MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Bellator 263 Recap: AJ McKee Submits Pitbull | UFC: Strickland Beats Hall | Ep 187

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

On Episode 187 of MK, Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell recap a BIG weekend in combat sports, especially for BELLATOR MMA where rising star AJ McKee submitted 2-division champ Patricio Pitbull at Bellator 263. Where does this night rank for the promotion and will they be able to keep McKee long-term. Plus, in the UFC, Sean Strickland impressed in a UD win over Uriah Hall. Also, some big fight announcements were made over the weekend. Michael Chandler vs. Justin Gaethje for UFC and Vadim Nemkov vs. Anthony Johnson for Bellator. The guys react to them. 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

back like a bad habit on the 2nd of august 2021 it's your favorite podcast it's the only podcast that you really need we can just be honest with you it's morning combat hello everyone i'm merely one half of your hosting duo i come to you live from the capital los estados unidos here in washington dc my name is luke thomas and i'm by Royalty on the right side of your screen. I believe it's the right side of your screen. He is, well, he's Connecticut's finest because he's its king. It's Brian Campbell, who also has, I guess, AIDS. I don't know.

What's going on, BC? How are you? Are you living? Wuhan got you all in check, Luke. We're there. I hope everyone out there is healthy and good, Luke. Back up, back up, because it's on LTMK and me, the B to the C. Luke, I am fired up, not just because a star was born over the weekend at Bellator 263,

but, you know, it's Monday, Luke. Let's fire the people up. Let's let them realize that even though it may look dark and damp outside, metaphorically, the sun will shine, and MK's there for you. We're ready to lift your spirits, talk some combat, and continue to brainwash you MKUltra style and let you know that we're your friends for life.

We're the only two people you need, all right? That's it. We're your two dads. Yeah, my two dads. Wasn't that a show in the 80s, My Two Dads? Great show, great show. Stacey Keenan, Greg Evigan, Paul Reiser. Great show, Luke.

Okay, so that's us for today. You remember that theme song, Luke? You remember that theme song? You can count on me. Well, where you go, you can count on me. We should make that the MK song, right? Someone's got to pay for that. So probably going to have it anytime soon.

I will say this. I want to tell everyone who is joining us, thumbs up, hit subscribe. We gave you guys a post Bellator 263 show on Saturday, but there's still a whole lot more to get to. Of course, is where you can follow us and everything else. So like and subscribe,

follow us on social, the whole nine yards. I mean, I don't know what you're doing, but if you haven't gotten Showtime yet, no time like the present, and you missed a big one, but we do have good news. First, you can go to Showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial. Second, I believe there's a replay, if I'm not mistaken, BC,

tonight at 10 p.m. in the east on Showtime Extreme. Did I get that right? Absolutely. Not only recap the biggest fight in Bellator history, certainly, and lived up to it in spectacular fashion, but a fight card full of Dagestanis taking over, Luke. We'll have more on that to come in this show. But a very fun... Look, you got to say this, Luke.

We're not getting into the analysis now, but you got to say this. This was Bellator's stage. Bellator didn't disappoint. They brought it. It was a great night. Listen, we hammer Bellator when they suck, but when they're good, you got to give them credit. And we definitely are going to give them credit.

That show, from the prelims on up, delivered in a big way. There's that. Okay, we also have merch. MorningCombat.store for mugs and hats and beanies and drugs and probably cbd and probably i don't know condoms and weightlifting gloves and everything else on there you can go to morningcombat.store for everything you might need and uh oh would you green light some some paraphernalia what does that be an mk bong anything you know i mean if showtime wants to

sell it and it would do numbers i don't give a damn what we put out there i don't know you know defibrillator i mean whatever whatever the people need luke that's right um and then last but not least i think we need questions for some mailbag segments that we're going to be doing so as always we ask you to scam the system by going to Apple Podcasts, leaving us a review, and then in the review, asking us a question. It could be on a little more of the sporting side. It can be a little more on the playful side if you like, but you've got to go and scam it.

Give us a five-star review and then put a question there. And, Luke, we were told that if you have already done that during previous MK bonus mailbag shows, all you have to go into is edit the previous post you had, and it will reappear at the top of the feed. So your question will get read. Luke and I, to repeat, do have some vacation days coming up, but we want to fill your hole, so to speak, by pre-recording some fun bonus episodes.

So please join us on that journey right there. There you have it. I think that is all of the preamble that we have. So without a moment's notice, let's just get... Oh no, Luke, Maniche wants us to remind the people to vote on all these podcast awards. Oh, right. Right, right. How could I forget?

So there you can see the URL. So first for the World MMA Awards, the 13th annual, you see the URL there. You can go to worldmmawards.com slash nominees. You can go and vote for MK for best MMA programming alongside programs that are just a lot bigger than what we do. So if we win, it would be something of a, you know, the little engine that could kind of thing. I think we have the other one too. I want to see you get positive about this process, Luke.

Don't try to paint us as the number 16 seed. Oh, can tiny Princeton backdoor its try to paint us as the number 16 seed oh can tiny princeton backdoor its way to beating georgetown in the 89 first no this ain't it luke okay we're on this stage because we belong okay so uh as far as i'm concerned it's more like contender series like maryland can eat a big fat dick right embedded eat a big fat dick uh dc and helwani dick okay all right you know where i'm going with this okay you want everyone to eat dick uh all right podcastawards.com slash app slash sign up for best sports podcast as well as best male hosted podcast uh you can go do that too so

either one of those would be great we appreciate it and if we win trust me our bosses will be very happy all right all right so with that out of the way bc let's get now to the topics at hand would be great. We appreciate it. And if we win, trust me, our bosses will be very happy. All right? All right. So with that out of the way, BC, let's get now to the topics at hand. We didn't get to UFC on Saturday. We will get to that. But let's start with what was the biggest and frankly the most important MMA over the weekend. And I would argue pretty unequivocally that's going to be with Bellator. Bellator 263 took place over the weekend. and this was one of the better Bellator shows in a long time, to be quite frank with you. In fact, I said this on Twitter, because before we get to the opening topic, I don't want to say that every Strikeforce show was the grand moment, and they all felt so fun, and they were always filled with the elite talent, and it always delivered. There were a lot of duds that Strikeforce put out along the way,

but you had a bit of a moment in time where you had a second promotion that could still deliver high-level MMA on a reasonably consistent basis. Strikeforce felt like Bellator 263. True or false? Yeah. Yeah, it did. It did, Luke. So here's an interesting deal.

This could have been, Luke, we still could have got the same outcome meaning meaning uh aj mckee proved that he is the real deal and he and he you know wins the featherweight tournament the one million dollars the the world title all that stuff we talk about pound for pound number one beats the best fighter in the history of belter he could have done it luke a five-round boring decision and we would have come out of there going okay you know belator had its big moment. We learned what we were supposed to learn. Let's move on and see what's next. Instead, AJ McKee, after a round, hit a triple-double and hit an absolute monster home run for the promotion. And the reason why that is important, Luke, I mean, there's a lot of reasons. Let's not overlook

the fact that he's a grassroots developed star and that Pitbull, you know, who made his Bellator debut in his 13th fight was the face of the franchise. It was all that stuff. But timing is everything. And this was a night where UFC happened to put out one of its, you know, weaker cards of the calendar year, a main event people weren't kicking doors in to see. Fights falling off left and right due to COVID. So Bellator had the night.

They had the trending. They had the people's attention for a moment just like this. A.J. McKee fulfilling the prophecy that he put out there, but doing it in perfect GIF form, perfect internet high light reel form. Yes, Luke, this felt like Strikeforce at the very best because Strikeforce at the very best because Strikeforce at the very best was legitimate competition to the UFC. And while this card for Bellator doesn't put it in that category where we're like, oh, let's, you know, watch out UFC the next two weeks. Bellator is going to,

you know, break your ratings. No, it's not that. But Bellator needed to keep going in the right direction. They've got the tournament formats on lockdown, and they're killing them. Now they're building grassroots stars. They're signing the right free agents, and they're developing the right younger fighters, particularly from that region in Dagestan, where this night just all came together. It felt big.

Having fans back in the arena at the Forum was very important. You had the hometown boy making good here, and AJ, when Compton and Long Peach get together, Luke, you know they are trouble. And it just came together to feel like the major leagues. This was a big win for Bellator, one that they can build on, one that they can continue to build A.J. McKee into the star that he looks to be. And really, like you said, did it feel a lot like Strikeforce? For the first time in a while, it really did, Luke.

And I think that's a big win for Scott C coker and company all right no doubt about it so let's talk about the fight itself here bc first question about everything biggest takeaway from from the fight from the monster win what's your biggest takeaway from the win and how it all happened that aj mckee wasn't just you know phenom phenomenal on on the certain level right eight second knockout of georgie carcani and 71 second submission of darian caldwell but that when he stepped up to the very top he kept the same energy he went for the same flashy risky at times uh moves and he pulled it off look because he is a dynamic force he's huge for this weight class he's young athletic strong confident all of these adjectives that we did in the long form previews that we talked about to build to this fight you know there was a hesitation even

in both of us luke even though i picked makita win i picked him by decision there was a hesitation to believe he could do exactly what he did to everyone else on this build to 17-0 against somebody like Pitbull. So I think the fact, Luke, that he was able to go out there and kind of look like Michael Venom Page, right? Go out there and look like a video game fighter at this level?

Dude, that was special. That's my biggest takeaway. That this isn't just a great Bellator fighter. This is a great fighter in period so luke when you talk about the global rankings at 145 if that's even a thing you have to try to consider aj mckee at the very top and in that mental math that we're forced to do when fighters cannot fight each other try to figure out where the hell does this place him among the best feather weights in the world he's 18 and oh he's

got bellator records for most finishes most consecutive wins he's two away from most wins in company history i mean this was a massive statement luke that if you're bellator and you want to compete against everyone else in the world you got to have must see worldwide players who aren't just attractions because of carnival or celebrity nature because they may they just might be the best in the world they have that now in aj mckee that's big luke he is who he said he was that's big luke admitted it's fucking big luke it's big yeah you don't have to get me to twist my arm to say i completely agree i mean it's so usually when a good night happens or even a great night there usually is some kind of thing you could point to.

Like, well, you got this, but you didn't get that. You missed a little bit of this part, but you got that. You make a series of examinations and there's trade-offs. You'll take something good that went right for something that was missing. So, for example, everything could have gone well, but let's say that the hometown crowd didn't show up or the fight wasn't in his hometown crowd. Or there'd be something kind of missing there. But here it's like all the hometown crowd didn't show up or the fight wasn't in his hometown crowd, or it'd be something kind of missing there. But here it's like all the boxes got ticked. Let's see violent finish.

Almost two of them check, you know, authoritative win, check, swag, check press conference that, you know, kind of set the tone, check, end of a tournament, check in his hometown, had him eat out of the palm of his hand by the time that was done. Like it was as close to flawless sports as you're going to get. End of a tournament, check, in his hometown, had him eat it out of the palm of his hand by the time that was done. It was as close to flawless sports as you're going to get. I mean, that's really what you're looking at here. Sometimes they say truth can be stranger than fiction.

I wouldn't call this exactly strange, BC, but what I would say is if you were writing a script, you would have written in some kind of adversity, perhaps. You would have written in, I don't know, some other element to make it seem real. This was just one-way traffic, essentially. The wind at his back, basically, since September of 2019, if we can be honest about it. And he just kept going. You know, it was kind of funny.

I was thinking about this, BC. If the tournament, which got started technically in 2019, if everything had played out normally, would he have still won? And the answer is probably yes. I mean, we'll never know, but yeah, I think at this point it's fair to conclude that he could have won it. But the fact that it was delayed, I mean, part of the reason why this was so overwhelming, BC, is I almost get the sense that he was overdue. This was supposed to happen last year. It wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have happened in 2019, but it was supposed to happen in 2020.

Kind of like midway through as a matter of fact. And yet he got, everything got delayed with COVID and blah, blah, blah. So by the time it finally arrived, he didn't want to wait anymore. He didn't feel the need to like make it anything other than what it was it was clinic clinical excuse me it was fast it was thorough and it was again it was about as perfect as sport endings get and you know what you need aj mckee aj mckee is now a a clear player uh for pound for pound certainly among the top featherweights in the world and is a budding star in this business and when you talk about the perfection of the night for aj for bellator you know by extension showtime whatever however deep you want to go or just mma in general you need the right dance partner luke had emmanuel

sanchez beating pitbull in the semi-finals which their rematch of their first fight which was close down to the final round it could have happened right if aj goes out there and does that to emmanuel sanchez great fighter emmanuel san, not saying anything wrong, but we wouldn't have had this level of validation. The fact that he did it against Pitbull, who as you said correctly in the buildup, was just as impressive as McKee, if not more given the level of competition he had to face on his side of the bracket, not to mention as the champion, you get no favors in this tournament. You got to fight five round bangers one after another. The fact that he did it against Pitbull, who everyone worldwide at this point has woke to and realizes this is a legitimate all-time great fighter. It's not a guy, one of those rare guys, Luke, who's never walked through the doors to the octagon, yet that hasn't held back his reputation and his legitimacy. And this was a full validation because he did it to Pitbull

and because he did it in McGregor-Aldo-like fashion, which I thought was very apt. I don't know if you were the first one to bring that up, but right when this ending of this fight happened, it had a lot of UFC 194 overtones to it. Absolutely, it really felt like that. What a spectacular performance when the stage was the brightest. But Luke, before we continue to bust out that champagne

and if you're going to come, come on bro. And these guys, they were coming. Can we just talk about this stoppage? Because when we did the reaction show, I joined you mid-show after finishing up on CBS Sports HQ. I really hadn't, you know, Zapruder'd the footage. Upon watching it another 49 times, I've come to realize, Luke, that I'm not so secure anymore in the idea that it was a perfect stoppage. It's not a bad stoppage. The limp right arm of Pitbull did, it was, you know, that's damning evidence, but I have to ask you a critical question here, Luke. I think McKee

did a great job in selling the finish to referee Mike Beltran, but, you know, verbally, like, look, this guy's out, call it, call it. But do you think someone of Pitbull's history, toughness, credit, you know,idation credidation credit accreditation look is that a word yeah accreditation okay i'll take that credit issue i'll call a drop out here um did he deserve better luke straight up yes i'm wondering if the colleges you went to had accreditation um i i will say this i think that it's not a perfect stoppage and i too kind of afterwards was like, eh, he was still a little bit with it.

But the two things for me that make it forgivable, well, I would say three. One, Pitbull didn't really complain afterwards. I mean, he kind of did in the initial moment when he was, like, coming to, but not really. So that's the first. Second thing I'd say is you notice the limp arm. If you're hand fighting and then your hand goes limp, that by itself is not necessarily the reason to do what you want

to check and whatnot and there was some of that but it's a bad sign and then the last one was he didn't drop to the mat directly like leota machida did when john jones had him no it wasn't that but if you notice he lets go a beat or two passes before he's even able to look up. Because I don't think he was out, but he was clearly about a second or two away from going that direction, probably. And he had to get time for literally the blood to go back into his brain so he could resume cognitive activity. I'm okay with it. I don't think it's the cleanest stoppage I've ever seen, but I think it's justified under the circumstances. And referee Mike Beltran, we don't really complain about him very often on this show, if ever.

I can't remember the last time I thought he had a bad stoppage. I think this one, remember, you got to grade referees not so much A, B, C, D, F, but pass, fail. And this, to me, is a pass. This one gets a grade of passing more than it does the other one. Luke, he's on top of it. You see how he takes a second? He kind of takes a second to get his legs under him like that.

But to be honest, though, McKee did have, not purposely just the way the fight played out, McKee did have Pitbull's face shielded from the referee's view. So that's why I think the limp right hand was sort of that key character. Yes, stop the fight. I see it. But it may not have been perfect. Pitbull still could have been there. I think given his history, if he could have done it over,

he deserved a little more, even if that means McKee was just going to deliver more punishment to finish it. I think Pitbull deserved better, but I want to ask you this question. In pro wrestling, Luke, they don't always love clean finishes of one guy beating another. Why? Because it gives the image to the fans who pay that this guy is definitively better than the guy he just beat so sometimes they do things luke the term is to like keep to protect someone's heat they'll have a guy

kick out on the three count right he'll lose but it shows you that he was fighting until the final second or they'll have the bad guy pull the tights so you're like okay good guy lost but bad guy was cheating do you think pitbull because of the somewhat controversial nature of this and because the fight only lasted two minutes retains a great deal of heat and credibility from this he's still the lightweight champion under bellator it's a little i don't it's a little fluky right i don't know if people can argue that be like how do you say this fluky i mean mckee dominantly defiantly won but we really didn't get to see just like aldo mcgregor what the fight really was going to look like do you think pitbull retains a great level of of of the

legitimacy he brought in because of that uh i i mean in terms of like rematches which we'll get to like you know can they do a 155 i don't know um but i mean yes they could I don't know if they will but I think the thing for me is you know Jose had to go out there and win some hard fights afterwards to get back what was lost a little bit you know and even then um uh I don't know that all of it is fully get back a bull I mean this is a big moment man and you know he didn't really to say he didn't show up is like not true because I think he was well-trained, but he just got run over. He got run over by the moment. Again, people always want to forget about bad parts of the resume

and just stack up the wins and say, well, what does the accumulative weight of the wins mean? And you can do that partly as an exercise, but the full resume is both the good and the bad, and this bad will damage his brand. But the thing is, I think you had said this on Saturday night, and I concluded the same, which was, okay, everything about this was amazing, but we still don't know what it looks like if AJ McKee is tired

from somebody just wrestling him to the ground for four rounds and avoiding submissions. We don't know what it's like if he gets poked in the eye and can't see, but the fight continues, or he gets hurt with a really bad body shot, or separates his rib, or breaks his hand, or whatever. What kind of magic are you able to provide when those kinds of bad things happen? We've seen Pitbull

overcome some of those things time to time, which isn't to say that AJ can't. It's just there are still a lot of unknowns. So what I think is going to happen here is AJ's got a series of difficult challenges in front of him. We'll see how he does. Pitbull's got some work to do to get back his brand. Now, the one difference between him and Jose Aldo, BC, is he is still the one 55-pound champ. I want to talk about that in just a second, but let me ask a different question back to you.

Everything about AJ McKee's success is attributed to him, but he's got a partner and that partner has been, and is now only ever been Bellator. Can they keep him long-term? It's it's, I know, I know it's folks don't want to have that conversation, but I don't think it's out of bounds. I think it's fair.

Maybe they can, maybe it's even the likeliest possibility, but we're allowed to have this conversation. Do you think they can do it? Well, I think the better question is how do they do it? Okay. And you look, here's one thing I want to just put out there. Okay.

Anytime I've asked Scott Coker, I've heard him asked about competing directly with the UFC. It's same thing in pro wrestling. When AEW or new Japan gets asked about competing with WWE, everybody's got the same answer of, oh no, we're not competing against them. We're just doing our own thing and staying in our lane. And Luke, to me, that's bullshit, right?

Because when you go into this game to be the best and everybody else is comparing you against them, so you are competing. So they've got something big on their hands in Bellator with AJ McKee. Now, you've got to feed them. You've got to feed them a few different things. You've got to feed them money, first and foremost.

You've got to feed them crossover big big opportunities and i thought from that degree scott coker in the post fight press conference had largely the right answers look what scott coker talked about is he wants to get him out to the masses meaning aj mckee so he wants to put him on big cbs in fights which look strike force is the comparison here. When Strikeforce put Fedor in before that Elite XE put Kimbo, I mean, the masses, different time with TV ratings before streaming and all that, but the masses showed up on CBS. The masses did, and it worked. I like that idea from Coker.

Let's put him on CBS. This is the right guy to do that. Coker even said, let's consider pay-per-view. So that's good, but i think the key thing is what aj said luke because look he was asked in the post fight press conference a lot about you know how do you think you stack up against the best featherweights in the world and inevitably you're talking about max holloway brian ortega and you know andga, and Volkanovski. So that's just what it is, right? AJ gave the kind of answer that basically teased to like, he wants to change the game,

he said. And what he's meaning is he wants to face these guys in sort of big cross-promotional things that we just don't see in today's MMA, right? We got enough of those issues in boxing where the biggest promoters and rival networks barely ever come together unless it's like Mayweather Pacquiao or Wilder Fury. Luke, it sounds like AJ is basically saying I'm willing to, now this is me paraphrasing, this is me putting my own two cents into his words, but it sounded to me like he was saying, you know, long term, I'm going to want to fight these guys and I want to change the format, you know, and that's going to mean, Luke, some type of cross-promotional thing.

Strikeforce did it in the past with M1 to be able to get Fedor. UFC famously said, hey, Vadami, go pound sand, brother. We don't do that here. Luke, do you think it's as simple as this? You can pay him all you want. You can put him on pay-per-view. You can put him on big CBS. You can get big ratings. You can make this kid a star. You can get him on pay-per-view. You can put him on big CBS. You can get big ratings. You can make this

kid a star. You can get him endorsements. All that stuff will help keep him happy. Keep looking out for good opponents you can crop up and build up to face him. But will he have to, will Scott have to find a way to make, to do the impossible, to make the long-term super fight against other promotions

to actually keep him and keep him happy look well they might keep him but not because they're gonna change the game there is no change in the game at least not by their own actions what do i mean by that listen part of the reason why the ufc is in such an advantageous position everyone's like oh if you don't like what ufc does just go do your own but the argument is total nonsense because there's a finite amount of elite fighters in the world and if they have access to the majority of them let's say 80 percent or so give or take and they got them under onerous contracts where they're very very hard to get out of it takes time and whatever

you know there's a lot of different sort of elements to it it makes any kind of rival promotion not just difficult but technically impossible that you can do other things you can change the rule set you can get your own collection of elite talent you can do what you do with aj mckee start them young build them up through all the various stages until they get to the most elite side and again that's a unique advantage bellator has but no it aj might be right in the sense that by the time he wants some big fights, maybe the Ali Act gets passed. Maybe there's a change in the industry in that sense. But no one's going to make UFC do something that they've never, ever shown interest in doing.

And frankly, in their minds anyway, would be bad for business. The one thing that I will say that I find very interesting is short of the Ali Act getting passed or whatever, is listen, you've got to think about something here. There's a new generation of fighters. And I still think push comes to shove, they don't unionize on their own. But I do think that these guys who are 20-something, 24, 25, I think AJ's 26,

I think they see a couple things, BC. I think they see the evidence about fighter pay and they realize that there probably could be a lot more coming their way under different circumstances. And if you think about who Jake Paul is, Jake Paul is not AJ's peer as a fighter, not even close. But they are, what, 24 or so, 25 versus 26. One's obviously a bigger star than the other. But you see a guy like Jake Paul out there making a point continuously about pay, continuously about fighter rights. I think a guy like AJ McKee probably absorbs. He's not, he's not dumb at all. I think he absorbs a lot of these lessons.

I think he might try and box either the Paul brother or something else. He might try clever workarounds and whatnot. And I think that, look, they kept Michael Chandler until 34 years of age. So the answer was, oh, could Bellator keep Michael Chandler? Well, technically no, BC, but they got the very best out of him, basically. They got many, many years, many, many great fights. By the time he went to the UFC, I'm not saying it was immaterial, but it wasn't like they were getting robbed per se.

You might find something similar, one of those different paths for AJ McKee. It's interesting, and Scott Coker did say, you know, exactly what you said, that, you know, maybe down the road, boxing those Paul brothers is something that could be in the cards. AJ said he did want to box. Heck, he said he wanted to box Mayweather,

not something I see happening, but he did say it. Luke, how big, and I'm not talking commercially, I'm talking size and weight class. AJ's huge for this featherweight division. He said in the post-fight press conference that unless, basically unless there's a giant fight, he actually might be done at 145, and we already know his want to go up to 155 and run it back with Pitbull

and try to become a champ champ. But how big do you think he can go and wait and still be effective, given that he does have this very long frame? Sorry, my alarm's going off because I didn't sleep last night, and I don't know what the hell's happening. I think he can easily go to 155. I don't think the 155. Also, you've got to remember, the 155 division isn't nearly as good as the 140.

The 145 division is of 135, 145, and 155. So, let's say, like, well, I guess they had 125 too. No, no, they didn't. They didn't in the first. So, I guess of all WEC weights, right? 135 to 145, 155. Obviously, they had more than that, but at a time, they just had those three. 145 is the best. Far and away. Like, not even close. So, I think he could go and honestly whether it's against Patricio or his brother or frankly anybody else I like AJ's chances to win that title up there too man I really think he can go and I don't know if he can maintain injury-free life with enough frequency to defend both titles BC but you're asking like does this guy have double champ

potential I'm gonna to say easily. I actually wasn't asking that. I almost felt that was a given, not a given that he would win at that weight class, but a given that he could compete and potentially be a favorite, you know, and be there and compete at 55. It's not that much larger than 45. He's already big for the weight class. I'm talking about welterweight long-term, Luke.

Do you think that, do you think he has the body? I think he's got the skill set and the speed. Do you think he has the body long term for for the right fight for that no but i will say this another dude again he's 26 by the time he's 34 right what's mma going to look like i don't think it's out of the realm of possibility you could get a 165 pound weight class and then you could push all the guys who are true welterweights up to 175 and is there some possibility there now we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves with this because you guys just won the featherweight crown but but to your point like yes there are some ways i think mma by the time aj is done is going to look a lot different than when he got in it i really do um whether that's part of it or not that is something

we should take seriously but at 155 yeah i yeah, I think he's going to do extremely well, even with the caveat of we still don't know a lot about some of his limits. We know a lot about his upside. We don't know a lot about some of his downside. And look, that's why I think the McGregor-Aldo comparison is so apt, because we still didn't know what that fight would have looked like if it went more than 13 seconds. At that point, we still didn't know what Conor would have done against a wrestler in a full camp. I said coming into this fight, we and AJ doesn't know how great AJ can be.

Now, he disagreed with that when I asked it to his face, but I still think that's where it's at, Luke. We don't know how great he can be. Is he just a a dynamic flashy striker who's who's hitting land in the hits one after another or does he have all those same intangibles that'll be needed that you mentioned the ability to come back on the score cards to fight through damage it's going to be a fun ride finding that out all right so point number two we kind of alluded to it here a little bit BC BC, but let's play matchmaker if we can. All right, so Pitbull still has a championship belt at 155, although obviously not at 145 anymore. You have a new champion, AJ McKee, at 145. There were some questions about where they go from here. So for point number two, BC, simple kind of question. If you are Bellator, how do you match make AJ McKee there you know it's it's interesting in terms of the

possibilities but hello Patricio's not done he still holds a belt he still might want to get his belt back what do you do with these guys I think you have to build on the momentum of this fight I think you have to play up as a positive the fact that the fight was so short the fact that just maybe just maybe the stoppage was disputable to, again, you know, retain heat for Pitbull. He still, you know, was the face of the franchise coming in with all those accolades. You have to match these guys up against each other within the next year. Does it have to be next? Not necessarily. You could convince AJ to defend his title. And by the way, Luke, you know, someone like Mads Brunel looked, I thought,

great in that co-main event, a very close fight against Emmanuel Sanchez, a former two-time title contender, where he's on a seven-fight win streak. I wouldn't hate that fight. Does that mean you want to give Pitbull a comeback fight? There's a lot of things you can do here. But if Pitbull's intentions are to hold and defend that lightweight title and not, let's say, give it up to give his brother, who's the No. 1 contender, a chance,

then it just makes too much sense that you would run them back against each other, win the next year, and you would do it for that lightweight title. Giving AJ a chance to carry the two belts on his shoulders, I think, is something that you talk about keeping a young star happy. I think that's a, you know, he's talked about that forever. He claims long before Conor was champ champ, I was the guy saying it. I mean, i mean look to aj's credit luke he's been saying a lot of things for a long time it's just he hadn't had the resume and credibility for a lot of people to listen so i yes i think the rematch at lightweight is the fight to make for all we know again not dissimilar to let's say you want a young Young-Jacek against Rosnami Yunus. Part one was a smashing.

Part two, five-round classic title fight. For all we know, this rematch, Luke, could be that same exact thing. And can you imagine if Pitbull should win that rematch, then you've got a trilogy, maybe even more on your hands for these two. So I would not go veer

anywhere away from getting these two back together. Also, you have some real potential about this guy's ability to king make. Let's say you went the route of Pitbull versus AJ McKee 2 up at 155. Let's say AJ wins. Tougher fight, but whatever. Still gets his hand raised. I mean, you still have to confront a future BC.

And I was going to say, I'll save most of this for my odds and ends. But usman number gamedov is a 155er you know what i mean and he is coming down the pike like a fucking freight train and you know you've already got habib cornering him as you pointed out on saturday night well and wearing the bellator swag and everything else whether it's intentional or not um that dude's coming and there's a lot of other guys right behind him so it's like uh you have a chance of potentially having aj and a number gamedov fight i mean that you know you're sort of the royal family so to speak of russian mma versus the american i don't know equivalent exactly but you know father son father son kind of dynamic although usmanman is obviously a cousin. In any case, there's some ways you could do that.

I actually think you want to keep him at 145. If I'm Coker, you could do the immediate rematch, but then he has to defend those, and what happens at 145, I don't know. But if you stay at 155, BC, here's the only downside. You've got to confront the fact that you've got Godzi, Robodanov, and Usman Nurmagomedov, and Kassan,an megaman sherapov with their sights set on that and i have a feeling that one of them three is going to win it do you think young aaron pico ever faces aj mckee for the belt or featherweight title that'd be a marketable fight super marketable but he needs still some time and

development everyone everyone develops at different rates in different ways you know aj got the proper development the proper slower push along the way they shoved fucking aaron pico to the front of the line and obviously he stumbled as a consequence but i feel like he's really rounding out his skill set i think he's getting a lot better so we'll see you have to say look you and i don't love the idea that in MMA, everyone's endgame is still to go over to boxing, usually to sell their soul in a fight they can't win. You and I talk about that all the time. That's a broken system. Sometimes it has to do with the fighter pay model, especially in the UFC, but it is what it is. But if you're AJ, you could be in a far worse place than be with Showtime, which has the Bellator contract, has Showtime Championship

Boxing, and also is in the Celebrity Crossover pay-per-view boxing game. So, look, I mean, do I want to stand against a Paul brother? Not necessarily, but, you know, there is potential fun things you can do, just like we thought was going to happen with MVP. Remember, MVP took that boxing pro one off, and he looked pretty good, and we're like, oh, maybe long-term they do something there. So there is things you can do to get creative. I'm just trying to think long-term marketable-wise, who are the names? That's why I brought out Welterweight. What if Dylan Danis can become something, Luke?

Is that a fight you can make one day? I'm trying to think in the Bellator roster creatively, who are we not thinking of? But, you know, look, this is one fight, one victory. You got to keep winning. So we'll see what happens. know look this is one fight one victory you got to keep winning so we'll see what happens let's take it one step at a time yeah they got magamon sharapov listed at featherweight i'm told he can go up to 155 if he wants to but yeah um listen i think they're probably going to have usman numurgamadov maybe fight goichi yamauchi who both had nice big wins on this car because that would they would match up really well they both

have to strike it out, and if it goes to the ground, they both have different skill sets there. That could be a lot of fun. But, dude, that guy is not far. One of them two, and most likely Usman, is not far from a title shot at 155. And I think you want to be careful about,

is AJ competitive against them? I think he'd be very competitive against them. But the question is, what do you want to do with that long term? And you just got him in this major celebratory moment do you want to risk having that run over for a guy who's an incredible fighter but maybe not a dynamo on the mic and everything else like at pitbull at a bare minimum was poking the bear with snoop dog usman number gamedov ain't that guy so something to think about all right let's get to some ufc if we can bc point number three man this was hard to watch I was kind of

watching out of the corner of my eye when the Bellator fights were going on so I revisited it later geez it just felt like he was fighting underwater BC Uriah Hall was soundly defeated by Sean Strickland now it went the full distance don't misunderstand it and there were definite moments where you could tell Uriah Hall was trying to push back. He was trying to will himself in there. He didn't quit, you know, and again, there were pronounced moments of trying to put it back on Sean Strickland, but really it was not a lot. It was mostly Sean Strickland backing him up, landing heavy volume, occasionally getting takedowns, working from turtle, beating him up. BC, is the story of the fight how well Sean Strickland performed, or is the story of the fight how poorly Hall performed? This is about Sean Strickland, Luke. In the end, look, this was

Uriah Hall's 37th birthday, and he wasn't coming in as damaged goods. He won four in a row. Questionable maybe on the last two of the overall value against injured veterans or old veterans. But look, Hall was trying to get one final stand here, and Strickland beats the brakes off him. Look, this is the food chain, the life cycle of combat sports, you know, veterans giving way to the youth on the way up. Strickland came out there, and his boxing was phenomenal. But look, it was that power jab. Uriah Hall was squinting very early from the power of just every time he got touched.

I think the story here is Sean Strickland, again, a guy who, Luke, we don't talk about him, right? You know, I'd seen him fight before, absolutely. But it wasn't a guy that was on the forefront of my mind when I'm talking at the middleweight division. You know, who's got next long term? Wake up. This is the guy. Hey, BC, Sean Strickland's the guy who's coming. You know, who's got next long-term? Wake up. This is the guy.

Hey, BC, Sean Strickland's the guy who's coming. You know, he's coming five in a row. And, Luke, he kind of made this look easy. His stand-up was great. When he went to the ground, there was really an energy, an electric ability of his ground game. The transitions, the fever pitch at which he went for finishes. I was thoroughly impressed across the board at his five-run stamina, at his toughness. To your point,

Hall attempted to try to rally back and empty out what was left, and he gutted it through, but, you know, his eyes were banged up, Luke, and I think the fighting spirit in the end just kind of got knocked out of him, whatever was left. This is what happens at the end of a career. And, you know, he had a good run there recently, but I think it's over. Sean Strickland showed you that he's ready for the smoke in the top 10. And this was as impressive as you can do it on this type of stage. And then you throw in some of those psychotic sound bites, Luke, that he threw out there, not just after the fight when he basically said, hey, Ngana would knock me out,

but I'll do it for the payday right now if you want to, or what he said in the press conference before the fight. I'm sick like that. I'm looking to kill a man in the cage. I got no shame about it. I mean, you watch more of this guy's interviews, Luke. You're like, I don't know if he's got a full deck up there, but he's got a full game, it seems. Good ass win, okay? This ain't about Uriah Hall at the end of the day Luke yeah no this is a guy who you just can't make the mistake early on in someone's UFC run you get an impression about them like oh yeah they're pretty good but whatever and you know they're not going to really

be the guy that contends for a title and I don't know exactly how far Sean Strickland will take it I guess time will tell but he had a record in this fight I think most uh significant strikes landed in a middleweight fight most attempted I think he significant strikes landed in a middleweight fight. Most attempted. I think he's got the longest winning streak in this division at this point. The dude is doing something pretty impressive at this point, and it needs to be acknowledged. We said it, I think,

on Friday. I'm not going to attribute it strictly to this, but I will say training with Kamzat Shemayev in the way that Sean Strickland had described it, which is if you don't bring a ton of internal fortitude to the sparring you know yes technical sophistication matters but you really got to have your head on a swivel against this guy and you got to bring a certain level of intensity I think that with the overall development of Sean Strickland's game it's always pretty good it's gotten much much better now he's doing real stuff plus dude he just had a certain attitude in this fight. Now, they were, again, a little bit later, fourth, fifth round.

It wasn't quite the same intestinal fortitude, but by that point, it was a little bit too little, too late, right, BC? Because part of going out there and then hammering someone with a jab, there's lots of reasons why you might do that, but one of them, one of them will be, I'm setting a tone, okay? This is how this fight is going to be all night as long as it lasts. I'm going to set a tone right now. It reminded me like there were times where we, you know, I've had really tough workouts and like within the first 10 minutes, you knew, shit, man, this is going to be one of those days where I'm going to probably, you know, exhaustion puke and whatnot.

And you think to yourself, fuck, but you just got to get through it. You do enough of those, it changes you as a person. You become much more hardened to the difficulties that these kinds of things throw at you. And so it looks to me like Sean Strickland has made technical maturation a part of his journey, fair enough, but he's made competitive maturation in ways that have made him, how good he was before it's taking it up another notch and yes he says shit about smoking meth and trailers and you know he would love to kill a person and he's a little bit he's a little bit out there fair enough but there's a lot of it out there when you take someone who's very good with a at least to start to start an indomitable

spirit and you put those two together against anyone who's not there to match that right away, you're going to fight out of a deficit for 25 minutes. And that's more or less what happened to Uriah Hall. I thought it was interesting because the first two minutes of that fight, Michael Bisping on commentary basically said what we were all thinking coming in. You know, you can't stand for a long time at that mid-range against somebody like Uriah Hall. He'll make you pay. He never really did, Luke, and I think it was the power of that jab.

I think it was just the constant pressure with just enough movement where Strickland was never an easy target to be hit. And any time it looked like Hall was going to turn it on a bit, specifically in the tail end of that fourth round, it's like Strickland met that energy and just put a little bit more on top of it and snuffed it out right away. And, look, this was very impressive. Luke, you know, we've seen guys show flashes, and, you know,

this is a tough level. The Uriah Hall level is tough. But we've seen guys show flashes, and then you put them in a five-round environment and, you know, maybe they don't look as strong the final two rounds. I thought this was absolutely thorough, and he was still going for the finish in the final minute of round five, meaning Strickland. So, yeah, put the psychopath in there against everyone else, Luke. Let's see what happens.

He's an interesting player. Yeah, no doubt about it. So what would you like to see him fight next? Did a matchup stand out to you about where he could go? You know, he didn't hate the idea of a Kevin Holland fight, Luke. I want to know if you hate that idea. That would be high-paced between two guys who don't give an F. That could be wild.

Would that tell you, though, enough about, like, we just learned what he is against the Uriah Hall level, a guy ranked eighth coming in, four-fight win streak, decorated history. Is Holland a step back in your eyes at this point? He is. He's ranked 14th, although I agree it would be fun. Another one you could do would be Kelvin Gastelumum darren till edmund shabazian these are kind of the people around the space that he's in the shabazian one's kind of interesting because yes sean strickland can mix it up he can go to the ground and he can do ground and pound for sure um but he puts pressure standing and i wonder how a

guy like shabazian would deal with that that That'd be kind of interesting. Maybe that's a little bit too much too soon, but the Gastelum fight, the Darren Till fight, the only thing I would not necessarily say he bought himself with this win was like, oh, let's give him someone in the top five. I still feel like that six, seven to ten range,

one more of those to really see, and then if that goes well, then yes, no doubt about it. If you're UFC and they don't seem to turn away from giving people the microphone or the spotlight if they're crazy, do you think they play up as craziness, Luke, or just let it play out how it's supposed to? No, I think that's just who he is.

It used to be. I remember when Frank Mir said he wanted to have the first death in the octagon when he fought Brock Lesnar, and he lost. Well, there's some debate about this, but soon thereafter his commentary gig was gone from WEC, and the UFC was very, very worried about it. But now people are just kind of taking it for what it is, which is just sort of insane talk.

But I don't think they're amplifying it. I think that's just that dude can't talk without that kind of insane talk. But I don't think they're amplifying it. I think that's just, that dude can't talk without that kind of thing happening. And then, you know, the video of them slapping Orlando Sanchez or getting slapped or whatever it was. He's a wild man. He's a total wild man. I now, you know, would like to get him on the show, Luke.

I want to find out, you know. But we'll match crazy and see who's left standing. I kind of feel like it'll be him. So there were more announcements over the weekend, BC, but there were two that stood out that I wanted to talk about for today's show on point number four. First of them, well, I'll just say both of them. On the UFC side, Michael Chandler versus Justin Gaethje was announced.

And on the Bellator side, Vadim Nemkov, your ranking Bellator light heavyweight champion, taking on Anthony Rumble Johnson. Okay, I'll just throw it to you, BC. Your reaction to these bouts being official and now scheduled. Well, let's separate them, Luke. First of all, the Chandler-Gaethje is about as sexy a fight as you can make in this entire sport. I mean, you tweeted it out.

It's just obvious this is like fight of the year waiting to happen. Full-on savagery a very important fight in the lightweight standings and the fact that they're going to put it in madison square garden as the reports look like luke uh with that what was the main event that they had uh they had considered but usman covington colby and usman too yeah i mean that card which for first of all i love with the exception of the the cormier uh Derek Lewis card which had some fights fall out last minute we didn't end up getting Poirier and Nate like we wanted they have properly loaded up those MSG cards and kept that as a as a big you know tent pole as Uncle Scott would say every year

as they should by the way especially how long it took to get there but Luke I mean that that fight is going to be freaking bananas I can't even see it going past one round, Luke. I cannot freaking wait to see that. Dude, you could almost put that as the main event. As great a fight as Usman Covington 2 is, the hardcore fans wouldn't blink an eye if suddenly Gaethje Chandler was your main event. That is great shit. Thank you for booking that UFC.

Give me that. I mean, people were disagreeing with me. They're like, oh, that fight might last a round or go seven minutes. go seven minutes I'm like well first of all you would then get round of the year second of all there have been many fights that were just around or around and a half that ended up qualifying and even winning well depending on who's saying it fight of the year like that's in no way disqualifying to me that it's a little bit shorter and yes if it goes a minute or two because someone gets viciously KO'd maybe not in that and yes if it goes a minute or two because someone gets viciously KO'd maybe not in that sense but if it ends up going around or around and a half

I don't know why that would make it something that wouldn't be listed on at least on the on the short list for fight of the year but you're talking about I mean understand what this bout is between Chandler and Gaethje you're talking about two guys who are generationally some of the most important action fighters of our time here. Justin Gaethje easily fits that bill. Michael Chandler does as well. And what's notable, BC, going back to our previous conversation, these were guys who were kind of orbiting on the outside of the UFC, and they're able to meet by coming together there.

I think that's part of what the UFC's appeal is. It's like if you really want to fight the best, what they're going to meet by by coming together there i think that's part of what the ufc's appeal is it's like if you really want to fight the best what they're going to say is uh we can bring the talent here so come here if that's what you want to do something to keep in mind but to your point it's impossible for that one short of injury or some kind of you know unfortunate circumstance influencing it just Just a fight itself. It's impossible that that will be bad. And then look at where it leads us. I'd love the loser of that fight to fight Tony Ferguson.

I'd love the winner to fight the winner of Poirier and Oliveira. I was just about to say, there's a million different ways you can go with that. And if Gaethje gets a win, by the way, you know, with no more Habib there, Gaethje versus Poirier 2 is not going to look like Gaethje versus Poirier 1. I have a strong feeling. So there's a lot of different way you know with no more habib there gaethje versus poirier 2 is not going to look like gaethje versus poirier 1 i have a strong feeling so there's a lot of different things you could do that i mean that gets me legitimately i gotta look i am rock hard with emotion about where the top of the lightweight division is going right now in just terms of like hammer versus hammer arm and hammer luke i cannot wait for this but uh switching gears to the bellator fight

announcement luke i don't think it's just that fight look this is a big night for bellator october Arm and hammer, Luke. I cannot wait for this. But switching gears to the Bellator fight announcement, Luke, I don't think it's just that fight. Look, this is a big night for Bellator. October 16th on Showtime in Phoenix, the next step in the light heavyweight world grand prix. Main event, Vadim Nemkov versus Rumble Johnson. Co-main event, heavyweight champ Ryan Bader versus Corey Anderson. And they obviously have a long history, know each other very well.

Luke, this is, you know, if you want to build momentum for Bellator coming off of this big night at 263, this is the right card. I know it's a couple months away, but dude, Rumble versus Nemkov for the title, tournament or not is appointment viewing. That is going to be some great theater

because Nemkov is so much more a complete fighter at this point. And Rumble just got touched up by Jose Augusto of all people, yet can end a fight at any freaking time and still looks to be as dangerous as shit. I cannot freaking wait for that fight. Give me that. I'm not here to say that Bader versus Anderson is some kind of throwaway fight. It's not. But it's not in the same action vein as Chandler Gaethje or even I

would argue I guess we'll have to see but I guess it doesn't on paper it doesn't seem like it would deliver in the way that Nemkov versus Johnson might we've been seeing in the praises again say the things when a promoter tries to lie to you and say that their bad things are good you know you got to call them out but when they say that their good things are good and they're right you got to back them up dude Vadim Nemkov is the real deal Holyfield now I don't know if he wins this fight but I guarantee there's a good chance of it uh number one number two if he does win it it might be via stoppage this guy is as good as any top five light heavyweight on earth and maybe the very best one he is a hammer and Anthony Johnson you rightly put

it couple of issues with that first fight. But in the end, the big power showed up, and he dropped Jose Augusto or Jose Augusto like a bad habit. And here he is just giving Ryan Bader no space to breathe whatsoever. That fight is amazing. The first seven minutes of that fight, Nemkov, Rumble, are going to be incredible. because if Nemkov takes Anthony Johnson into the deeper edge, he's going to gas him out.

He's got a motor, Nemkov. He's fantastic on the ground. He's a great striker. But in that first seven minutes, Luke, Rumble can take your lunch and your credit card and your world title. He can knock your ass out. That's going to be great. Give me that.

Give me that shit, Luke, please, okay? It's very, very good. Early, I give you the right to change your prediction over time. Do you have an early sense about either one of those fights? Yeah, I mean, look, the smart pick will be Nemkov based on the ease in which he did that to Bader, right, who is reformed and in a very good spot in his career. He should.

He should be able to beat rumble johnson but even though rumble showed us some holes in that comeback from a long layoff due to retirement um there's still he's in great shape there's i mean he's still gonna be uh you know he's gonna have a shot here luke okay he's not washed is what i'm saying. Fair enough. All right. So point number five, last but not least, there are a bunch of fights this weekend coming up, including but not limited to UFC, I should say, 265 BC. Okay, in your main event, you got Derek Lewis taking on Cyril Ghosn. But up and down the card, what it looks like to me is,

obviously with the departure of Amanda Nunes' fight against Juliana Pena, in the sense that there was at least two title fights on the card, it's lackluster in the sense that there's nothing really as a sales angle for pay-per-view. However, if it was a free fight night card, we'd be singing its praises for that. So in that spirit, BC, what fight are you most looking forward to at UFC 265 there's about three or four hardcore specials on this card they're very good fights and they would they would fill out any strong pay-per-view card to get you excited and that co-main event which has now been bumped up due to Mandy falling off is Jose Aldo Pedro Munoz look that's a great fight it's an important fight

in the Bantamweight title standings but that fight's going to be an absolute banger, Luke. I can't wait to see it. Jose rebounded very nicely against Marlon Vera after those high-profile losses. And, you know, I've said it before, I'll say it again, Luke. I love this older version of Jose, one weight class down, which I'm still shocked that he's able to make this weight and look that good. He's a headhunter, man. I mean, he can finish a fight at any time. He's not as thorough as he was in his featherweight title days. He's not committing to the leg strikes as much,

but he is an absolute, as you would say, and we're abusing the term, hammer in there. And Pedro Munoz historically puts on exciting fights, and he's a tough out. I'd like this fight even if they were both old and washed, but it still matters in the deepest division in the sport, which we have now officially appointed Bantamweight just that,

that I can't wait to see this fight. No doubt about it. I'm going to go with, you could go that one, Chiesa versus Vicente Luque. That one, the winner of that is probably going to be close to a title shot-ish. Obviously, Tisha Torres, Angela Hill should be a lot of fun. But the one I've got my eye on is the main event of the prelims. Because I know they're having a hard time getting guys to fight them.

Rafael Fazaev taking on Bobby Green. Boy, that is a hell of a contest. Fazaev is one of these guys out of, he's technically, he is Azerbaijani. But he was out of Tiger Muay Thai. And he was the one that did the huge lean, like, what do you call it, like stylebender does when the kicks come. And just, you know, this incredible matrix-like display of agility and balance. He's a phenomenal, phenomenal striker. And I can tell you they've had a hard time matchmaking him.

Bobby Green is the kind of guy who just doesn't give a fuck. He can strike, he can wrestle. Now, sometimes he wins when he should have not. Maybe sometimes he loses when he should not have. He's a little bit all over the place, loose cannon-ish, but he is very talented, and when he keeps his focus right, I think he's as good as anyone in the top 15 of that division. This is a fun fight.

Fazaev, if you're the better technician, and Fazaev probably believes that he is, this should be a very winnable fight. But Green has a way of making things complicated for those kinds of folks. It's a great test for, frankly, both guys, but for Fazaev, who is looking to make a mark in the UFC. Fazaev looks legit, so I can't wait to see this fight.

I'm even more excited, by the way, about that Song Yedong-Casey Kenny-Bantamweight fight, which opens the pay-per-view card. That's a fantastic one, Luke. know curmudgeon-y, crusty when we should be MMA journalists who have rightfully sort of panned the interim title being at stake here for commercial reasons only? Are we completely not allowing ourselves to actually look at how good this fight could potentially be and how it's going to answer a lot of questions in this division? I mean, Cyril Ghosn and Derek Lewis is a hell of a fight, but up to this point, Luke, every time I hear it or see it it I'm just sort of dismissive like oh fucking a right we got a got an interim title on there it's like a scarlet letter to me

Luke should I just get over that and get really excited about this fight that's what the promoter wants you to do it's up to you I mean I would say that there is a chance that it could be boring it's possible that gone could stick and move and never really put lewis away i tend to think that gone's body work we'll talk about this on friday i tend to think his body work will make a difference over time and it won't necessarily go the full distance of course we'll have to see obviously lewis has blinding power so he lands one of those and forget about it listen the fight is probably fine it's an interesting test for derrick lewis uh it's an interesting test for cyril gone too given his interesting test for Cyril Ghosn, too, given his potential upside.

At the same time, it's just not the one that should be happening. This is not a fight that the promoter should be making, especially not for a title, anyway. He wanted to make it, that'd be one thing, but for a title, certainly, I don't think that's appropriate. The real question here is where is Francis Ngannou? Shouldn't he be, not on this date per se, but shouldn't any kind of title implication be reserved for his return at a normal schedule

like what the promoter is basically doing is listen i'm gonna let the passage of time kind of wash over everyone and i'll probably give you a fight that could even be decent it not even outright good so that you'll forget about it i don't want to like penalize derrick lewis and i want to penalize cyril gone they're just trying to live their lives the best way they know how, but kind of forgetting about all the baggage is exactly what the promoter wants you to do so they can keep doing this in the future. I would caution against that. Yeah, caution.

Luke, I have to lament. My girl, Karolina Kovacevic, is on here coming off four straight defeats of a winnable fight against Jessica Penne, who also could need a win here. But it's tough to see that original class of the tough season. I don't even remember if Carolina was in that tough season, but that original strawweight class, right? The original fighters that filled out the title fights. And Carolina, let's not forget, pushed Ioana deep in that absolute five-round war

in which Ioana may have won, but she was the one heading to the hospital. And Kovalkevic was the one doing smiley interviews afterwards. She's in a tough spot here at 35, needs to win badly. Certainly not the same fighter she once was. It's tough to see an original division of fun names start to age out. We're seeing that now. It is what it is, Luke. It's the life cycle of sport.

It's winnable for either of those two ladies, Kovalkevic or Penne, but it's a little life-raftish in terms of what it gets you. Okay, so that is it for our top five, BC. So it is time for us to not ask each other questions so much as it is for the viewers to ask us. It's time for DMs from Diggity Dogs. Eh? Eh?

Eh? Mmm. As I drink my gross concoction all right uh here we go from uh oh soldaco i don't know how the fuck you pronounce this thoughts on the post-fight interviews from mckeee and Pitbull well Pitbull I think only spoke to the media afterwards I don't think they interviewed him in the cage did they they did I skipped it no they did but they interviewed AJ as well what did you think about what the stuff they had to say after the fight uh yeah I watched the Pitbull sat down for about five minutes and um you know he did say that he had more fight left in him and thought that the fight shouldn't have been stopped.

He didn't overly protest it, which I thought was respectable. He said, look, I'll be back from it. I'm unlike other fighters. Every fighter says they'll be back from a big loss, but I actually will be. I'll be better than this. And Luke, his history has shown that, boy, does Pitbull improve from defeats and figure out what he needs to fix, although you do have to question.

In this matchup, there's a big size differential between these two. So it's always going to be an uphill battle against somebody like AJ McKee. But, you know, I thought he fielded it well. I think one specific reporter asked, because he had his son next to him, about teaching his son about the lessons of defeat. And I thought Pitbull fielded that well. He was respectful.

He was the champion we expected him to be, Luke. He didn't come out here and talk junk or play up the you know the questionable stoppage too much so that is what that is luke he played it well yeah you know i was thinking about like uh eric albaracin if they really hated that stoppage i feel like he would have texted me 50 000 times over the weekend and he didn't so he would have sent you so many drunken videos with those weird glasses. Yeah. A hundred, a hundred percent. All right. From Dylan J. Moran, AJ McKee versus Alex Volk and Max versus Pitbull.

Who comes out on top for each of those two matchups in your opinion, by the way, AJ McKee saying a fight with Max Holloway is his dream. See, I got to tell you that's, I definitely like Volkanovski to beat McKee. I just think at this stage of the game, he's a little bit too tough to beat.

Pitbull's 34 against Holloway's jab and reach. It's an interesting one. What do you think? Yeah, AJ had said Holloway was always his dream fight, and those styles against each other would be absolutely incredible. Although it's easy to say that you would like Volkanovski's chances of diffusing what Pitbull does great. absolutely incredible although it's easy to say that you would like volkanovsky's chances of uh of you know diffusing what pitbull does great they'd be a lot closer in size luke than some of these other matchups that that could be an absolute banger because yeah your boy can your

boy alex can throw too so that could be uh yeah the better matchup to me would be mckee holloway and then volkanovsky pitbull i think that's a better pairing. Why? Is the question asking it differently? Yeah, the question's asking McKee-Volkanovski and then Holloway versus Pitbull. In that case, I'd probably side with both UFC guys maybe, but if you switched it a little bit where it's McKee versus Holloway a little more open, I think that's a winnable fight for either guy.

I still like Volkanovski to beat Pitbull, but that's a close fight too. True. So you're not ready to say you think McKee could beat everybody in the world at 145? I think on the right night he probably could. I just feel like at 26, without having him really fully... When I say tested, he's tested in the sense that they lined up difficult opponents for him and he knocked them all down. He's somewhat untested, somewhat, somewhat, in the trench moments where you have seen Pitbull climb himself out of Saturday notwithstanding.

You just don't know exactly when someone... Dude, here's the rule with MMA. And everyone gets behind someone and says, this is not true. I go through it with every generation of fans. Not saying you, but the last one I had to deal with this one was McGregor. Here's how this goes, folks. Eventually, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not a year from now, maybe not even two years from now, although it could happen then, someone is going to put it on AJ McKee. Someone is going to start hurting him in a fight, right? And the question is, what is he going to do about it? And I don't

know what way he'll be hurt. Maybe it's to the legs, to the body, whatever. He'll get rocked, something. It happens in MMA every single time to every single fighter. Maybe Habib would be the one guy who didn't get super rocked, but I don't know that we're talking about McKee with the same level of Habib reverence. So the question is is what does he do when someone does that to him and plus Habib like physically controlled you AJ McKee is happy to stand at part I don't know I don't know what the answer is he'll probably fucking shine but we just don't know we kind of have to see him go five rounds first before we can comment on on on any of this you know right exactly so many of these fights have played to his strengths completely.

So we do have to see. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy to look, you know, me, I love flashy packaging. I love to put the cart before the horse, Luke. I love emotions. Right. You know, and, and AJ's got me feeling those emotions, you know, deeper than I've ever felt before, but I got, even, I got to put the pause on there and say, you know, you're telling me it's going to go five with Volkanovski? I still might pick, you know, the down under wonder. So there it is, Luke. All right. From at PinkySongha08,

who will be your next resume review victim? 6-0, Luke. 6-0, brother. Okay. What are you going to say about that? Okay. What wish we do we go after covid where are we going with this the covid resume that's a hell of a resume um yeah i don't know i don't know if there's any big one yet because the problem is we've done like you could do one for kamaru i suppose but it feels a little bit early right i don't know if that makes a whole lot of sense. Francis still wouldn't make a lot of sense.

They want Dustin ahead of the Olivera fight. That's what I've heard. The one that I have the site set on is Jon Jones. That's the one that... I knew you were still holding that 214 bridge. No, no, no. By the way, someone on my live chat brought up some kind of quote that I had right around the time that he blew up all the plans for UFC 200. And someone was like, well, maybe this is what you said that pissed him off.

I read it, and it was like, and I said on the air, like, there's zero chance I would apologize for any of this. So, no. Dude, that bridge is burned. It's gone. It'll never come back. But this is the thing that folks lose about resume review it's not we're not doing it as like a prediction engine like we don't put

the names in and be like oh we're focusing on this guy because we think he'll win it's not both of us pick Kamaru to beat Jorge but we still did the resume review on Jorge why well dude his career story is just a lot more interesting. It is. The guy started fighting in the streets with Kimbo Slice, for fuck's sake. And he was kind of always that other dude until he goes on this journey in the woods, comes out, starts knocking everyone the fuck out in the most violent fashion. And yes, it didn't work out for him up until the point where we did the resume review for him. But we're trying to tell interesting stories through resumes that have been around for a while. Well, dude, Jon Jones has been kicking everyone's ass for a long while. This dude was on my radio

show when he was still part of Team Bomb Squad in New York State back in 2008. I mean, we're talking 2021 and he's still a super relevant, if somewhat departed figure. Like how would you not do a resume review on him? And whether you want to believe in some kind of magic and tooth fairy and whatever, you're allowed to do that, you or anybody else. But the reality is, and BC for just 30 seconds of seriousness, we're trying to tell the stories of people who are on the precipice of great things that have interesting uh professional lives that deserve to be retold i don't regret doing one for pitbull at all in fact i'm quite glad we did especially now that he's lost at least there is this record that you can show someone

of what he did yeah i agree with that i i think a you know boo-boo wild thing resume review might be a little more interesting than john at this point but uh you know just so people know we don't get together and go which fighter do we like the least let's curse him but luke it is getting to the point now at six and oh where we have we we may we have a responsibility luke it's like you know you're a gun owner you got to keep that shit locked up like we have a responsibility look this is a where there's a dangerous thing we're playing with here so see i don't think we have any control over it. I think the fighters do. But I will say this.

There's no one that stands out to me right now. I can't think of an obvious candidate. Can you? I won't let you do one on Rose. I'll tell you that right now. Okay? Not doing it. Not doing it, bro.

Not doing it. No, yeah, but Jon Jones is the big one when he comes back we're gonna do one on john jones for sure but so we've done six and the the favorite we we've done six of them three times on the underdog three times on the favorite which is interesting that's interesting yeah i will say that part is interesting uh the other thing is we got to do one on amanda nunez at some point too we see we haven't done one on any kind of women fighters yet the other thing we could do though is if to make people happy we could do one on like a fighter that's already retired like a Ronda Rousey or something you know well then you're gonna kill him Luke I mean there's nothing left to lose at that point it'll be like final destination

I mean it would be okay every time we do one, whether you want to talk about the curse or not, Luke, and I know you don't, we are putting the curse to the – Hold on. No, no, no. Just bite your tongue. We know what you're going to say. We get it. It's not even about that.

I don't even know what to say. I don't know what to say about it. I honestly don't know what to say because it's obviously ridiculous. Like, you guys want me to discuss Santa Claus with you. I can't do that. Okay. So what I'm saying is, is like every time we do one now at this point, since it's 6-0, we are testing

it. We are challenging it. Could you freaking imagine if we did Amanda Nunes ahead of anything short of Shevchenko, right? If we did it in the Pena fight or GDR or whatever, and then she lost, Luke. I'm sorry,

Luke. You would have to come out and be like, guys, it's more powerful than I thought it was. It's like when we filmed it, it was a Mugwai. Now it's a Gremlin, bro. What are we going to do, right? Right, but the opposite would be if we did one on Amanda and she

broke it, they'd be like, oh, of course Amanda's the one to break it. But then if we did another one on someone else who has a lesser status than literally the greatest women's fighter ever, they would say it's back on. Like, there's no, the only way to beat it, so to speak, to beat it, at least to beat the perception, I should say,

would be for it to go relatively even over time, which I suspect over time it will. It's just going to take a little while. All right. I don't even get this next question at all. At DrinkHotTeaWithMe, does LT like watching old guys competing at the Olympics in weightlifting to keep his dreams of becoming an Olympian at an elder age alive?

BC, I don't know who the fuck he's talking about. There's no one old weightlifting at the Olympics whoics who's a who's a dude who who the fuck would that be i don't know they're all in their 20s and early 30s i haven't been watching much olympics this round luke you know no what if you when you usually watch the olympics what do you watch well you know go to okay the best events are this in my mind sprinting and track and field without question. 100%, I agree. Number two, and my wife pushes me into it, but then I get hooked.

I'm sorry, female gymnastics is exciting as balls. It is what it is, Luke. I like it. I like it. And elite swimming, right? I mean, elite swimming is incredible. Those are my three. In the past, I've been a monster Team USA men's basketball fan.

I've kind of lost a little bit of interest in that, but that's my core, Luke. What else have you moved by? Wrestling is big. Obviously, wrestling is big. I like judo, but I don't like the rules all that much, which kind of make it not as good as it could be. But the weightlifting is big. I think what he's talking about is I've posted pictures of an old dude, not pictures, videos, of an old dude by the name of Randy Kudlub, who is the co-founder of Kabuki Strength.

They make a lot of different kinds of unique equipment and whatnot. He's 72, and he did some powerlifting recently. But that was not on a grand stage like the fucking Olympics. The Olympics, dude, if you were... I mean, the oldest competitor I can think of at the Olympics on the male side but you know that was like not on a grand stage like the fucking olympics the olympics dude if you i mean the oldest competitor i can think of at the olympics on the male side who did anything is lu xiaojun who is maybe one of the best to ever do it in any weight class he got gold and he's 37 but he's fucking super bricked up that's as old as it gets dude like that's and even that is fucking rare 37 is very old um for weightlifting at an elite level.

So this dude is obviously just very confused because there are no old dudes lifting in the Olympics at all. Do you think there's as much consummation in the Olympic Village this time around due to the COVID scare as normal? Yeah. I'm guessing no one's actually getting COVID, but they're getting all kinds of gonorrhea. Gonorrhea. Gonorrhea, the truly first undefeated plague.

Yeah. All right. Last but not least, from Taekwondoodmemes, that's his name. If you could wake up in the world of any TV show, which show would you want to live in? Fuck me. any tv show which show would you want to live in fuck me um does the emmanuel series count on showtime back in the day luke or what i mean does uh yeah does bang bus count um yeah um well uh i mean i don't want to live on a tv show bro i mean all all the best tv shows involve like drama and violence i don't want to live in that. I don't really want to live in that, Luke, really?

Would you want to live in a sitcom? I mean, can I be a part of the Seaver family on Growing Pains? I don't know. Oh, you know what? I would be a part of the 90210 that Tiffany Amber Thiessen was on. There you go. There it is. You nailed it.

I wanted to be part of that friend circle big time, Luke. And I would have exposed Brian A. Green, B.A. Green, Brian Austin Green. What was his character's name? David Silver? I would have exposed him as an absolute weirdo. I know he got cool and he started banging Donna and he was like the school DJ and he

could sing and dance. Yo, he was a nerd, bro, and I remember it because I watched episode one from back in the day. He used to hang out with that blonde kid that shot himself, Luke. i would expose ba green right away and challenge him to fight on the first day of school no question about it i just want to put a knife between the sixth and seventh floating rib right through the lung so he can't scream when i when i when i knife him from behind yeah that's what i'm talking about okay yeah but but you picked the right year. When Valerie Malone arrived, Luke, boners, bro. Apex predator.

Apex predator is what I would say. All right, BC, we go from discussing A.J. McKee's win to our childhood lusty fantasies of Tiffany Amber Thiessen. With that in mind, why don't you take away the silly portion of today's show? All right, what we do every Monday, it's really the highest rated segment in really the internet's history. We scour the globe for the good, the bad, the ugly, the highs and lows, and in between

from combat, sports, and beyond. And this is a great batch of shit this week, Luke. It's Have You Seen This Shit? Yes. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game.

Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. The credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. Oh, God. Oh, Luke, you didn't do that this time. Oh, God. I got the

fart needles. Oh, God. All right, Bellator 263. Never mind what I'm getting. Los Angeles. I think we actually ran this vid earlier, so it's a little redundant, but here's A.J. McKee celebrating with that bubbly luke you deserve a kid all right looking good right there that's that's me after five minutes on perb city

five minutes really uh luke uh no 50 cents sorry i lied 30 seconds yeah exactly please uh no 50 cent this time to hand out the uh the champagne i don't know what happened there maybe we had a falling out let's keep it it rolling from 263. Khabib's husband, Usman Nurmagomedov. Look at this jackknife knee to the body of Manny Morrow. Look, he's nasty, bro. He looked good, dude. He looked really good.

His takedowns were slick. He was in complete control. Now, granted, this opponent was a nice kid, but he's very overmatched. Nurmagomedov was supposed to look good, but I'm telling you, man, this guy, I'd be very surprised if he's very overmatched. Nurmagomedov was supposed to look good. But I'm telling you, man, this guy, I'd be very surprised if he's not wearing Bellator gold at some point. He's going to be wearing a Bellator gold.

Habib was 4-0 on Saturday. Another one of his protégés, Gadzi Rabadonov, Luke. He sent Daniel Carey. Look at this left hook. I mean, perfectly timed. Smesh indeed. Luke, that Smesh factory is just working all night, churning out new daggies. Watch this.

Watch this, man. Watch this. This guy sets it up, and he just times it perfectly. Oh, God. One hitter quitter. Watch the head go bop. Oh, man, that's a nice shot. That's some brilliant shit.

Let's go over to UFC Fight Night in Vegas. Luke, unfortunately, on Friday, inaugural flyweight champ Nico Montano was trying to weigh in for her bantamweight bout at 135. Luke, she came in at 143, and the fight got scrapped. Luke, I kind of wonder if this is the end, right? You know what? Here's what I'll say about Nico. I've interviewed her a few times. I do think genuinely she's a nice person.

I do think genuinely she cares. I think she's had a hard life. I think she's had a really hard past few years, no doubt about it. The thing that got me was afterwards she put out a statement. Because if you come in seven over, you know as well as I do, BC, you come in one over, hey, that happens. You come in two, maybe three over. You could have been more disciplined. Maybe it was short notice, whatever.

You come in seven over where you're almost at the next weight class. You either have an injury that you didn't disclose or something went terribly wrong in the whole process. So she put out a statement later and it was rather lengthy. But one of the things she was saying was because of all the harm she's done from weight cutting and blah blah blah it's just harder for her metabolic rate to be in a position where she can keep the weight off of her even though she's eating a lot less and i'm like here's the thing for me man it's like if someone was telling me i couldn't do this show anymore or even mma stuff anymore and i had to go figure something out that would be very very hard for me like i would i I don't know what I would do quite frankly I mean I'd figure it out but I'm sure it'd

be extremely difficult so I I don't want to be the guy but like you should go do something else at the same time if this was my sister I'm trying to think about it like that like somebody I cared about a lot she was telling me that her ability to like she couldn't even eat food and lose the weight because her metabolism was so wrecked from years of weight cutting whatever else i would tell her to stop jeopardizing her health i would say that i don't or move up a weight class or or something because dude she used to fight at 125 she got got, for 135.5, she weighed 143. Something is terribly wrong. I don't want to pile on, Luke, because I always felt she got a raw deal.

I never even thought that that title should have been created at that time, nor used the tough model system, and then they stripped her, you know, where it didn't make sense. Luke, do you remember when they originally were going to book Niko against Shevchenko, and Shevchenko was like a minus 86,000 favorite? I mean, that would have been bad. That would have been very bad. That would have been ugly.

All right, let's keep it going, UFC. Hey, Luke, Coach Edmund has another Armenian hammer. His name is Milsik Bogdasarian. And look at this head kick in his UFC debut against Colin Anglin. Hell of a finish here. This kid looked good. The only criticism I would have, and it's very mild. I want to point that out.

It's very mild. He throws everything with evil intention, which is fine at the stage of the career that he's in, but against the better guys, that won't be enough to put them away. And so you have to have a second and third level where you've got the cardio to last and everything else. He's still working it out, no problem. He was unbelievable that night. But to get to the next level, which he's got all the talent to do,

some change is going to have to be in order. But that night, he was unbeatable. Good head movement too, absolutely. Look, your brethren shining on this one. Let's go over to Jared Gordon in the welterweight division. You see this right-hand KO of Niklas Stolz. Oof. Took the angle and then set up it up right straight down the pike.

That was beautiful. That was face-crushing. See how he stepped out? You like this guy, Luke? He, um... I like this. Watch. He steps out.

Let's see. Bop. Just double jabbed his way to the outside and then fired the right hand home. Yeah, that was really nice. I like guys who can set stuff up, man. I think they're the ones who are built for the long haul. And Luke, somebody we're going to be talking about a lot on this show

because I think she's my new favorite fighter. Strawweight Cheyenne Baze had a hell of a vicious finish in the co-main event after about 18 fights got canceled, Luke, against Gloria DePaula. Look at that, Luke. Dude, I said it on Twitter. This was a mean stoppage. When you're elbowing someone from mount, you know what I mean? Like, dude, that is, that is, fuck.

She's a mean fighter. Let's be honest. I mean, you know, we'll get into the fighter she's a mean fighter. Look, let's be honest. I mean, you know, we'll get into the fighter pay stuff later where she had a lot to fight for here, but this is, that's some brutal-ish. And then after the finish, let's check out the celebration dance. Luke, can you give style points on this?

Oh, yeah. Oh, money. In the club. Dude, you know what's amazing about this fight is she hits her with the kick as she's getting up and then pushes her down and moves to mountain and elbows her. It looked like a schoolyard fight.

I mean, it wasn't. I don't mean to say that they don't have more like capability than that. It just played out that way where it almost looked like they were battling in a parking lot. And Jesus, Baze was, I mean, she couldn't be beat that night.

You may remember Baze, not only the husband of J.P. Baze, who's a UFC fighter, but Luke, do you remember when Baze beat Montserrat, Cornejo, Ruiz, and told her that she would meet her in the parking lot or she'd follow her home afterwards? Yeah, I think she meant it. She was asked about that this week at the press conference. Let's go to the audio here. Fuck her, but, you know, on to the audio here. Fuck her, but

you know, on to the next one. I think we're all curious, did you in fact follow that bitch home? Frustrated with how that one went. Best part of the hike. Oh man, the staff was on my ass as soon as I left that cage. You know, the thing that was disgusting was obviously the girl spat at me and

called me an effing puta, but not even our coaches shook my hand or my coach's hand. They're all cowards in my eyes for the night, and I still think so. No, I did not get to follow her, but when I see her, she better step up. Do you like it? I mean, I guess maybe not among casual fans, but among hardcores. That's a pretty well-quoted line. It's become a little bit famous.

I mean, do you like that that's a part of your reputation, or do you think, oh, I wish I wouldn't have said that not at all I'm real I'm a hundred percent real I'm human if you're gonna disrespect me like that when I gave you nothing but respect you bet your ass I want to slap the shit out of you after the fight I mean what pisses me off the most is you shook my hand at weigh-ins knowing damn well what you were gonna do after the fight that right there has coward written all over it. Bitch.

Wow, Luke. Damn, bro. Shout out to John Morgan for asking the hard questions there. But Luke, she's pretty real. She's pretty real, dude. Well, you better show up with flowers on Valentine's Day. Good Lord. Yeah, she brought it right there.

More on her to come because it was an interesting story here. Let's go to outdoordoor MMA, Luke. The promotion is called Strelka Street Fights, and this is literally pounding sand, Luke. Dude. Hands down, eats a head kick from hell, and then just flops back. He testified in church.

This is what happens if you get the 30 days free of showtime and you don't like it. Okay, this is what happens, Luke. Listen, maybe he was just feeling the gospel of the Holy Ghost, BC. It's possible. All right, let's go to the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Judoka Martina Trajdos of Germany getting fired up by her coach before this event, Luke. What kind of – to quote Chris Rock,

I'll never hit a girl, but I'll shake the shit out of her, Luke, right? Let me tell you something. Those judo geese are super thick. You can probably shake the shit out of someone that way. And, you know, listen, a little bit of bop-bop like that, hey, that's good stuff. That's assault, brother. Wow.

Let's keep it going here. Olympic boxing, light heavyweight, Imam Katayev of Russia. Oh, look at that, Luke. I didn't see that one. Made him do the stanky leg. To the dude from Spain? Poor bastard. Yikes.

All right, let's go over to Moroccan boxer Yunus Bala. Luke, he's going all Tyson Holyfield on him right here. Take a bite out of crime. Wow. You know, maybe he was just hungry. Maybe he needed a Snickers. I don't know. Yeah.

You see AJ McKee trying to get that Snickers sponsorship? You know, he was trying. You know what? That was the one miss. That was. He was like, Snickers, are you not satisfied? I'm like, I know you planned that in the mirror, AJ, and I don't know if it's going to work.

I hope it does work for him, but if it doesn't, I'm going to call him on it. Luke, this may not be the same era as the Dream Team running circles around Angola, but check out Drew Holiday here of Team USA schoolballing this guy right through the wickets. Oh, man. Yeah, people don't understand what it was like when the Dream Team was there. It was like, honestly, the Globetrotters versus the Washington Senators, whatever they're called. But every once in a while, you get a good moment here on the international scene.

Eddie Hearn resurrected his fight camp at Matchroom Sport headquarters, Luke, outside of London on Saturday. And your boy Avni Yildirim, fresh off the Canelo loss, got carved up by Jack Cullen. Luke, this was a super middleweight title eliminator. Cullen beat the bags off of him for 12 rounds with that speedy jab. Luke, do you know Cullen's nickname? Little Leaver's Meat Cleaver. That's his nickname.

I post this on here to expose the ridiculousness of boxing's mandatory system. Your boy Avni, Luke, is fading away pretty quickly here. Nice win. Yeah. All right, let's keep it rolling here. Elite Fighters won in Poland. Luke, this was a bizarre MMA event in which, uh, Gribaca hit man was all over it. Luke, they had a three on one match and it, uh, it went exactly how you would guess it would Luke poor, poor bastard here. So does he become a member of the Bloods or Crips after this? Yeah, this is the initiation, Luke. This is very similar to your frat boy pledge night, I'm sure.

But why, Luke? Why? Are they all going to bang now? Also on this card, Luke, check out this pre-fight dance by this polish fighter you saw this i saw this i and i was thinking about this my wife watches love island and my only hope for my daughter is that oh my god yeah yeah that's it look i was thinking to myself i'm like i hope my daughter like my daughter does not have to be on the scripts national spelling bee or be an olympian anything like that. Just don't do that.

Yeah, don't go to the poll. Oh, wow. Maniche saying Love Island UK is severely underrated. He's got a lot of time on his hands. All right. Maybe less Love Island UK, more books there. Maniche. Maniche.

One championship battleground. Luke, did you see the Burmese python Ong La In Song? You know our boy, the New Year's guy, sending Leandro a tate. Yeah, Old Lang Syne here will fucking put hands on you. That dude is very, very good. Is he the best light heavyweight on Earth? No, but he's good.

It's a new year indeed. New day? All right, Luke, let's go over to former Cuban Olympic wrestler Gustavo Ballart with the flying groin strike on Ryoto Dragonboy Sawada. Luke, this was men's straw weight. I thought at first it was like small people wrestling, but Luke, it's men's straw weight. Will this pick up and the UFC get involved? What do you think?

There are smaller weight classes. There's also women's Adam weight, which is 105. I don't know that there's going to be a big market for it outside of Latin America or Asia, but who knows? Yeah, Dana's not employing these guys anytime soon. Alright, summer concert season is heating up, Luke. Here's Jorge Masvidal appearing

at a Steve Aoki show and throwing some cake at the fans. Luke, what the heck is this about? COVID? Yeah, more or less. More or less, Luke. Okay. Ioki's what, a famous DJ of some range?

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I think I've seen his name circulated in that way. All right, Luke, speaking of COVID, greater Chicago area had a super spreader event called Lollapalooza. That's Fred Durst dressed up as Kenny Rogers, Luke. And did you see this Olympics skit show? Can we zoom in on that, please, Maniche? Look at the friggin' crowd,

Luke. Wow. Wow. This is why we can't have nice things in this country. I'm so glad I'm old. Yeah. I mean, I'm not glad that I'm old, but I'm glad that I don't have peers pressuring

me to go to this shit because i probably would have done it you know how many masks you think were there luke how many masks you think there were any masks in that crowd only for robberies okay all right all right that crowd was on fire luke and speaking of let's go over to the soccer pitch what the hell's going on here luke so i've not seen this but is is there is there a turkish team playing i have no idea i'm a little nervous about it what the i mean this this doesn't look safe luke is there any survivors not do i again i don't know these are the turks or somebody else i'll just say this if you don't if you for folks who don't know the turkish uh super fans are famous famous for lighting shit on fire and flares at the game and whatnot.

Like that is what, did I ever tell you that I saw a rivalry in Turkey? This is true, bro. It was Galatasaray versus Fenerbahce, which is like maybe the biggest one in all of Turkish soccer. And I saw a dude chasing another dude with a donor kebab sword.

You know what a donor kebab sword is? You ever seen those like like, at the fair, those racks of lamb that turn and they shave it and it comes down and they put it in the pita and then they serve it to you? Yeah, it's disgusting. It's like that long or something? That motherfucker had it by the handle

and was chasing another guy with it for, you know, having the audacity to be the fan of a rival team. They don't fucking play over an Istanbul boy, let me tell you. I once saw a guy with one arm beat up a guy with one leg at a Dave Matthews concert, Luke, on the lawn at the

Meadows in Hartford. It was pretty legendary. Alright, Luke, let's go. PBC on Fox from Newark. This had to be one of the worst Fox cards ever, Luke, but in the main event, Michael Coffey, the heavyweight prospect and former Marine, Luke, he got lit up by late replacement Johnny Rice, a 13 and six record. Yeah. Johnny Rice sent,

sent old coffee to hell here, Luke. Yeah. Coffee. I was checking him out on Instagram ahead of this fight, you know, thinking he was just going to walk through, dude, he got tore up the entire time. Um, he didn't get stopped in the way that like, you know, he got tore up the entire time. He didn't get stopped in the way that he got flatlined or anything, but by the time it happened, I wasn't opposed to it. Semper Fi, but that's a bad loss. Yeah, and the undercard, former lightweight prospect Carl Dargan came back after a long layoff. Look at this uppercut KO on Ivan Delgado here.

Dargan has his back to the road. Look at that. Man, that's like that uppercut that, what you call it, that Tank Davis hit on Leo Santa Cruz. Yeah. Dargan, of course, Luke, married to rapper Lil Mo. I don't know if you know that. No, I don't know who that is.

Okay. Let's keep it rolling here, Luke. This is from last week. We've got to play the audio. At BKFC, Hector Lombard confronted Tyron Woodley for violation of the bro code let's go to this right right that's fucking wrong no that's fucking wrong

well i want to smoke i want to please you yeah dave feldman get in there luke to quote to quote showtime yeah he's accusing him of trying to fuck his side chick all i know is double audio maniche yeah there we go there we go that's not embarrassing at all that double audio all right luke to quote uh brendan shab uh that's not embarrassing at all, that double audio. All right, Luke, to quote Brendan Schaub, that's not how Eskimo brothers should treat each other, Luke. Seriously. Yeah, I don't know what the story is there.

I mean, I don't really want to get into people's personal business about who they're fucking in this world. So, like, I don't, you know. How about we just make fun of people's weightlifting form, Luke? Let's go over to heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. Is this good or bad? I couldn't figure it out, so I figured I'd ask form, Luke. Let's go over to heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. Is this good or bad? I couldn't figure it out, so I figured I'd ask you, Luke.

Um... You know, it's not great, but it's hard to tell. I can't quite... His back is rounding like a son of a bitch. It looks like he's doing Romanian deadlifts, which is a little more straight leg. I can't quite tell. It's a bit of a... It's not not great but he might not have

that much weight on there i don't know look we always say in regional mma anything can happen even a rainstorm luke check out these two fighters having to deal with the slickness here i saw this one live oh my god what is happening dude yeah keep having outdoor MMA, doofuses. All right, let's go over to the pizza parlor, Luke. You never know when a great fight can break out. Watch this, dude. This one was great. They got, this reminds me of the dudes in Turkey with the donor kebab swords.

Yes. They got the little shovel that comes with the handle for the pizza. You think that was over a girl luke no i guarantee this was over like hey there it is get that sword get that fucking thing let me explain no anchovies yes there was a there was a story i remember i think it was the mcdonald's on west fourth which is right by these basketball courts in the uh in in greenwich village in in nyc uh i remember there was someone who who like i could have the address wrong but there was somebody who like was like bitching at the mcdonald's employees then jumped the register and one of the dudes he was definitely excessive he took out this thing that looked like a wavy sword that must have been for like god knows what and he began to hit this woman with it and like there were other women being like stop stop you can hear it

i'm not saying he wasn't excessive with it but i also have a rule let me explain something to you if i'm working minimum wage at fucking mcdonald's and you jump the cash register because you don't like the customer service i'm gonna going to bang you over the head with every fucking metal object I can find. I don't give a shit who you are. It's like, call me whatever you want, but you come onto the palace floor, Jermaine O'Neal's going to knock you the hell out.

100%. If you want that smoke, listen, if you try to piss somebody off and scare them, do not be surprised when you succeed. When that lady got beat, he definitely, he laid it into her a little too much.

But like, as a general rule, don't come over the counter. Don't do it. Luke, it's rate that tat time. This isn't Mr. He-Boss, but Jessica Rose Clark had her image, somebody wanted a tattoo of her on their thigh. Luke, your thoughts? It's actually pretty good. I mean, I can, my vision is not clear.

So Jessica Rose, yeah, that's good. It's actually pretty good. I mean, I can, my vision is not clear. So Jessica Rose, yeah, that's good. That's actually very good. It's a little dark, but that's because it's new. So when it heals, it will lighten up a little bit. And obviously the nature of the photograph on the leg is going to make it hard to duplicate. But Jessica Rose Clark has, she's like a real tattoo enthusiast.

She's got some really good ones. She does a lot of American traditional stuff. And she's part of this brand called Notorious Bastards, who are kind of really into artsy sort of style of tattoos. You know, the face tattoo is not a personal choice that I would make, but that's a decent tattoo right there. All right. Hey, let's go over to the amateur wrestling mats, Luke uh there's two guys wrestling here and one of them is rock hard with emotion luke what do you call this move fellatio yeah blow job i mean i'm not sure what you want me to call it um they fucking wow is that a north south luke i know. I mean, what is going on here? Wow.

Okay. Yikes. All right. Luke, I got one more for you. We were able to get into the DeLorean and head to the future. This is Luke Thomas in 10 years. First of all, he's not nearly fat enough. God bless this man. You know what this guy's like free fun lunch with a meal yeah yes i mean can you blame him look at these women he's like let me get a slice with an lbb please uh big bbl sorry

bbl wouldn't you want to stare i I mean, this guy is, you know. No, dude, first of all, that's you with the dyed hair, number one. Oh, come on. Come on. I'm staying gray, Luke. Stay gray, okay? There we go. All right, that's the shit for the week.

That's all I got, Luke. All right, that's it. All right, with that in mind, let's go back to odds and ends, BC. What do you have for odds and or ends? Yeah ends yeah look this was an emotional win for cheyenne bays um i want to play a couple clips here and and talk about this quick and bring the story to light this was her reaction uh to getting the fifty thousand dollar bonus luke uh from her victory which was bumped up to the co-main event we talk about fighter pay and how much it costs for these fighters to even try to train and live this is an interesting turn of events

Let's go to that Manish. I Am negative in my account right now, so it's gonna make a big difference and my whole paycheck actually is I have to pay back fifteen thousand dollars for a loan I got From a few people so, you know, I made ten and ten from my winning my winning show So that twenty000 was just gone so and I was okay with it I was okay if I won and that check was gone because I made the I made the move out here and I knew that this fight was just going to be for the move but it was the best decision me and my husband made for our careers and just to get that bonus

I've been so broke my whole life because of this sport but it's so worth it to me because I love this sport but to get a fifty thousand dollar paycheck you know my husband's gonna tell me to put it away I'm definitely gonna want to buy some nice stuff but you know I I like I like to buy a little bit of things for the house and for my animals I really like to spoil my family but you know this week I'm definitely taking my team to go get a nice dinner. So it's life-changing for sure, but I just got to put the money away

and just go out there and fight again. Luke, here's a video of her actual reaction to finding out in the locker room from her husband that she had gotten the 50K for that victory. You got Performance of the Night. Yeah! Let's go! Let's go!

Hey, Sean. Hey, Sean. You deserve it. Hey, you're screaming rhinos. Not a girl. So, Luke, we talk a lot about fighter pay, and a lot of times our discussion is centered upon, like, Jon Jones, right? Like, you know, is it enough for him to make, you know, a million and a half in a fight,

or should, given his history and where he stands all time and his star power, you know, he should probably be making four, five, six, seven million, whatever. Or, hey, Conor McGregor, I bet you he made 40 million as opposed to the three that got reported. Luke, this is the real fighter pay story right here. I know that this card kind of fell apart and had fights fall out, and UFC didn't intend Cheyenne Bays to be in the co-main event. She got paid $10 and $10, and she was literally risking it all and said, I went in there ready to die in that cage if I had to

because I love the sport and I'm in the negative and it costs more to do the training camp than I was going to get paid. Even if I won, I mean, look, that's the real fighter pay issue right there. That a fight of the night could, could literally change her life. Um, that's what I want to see cleaned up in the sport. I mean, if it was the first fight of the night, look, you look at the payouts in a boxing match, guys in the first fight of the night off TV are getting paid like $2,000. That's not any different.

If that, if that. But this is somebody on national TV or on ESPN Plus in a co-main event. They're going to pay $10,000 and $10,000. Luke, I mean, you can bring out John S. Nash all you want. If Dana's going to give a bag of cash and not report it to the irs this is the person to give it to these type of situations these fighters luke are are dying just to try to stay in this game they love the sport that much and it's uh you know do i want to see the one percent get what they deserve sure but i want to see all the fighters be able to pay their freaking bills i mean this was like humbling to watch well i mean i would slightly disagree in the sense that um

i think it's deaf like you know what is the face of the fighter pay issue is sort of a difficult question and the reality is because there is such a wide disparity between to your point to your point like there's john jones's who know, you can make a strong argument. He's not been paid what he's worth, but he's already worth millions, right? Versus Cheyenne Bays who has to take out a $15,000 loan. I mean, let's do the math on that. $15,000 loan, you got $20,000 plus you got to pay out taxes and everything else. You get almost none of that back.

That's basically all I'm spoken for. Oh, how about paying your team, flying, you know what I mean? All that stuff, right? Exactly. Like, it's gone. Like, you won't collect a cent of that um so that fifty thousand dollars and that's going to get taxed too i think but that will at least serve a very valuable purpose and float her for some time and i'm very very glad to see it i think she earned it by the way i don't think it's any kind of pity case either um you know so you can

ask like who's the face of the of the um fighter pay issue her case is going to be, I think, for a lot of folks, immediately more sympathetic. And frankly, her need is more immediate, right? She literally needs that money. I remember on a UFC on Fox event, BC, I recall this distinctly, when Roland Delorme, who's since been cut,

but he had a moment there where he said he needed money and was hoping for a bonus because his water had been turned off. You know, this is just fucking insane that this kind of thing would happen. Still, I just don't want folks to lose sight of the fact, if this is the kind of thing that gets people motivated to support change for fighters, hey, I'm all for it. I just feel like we should not lose sight of the fact that all of the different people in the UFC, all the fighters, no matter what range they're in, they're all being negatively impacted. So whatever makes you more sympathetic that gets you on to the case, let's do it.

But genuinely, genuinely I mean this, they are all owed more. Jon Jones is risking a lot too when he goes out there and fights unbelievable guy after unbelievable guy and gets paid 25% of what he probably should or whatever the number may be. So I agree with you. Her case is like, there's got to be some kind of minimum. If you're going to be on national TV, you win via stoppage in a co-main event. That should count for more than it is. Especially if you're literally, literally destitute in BC, I've been broken in my life and you've been broken in your life and you know what it's like. There are moments where you sit in there broke and you look at your life and you say, this ever going to end am i ever ever going to get out of this hole you know and you just need someone to help you out um let's give these people some relief but let's not lose sight of the fact that there's they're not alone and who's been underpaid

at the very least it was a it was a good story it was heartwarming to see someone show that kind of emotion and see what just winning that bonus can do for them. But again, you look at the money the promotion brings in and the platform, you know, like you said, if you're going to be in a co-main event or on a main card, good Lord, I don't care who you are, the minimum should be better than this, right? You know, you should give somebody a fighting chance to,

they want to be elite. They should be able to afford to train like they're elite, you know? 100%, 100%. And again, we've already been over my odds and ends. I don't have a whole lot to add, but I will say as Russia begins to develop more into MMA, you're going to see it in all these different promotions, either natively Russian ones or any fighter that gets signed to any promotion, whether it's one or UFC or Bellator. As Russia gets better, MMA will get better. Individual organizations will get better, individual organizations will get better. But it does appear to me, BC,

I don't quite have the numbers on it. I'd be curious to talk to some of the matchmakers over at Bellator. They just seem to have gone all in on whoever is available from Takistan. Like, guys we've not heard of, and then they debut them, and you're like, okay, he's ready to be a champion.

Whether it's Kassan Magomed Sharapov, or whether it's Usman Nurmagomedov, and there's many other ones as well. I got to say, I think it's... Yeah, dude, it's a smart play by Bellator. Get these guys locked up, put them in fights that get them ready for the big stage and get them blah, blah, blah, and then see what happens.

And you've already got two Bellator champions right now, right? You've got Valentin Moldovsky, and you've got the light heavyweight dog, Vadim Nemkov. And then Amosov was born in the Ukraine, but he trains in Russia with Team Fedor, right? No, no, no, no. He's ATT. He's ATT.

Oh, I'm sorry. He doesn't train, but there's a Russian Sambo connection there, even though he's born in the Ukraine. Yes, that's right. He's a Sambo world champ. That's right. So that part of the world, so from Ukraine on down the Caucasus Mountains to Georgia and everybody else, I mean, that just is going to be an absolute hotbed.

It is smart of Bellator to get guys who, obviously, Usman Nurmagomedov, B.C., he's not the best lightweight in the world. He's not even the best lightweight in Bellator right now. But he could be both within a relatively short time frame. Get him now. Lock him up and see what you can do it's a great play and honestly it makes the just for me it makes the roster so much more exciting i love it i love what they're doing yes look you got to give scott coker credit for this

like this was a smart direction to go and it's working out so keep up keep up and then you know regardless of bellator it's getting to the point luke when you look at the betting odds it's like wait what country is this guy from oh you know he's oh he's the underdog but but he's but he smashes yeah i'll put the money on him i mean you got a window here luke to make some big cash on dagestan okay so yeah these guys don't even break a sweat opponents they look like they're carrying their groceries to from the car to the house and that's how much exertion they have to put out and they can do everything already. It's wild

how good they are. Alright, BC, that's it for us. Let's remind folks a few things. Number one, we need some questions for the mailbags. Go scam the system. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and from there, you give a nice five star blah blah blah. We'll answer them there.

You can make them a little bit fun. You can make them sporting, too. This is not quite room service diaries. It can be a little bit more on brand for the typical MK show, but that's how you want to go and do that. We also need you to vote before I forget. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote for us on the podcast award. This is one, podcastawards.com slash app slash sign up. You can vote for us at Best Sports Podcast, Best Male Hosted Podcast, and also don't forget the 13th Annual World MMA Awards where we have somehow found our way

onto the nominee list for Best MMA Programming. If you watch this, I know you agree that we are, so why not give a vote? You can go to worldmmawards.com slash nominees. BC, we will do fan subs on Wednesday, and we will do Dead Wrong on Friday, but to do that, people have to email us. MorningCombat at gmail.com That's the place to get those in.

I have something for you to look forward to this week. What do you mean? Wednesday's episode of Morning Combat. Are you ready? I look forward to all of them. I got a little something in the hopper called Celebrity Wheel of Death. Oh, okay.

All right, we'll see how that goes. You have piqued my curiosity. Let's see what else with folks. You want to try Showtime? Again, tonight, 10 p.m. in the East, Showtime Extreme. You can watch the replay of Bellator 263. You can go to Showtime.com,

get a 30-day free trial with Brian's dumb smile. And if you like it, you can watch the replay of Vellator 263. You can go to Showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial with Brian's dumb smile. And if you like it, you can keep it. If not, no harm, no foul. And we got merch. MorningCombat.store. You can go buy condoms, machetes. It's like Amazon.com. You can go buy TVs there. They're MKTV.

It's awesome. I will say, let's give credit to our merch folks. The mugs they put on the morning combat dad store they're pretty solid luke there you can get some camouflaged dad hats i mean there's some good new shit i didn't even know we made that luke that's right i didn't know we made it either so there you go uh all right i think that is it for us bc we'll be back on wednesday we've got tons of stuff happening this week uf UFC pay-per-view on Saturday and then that's it so for the king of Connecticut Malka Showtime CBS Sports I'm Luke Thomas see you

all Wednesday and until then may all of your gains be loyal Thank you. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.