that point. I don't think it would change the depth of the division, but it would mean you'd have these really revered, accomplished figures and pound-for-pound greats sitting at the top. Okay, that's a weird thing I'm not going to read. Let's see. It's unlikely, but if Izzy and O Usman were to ever meet at 185, how do you see that fight playing out? Usman is a huge welterweight with great wrestling, and Izzy obviously has next-level striking and great takedown defense. It's interesting. I tend to think that Adesanya

would stuff the takedowns a little bit more easily than folks might imagine, which doesn't say that Usman wouldn't get him down eventually. He might. But I feel like there'd be a lot of stall positions. And I feel like in the interim, Adesanya would be able to do a little bit more damage such that Usman might win some of the control, but there would be a noticeable lack of damage all the way around

to help to dissuade the judges from giving him rounds or overall the fight. Hey Luke, would you say that UFC champion styles are cyclic? The prevailing styles come in waves, or are these purely coincidental, i.e. a wave of wrestlers become champions, then get replaced by strikers, and then the cycle continues throughout the weight divisions? Well, there's a lot of things happening. One is that the sport's a little bit different now where you had these wrestlers coming in at a certain time

and then other wrestlers looking for an opportunity to make some money. Word got around or they could just witness on their own, and then there was this major influx because you could see how well collegiate and freestyle wrestling would translate. So there was that. And then best practices caught up where wrestling became much more well-known across all of MMA, which made striking reinforced and sort of sublimated jujitsu to a degree. So there was that, I don't want to call it a problem, but that reality. And yes, that changes over time as each new set of best practices, you know, the fence wasn't nearly as valuable a tool to hold someone up against to get takedowns. Takedowns used to be pursued in the open much more and now they're not. So the games that people play with the individual styles

then began, it was sort of like at the skill set level and then the skill set became much more a function of the um particular tactical you know choice that someone was making in a fight surface area and you know that kind of a timing and that kind of a thing you know where where was this particular skill set being applied in what manner right um that tends to be you know this sort of take turns kind of thing but also like there's just a lot of copycatism you know no one did a front kick to the face until silva did it and then boom you're just seeing it i won't say all the time but it's not uncommon you're seeing it on the fucking contender series who was that i think it was the chilean kid who did it you know you're seeing it, I won't say all the time, but it's not uncommon. You're seeing it on the fucking Contender Series. Who was that? I think it was the Chilean kid who did it.

You're seeing it at that level. And he did a great version of it. It's something that people just pick up on and then share. And so everyone begins to use it or it becomes widespread enough, I should say, so that it becomes effective for a while and then people work around it and they develop a new technique or a new strategy or a new sort of style of fighting that works around that problem and so forth. So a cyclic, you know, in the sense that the predominant styles tend to have moments in

the sun, that is true. But I don't know that it's like, you know, I don't know that it's perfectly circular where everyone gets an equal share over time. I tend to think what happened was you had this onslaught of good athletes from a wrestling base. That changed the game. But at that point, then it became a series of practices. And once the practices changed, you've got good athletes now. I mean, it's hard to do well without really good athleticism at the ufc level what the differences are now are these other more granular uh changes you know uh with for trevor whitman and his footwork or you know uh habib with his fence wrestling and and working with risk control

and all that kind of stuff it's it's about tactical decisions how scalable they are how many people like can you take what someone else does and reproduce it? And how valuable is that as a consequence? And that tends to, I think, turn the screw. Did you see Rogan's podcast with MMA referee Mark Smith? I did not. I saw that he was on there. I've not heard it yet.

When does the documentary come out? I think next week, maybe a week after that. Why is Habib chasing the GSP fight? I don't give a fuck anymore. I just don't give a fuck. I said it on yesterday's show. I understand why people wantSP fight. I don't give a fuck anymore. I just don't give a fuck. I said it on yesterday's show. I understand why people want the fight. It'd be great if they made it for, do I need to tell you why it'd be great? We've been over this a million fucking times, but you know, this constant, maybe, maybe, maybe at some point it's like, dude,

you know, just let me know if it's real or not. And, and, you know just let me know if it's real or not and and and actually just let me know if it's real and if it's just a maybe until then then i don't care anymore you know i i i get that you know there's a there's this idea of people want what they can't have and there's this idea of um that would be a crown jewel i i get it i i understand i understand why people want it but if you're if it. But if you're a casual fan, this is different. But if you're a fan who is really invested, if you're a hardcore, even semi-hardcore, and you get UFC action week in, week out, and you understand the depth of what you're getting, and now Bellator looks like they're going to start up here in, what,

April or something? You got LFA in motion. The sport has never been better in terms of best practices it's like yes I would love to see the fight too but dude what is what is missing in your life that you just

gotta have it if you're one of those hardcore fight fans there are so many good fights there are so many good athletes there's so much intrigue and interesting things happening the intense focus

if that is your if that is your sports fan profile, if you're a hardcore sports fan, that's your profile, this absurd obsession over a fight that still seems quite unlikely, I just don't get. I really, sorry, I don't. And to me, it's like a little bit, it's a little bit novice-y. And I've noticed, by by the way this is not true across the board to be clear but I have noticed that folks who are a little

bit more in my camp which is that you know some trash talk is nice can be fun you know but really what I'm watching fights for us because I actually like watching fights I like the science of it I like the science of it. I like the brutality of it. I like the marriage of the two. I get a lot more fulfillment from watching fights such that whatever I would get from GSP versus Habib, which would be substantial, and while it would be substantial, I don't need that to be fulfilled. You can get so much fulfillment from all of these other places. You just don't really need that. It'd be nice to have, but to me, it's like having a fleet full of automobiles. It's like, wouldn't it be great to have another Tesla? A one that I could

go a hundred miles an hour in two seconds. and every time you drive, you get roadhead. It'd be like, yeah, dude, that'd be sick. That'd be sick. That'd be awesome, right? I mean, it would make going to the grocery store a very different experience. But do I need that? No, I don't fucking need that, you know? I noticed that you and BC push for likes and subs on YouTube very hard,

but tend not to mention Spotify or Apple or other podcasting platforms. Are streaming apps not an important part of the business model? No, they are. They are. I'm intensely focused on YouTube, and frankly, I understand the YouTube business model more than, significantly more than I understand just a pure audio podcasting world so it just comes a lot more naturally for me as a consequence but no I mean those are valuable as well

more GSP questions I don't give a shit wasn't Venom supposed to be the UFC's official outfitting partner starting in 2021 the first three events of the year had regular old Hebok there are two replies to this that's a great question. I do not know the answer to that. I thought so too. Now Reebok was still going to make the shoes because Venom doesn't make the shoes. Boy, that's a fucking great question. Let's see. When is that supposed to go into effect? Ah, April 2021.

There you go. That's why. April 2021. They need time to get that in order. It's like the vaccine rollout. You can't just do that shit. Willy nilly. Hey, Luke.

Did the Holloway-Volkanovski rematch have any effect on how you view possible rematches and the adjustments a fighter can make? You were one of the few who saw Alex as a big threat to Max in the first one and were proved right, but then it seemed in the rematch you didn't see a way Max could close the gap and he did. Yeah, that's a fair characterization. That was a failure of my own imagination. Part of the reasons I had praised Holloway striking all the way back to the Monday morning analyst days were that as I mean, I think I even said it on Monday morning analyst explicitly as well. Cause I know I had

done various episodes on max. I'm not sure which one that it is, but I called him a very modular striker. You guys ever seen an AR 15 and AR 15 is a very modular weapon because of the ways in which you can customize it for any number of things. Sights, grip, you know, whatever. There's just a lot you can add or subtract from it to make it whatever model that you would like.

His striking was a lot like that. In fact, more recently, it just became clear to me through the... It was hard to notice after the first... It was hard for me to realize that this was... How do I say this? I lost sight of this after the first Volkanovski fight. The second Volkanovski fight was a reminder,

and then the Cater fight was a sledgehammer over the head. I've called Max Holloway the heir to GSP in the following sense. And again, I realize in MMA, anytime you make a comparison, people think every element of one comparison has to be identical in every way to the other thing you're comparing. It's not what I'm trying to say. It is not a totalizing comparison. But the thing I am trying to say is GSP had a skill set and it was wide ranging and he would use

more towards the end of his career it was a lot of wrestling but the point being was he would take what he had he would sharpen it up overall every time and then he would tailor it just so for each individual fight. Not a radical change but I'm going to use

this particular tactics and this particular setups and these particular moments and fights to go for things. And it had this effect of having sort of his modular game plan. He could just build the right game plan, even though you kind of knew what he was good and bad at. He would focus on just the right things. He would set things up just the way he needed to. And it was tailored each time for a different opponent. Max does that in a narrower sense in terms of like, you know, he does mostly striking, if not almost exclusively striking. Um, although there's some ground and pound to be had or even some clinch fighting on occasion, but he does that with his

striking. Like, you know, if you go back and look at the way he fought Aldo the first and second time, you know, one of the major differences, he circled one way into Aldo the first time and then circled the very opposite way the next time, really changing up. I mean, that's a major difference that I think played a role in how he was able to do so well both times, among other changes, right? That was just one of them. But yeah, I lost sight of that after the first fight because what Volkanovski was doing was, you know, again, so many people are so mad at his championship reign. I just think to myself, okay, whoever you think won the fight, put it aside and ask yourself, why is it Volkanovski gives Holloway problems? Maybe you think not enough to win, but he does give him problems. Like no one's had fights at featherweight as close as Volkanovski has had with Holloway.

Not even Edgar a distant second. So why is that? What is this guy doing? And it's, dude, it's the, he is never still. He is changing looks constantly. You don't know when he's coming. You don't know when he's going. You don't know what he's coming with or going with.

He's hard to get a beat on. He's changing his own rhythm. God, dude, it is very difficult. He has basically weaponized fundamentals. Oh, never be a sitting target. Okay, how do I do that? How do I bring that principle to life? Use feints to change angles or set up another shot. Okay, he'll do that to the nth fucking degree. You know, and I realize that the two fights with Max are controversial and there wasn't like a thunderous knockout. You know, it was 10 rounds of very close action by and large. And I think a lot of people have kind of used that as a way to be like,

oh, well, you know, how great of a fighter is Holloway? I'm sorry, Volkanovski. Fucking Volkanovski is... Dude, his style is a... He's a bad matchup for everyone. For everyone. Because what he does is just pull the fight game, the striking game apart.

And he takes everything that gives you oxygen, not literally, but it gives you oxygen to do what you do. And he saps it out of the room. He is never still. He is constantly setting shit up. He is in range. He is out of range. But you never know when he's doing that. Oh, is this a look to go one way or is this a look to other way is this a look to hit me to the body is a look to hit me to the head oh here i'm coming and it's a leg kick or i'm backing up

it's a leg kick i'm changing angle oh and now it's a different kind of leg kick and now he goes this direction it's just he's just a not really a perpetual motion machine but there is just no one of the worst things you can do in striking is to have a pattern because if they can pick up on it, then they can trick you. And then if they can trick you, they can do really bad things to you. Okay. But here's a guy where there's almost no pattern. You ever seen those, um, one of the stories about how the Americans won the Second World War and the Japanese theater was they were able to they were able to use

the Native Americans. I think it was the Navajo Native Americans. And the Japanese could not figure out, like they knew they were speaking some other language, but they could not break it. They had no idea. Like, how the fuck do we break this language? And they used their best linguists and, you know,

code breakers to do it, and they couldn't do it. Now, at this point, you can go back and look at what Holloway and Volkanovski have done, and you can get a read on what Volkanovski tends to prefer and whatever. I don't mean it's indecipherable in that sense. But in real time, Max was able to make some changes. That's true. So it's not utterly indecipherable. But that's how it feels to me when I watch him against someone he's just having a good round against.

You just fucking don't know what way is up, what he's going to do next. It is really, really, really hard to read. And so that made me lose sight of the fact that Max is, and his team are incredibly capable. And, you know, these are literate guys in the striking game. These are experts in the striking game. And they're not done. They're not done making changes. So, you know, the Japanese could never figure out what the Navajo were saying.

It looks like Max and his team might get it after a third crack. But even then, it's no given. Because that's what, dude, Volkanovski is fucking amazing. I know you can't talk about it for what I can only assume is legal reasons. But can you tell us whether the dissected will ever be back on MK? Well, it definitely isn't legal reasons, for crying out loud. Or is it gone for good, with technical difficulties

being the permanent replacement? I don't know is the answer. It's definitely the... I'll put it this way. I don't know if Dissected is done, but I can tell you it's indefinitely suspended. How about that? So we'll see.

How do you see Fury versus Joshua going? I see Fury beating the living fuck out of him. Thoughts on the new Cannibal Corpse track? It is good. It is good. It is good. Say what now? Do you think the UFC is promoting Chandler and releasing fighters early,

almost helping other promotions, because recruiting people like Chandler and Gaethje is a safer bet than regional scenes? I don't know if I understand what you're asking me. Yeah, I don't know what the fuck you're saying. On the Weighing In podcast that was released today, Josh Thompson and Big John talk about the evolution of women's MMA, skill, best practices, strategy. They thought the current state of women's MMA was somewhere around the Chuck Liddell GSP era

when compared to the level of men's MMA. I don't think that's crazy. I think there might be some noteworthy examples that you have current fighters who are pretty current on overall best practices, even on the men's side, like, you know, Ioane and Jacek has got a really modern game. Of course, GSP has a game that is, you know, was future-proof to a degree.

So maybe that's what they mean. I'd have to go back and listen to what they said. But listen, there is a gap between the modernity and the depth of the men's game and the depth and the overall skill development on the women's side, particularly in the wrestling. But that's getting a lot better. You're seeing a lot more double legs, singles, body locks,

versus just fucking head tosses. The wrestling has really advanced on the women's side, just as an example of how far that's come. And then you had that French woman, whose name I forget, she was on the inauguration show. She was one of the first fighters who was out. I mean, her striking looked just as modern

as any guys I've ever seen. Really, really good. So, you know, would I put it there? I don't know if that's necessarily the way I would go, but if they're arguing that there is a gap and that that gap deserves to be acknowledged, I don't think that's crazy at all. It tends to get you in trouble sometimes,

but I think the evidence bears it out. Who would you favor to win in a Conor versus Tony Ferguson fight? Yeah, this is the fight that I think should be next for Con Connor. Because if you're Tony, this is a great opportunity. I think it's a winnable fight for him, especially if he mixes up his offense. If you're Connor, that's a guy who with your striking, if it's still on point and if you're moving around a lot, that is a guy who, by the way, he's got a great chin, right? That is a guy who you should be able to land on effectively. So to me, it's like Tony's got much more diverse offense.

He hits hard. He's got a great chin. He's got an unrelenting gas tank. If he can push that fight a little bit later, as is the case with many Connors fights, you have to like his chances. Early on, it's a fight that I think favors Conor in the early going. But Conor has to be dialed in. He has to take it absolutely seriously. He has to understand what he's up against and how unorthodox Tony is. And if that fight gets late, dude, Tony is going to put it on him. So to me, I like that fight

next for Conor. I think it's an appropriate challenge. I think both guys are coming off of losses. They're looking for a reset here. They match up in interesting ways. It's winnable for either guy. I like that fight next. I like it a lot more than just going back to fighting Dustin a third time right away.

Have you reached out to Phoenix Carnevale to host alongside you when BC inevitably gets locked in its factory town's local gas station cooler? I have not, but I'm certainly... I would love to work with her again. I'll put it that way. Jesus, that's a great question. I don't know if I have a good answer for it right up front. Lord. I never thought of it that way. Early 20s.

The question is, what are some books you would recommend for men in their early 20s? Are there any books that changed your perspective on life or work? Candidly, I think a lot of guys are looking for some sort of Jocko Wilnick, if that's how you pronounce his name. I've got nothing against him, but you know, he's got this, to me, I'm not as ready to be a consumer of his work in part because I, you know, I was not a Navy SEAL. I'm certainly far from it, but you know, you get a lot of those types in the military and they're, you know, they're high speed, low drag, man. They're very successful. And I've benefited a lot in my life by being around them. But you know, it's like, ooh, it's been looking for something different. I got my benefit from that. I'm But it's like, ooh, it's been looking for something different.

I got my benefit from that. I'm looking for another gear. And I was looking for another gear after I got out of the military. So I thought that I benefited as much from that as I could. And so I was looking for something else. So I see a lot of guys who are looking for what I was looking for back at that time.

Kind of like a self-help worldview, kick you into gear, let me make it all easy for you. I don't know that I have a book in that sense. My recommendation, if you're a guy in your early 20s, so let's say 22, maybe you're fresh out of college, maybe you're fresh out of your four-year stint in the military, maybe you're just 22 and you're figuring things out. Who knows? I'm not trying to distill life's meaning and give you direction at 22 because I don't think it's that easy. I mean, there are definite paths you can take that make it easier if you just stick to that path to, you know, reach the next destination of your life. I think that is true. But here's my point.

You know what I'm reading if I'm at 22? It's a little bit less the case now. Now I have a little bit more of a focused approach, but I'm trying to just learn more about the world more generally. And that doesn't sound like the right answer, I'm sure, to a lot of you. You're like, no, I want the secrets of life.

Help me at 22 because you feel either lost or confused or something. But nothing gave me clarity in this world. And if you watch this chat for a long time, this is not the first time you've heard me say this. But it is true. It is undeniably, unquestionably true. Nothing gave me clarity, less so of purpose, but in terms of the tools to understand what I wanted and who I was and how I was going to think about the world than a philosophy degree. Now, that's not necessarily attainable to everybody

else, but what I mean to say is if you want to start with books that outlined um you know different forms of thought or um you know different concepts you could do that who were logical positivists what is uh you know what are epistemic studies phenomenology um youology. You could do symbolic logic games. But even aside from that, just reading about history, reading about any kind of book on literature, any of these things. Smart people who have developed ideas and things to say, you can find moments of inspiration and frankly,

understand your world better by absorbing that rather than someone who's like, I've got, you know, here's a way to make your bed every morning and kick you into gear. And listen, I know I sound like a bit of a hypocrite because I went and I lived a little bit of that life at that particular stage in my life. Like I got benefit from it. So maybe if, you know, maybe if that kind of self-help, if you really feel like you need it, go get that too. I don't want to only confuse people by having them read, you know, Steinbeck when they're looking for something a little bit more

applicable to their life. Okay, fine. But I'm just trying to tell you that like over the long term the things that will guide your uh your moral compass your your reasoning your understanding of of systems of the world they're not going to come from a self-help book almost certainly not going to they're not going to come from you from some guy who's trying to whip you into gear. Probably. Exceptions abound.

They're going to come from listening to a wide range of experts tell you what they know about the world and the way in which they know it. So just dive in. Dive in and start going I'll try to come up with a more concise list of things that might be a little bit more helpful for this particular stage of people's life I'll see if I can put something together but just as a general rule because the way you framed the question was

this stage of my life right now I'm not just to wrap it up, I'm not telling you that like, you know, somebody who is pointing the finger at you and telling you like, you need to go and do pull-ups every morning is wrong. They might be quite right. You know, there's, and by the way, there's a lot to be said about like your own habits as practices. You are some of your habits. There's another thing to be said about that. Yeah, there probably are some lessons you can learn, but please believe me. Please believe me. What you don't want is someone to tell you what the path is. What you want are the cognitive skills that you can develop that will enable you to decide for yourself what the suitable path is,

and then how to incrementally take steps along the way. What is truth? What is false? How do I know? Right? If someone's just telling you what it is, it'll sound convincing because it'll be motivational and you might get some benefit from it because it will take you from a better place than where you were. But to really do this over the long haul to really make the most out of yourself the you know the unexamined life is not worth living right we say it all the time um find somebody who knows a lot about something right and listen to what they have to say and you may not agree with all of it but you may agree with part of it and then do that over and over and over and over and over again. Forever.

And that will enable you to begin to figure out what's true and what's false. Who am I? How do I think about the world? How do I know what's true? How can I prove it? How can I demonstrate that to myself, to others? And how does that lead me down a path of fulfillment and understanding? That's the way I would go.

Okay. Please give the video a thumbs up. Let's do this one more time. Please give a video a thumbs up. Hit the subscribe button. Back tomorrow with a live show, we will preview the Overeem and Volkov main event. And yeah, thank you guys as always so much for watching. I appreciate you. Back tomorrow. And in