MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Adesanya's Future, TRT, Aljo Sterling's Title | Luke Thomas' Live Chat, ep. 67

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

On ttoday's podcast, we'll talk about Israel Adesanya's future at middleweight and whether some of the weaknesses shown from the UFC 259 bout with Jan Blachowicz will materialize when he returns to his primary weight class. We'll also talk testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling's campaign to defend himself, dieting, Zhang Weili vs. Rose Namajunas, Leon Edwards vs. Belal Muhammad and 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

Hi everybody. Hello. It is Thursday, the 11th of March. Yes, the 11th of March 2021. How is everyone? My name is Luke Thomas. This is episode 67 of the Luke Thomas live chat right here on the Morning Combat channel. Of course, I am from CBS Sports as well as Showtime, and I host my regular podcast, which is called Morning Combat, on this very channel, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, with Brian Campbell. Today is just my solo live chat. So if you're watching, either you're new or you're a regular, please give the video a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button. Today we'll get to leftovers from UFC 259. We'll also look ahead to Leon Edwards taking on Bilal Muhammad. Really anything else you guys have in mind. So without further ado, let's get this party started. And we're back. Alright, let me just quickly tweet out that we're back. All right.

Let me just quickly tweet out that we're live. And then I'll get to your first set of questions. We'll go for about an hour and some change as we normally do. All right. And yeah, it should be a good time. Let me just quote tweet this. Live now, bitches. All right. Hope everyone's doing well. Hope you're having a good day. Hope I can make your day a little bit better. If not, well,

you're shit out of luck, but I will do my best. I will give it the college try. All right. So without further yapping, let's get this started, shall we? By the way, these are available at, this is my, my, my nude lens. There it is. These are available at store.show.com. Show is spelled S-H-O. All right. First question. Hey Luke, I don't know if you have ever talked about this on the channel before, but what was your first ever interaction with BC and what were your honest first impressions of him? I always had a good relationship with BC. It's funny, actually. First time I interacted with him was at a boxing event.

Definitely at a boxing event. Definitely at a boxing event. I don't know how we made contact. I cannot remember if somebody introduced us or... I don't know. That part I don't remember. Maybe he does. But it was definitely at a boxing show. I want to say maybe Mayweather Canelo. Maybe Con Peterson?

I'm not... Somewhere in that time frame. Somewhere in that time frame. And I always thought he was funny. And I always appreciated his takes. Which is to say, like anybody else, I don't always agree. But I thought that he was trying to figure out problems. Trying to work through them.

He had an interesting method of delivery. My opinion about BC has, in terms of the root of what I established when I first met him, that root hasn't really changed. Now, the relationship has grown as we have intertwined our futures together in many ways, but that core idea has never really been challenged. And then it was actually, again, if I'm trying to remember this correctly, I think it was actually Chuck Mendenhall who came to me and said, hey, do you know Brian Campbell? He does MMA stuff too. We could get him on the MMA beat. Because the way it worked when we did the MMA beat was

there was a couple of times they flew in people from LA, like a Mark Ramondi when he moved out there or when they flew in Sean O'Shaughnessy one time from Arizona. But the way it basically worked was who was on staff, who was on staff that lived near New York city and could get there reasonably easy. Uh, or just who was an MMA journo who was nearby. That was sort of the pecking order about how it went. People were always asking for, Hey, why isn't this person on? Why isn't that person on? It's because, like, dude, the company ain't paying for that. Like, people were like, oh, you should have Jordan Breen on. Dude, Jordan Breen would be a phenomenal member of the MMA beat panel, but they ain't flying his

ass, like, from another country to come do this. Trust me, it's not going to happen. Maybe if he was with staff, they would have considered it because it was Toronto, but you get the idea, like, you're not on staff and you live in another country. No, it's not going to happen. Maybe if he was with staff, they would have considered it because it was Toronto, but you get the idea. You're not on staff and you live in another country. No, it's not going to happen. Chuck was thinking, hey, who's nearby that could do this as a regular, reliable member of the panel and be entertaining and contribute to the conversation? BC obviously lives in Connecticut. I don't know if he lived in the same place then as he does now, but six one way, half a dozen the other. And we got him on, and he was good right away. He was good right away.

Right away, I was like, yep. Chuck rarely has bad recommendations. You know what I mean? If Chuck Mendenhall's like, hey, that's a good scotch, I'd probably believe that. Oh, that's a good book. You should read that book. All right. I don't know if I will, but I bet if I do, I'll be like, you know what? Chuck was right.

Chuck was right. Like he rarely makes a bad call ever. So when he said, I was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's fire him up. And he was good right away. He was good right away. BC was. Have you ever been on TRT? And if not, do you plan in the near future how you self-admittedly are tired more often than not with you being 41 and stuff? So no, I am not on TRT now. I've never been on TRT. I've taken, now you gotta remember something. I grew up, I was in college.

So let's say 19, 20, 21, right? In that timeframe. I grew up, I was in college, so let's say 19, 20, 21, right, in that time frame. I was in college at the time when GNC had that real shit, you know, where, like, you're lucky now if you buy creatine and it's like, oh, it was laced with some kind of anabolic property and you might have gotten some kind of, you know, minor benefit from it. I realize fighters sort of make it scandalized because of how ridiculous our drug testing is, but for the average person, you might get a boost on that. Dude, it used to be the case. I mean, it's always been true that supplements are the least important thing you can do if you're training properly. I think that part has always been true. But back when I was a kid or teenager, young man, whatever you want to call that, dude, you could go to GNC and get

ephedra. You guys might GNC and get ephedra. You guys might not even know what ephedra is. It only had to kill a few athletes before people were like, you know, maybe you shouldn't take this. God, what were they called? It was like the original hydroxycut had like a fuck ton of ephedra in it. And you could feel your heartbeat and race and shit, you know, when you took it. Xenadrine was another one.

Xenadrine was just filled with ephedra. And then there was a couple people that died, and then the big one was, I think it was a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles. He pitched and maybe even collapsed on the mound, but either way, he had some heart complications from taking ephedra. Yellowjacket was another one that was originally with ephedra.

Anyway, I've taken all that shit. Anything that GNC has made that like was in the aisle where you have to get the manager to unlock the shit that's in that glass case. You know what I'm talking about? If you guys ever been to GNC, if you want protein, you know, they got Mega Mass Fuel 3000 or whatever. It's on the wall. If you want, you know, creatine monohydrate, not hard to find, you know, um, fat burners, you know, and of course you have to walk through the aisle of like pills for women losing their hair and old dudes who need centrum silver or something.

And then you get to the aisle for maniacs and in that aisle and the names are always like super fucking ominous, you know, like arson for like a fat burner or like, you know, fucking, you know, anabolic, creatine ball, like anabolic. I mean, just these crazy names that they would come up with. And it would be ingredients in that shit where you have to be like, yo, manager. It's like, you know, it's like going to Blockbuster and be like, listen, I'm only here for the pornography. I don't give a shit about Mission Impossible or Terminator 2, you know, or fucking when Harry met Sally. I don't give a shit when Harry met Sally. Take me to the pornography, sir. That was me walking into a GNC. So to answer your question, I've never been on TRT. I'm not on it now. However, to answer your question, do I intend

on taking it in the future? I am seriously considering it. Yes. Not right now. Not right now. You know, I'll share parts of my life with you guys. I don't really care. I did get a medical marijuana card in D.C. You know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that it's the most above board. It's all above board, but it's the most rigorous process that you ever had to go through in your life. But I was taking a lot of over-the-counter medications and even some prescription ones to just manage pain or get sleep or whatever. And of all people, my wife was like, why don't

you just try getting a medical marijuana card, talk to a doctor, see what they say, and see what it does for you. And so I've had one for, um, about a month or so, a little bit longer. And I haven't slept this good in a long time, long time, long, long, long, long time. Like honestly couldn't remember the last time. Like I just slept through the night. Like the first thing I remember when I wake up is not remember, but the first thing I encounter when I wake up is sunlight. Like that never was the case for me in the last 10 or 15, at least the last 10 or 15 years, maybe not 15, but certainly 10. Um, so that has made already a dramatic improvement. I would like to see, you know, by taking care of myself with

some of these methods, if that is the kind of intervention that I can get closer to some of my idealized goals about mood, you know, body composition, general health, that kind of a thing. I'd like to see how far that takes me. If that hits a dead end at some point, then, you know, certainly I am in no way opposed to taking it. And I probably will, you know, maybe in 10 years, if this current thing I'm doing works out, but, um, not right now, not right now. All right. Youngest currency UFC champion is 31. Wait a second. Is that true? Before I say yes, that's true. Let's see. All right. Figueredo, Sterling. Sterling's 31. How old is Sterling? No, that can't be right. Isn't Adesanya 30? Let's as well in July. Jesus. Well, in some ways, that's not exactly something especially scandalous. You're saying, okay, the youngest one is right in the middle

of their prime, or something pretty close to that, either one direction or the other. That seems about right. The question is not that. The question is how much older are the others? Here you have Sterling at 31. So how old is Piotr Jan? Jan is 28. So there's one that will bump you back. Volkanovski, let's see. How old is our man, Mr. Volkanovski? He is 32, so he's barely older. Number of people I'm not even going to count. Usman, what is he? He's got to be right around that mark. I think he actually is 33, right? Kamar Usman is somewhere closer to that. So let's see. How old is Mr. Usman? He is 33. Exactly. So these are not radical departures. Then Adesanya, 31. Blachowicz is older at 38. Miocic is what? 37-ish? Stipe Miocic. He's 38. Okay, that's definitely older, but that's heavyweight,

which is, that's not necessarily age prohibitive for that particular weight class. And then you just have the women. So how old is Amanda Nunes? She is... Jesus, she's only 32, and she's bored as fuck, beating up these... Jesus Christ. You would have hoped if you're a, a bantamweight, you'd be, you know, that she'd be 34 or something. Like maybe you got to wait another year or two for dominance before it starts to fade or some shit. She's 32. Oh,

y'all ladies are fucked. I mean, dude, how does Amanda Nunes lose at this point? Meaning the following. If she doesn't get distracted, and she's living right, maybe a few more creature comforts because of the money she's put together, but in general, she's training when she's supposed to, she's dialed in when she's supposed to, the stuff in the home, it's obviously a blessing for your personal life, but obviously, you know, to the extent it doesn't affect your professional, the whole thing.

Who the fuck's going to beat her? Shevchenko's the only one, but assuming they don't do that. Shit. Let's see. Zhang Wai Li is how old? I know I'm going very long with this question. I apologize, but now you got me curious.

So I want to see. 31, so that's not a radical departure. And then Valentina Shevchenko, how old is she? 33. Okay, so you have the oldest is 33 with only two above that, both of them 38. And in the case of 38, it's light heavyweight and heavyweight, the two biggest divisions where you would expect to see something like that. To me, the bigger question would be how old the champions are relative to their peers. If Adesanya would have won, he would have had a seven-year gap on Blachowicz, and I get,

a nine-year gap or something on Glover, so he would have benefited from that. Yes, you would have probably liked to see more champions in their 20s. But I think what this underscores is you've got most of them 31 to 33. That's about the age where you're going to be a dominant champion. Because after that, it becomes much harder to do unless you're in the higher weight classes. To me, it'd be kind of alarming if you saw not so much like 26. Although even then, I would be a very fast developer. But if you saw something like 36 at women's strawweight or something, that would be a little more on the unusual side than what you see here, actually.

Can you talk about some of the technical aspects of the Jan Sterling fight? I've not examined it in detail. We got 20 minutes of high-level action, and the main narrative is about the knee and the aftermath, which is extremely tiresome and a discredit to the skills of both fighters. I did do a post-fight show where I got some of that in.

I've not gone back and... I've actually not gone back and watched the fight. I mean, I've watched the finish, or the ending, I should say, many times, but the rest of the fight, no, I've not. And what I remember was some of the stats. I'm going to pull them up here really quickly

because they're actually kind of important. Peter, Jan, fight metric, let's see. So the thing that stood out to me was not that Jan's takedown defense withstood, because that should not be surprising. I mean, you thought that Sterling would have a chance, but you also knew that the idea that Sterling was just going to have his way with him on the ground, that never seemed plausible.

But could he get him down, hold him down long enough, mix it up as a part of the broader strategy with the striking, and that sort of a thing. You thought maybe he could do that. Here's the thing that just blows me away. Aljamain Sterling, one for 17 on takedowns, a whopping 5%. Peter Jan, seven for seven. I wouldn't have seen that coming.

That you would have got him getting all seven on Aljamain. I realized some of those were foot sweeps. I realized some of those were like Osotogari trips. These are not standard double leg and single legs, but it doesn't matter. Takedown's a takedown as far as I'm concerned. Some are niftier than others. Some are cooler than others, but you get them down, you get them down. And with that,

he accumulated more control time than Aljamain. Aljamain had control time 325. Peter Jan had over four minutes of cumulative control time. 117 in round one, 125 in round two, 49 seconds in round three. And he had built up at least 41 seconds into round four. He had gotten a takedown there. Dude, that is amazing. That is extremely impressive. Who has 100% takedown rate on Aljamain Sterling besides Peter Yan, who has more than one attempt? That is, I mean, the answer is, I mean, I don't know that the answer is anybody um I'd be curious to find out that is crazy shocking what I actually thought was kind of interesting was if you actually go and watch the round where you thought Aljamain was doing his best maybe the first three

or four minutes of round one like Aljamain looked really really good there unsustainable but like what were you looking at you were looking at somebody who was putting in a good effort. It was very successful what he was applying. It looked to me like he had this strategy where it's like, I'm going to let it rain on you and see if you cannot get wet without an umbrella. Where you're constantly trying to cover up and you get hit here and then it's like whack-a-mole. Then you go here, then you go here, then you go here. And each of those touches doesn't do a whole lot by itself. You're just kind of, you know, keeping a hand in their face, backing them up, but it gives you time to sneak

in hard ones when they're not looking or when they can't see it coming. And it just put Jan completely on the defensive, completely on the defensive. He just had to cover. But if you can't constantly play whack-a-mole on his face, which you can't, right? Who can keep that up? He was able to just make reads and adjustments and he was able to call for what he wanted and

get it. So you have to think about it. It's like to the extent that he had any moment to noodle the moment, to think, to problem solve, right? So I'm looking at what's in front of me. I'm looking at what's coming my way. Now I'm making adjustments.

I'm making reads. I'm thinking about, okay, what can I do now? If you give him time to do that, he was better than Aljamain, right? If he had time to problem solve, which he does because his defense is good and his offense is tremendous, but before his offense really got going. But if somebody can problem solve at distance and it immediately manifests itself, that's a problem. That's a problem. Now, one judge had it two rounds for him. I'm not sure how you get that because the takedown came in the first. That was his best striking round.

Sterling got no takedowns. He whiffed on 10 attempts between the second and third round. Third round was really bad, I think, for him, right? Yeah, there's a gap there. There's a talent gap there. Peter Yan, to me, if I can stand, again, it sounds sort of obvious, like isn't that what everybody does? No, not necessarily.

I can stand across from you, and if you're so much better that even if I attempt something, I know I'm going to get lit up so I can't really open up. Maybe I can defend half the stuff you're throwing, but eventually all that's going to get through if I'm not throwing back in any kind of meaningful way. If you're worried about being countered, if you're worried about just wasting energy, if you're worried about

missing and then getting out of position, it'll make you hesitant. Peter Jan doesn't have these problems. He can read the situation, then make the calls. And then when the calls happen and they take place, he enacts them. They generally speaking have quite grand success. And so you can just build on that, right? It just sort of tells you that the problem solving, the real time, there's pre-fight problem solving, and then there's real-time problem solving. And pre-fight, I thought that Aljamain had some good ideas. Going for the takedown was the right idea, that he wasn't very successful is a different matter. But, you know, kind of spamming him with takedown attempts, it occupies his time in a way that you at least think you like your chances a little bit there um the other part is um you know pre-fight some of the ways in which he was putting combinations together

and kind of you know trying to have a steady volume i thought that was good the problem arises uh in real time when yon was able to make adjustments after those after that rate slowed and he was able to get time to look across and begin to make assessments about what he was up against, once those wheels started turning, it was a very different fight. So that to me indicates there's a gap there on the feet, a pretty significant one.

All right, let's see here. Will you ever invite Jack Slack onto the show? He said he's interested. Now, did he? I do love Jack Slack, but is that what he really said? I'll have to see. Your general thoughts on Piers Morgan when he was a news reporter in America.

I'll tell you, if it wasn't for Twitter, I'd have no idea that there was some issue. I don't care about Piers Morgan. I want to be explicitly clear about that. I guess he got into some trouble in, in the UK for, I don't know, defending the Royal family or saying harsh shit about Meghan Markle. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know. And I, and I frankly don't care. Uh, here he was, I'm not sure what the UK equivalent would be, like who has gone to their shores and done something similar. You know, you don't remember about Piers Morgan being on American television? He had Alex Jones on set, and they just were arguing about gun control. And it was the dumbest fucking, you know, there was no,

what could you, as an observer of an exchange between two adults, what could you, what benefit could you derive about understanding the gun debate in America by listening to that? I mean, you know, it's remember that what he tried was loud, but I think he mistook loud for bold, which they're not the same thing. It was loud. You have to understand something about Americans. Americans love, they don't say this out loud, but just as the way in which we have Brits in our lives, Americans love to be lectured by Brits.

They say they hate it, and I guess on some level they do, but they actually like it. He's popular, obviously, in the UK too, but there's a reason why Gordon Ramsay is popular here. It's like this abusive chef. Yeah, I'm not saying if he didn't have an English accent it wouldn't work,

but having one certainly helps. John Oliver lecturing Americans. He's an American now too, but, you know, you get the idea. He has a very thick British accent. And, you know, just sort of going over the state of American politics. Like, we just love that kind of a thing. There's just some sort of, like, child-father relationship with the UK in certain ways. And I think he was hired kind of in the spirit of that. I mean, he was controversial

for what he had done, but there was always this, I think the underlying element to it. But to be candid, he did not make a huge impact here at all. No one talks about him here. If they talk about him here, it's only by virtue of him getting dunked on Twitter or something he's done on the air in television in Britain. Here in America, he was a very short-lived... People just were not interested in what he was selling at all. And again, the lasting memory I have is having Alex Jones in a... If you've never seen it, I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere.

When I say it's a shouting match, you think, oh, it's just two guys yelling over each other in the way that cable news typically provides. No. No, no, no. Much worse. Much worse. Hey, Luke. John Cavanaugh was recently on BT Sports Open mat.

Okay. And when asked about the trilogy fight versus Poirier, he stated that the camp has now dealt with how to use and defend calf kicks. Do you think Conor's camp may be dismissing Poirier's overall skills and performance that he displayed in the fight, and this will come back to bite them in the ass? Or do you think that in the trilogy, if Conor can attack with calf kicks and show solid calf kick defense that the result will be in his favor. I think it's incredibly foolish to count out Conor McGregor in the trilogy. Now, there's a couple things you should mention with that. One, typically in MMA trilogies, if there is a big gap between the first and second fight, typically the fighter who wins the second one wins the third. Uh, it shows that, you know,

because what ends up happening is there'll be like the first fight that again, sometimes there's immediate rematches, but a lot of times there is a lot of time that elapses and then they make the second one. And then that's controversial because now they're one, one a piece. And then they redo the third one relatively quickly. And so for those reasons, there isn't much space between the second and third fights, in the case where there might be a big space between the first and the second. So you often see a lot that if you won the second one,

you're probably going to win the third. Keep that in mind. I don't think that they're dismissing Poirier at all. That was a very humbling moment. I mean, obviously you can take it the wrong way if you want to, and be like, oh, let's just work on Capcooks and everything else was fine. You know, before I didn't want to come down and be like, oh, Connor has to play mind games to win. And I still don't think that. I may have talked about on this live chat previously. I do think it's at least worth considering maybe he's lost his edge a little. Which by the way,

by itself doesn't mean he won't win. But are you getting the very best version? Under what conditions is he able to be his very, very best? And obviously, part of that is training right and being in shape and the right weight class and blah, blah, blah. But I don't know. I kind of wonder, like, do I need him to do something crazy and say outrageous things to opposition in the days leading up to the fight for some cheap titillation? It doesn't do anything for me. Your mileage may vary, but I don't need that.

But I think the dude who did that was also, I don't know, maybe a little bit more dialed in, maybe a little bit more on edge about needing to win. I don't know that that's true, but before I thought it was definitely not true. Now I'm not so sure. I'm really not so sure. So whatever adjustments they're making, if there is a competitive ambition issue, it doesn't matter what else they do. So it's something to pay attention to. Again, do I know that it's real? I do not know that it's real. I'm just thinking out loud.

No, I do not think they're dismissing Poirier's overall skills, but I'd be curious to see what those adjustments are. Are they going to have his feet rotated over more naturally, almost maybe a little bit, something closer to square, so that he can rotate out that front foot far enough the way around, so he's not bladed anymore with his stance. He's a little bit more square. And that gives him the time to rotate through.

That would be interesting to see if that's how that stance switch, or not switch, I should say, that would be interesting to see how that stance change ultimately impacts things. The thing that I would say also is, Poirier even said he got hit with one where if Conor had followed up, it might have been trouble for him. Conor still landed in that fight. He popped Poirier's head back several times. It's true that it's much more than the leg kick. Poirier's boxing is way better. He got his timing right away. And that check right hook, we went over it in detail, was masterful. So it's clearly much more than that. But if you take away the leg kicks, there's a question of like how much more even the fight becomes sort of MMA boxer to MMA boxer. I tend to think it actually does get more competitive.

But we'll see what defenses he comes up with. We'll see what new wrinkles Poirier comes up with. If the fight is back-to-back-ish, for that reason, I don't like Conor's chances. But I would be crazy to dismiss him. There's just a lot of questions, dude. What is going on with your career? Which is kind of a big question. And then two, to what extent does changing your stance in a way that enables you to check leg kicks, how does that change your game? And there's just no way to know the answer to that. Not for him anyway. Any follow-up thoughts on the Rogan and DC situation? People

were calling for them to never be allowed to broadcast again, which is crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. Seems like Joe Stock particularly has been dropping with MMA fans for a while now. Not sure what to say about that exactly. I do see more complaints on Twitter, but it's hard to know how real that is in terms of being representative of the wider fan base. I'll say on social media you detect that more. Yes, that's true. Look. I'm in a slightly different space than everybody else.

Not everybody else. Than many people. That sounded stupid when I said it that way. If you go and watch, go and watch, I don't know, BJJ Scouts breakdowns, any of my technical difficulties, any of the,

whoever, whoever's in technical difficulties, um, any of the, um, whoever, whoever's in a, you know, to your mind, a sufficient job and explain the details of a fight that happened, go back and look at their explanation. And this is what folks don't do, but I really strongly recommend you try after you're done watching whoever your favorite breakdown artist is, then go back and watch the fights and see how much they talked about that. And sometimes, and I've seen this even with very good commentators, like commentators who are better than I could ever be if I tried my hardest every single day. So even with them, these are incredibly talented commentators, they'll miss almost all of it sometime.

Not because they don't know what they're looking at, but because it can be hard to make judgments. If you're just one fighter, you're kind of an autopilot to a degree, and you're making judgments about another fighter. And they pick up on some of these things, but these broader trends through a fight, if a fight goes, for example, three, four rounds, the commentary rarely matches what is the driving

factors in what is making a difference in winning and losing. There are exceptions to that. I tend to think Josh Thompson might be one of the most underrated commentators that we have. For that reason, he's very good about making an immediate assessment about what is happening and how it fits into the larger picture. But that's hard to do. And even he will miss it sometimes because it's just, dude, MMA commentary is really difficult. It's really difficult. And it's gotten to the point for me where I'm not really listening to it, man. Like I'll hear it, you know, I'll be, it's, it's, I'm not completely ignoring it, but it doesn't, I don't, it doesn't meaningfully enhance the broadcast for me anymore. It used to, it doesn't anymore. Uh, for for me anymore. It used to.

It doesn't anymore. For the most part. You know, exceptions here or there. And so the complaint, I think, has been a couple things. One, that they were really biased against Blachowicz. I don't think that's untrue, but I definitely don't think it's intentional in the way that people have sort of suggested. Like, you know, Dana's like, Izzy's our guy. You should do it.

I just think that when you get into a conversation, two people will make something a focal point, and then they'll just revolve around that for the sake of the conversation rather than, you know, trying to do the most scientifically unbiased assessment of what is happening. There are sort of conversational rules, which doesn't say they couldn't do necessarily a better job about curbing some of those excesses, but I don't think it's the end of the world. The bigger question is, like, what do you want out of the commentary? Because the bigger thing for me is there's going to be moments of bias in one fighter's direction or the other. But the biggest issue for me is that it sounds like a fight companion, less of a commentary gig. So if you want a fight companion,

you're in luck with that pairing because they seem to really enjoy each other's company in that way. And it tends to devolve that way. And I tend to think the producers might want that because they keep pairing them that way. Um, or do you want something a little bit more where, you know, sometimes, you know, Dominic Cruz doesn't have to be adversarial with Joe Rogan, but maybe taking a different response, staying real analytical, real eye on the ball kind of a thing. Um, yeah, I think that that's fine. I think you can probably get, you know, it's enough to... How do I say this? Maybe that's something they could do more of.

But, you know, Dom was fighting that night. That wasn't going to happen. Yeah, I'm not sure what people want. I'm not sure what people want. I tend to... Yeah. I don't... I don't get a lot of MMA commentary these days,

for the most part. And it's because it's insanely, insanely difficult. As for Rogan, he's in an interesting space, right? If you go back and you watch old broadcasts, it was him and Goldberg. So he had much more analytical work to do at the time. Now the fighter does the majority of that. So he kind of does the in-between, the Max Kellerman, which is like narrative meets some technique assessment

and the kind of space in-between. But the question is, are you getting enough of that, given the relationship with DC and how chummy it is, to maximize that role? I think there's probably some things that are in order for review. This is an important question. I'm glad you asked it. Any chance for technical difficulties on Yon versus Izzy? I got a two-parter coming your way on that one. I actually, I wish I had my, did I upload that? No, not yet. I actually recorded it when I was in New Jersey. Recorded it on Monday night and I did not post it because one, I had these, I have my

brand new, where are they? Somewhere around here. I had my brand new, I'm trying to pack light now when I go to New Jersey, cause I'm always packing a shitload of camera and audio equipment. And so it kind of winds up being like three, you know, a backpack, small luggage for clothes, but then a fucking huge bag for production stuff. So I was trying to go minimal in this. So I brought my road, uh, go to Mike's sound. Wasn't great, but that really wasn't the reason why I posted it. The reason why I didn't post it was I'm not changing any of the analysis, but there was when usually when it's over, I've kind of poured out the cup of what I had to say. And it was funny. I actually,

I was on my work computer, which is like a 13 inch MacBook pro it's it's it's okay. It's not great for heavy needs like video editing. And I was only shooting in HD and I couldn't actually get it out. It wouldn't export. There was something going on with Final Cut Pro at the time. And then I was thinking, you know what? I didn't say this in the video. Ah, that's okay. I'll put like a little descriptive note. And then I was going back and I was watching other parts while I was trying to get this thing out. And I'm like, I didn't mention that either. And so I kind of decided, you know what? I'm going to do this differently. So here's why it's two parts. One, we're going to do one on Jan, just Jan. Two, we're going to do one on Adesanya. And

the reason why people are like, oh, here comes Adesanya praise again. Well, there is some Adesanya praise in there that I think is missing, but it's actually the opposite reason. The reason why I'm going to do a separate Adesanya one is that, listen, I've been bigging up this guy for two, three years at this point, and he finally took an L. I can't go all the time and tell you all the wonderful things about him if when he suffers a loss, and it wasn't a devastating loss. I mean, he wasn't viciously KO'd or something, but it's a loss. And so there are some criticisms that need to be made of the way he fought

and particular strategies or tactics that were employed or not employed. And if I'm going to give you three years of praise, the least I can do is give you one video after that of fair and I think very important criticism. So we're actually going to do one praising Jan. We're going to do one, I think, fairly. It's on the loss that Adesanya suffered. Like, what did he do in the grappling context

that was so critically important in terms of how it went? And also, like, restating the context of the loss. Like, what exactly does this loss mean for him? Competitively, not like not like you know stock as a star that's not what obviously technical difficulties is about so fuckers you would have had one earlier um but i wanted to do it right so and i know i've been like insanely off the mark on those in terms of consistency i don't know what to tell you you know it doesn't matter

anymore because you won't believe it and and I wouldn't expect you to. But yes, there are two of those in the works. One of them should be out today, by the way. Should be. Not guaranteeing it, but should be. Okay. Hey, Luke, I found the discussion that you and BC had on Monday regarding Aljo gained the title very interesting.

During the discussion, BC said that if an illegal strike is landed in a title fight, then it should be ruled in no contest, and that the belt should be vacated with no holder. Surely this could never be an option, as it would leave open the opportunity for a fighter who is aware that they are losing

a fight to deliberately throw an illegal strike in order to prevent a loss on their record. I think it would also prove advantageous in terms of a rematch being more likely due to circumstance. However, as an alternative, if a championship fight has passed three rounds, what do you think of the idea

of going to the judge's scorecards and awarding the win to the fighter who has received the illegal strike if they are winning on two of the three judges' scorecards. If that fighter is not winning, then the belt would either be retained by the champion if he received the illegal strike or made vacant by him

if he was the one disqualified. Love that idea. Yeah, you're right. Brian's idea was characteristically terrible here. I'm joking, little ones. People are like, you're so mean to Brian. I'm like, I'm actually not mean to Brian. The fun I'm having is maybe being mean, but Brian and I are fine.

We're adults having a professional conversation for fun, which includes and is not limited to taunting one another. I thought that would be pretty obvious, but you would imagine it would be, but it turns out it's not. As to the nature of your question, here was the biggest problem for me is, and I said this on the show, if you guys missed it, it went something like this. You know, if Tom Brady takes a sack, right? His offensive line failed him and he takes a sack.

And it's a a sack, right? His offensive line failed him, and he takes a sack. And it's a vicious sack, right? They might add on some kind of extra penalty beyond just, you know, roughing the passer or something, right? In the awarding of what they can do, but it's already defined. Once you call what the penalty is, that's it. Like, that's the rule. Now, I understand that if the guy can still fight,

you don't want to call the fight off. But at the same time, you can't tell me what happened on Saturday is the ideal way to do this. As I argued on the show, did he act? Did he not act? Who gives a shit? You'll never know. It is entirely plausible that he did, or that he was injured in some kind of way. And even if he wasn't, he is incentivized heavily to lie about it. What do you think is going to happen? Yes, you will get the occasional Anthony Smith that will disregard all that, and that's nice,

but you're counting on someone adopting a norm. I don't count on that in life. You know what I count on in life? What are people, whatever else, what anyone tells you, what are they incentivized to do? Because nine times out of ten, that's what they're going to do. So you can't tell me that, and we're sitting here watching Aljo, you know, like it's some kind of, what are we,

directors in a fucking Michael Bay movie? And we're judging auditions? What is this? This is the dumbest shit on earth. You know, there's got to be a better way. And so, to your point, if you want to just call it, dude, that hit was so fucking egregious. To your point, we're just going to go to judge the scorecards that is such a disqualifying uh shot so manifestly out of bounds uh fights over and we're going to the scorecards

you know you're you're not allowed we cannot trust you to compete anymore all right some some kind of idea like that uh i'm not opposed to that i am candidly not opposed to that I actually like Big John's idea where you should have taken two points from him you know if Aljo could continue which you know is whatever it's his own thing but like that seems like you know if right away right away I would have wondered what would have happened

to the fighter because now the incentives are changing a little bit what would Aljo have done if he had seen Jan early, quickly, had two points taken from him? How would that have affected his calculus to the extent that there was any kind of way that it could? And again, it's entirely plausible that it couldn't have.

But if you're just waiting on this situation to be a function of how convincing you find the writhing in agony of a professional fighter that's that seems real dumb doesn't it that seems real dumb you know oh i uh i once sprained my ankle in sixth grade and it really fucking hurt but i didn't roll around like that i once bumped my head on the you know moving my college friend into his sixth floor walk-up on the Lower East Side, but I didn't move around like that. I think he's faking it. All of this totally anti-medical bullshit that people are coming up with. Oh, I, you know, I've watched a lot of MMA. I've seen a lot of KOs and, you know, what is that supposed to mean?

You know, the medical doctor says there's a reason enough for him to consider it to be bad enough they shouldn't continue. End of conversation. End of conversation. All that shit about, you know, whatever. You guys know what I'm talking about. It looked like whatever it looked like, but that just, you know, we're sitting here watching like, Hmm, how, how convincing is this? Oh, I didn't roll on my left side when I got kicked in the ribs by my, my friend's horse when

I was visiting his farm. And I don't know if this is real or not. Like, what the fuck are we doing? None of us are in there. None of us have been kneed in the fucking head flush by Peter Jan. Peter Jan. You know, and none of us were dealing with that shit. Like, if you're going to make it about how that dude looks after that, yeah, he's going to look like shit. And he's probably not going to want to fight. And who the fuck can blame him, especially when he's incentivized to not fight take the decision making out of their hands

thoughts on how susceptible izzy is to kicks to the body and legs his wide stance and defense of pulling his head back seems like opponents could have success. Jan landed quite a few, and it seems it could have kept going back if he wanted to. The body kicks were good as he was retreating. That's true. The leg kicks I did not think were game-changing. I did not find them to be that. They were good on the occasion

for a little bit of roughing him up, but Jan was good about checking kicks. Izzy checked some kicks too. I did not find that to be, not like nothing, but I did not find that to be a major contributor. But I do think you're right, and we'll go over this with the takedown stuff when the video comes out,

but when you're planting your feet and you're doing that matrix thing where you're going all the way around, right? You're going all the way around and whatever. Yes. you're doing that matrix thing where you're going all the way around, right? You're going all the way around and whatever. Yes, you're going to be creating a series of openings that your legs are literally out in front of you. And if you're good at retreating, John Jones is really good at retreating. What did you notice Dominic Reyes do? Go to the body, right? So if someone's just always kind of out of reach

with their head, tear him up on the body. That's exactly what you saw. Where does Blachowicz rank among all-time Europeans in UFC history? Wow! Now isn't that a question? Man, I've never thought about that.

That's a great question. Where does Blachowicz rank all time among Europeans? Well, certainly if you've got a title, you're going to be near the top. There's many, of course, who have belts from Europe. But, you know, not many. But, you know, it's a relatively elite club. Let's put it that way. It's an elite club.

Okay. I'm not trying to diminish it. I'm just trying to say it's not like two people, but it's not a thousand either. What has he got to be? Top five? Something like that? Can you believe that he lost to Alexander Gustafson? Right? Gustafson? Right?

Gustafson out-wrestled him because he was getting lit up on the feet a little bit, but Gustafson out-wrestled him. And Gustafson gave John and DC all they could handle. Never got a title. And here's Blachowicz fucking putting up title defenses. Isn't that unbelievable? If you would have told me Jan Blachowicz is going to achieve higher highs than Alexander Gustafson when that fight was

over, I would have been like, are you out of your fucking mind? And he did. That's what I'm talking about, dude. Everyone's like, I've been, I've been believing in Jan for a while. Will you please stop fucking lying? Will you please stop lying? It's fine to believe in him the last couple or something, right? But before that, dude, when he beat Luke Rockhold, you may have said you know, I think he can give him a run for his money or whatever, but

the idea that what you knew dude, that was the first fight after losing to Tiago Santos and yes, he had a four fight win streak before, but not against credentialed opposition. And then he goes on this just bat shit amazing run. Can't be stopped.

And look at him now, dude. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy how good he's gotten. And how much he's achieved. You got the belt and you defended it? Fuck. And you did it against this transcendent middleweight star? Wow, man.

Has one fighter leaving a division changed another fighter's career in the way that Jones leaving light heavyweight has changed Blachowicz's? Well, when St. Pierre left, Lawler, you thought Hendricks was going to be the heir apparent, but it turned out to be Lawler. He got a boost. I'd say DC got a boost when John left, right? Because he was able to become champ champ that way.

You know? Not left, but was ineligible, inactive, whatever you want to say. Not many guys hand it back. You could make a case about Figueredo. I mean, there's not many times where someone just leaves a division or hands back a title to motherfuckers and says, figure it out. You're asking more about just any one person leaving.

But it's usually some that, what, you know, it's usually like some kind of figure like GSP. Like if it wasn't for him, would Fitch have been champion? It's a reasonable thing to think about. Hi Luke, how are you? How's the diet going? You're doing any cardio? You're just throwing weights around with the homeless bloke. Long time listener. Keep up the good cheers. No. No. Although there were construction guys out in front of my yard and today was front squats. So they thought I was the weirdest motherfucker ever. I sent a picture of what I was

doing to BC. He was like what did he say? This is literally what he said when I was texting him. He goes that is very white trash of you. I was like, yep, yes it is. Okay, so everything is going good. Obviously, I have wrecked my body and I look like absolute shit,

but I am doing everything that I'm supposed to be doing. For cardio, I don't do anything specifically other than try to stay active, walk the dogs, that kind of a thing. But let's see, I'm lifting five times a week. Largely hypertrophy, not doing so much powerlifting because I'm on a calorie deficit. So I'm not going to be hitting any new PRs anyway. And with, I mean, I'm still doing some stuff, deadlifts, squats, some bench, not a whole lot of bench, more overhead press. But other than that, it's just all accessory work. So, um, so anyway, I'm on a program there and, uh, I'm trying to get the hypertrophy in because I'm

trying to do more volume to downsize. Right. So if you're not going to be putting on crazy PRs, which I'm not going to be. I'd rather just get more volume in. Plus, I feel a little bit better with the volume in that way. And then the diet. The diet is good. I've been on it for a month. Something like that. I have to go double check.

I could be a little bit wrong about that. Maybe a little bit longer. I'm not sure. But to this point, it's weird. Have you guys ever done flexible dieting? So flexible dieting, if you're familiar, then you probably know better than me. But this is the best way I'm going to explain it. It's basically just math, right? More or less. It's just math. At the end of the day, it kind of takes the mystery out of dieting a little bit, like what works and what doesn't. What can I eat? What can I not eat? You kind of know a little bit. So basically every day you measure your macros, your proteins, your carbs, and your fats,

okay? And you have a certain threshold you can have for all of them. Now, some days, if you want to mess with your metabolism a little bit, you can still stay an overall caloric deficit, but you change up the calorie intake each day so that you're not, let's say, at 2,500 calories every single day. Some days you're at 2,200. Sometimes you're at 2,800. You're sort of messing with it. But the general point is you stay under those macros,

and those macros and that caloric load are essentially about each day about 500 calories less than what you might have for normal metabolic functioning, sort of weight maintenance, just staying the weight you are. And you just make sure that it may take you a little bit of time. There's some mathematical formulas about ways you can derive this. You obviously want to get the math right about how much do I want to shave off each day and what kind of allotment do I want to have for my three pillars of what I'm eating. But once you do that, you can basically have whatever you want.

I certainly like to keep it to things that are... The one thing about flexible dieting that you end up eating is you end up eating a lot of deconstructed foods. I don't make a lot of dishes. I more just cook proteins and then cook vegetables and then decide how much within my limit can I have some rice, can I have a cup of rice? Where does that fit me into my carb macros? That kind of a thing. And so I eat food that's kind of pulled apart. It's not mixed together in some kind of way. So you end up eating deconstructed food. But if you exercise, if you decide you want to allot your macros that way and you want to have, I wouldn't have a donut because that's a lot of calories, but let's say, I don't know, a Pop-Tart or something. I'm

making something up, a Pop-Tart. You could find what the nutritional value is for that and it will fit into your macros. And so what ends up happening is the whole idea is not to demonize any kind of one form of food, right? Like, oh, I can't have carbs or sugar's bad or whatever. And certainly you want to make sure you limit your intake of any of these kinds of things. But you know, the real, the real way to weight loss, man, it's just caloric deficit. Like I'd say you see those dudes who was like, I ate McDonald's for a year and I lost weight. And the answer for that, the reason why is because they just, a, you know, calories in calories out, right. Um, they just maintained a caloric deficit and and they lost. So, like, every day, dude, that's a fair bit of math that I don't enjoy. But it's just math.

It's just math. So I've gotten better about it. I've put a few extra rules about it, about what time I stop eating at the end of the day, although that doesn't necessarily matter. It's just a personal one. It's going good, but I have absolutely wrecked my shit and I look terrible. But between the lifting and now the caloric deficit and this better sleeping, I'm already feeling better. I have the Inzer lever powerlifting belt. You guys ever seen this? It's

a huge belt. I don't have the 13 centimeter one. I have the, the one that's for normal people, not the huge, you know, 400 pound behemoths of a strongman, but it's a lever. So you flip the lever, but the lever sits on the belt via two screws. I've already had to put it back, uh, two notches. So I'm pretty happy about that. I'm pretty happy about that. But I also have a incredibly long way to go because I did a lot of fucking damage. I did a lot of boozing over the last few years. I did a lot of work at the expense of my personal health. That's another reason why my personal channel is kind of languishing at the moment. It's because it's like, okay, when I got up this morning, what did I need to do?

I needed to do a bunch of errands and pay bills and research and get ready for tomorrow's morning combat. I had to get ready for today's live chat, but there's some time in there. How I want to allot it. Do I want to go lift weights or do I want to, you know, um, make a video? Well, you know, which one is more important? You just, right. We've talked about this. How do you get to a a goal there's many reasons and many ways in which you're going to a goal accomplish and um you should listen to folks who are good about that but certainly one thing i've told you guys that i know to be true you do things doesn't matter if you want to do them oh i i don't feel like working out well what does you feeling like working out have to do with anything i didn't feel like it i don't give a fuck it's like did i feel like working out. Well, what does you feeling like working out have to do with anything?

I didn't feel like it. I don't give a fuck. It's like, did I feel like doing front squats today in front of a bunch of construction dudes? No. No, I didn't. But it doesn't matter what I feel like. You just go do it. So it goes well. What is it? The 11th of this month. So let's check in the last Bellator show of April. So let's check in on the 16th and we'll see where things are then. It just takes time. It just takes time. Especially when you've done as much damage to yourself as I have.

But, you know, I'm on my way. Yon was reacting to Adesanya's feints But he was also landing Do you think Yon was biting on the feints intentionally So he could get Adesanya to then fall into his own traps? No Although that's a good question Here's what I noticed on the tape. Adesanya would throw a series of feints, get a series of reactions, right?

And he would attempt the next stage of those things. But then when he did, he ultimately would not pull the trigger. Now, his volume was higher here than it was in the Romero fight, although that's not necessarily saying much, but you actually go back through and you watch. I think Adesanya was very fearful of the countering, particularly the lateral countering. Oh, my God, my back. The lateral countering. Oh, my God, my back. The lateral countering that he had coming his way. He was very worried about it.

And so he was doing a lot in terms of feinting and stance switching and combining everything the way that Adesanya does to mess with range, get a little bit closer, see what was out there. But there's a lot of times, man, where you see him feint, blah, blah, blah, and you'll see Jan swatting the flies or whatever, and then you'll see Adesanya build on it, right? So before he'll try to hit faint, hit faint, hit faint, hit faint, get some kind of reaction.

Then he'll pick his leg up, pretend like he's going to throw, use it to step and switch, and then get him closer to the target, right? It's a common one that he does. And then he wouldn't throw. He would just kind of back out. I tend to think that, like, he did have Adesanya biting, sorry, he did have Blachowicz, excuse me, biting on the feints. That's true.

And then you heard the commentary team talk about it. What they didn't talk about was why didn't he follow up as much? Why did he have a lot of feints that led to retreat or no real strike behind them? And I tend to think it's for all of the biting that Blachowicz was doing, he was still nimble enough to get a good counteroff, and he probably hit fucking hard, man. What is the best defense for lower weight fighters aside from stepping out of the pocket? Slip, block, parry, all of them. You need all of them. Seems at higher weight classes,

it's much easier to slip. The punches aren't as fast, but you could still slip. Slipping is a very, very hard thing to learn. I've told you this before. This is not a slip. It's could still slip. Slipping is a very, very hard thing to learn. I've told you this before. This is not a slip. It's not a slip. A slip is this. Like not even, just like a little bit. Just a little bit off to the side. It's barely off to the side and then you come right back, you know. Or you can throw off center, but if you're just slipping, it's just a little tiny movement. Like the punch goes right by. That's a hard skill to learn, y'all. Very, very hard skill to learn. But you can do it.

All of those things are involved in lower weight class fights. All of them. What are some good dumbbell exercises for beginner weightlifters? Man, I cannot tell you guys. I wish I was fucking 14 or 15 now. Only because when I was a kid, dude, the way you learned how to lift weights was you went to a busted ass rusty fucking gym with, you know, barbells, you know, and then the standard kind of weighted plates. But like, it was always someone's older brother who didn't know shit about what he was talking about, who was trying to tell you what the answer was.

And they didn't know movements. They didn't know progressive overload. They didn't know, uh, programming on a mezzo cycle. They didn't know any of that shit. And that was how I learned. And I had to unlearn everything because eventually you're able to buy like flex magazine, muscle and fitness, Arnold Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding encyclopedia I became aware of it you know so you you could begin to piece things together there but today man you can go on youtube and just be like full body workout beginner dumbbells and it'll just be rows of shit that come down I would say a lot of things. If you have, depending on what kind of dumbbells you have, if they're a little bit sturdy, you can use them for snatches,

dumbbell snatches. But you would want to think about all the different parts of your body you can work. So how about quads, legs? You can do goblet squats. For your hams, you can do Romanian deadlifts with the dumbbells. For your calves, calf raises, single arm with a dumbbell. You could spread your legs really far apart, and then you could put the dumbbell in the middle, and you can work with the abductors and abductors in your legs, depending if that's something you want to do. You could do lunges while holding dumbbells. You could do, you know, all kinds, you could do dumbbells while you, while you, you know,

kneel, press overhead at the same time. I mean, there's a million things you can do for that. For the low back, same thing. You could do some kind of, you could do dumbbell deads, although you have to be a little bit careful about that, but there's ways in which you can, you can accommodate them. You can do it for the triceps, dumbbell kickbacks. You can do, you could do dumbbell deads, although you have to be a little bit careful about that. But there's ways in which you can accommodate them. You can do it for the triceps, dumbbell kickbacks. You can do skull crushers. You can do overhead presses.

You can do overhead extension for dumbbell curls. But you can do curls out in front. You can do curls far behind to get the different heads of the bicep. Obviously, for chest, bench, incline, decline, flies, abs, you can sit up with them for shoulders, front raises, lateral raises. You can do pullback for the back of the third try. You can do shrugs for your traps. You can do upright rows with dumbbells for your traps.

Overhead press, you can do Bradford pressing. Even with dumbbells, you can do Arnold pressing. Overhead press. You can do Bradford pressing. Even with dumbbells, you can do Arnold pressing. Those are awesome. The Arnold press. Obviously Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of patented those. Those are great.

Overhead. Again, dumbbell snatches. Dude, you can do all of that shit. All of it. All you need. Obviously all you need is body weight to really get swole if you want to. But man, I'd named 5% of things you could

do. 5%. After Jan's impressive grappling performance against Aljo, how do you see a Jan versus Suhudo fight going? Boy, I hadn't even thought about that, and that is a very good question. Hmm. Wow, that's really good. How would you see a Yon versus Suhudo fight going? Um... Jesus. fight going. Jesus, you really stumped me on that one. I'm trying to work it out in my head. You wouldn't want to stay too much at range with a guy like Peter Jan. You would probably want to back him up, control him if you could. You would probably want to stay on the front foot with him,

backing him up inside boxing range. He's got more tools at range, and then locking up, the juice ain't worth the squeeze given how good he is at it. But if you can back him up and kind of put a jab in his face and really, you know, make him fight going backwards inside that range, I think Suhudo has a chance. But outside of that, in those other ranges,

you kind of like Jan's chances. That's a fucking great, great, great question. All right, what time is it for? So we got a little more time left, but let's get to some good ones any thoughts on dan hardy being fired or is there not enough information to say anything yet i don't have any more information than you guys have i hit him up but he didn't give me anything um you know i think the world of dan hardy I cannot imagine what he did to get fired. I would have, you know, who knows? I don't know. I don't know. I've always had just really good

relationships with him. Sterling's, this is a good question. Sterling's post-fight behavior has turned a portion of the fans against him. I recall a similar occurrence when Woodley beat Lawler for the title and proceeded to call for the money fights. Do you think Sterling will I don't think so. Maybe he will. Because Sterling feels like if I adopt the villain role, I will be tacitly admitting that I am some kind of bullshit champion or something. That the whole thing is a scam, even though it's not his fault. I don't think he wants to do that.