MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Bellator 288 Recap: Nemkov & Nurmagomedov Impress | UFC Fight Night Recap | Ep 376

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

On Episode 376 of MK, the guys recap a huge weekend of combat sports. At a massive Bellator 288 event, Vadim Nemkov outclassed Corey Anderson in the main event. Is he the best 205er on earth? Usman Nurmagomedov soundly defeated Patricky Pitbull to become the new lightweight champ. What's your biggest takeaway from his dominant victory? Plus, they breakdown UFC Fight Night and ONE on Amazon Prime 4. (5:11) - Nemkov vs. Anderson 2 (23:30) - Pitbull vs. Nurmagomedov (42:10) - Kennedy Nzechukwu (53:28) - James Krause (59:10) - Christian Lee (72:00) - DM's from Donks 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:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, let's bang, Tooey. It's Monday morning. Huh? How about that? It is the 21st of November, 2022, and it's time, diggity donks, for Morning Combat. Hello, everyone. I am merely one half of your hosting duo. My name is Luke Thomas. I got a big poofy hair going on thing. I joined you from the capital of the status of needles right here in Washington, D.C., joined by my New England brethren.

You know him as that BC with that CTE. He's my friend and yours. It's Brian Campbell. Hi, Brian Campbell. I'm here, Luke. Thank you for that great rousing introduction. I'm fired up to be here on a Monday and to get right into breaking down fights.

Why? Because that's why people come to MK. The other stuff, the dad humor, the excessive 15-minute ads to open the show, Luke, that's all people come to mk the other stuff the the dad humor the excessive 15 minute ads to open the show luke that's all just gravy right but they come they come for the meat at the end of the day the turkey the meat pie everything i'm going to be consuming on thursday along with my athletic greens okay so uh it's turkey day week the best holiday going right you don't need gifts you don't need religions you don't need anything but an american flag football turkey

a loose waistband and each other and each other yes indeed all right bc let's get to it so what do we have on the docket today we had had Bellator over the weekend. We had one over the weekend. We had UFC, sort of, over the weekend. We'll get to that as well. Plus, I know today's Have You Seen This Shit is going to be epic, given all of the Dylan Danis news.

Okay, well, it will. But let me just give a warning to the people, because this ruined my Sunday. I accidentally deleted a week's worth of HYSTS links and then had to scramble to put together. So I'm missing some key moments. There is some Dylan Dennis bullshit. There's some copy and paste, but it's not your typically enriching shit, right? All right.

Well, glad to know everyone should be let down today. I mean, if you guys have another show you could be watching right now that no i'm just kidding this one wins awards this one changes your life okay thank you all right so uh standard disclaimer here we go if you want to try showtime which by the way there are still i think two more bellator events this month as a matter of fact you can get those showtime.com 30-day free trial if you like it you can keep it if not you can bounce you can also get some merch morningcombat.store you can get this shirt here if you want i think you can get bc's hat i can't quite tell i think you can

get bc's hoodie if i'm not mistaken or is that an old prototype well it might be an old corrupt prototype this donk hoodie but you should look for it right now by going to morningcombat.store you can wear this mug. And obviously, a reminder, folks, this week is Black Friday for all you people that are willing to engage in that filthy holiday. But we do allow you to engage in it from distance. So if you head to morningcombat.store right now, right on the front page, put your email address in that envelope-shaped hole right there, and you will get an exclusive look. The only way you can find out the Black Friday savings that RJ Gangbanger has going on over there in Jersey. So get in there, check it out.

Flat rate shipping international, you know all that shit. But look, if they want to dress like us, if they want to feel the way we do, all they have to do is disregard health protocols for the first 40 years of their life, right? I mean, they can feel exactly how we feel right now basically right basically right and we call him gangbanger because he actually is a member of the latin kings that's a true thing that is not at all um well he's in the reserve look like you're a marine ship he's in the reserves okay i mean you know he's still

this is some you think this is some slight you're a nasty civilian pig any assessment you make of my military service is irrelevant all right hey every single one of your heroes that you that you you know locked arms with have paid for sex in their life so you can you know you can shove it luke that is true that is also true that is also true that dude you know what the marines love they love god country core and prostitution i mean in that order in that order well you could argue that's always been the american way but hey let's bang all right too he let's all right one more reminder morningcombat at gmail.com is your email you can send us your dead wrongs there by the way you were asking me and i'm at fault too like i'm not blaming you i'm just sort of introducing the

conversation that way we had a conversation about a fight that was never even going to take place on friday between rodolfo Vieira and I think Bundridge. Yes, Casey Bundridge, I think that's who it was. I can't remember anymore. You mean Amanda's husband, Luke? The fight was pulled off the card and we sat there and had a breakdown about it that was never going to happen. I mean, look, we're pretty washed. It's incredible that we're so successful, okay, to be fair right now. But hey, let's get into it because Luke Bellator happened Friday and I was entertained brother Bellator did happen Friday all right so let's kick off the show

with some Bellator news we start with the main event really of Bellator 288 which of course was on Showtime over the weekend in Chicago Illinois Vadim Nemkov retains his title can you believe it he remains the Bellator light heavyweight champion? He remains the Bellator light heavyweight champion. He wins officially the Bellator light heavyweight Grand Prix. BC, he didn't just beat Corey Anderson. He kind of, I mean, I want to say dominated because I think Corey Anderson won a round on one of the judges. He got two, which to me is incomprehensible.

I can give him the one. I can give him the one. But Corey Anderson going 0 for 15 on takedowns. You want to talk about a difference maker? It was that. My question to you, is Vadim Nemkov the best light heavyweight on earth? It's a difficult question. I'd say right now, no.

I'd like to see him get a chance to prove it by continuing to get big wins. And, you know, the best way to prove it would be to get some super fight rematch with current UFC light heavyweight champion, Yerry Prochazka, who handed Nemkov his first pro to feedback in 2015. That's not going to happen either. But, Luke, if he's not the best, he proved on this day that he was right there in the conversation and deserves inclusion within that group. Why? Because it's just the way the luck turned when these two fought in April for the $1 million in the tournament final. And we talked all week coming in.

If someone's going to benefit the most from this mulligan, from this redo, it's going to be Vadim Nemkov. But our biggest question was, even with that, you know, what was that six-month, seven-month difference between the fights, is Corey Anderson's plan A still that great? Turns out, no, Luke Luke because Vadim Nemkov used that time to an approve and unfortunately for Corey Anderson I don't think he he showed much improvement in fact a regression between the two fights now what did Nemkov do first and

foremost keeping his back off the canvas 0 for 15 on takedown offense to take down attempts that was huge his stamina seemed to increase, although obviously the first time around his stamina went down largely from being dragged around on the canvas. But I think even bigger, Luke, than the takedowns was his control of distance was masterful on this one. He was able to use his jab as a consistent stiff weapon, use it to hold that distance, but also being smart with the right hand without putting himself in positions to get countered with a takedown attempt and that was huge Nemkov sat down on his weight kept his body balanced down when he did throw the right hand

it was in perfect situations where he could counter to keep Anderson away but for the most part this was left jab calf kick and i think that combination ultimately just perplexed cory anderson who was unable to take him down and was really unable outside of a few spare punches to take over control of this fight in really any given i mean you said he got one or two rounds i had a five rounds to zero on my card i don't really know where you're going to find a cory anderson round there and that's all full respect to the changes Vadim Nemkov made in camp while given a chance at this rare sort of mulligan. He's still unbeaten during his Bellator run. He's taken on the best names available more or less every time out. Even when he had to take on Julius Anglicus in a last minute change, he got dropped,

but still came out and won that fight going away and showed us what he's all about. He's one of the best light heavyweights in the world. He's putting together a tremendous run right now within Bellator, but this rematch, it was one-sided because he made the changes and Corey Anderson didn't. That's the difference in this fight, Luke. You know, it's so funny. We had Corey Anderson on the RSD couch and he even acknowledged right with us that, you know, his friend had told him hey, man, this guy got a good look at you. You're going to have to have some new tricks up your sleeve in order to get past him. It wasn't like he didn't know that that was the reality he was facing. He was clear-eyed about it.

He understood it. He accepted it. He was excited about it. It was all very much on the table. And yet when it came time to fight, he was unable to do anything about it. The amount of improvement that Vadim Nemkov made between the first and second fight is frankly shocking to get that much better about your takedown defense that quickly and of course if you heard the broadcast they attributed it to of course hard work but as well as going down to American

top team and getting some work with some top wrestlers down there it paid massive massive dividends you know it kind of reminded me a little bit. They have different styles, BC, but they do have the same coach, and it was the same kind of situation. Here's what I mean. We talked about Frankie Edgar against Max Holloway, and that was always going to be a bit of a bad matchup because at 145, Max Holloway has very good takedown defense, and if you can pull the takedown component out of Frankie's game his striking becomes a lot easier to deal with now you had asked me on Friday is there a path reasonably speaking for Corey Anderson if he can't get the takedown and my answer was volume but that was

taken away as well he simply couldn't get off as much but stopping the takedown really disrupted Corey's game he could not get much going. And then, as you indicated, the jab from Nemkov, the lateral movement from Nemkov, his cardiovascular conditioning late in the fight. Dramatic, dramatic improvements. He was already very good. That Corey Anderson no contest fight,

which looked like it might have been headed towards a loss for him. What a wake-up call that was. He made all the right decisions between fights. He made all the right decisions in this particular fight. And to answer the question that I gave you, is he the best? You know, I don't know. I don't know exactly. I don't know how he would match up against Ankhalaev or some other guys.

But I can tell you this. He is very much their peer. Very much their peer. And maybe better than them eventually. We'll have to see. This was a hell of a showcase performance for Vadim Nemkov and I can't wait to see him fight Yoel Romero let me ask you a technical question here because my you know by no means am I attempting to crap on Anderson

who we loved getting to know and you know he did seem to show a great demeanor and defeat on social media afterwards it wasn't his night he fought a, all that stuff. But he didn't just get the takedown taken away from him here or there. I mean, he got completely shut down. What should he have done better? I mean, did you see that there was something missing? And I don't know if it was game plan wise spark in him. If maybe the, you know, the stuffing of the takedowns began to build up on him sort of a you know a callous of oh crap what do i do now but we've seen better striking from him than he

showed in this five-round fight what ultimately went wrong in your eyes uh for cory anderson over this fight that there wasn't even a late rally there was maybe it was a lack of urgency down the stretch i'm not sure but there wasn't, oh man, if he only started that earlier. He never cracked the Nemcov code for 25 minutes. Yeah, and by the way, when I say he got two rounds, I'm not saying I gave him two rounds. I'm saying one of the judges gave him two rounds. One of the scorers was 48-47.

So to me, that's crazy. I don't know how you could find two rounds for Corey. One, I think you could squint and maybe find one. But even that is probably not the case. Okay, but either way way answering the question so this is why guys like Islam Makachev and Habib Nurmagomedov hold such distinct advantages it's actually a great question BC because you're right under the traditional system of takedowns he was using he just couldn't even really get close he had there that one round I think it was round three or four where he was trying to press Nemkov into the fence and they had this kind of stalemate on the hips turning in circles

and he was trying to press him and eventually he just let it go. It's like, here's the thing, what makes, now that he's retired, we'll leave him out of the conversation, but what makes a guy like Makachev so deadly, right? So gifted. Think about what him and Shavkat Rachmanov do. They will accept pressure at certain times, physical pressure, and put their backs up against the fence. And from there, they've got all kinds of trips and throws, right? This is the thing. I've said this before.

There are trips and throws in wrestling, and there are normal takedowns for leg attacks in judo. But judo tends to emphasize one side of it, wrestling another side of it. The guys who are high-level guys, like your Usman Nurmagomedov, who we'll talk about in a minute, your Islam Makachevs, Habib, so forth, what they're able to do is if they have to go to a traditional single leg or a double leg or a high crotch lift or whatever, they can do that, but then they can meld taiyatoshis, haraigoshis, uchimaras, you name it. They can switch to different kinds of throws, upper body, lower body, single leg, double leg, body locks, the whole nine yards. They've got a wide repertoire where they can constantly shift where the attack originates, what kind of leg it goes on, how many different entries they need.

Do they need one underhook? Do they need two? Can they get it from double overhooks? And most, even very good collegiate wrestlers don't really have that. They don't have that ability to nimbly, nimbly, listen to the word there, go from a double leg that doesn't work, switch to a high crotch, then switch, if that doesn't work, to some kind of Uchimata, Haraigoshi, which is a trip either around both legs or in between them. They don't have that ability to switch what I would call takedown systems. Again, all of them are comprehensive, but they emphasize different things.

The guys from Dagestan, they can. They're very good ones anyway. They can do that, and it's such a distinct advantage. I think that was missing from Corey's game. Yeah, Corey, you got to learn that Ushiguroshi and get on that shit. No, seriously, though, I think he was stunned by it, Luke. We saw his confidence.

I mean, he could not have been more confident on our couch breaking down exactly what he did to sort of nullify Nemkov the first time around. And then, you know, he just wasn't able to replicate that. And I don't know if there was a lack of next-level preparation from what Nemkov might do, or maybe they were just caught off guard. Can Corey Anderson go back to the blackboard and figure this formula out and make another run back to the title in your eyes?

I mean, how damaging was this for a guy now in two organizations? I mean, he got close in the UFC to the title shot, got really close. And Bellator, he basically had the belt around his waist last time. So, you know, what does he do next from this? I mean, he's not dead. He's not old and washed, but there's going to have to be some changes after this performance. I mean, here's just the reality.

He's 32, which is not old at all, but he got out skilled. He got out skilled, and he's a skilled guy. I mean, we're not talking about some guy who's bad. We're talking about a guy who's very, very good. Corey Anderson is very, very good, but he just didn't have enough tools in the tool uh belt to go to to give him some kind of response people wanted you to go out there and fight like aggressively you can do that but oftentimes fighting aggressively just means fighting like a dumbass and cory anderson's not a dumbass he's not going to fight that way he wants to fight

in some kind of strategic and and reasonable path to victory he just didn't have one that night so honestly it's not really about like the things he's good at weren't there the things he's good at were there it just wasn't enough against this caliber of an opponent who is this prepared this in shape and we should also say dude Vadim Nemkov is a good athlete he's a really good athlete dude he's dynamic he can cover distance again I thought is we haven't talked much about it no you mentioned it when your first answer was but dude his cardiovascular conditioning in this fight was on point he put in as much effort as he needed to in every single round and never looked winded to me never looked like he was rationing offense you know what I mean he always had just enough for every single situation he was in and then a know what i mean he always had just enough for every

single situation he was in and then a little bit more to claim the round now he didn't get the finish and and i think that also speaks to how difficult cory anderson is an opponent and like there was a gap between them and it was a consistent gap although we got to be careful about this bc it wasn't a huge gap between them it was a noticeable gap he was able to maintain through the course of five rounds it wasn't like he was beating the shit out of cory and he did drop him in the first or whatever but you know what i mean it wasn't like he was just completely annihilating the guy he was a noticeable and kept it it was a noticeable flipping of the script in comparison to how the first one went it was eye-opening and shocking in that regard but um

it's interesting that what nemkov ultimately did was yeah raise the raise the the stamina shut down the takedowns as we talked about but he almost like keep it simple stupid right he almost put a big kiss on this he simplified it down to essentially jab calf strike occasional right hand every once in a while. And man, it just shut all the doors. So, you know, one up to Nemkov for the run he was on when not, you know, he wasn't really all that known outside of Russia when he first joined Bellator. But that run of beating four former current champions to get to the tournament and now three wins.

And it's not like that no contest never happened. But look at how quickly he turned the entire thing around. And Luke, while we are rightfully, when we talk about Usman Nurmagomedov shortly, going to once again continue to just blow the fugal horn in the direction of Team Habib and, you know, the Eagle as a coach now, dude, Team Fedor is pretty badass. Even though the story in this time is about what Nemkov did to get extra help, to get the Cliffs notes. No, not Kill Cliff MMA, American Top Team.

I want to give respect to what Fedor's doing there with the names he's building, Valentin Moldavsky, all that. But is this a damnation against what Fedor offers that nemkov needed extra help he had brazilian shrek with him in the corner there luke um conan silvera yeah yeah i mean what you know what what is what does this mean about what what even team fedor was missing in terms of their of their uh yeah they probably don't have a guy on staff who has the kind of wrestling uh pedigree or coaching ability or whatever he just wasn't getting the right looks for what the american wrestler presented to him at least not you know organically in camp so he had to go and find it

outside but like i would actually say that's a good thing about fedor that he let the guy go train at oh you're not let him but you know it didn't have an issue I should say you didn't have an issue with with Nemkov going to ATT getting this extra training because look at the benefit it conferred massive massive benefit not just for this fight but for any future fight he might have even against Joel Romero who's not an American wrestler but might adopt some of those similar kinds of tactics that have been boiled down for MMA purposes so like this was something that's going to give him longevity for the future in a profound kind of way. So I actually think that Fedor doesn't have omni-competence. No trainer does.

And when they lack the capacity to provide that, not getting in the way of students getting that where they need, I think is important. Now, you could ask a question long-term. Should Fed or have something more like this in his camp so guys don't go have to have to go out and find it yes i think that's probably some kind of assessment you could make but in the short run this to me speaks quite highly of fade or that he was like yes go get what you need and when you're ready to come back let's all work together and look at the result everyone you can't say that whatever they put together in camp

didn't gel it It gelled perfectly. Yeah, it was absolutely perfect. One more. This may be a hard question to consider, but do you think Vadim Nemkov also attended the DeSantis 2024 rally that Dan Lambert had at the ATT gym? I don't know the political leanings of Russian fighters these days. I would imagine if Brazilian fighters

are massively right-wing and American fighters are massively right-wing, I would imagine so are Russian fighters, but one never knows. Neither here nor there. Here's the next question, BC. Okay, so they had a face-off in the cage on the February card, February 4th, I believe,

on CBS, co-main event. Vadim Nemkov is going to defend his title against Yoel Romero. Early thoughts about how this could go. Well, first of all, I love the matchup. Not just the celebrity factor, the sex factor, because Yoel Romero can explode with the kind of strikes, almost video game strikes at times.

I love the placement on CBS February 4th under the Fedor Beideydour rematch. But I think this is an easier matchup for Vadim Nemkov and plays well into what he does. I mean, obviously, if you're Yoel Romero, you're going to want to make him extend. You're going to want to make him reach. And, you know, Romero is never a stranger to sort of holding the ball at times in a fight to sort of frustrate you and bring that out. So it's going to be a test of that for Nemkov.

But if Romero just looks to strike against him from the outside, I can't wait to see this fight. I want to see Romero's explosive power, but I think Nemkov handles this from a distance, Luke. So I think Anderson was that really tough test for him within this division. Maybe down the road, they end up getting a third stab at it if Corey can continue, you know, start a new stretch of winning here. But I love the Romero fight, but I think if you're Team Nemkov, you already know what to do against him, right? This is not the type of fighter that this version of Romero is going to surprise with that stuff, right?

No. I mean, here's the thing. To me, Nemkov is just way better than Romero, like way better. However, and we all know this about Romero, you can be better than him and that may not necessarily matter. Even at his advanced age, the guy's nearing 50, his explosive ability, his athletic ability, his weirdness, his willingness to take risk in unusual situations, that makes him dangerous. That could flip the tide of the fight at any point so I expect Nemkov to win and I expect however long the fight goes Nemkov to be winning the vast majority of that time but Romero's a wild card

he's a wild card figure that makes it you know hard to definitively say just because Nemkov is better that ultimately means he will clearly win or defend his title. It could get tricky down the line there. Do you think Nemkov can take him down consistently? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Not early. Not early. But I think he's going to leg kick him a lot, get him tired,

get him a little bit more stationary, and I think then he could for sure. All right. He's a hell of a champion. It's like after seeing him come back and get this win, you want to know more about him. Look, he's very hell he's a hell of a champion and I you know it's like it's like after seeing him come back and get this win you want to know more about him Luke he's very soft-spoken there's obviously the language barrier and you know we saw what happened when you try to get inside of Fedor's defenses in a sit-down but uh you know I hope Vadim gets his chance here to to be all he can be Luke because he seems to be a special fighter so he's one of the he's one of the very

best fighters Bellator has on their roster. I mean, I don't know if he's better than Patricio, but he's up there. He's top three, maybe best fighter, top five best fighters that they have. I mean, he's very, very good. All right, let's go to point number two. We stay with Bellator because it was another title up for grabs,

and sure enough, this was the easiest to predict, although there were some surprises about the fights, I suppose, along the way, but either way, Usman Nurmagomedov is your new Bellator lightweight champion. He absolutely blanked Patrycki Pitbull. It wasn't even close, not for a minute, nothing. Gets the fight, gets all five rounds, and some judges score cards. I think he had round two, maybe, round two or round three as a 10-8, so there was one 50-45. There was two 50-44s. He made it look easy.

BC, biggest takeaway from this championship win by Ousmane Nurmagomedov. I mean, the only thing I could say even remotely negative is that we didn't get a finish despite his just complete domination. And for those middle rounds, he didn't necessarily look like he was going for a finish. And by the way, it's not always easy to finish. Somebody has battle tested his Patrycki Pitbull. But my biggest takeaway, Luke, is even without a spectacular finish, which I said coming into the fight could be like, you know, imagine a head kick here.

He could just kick your TV screen in. He still kind of did with how great across the board in every single category he is for a 24-year-old who had four fights under this banner on this level. He's, what, 16, 17, and 0 at this point? We have no idea how good he may end up being in the long run, Luke, when he consistently faces the best in the world, when he adds new skills to his game. But look at what he is right now at 24. You know, with Coach Habib behind him,

Islam Mahachev is another brother training him and pushing him in his corner. I mean, this guy in every single category was nasty, was well game-planned, was just, I mean, from distance to accuracy. He's a 10 out of the 10 across the board in almost every single category yeah there's a lot more he's gonna have to show us in his career and like everybody else i want to see him against the very best in the world you know i want to see him against aj mckee for this title in this promotion one day soon but for this level of competition and just his fifth Bellator fight, short of a finish, he absolutely dazzled. He is beyond a complete fighter already for this age. He's a dynamic, sensational fighter that, you know, I'm ready to start having some real conversations about not only the Team Habib

movement that has come on and is taking over and the creation of MMA's new Gracie family in some weird way, but I'm not even sure who's the best of MMA's new Gracie family in some weird way. But I'm not even sure who's the best of all among them because I got people in my DMs going, look, I know you're going to go nuts. I know you're going to go nuts on Usman, but Umar is even better than him. And oh, by the way, Islam just looked like a million bucks against Charles. Luke, these guys are coming on and they're insanely great. And this guy's only 24. What do you want me to say about him he's everything you would want a mixed martial artist to be and whether you cared about it or not delivered a very

heartfelt sort of um you know wholesome reaction to the victory getting habib on on the on the uh facetime and just showing so much humility and reverence to the family. Dude. You know, he looks so good. You had a feeling he could do that against almost anybody. Now, let's not overlook this matchup and how he was a 7-1 favorite or whatever. He should have done this in some ways. Should he have done this, though, in reality at 24 this dominantly with this little world-level global experience? No.

He's a special fighter. So listen to this. ESPN MMA put together a graphic. This is team Habib's individual records. Ready? Habib Nurmagomedov, 29 and 0. Islam Makachev, 23 and 1. Islam Mamadov, who fights in Bellator, by the way, or did. I'm not sure what's the current state of his contract. 22-2-1. Now, Zubaira Tugugov, not that great. 20-5. Oh, that's still pretty good, and won. The only Nurmagomedov who's got a bit of a blemish,

Abubakar Nurmagomedov, 17-3-1. Usman Nurmagomedov, 16-0. Umar Nurmagomedov, 15-0. Their combined record, 142-11-3. Hammers, hammers, hammers up and down that list. Now, to your point, I thought it looked to me, BC, tell me if you disagree with this fight with Nurmagomedov and Pitbull. I thought, especially in rounds three and four,

that Nurmagomedov could have turned up the intensity a little bit. It looked to me what he wanted to do was make sure the fight was always, always, always on the most advantageous terms he could get. And he only really went for a takedown when he had a very clear, totally wide opening that he was able to create. Other than that, he played it what I would call a little bit on the safe side. I think he was feeling the nerves a little bit for him in his career this was his first ranked guy in Bellator it was for a championship fight it was for five rounds I it looked to me just a little bit BC just a little

bit and understandably given all the circumstances he was a little bit nervous a little bit cautious does that seem fair to you yeah that's the only I think that's got to be the only the only thing you can slam back at him and it was legit because i felt like he should have walked him down and finished him and when we say he's a hammer luke it's not just takedown domination i mean he's absolutely dominating every inch of that stand-up against a noted almost all-time great slugger for this promotion so yeah short of the the passivity he showed at times but look at these pictures right here he wasn't passive there in full mount yeah he's freaking nasty he's good on the feet he's got good ground and pound his take i will say this for patricky he did get taken down and when he did obviously never committed i was able to do a lot of damage on the on the floor i will say this i

thought patricky's takedown defense looked a lot better than I had thought that it might I thought he was going to get taken down much easier than he did now Bellator doesn't provide stats so we don't have the exact numbers but um there were several times he was able to ward off the takedowns and and keep I think that's part of the reason because the takedowns were a little bit harder to come by and so Usman was a little bit more careful on the feet than you might imagine. But look at the state of things. He was bloodied. He was battered.

Still, I give Petricci credit. His takedown defense, not perfect, not enough to win. Better than I thought it would be, for sure. Okay, I'm not going to sit here and compare Islam Mahachev's breakthrough performance against Charles Oliveira and this one against Petrycki. Patrycki's got a great career and he's a great fighter. There are different levels though. We still have to see Usman against a lot of

different competition, but luckily he's 24. It's so early. Do we have a feel right now on who's the best fighter long-term in this stable? Are these cries in my DMs of Umar being the real deal legit? I mean, dude, Islam Mahachev may be way better than we even realize right now. Look at the leap he just did against Charles.

But look at 25 minutes of Usman right there. Look at Umar of late just blowing our doors down. That another guy's coming out of that hammer closet. Who's the best out of these guys? Are these guys going to end up being better than Habib? Because he was more one skill dominant for the most part? How do you sort of take stock of the cupboard right now?

Hard to say. Umar's grappling might be a little bit better than Usman's. But I think Usman's stand up might be a little smoother than Umar, although Umar is underrated on the feet as well. Umar might be the best of them. It's possible. It's undecided.

Here's what I would say. It's just too early to tell between those two, but I do understand people that think Umar might be a little bit more talented. Nevertheless, I just want to point this out. At 24, Usman Nurmagomedov is 16-0, undefeated, got the championship belt, already has a complete skill set, right?

Like, already good enough to win a title in a major organization. Imagine what he's going to be like in five years. Because by the way, he doesn't take a lot of damage either. I mean, I'm sure those practices are insanely difficult, but in the fights themselves, he doesn't take a lot of damage.

So in five years, as he continues to round out, smooth out, and really bring all the portions of his game together, dude, I mean, I don't know if he's going to be unbeatable, and really bring all the portions of his game together. Dude, I mean, I don't know if he's going to be unbeatable, but if he can keep up what he has been doing, it's just going to be hard to fucking beat that guy. Look, I have two really important questions for you involving Usman Nurmagomedov. When Team Habib and RIP, the late Abdulmanap,

the patriarch of this Dagestan gym here, of this movement. Look, they were very strategic from day one of one day Habib will step aside, Islam will take over in his spot, more or less. Right outside of the interim reign by Charles Oliveira, that's what happened. Do you think long ahead of time, they obviously knew Usman was going to be this good, this young. Did they steer him to Bellator rather than be in a situation where they've got Islam in him and they're basically brothers right more or less in the same division was there any pre-planning

in that had to be I don't think they do anything by accident you know I just don't nothing happens just because it happens that way it was obviously great for Bellator that they got the Nurmagomedov services and again I think Islam Mam excuse me fights for them as well yeah um i i listen i i you saw that a little bit what we're talking about some of that hesitancy i think they wanted to put

him in a place where he could get we've talked about it before with aj mckee aj mckee went from making his pro debut to winning a title and a major organization all in one place. He never had to bounce around. If you are a talented person who has extraordinary potential, but you're still young, right? Putting someone in Bellator where they can coordinate the matchmaking more along all the various stages of your development, I think really benefits you.

Now, he jumped to the front of the line against Patricio at so at this point, he's going to have to enter the Grand Prix and then defend his title. But I do think that there's something to be said for the fact they wanted to mature and nurture this guy, yet when he was ready, still give him high-quality opponents. Bellator, I think under those considerations, is probably a better fit for him, like it was for A.J. McKee as he was making his ascension through the ranks as ranks as well glad you mentioned AJ because that's my second

hot burning have to ask you right now must interrupt you regardless of the direction you were going to me I do some people think I'm just filthy right I can be a cash right but I my hardcore heart Usman Nurmagomedov versus AJ McKee is one of the best fights you can make in this sport right now and we're really close potentially to seeing that so Luke Thomas I want to ask you is Usman a problem for AJ or is this when it happens and it could be who knows in the next year I don't know is this is this a 50-50 fight in your eyes because of what we still don't know about both of them I mean what the hell is this going to look like I'm going to be so fired up yeah so this is a crazy one so you know AJ is going to go out there like just guns blazing and try to put a lot of offensive pressure on him it

doesn't seem wise to try and out you know uh point fight a guy like Usman Nurmagomedov it doesn't you gotta take the fight to him for better or for worse. But of course, even with that, there are some real challenges with doing something like that. So you've got a case where AJ is either gonna open himself up to vulnerabilities by being too offensive, or all that pressure will eventually get a guy

like Nurmagomedov to crack, and he will make a mistake. That's the central tension of that fight. But both guys, very well-rounded. Both guys, very offensive. It just feels to me, AJ McKee at this stage of his career, a little bit more gunslinger, a little bit more gunslinger. A guy like Nurmagomedov, a little bit more surgeon.

I'd want to see what their wrestling and grappling looks like against one another. I'd really want to see if AJ... That 155 Grand Prix, that division is now ready for a Grand Prix. Now with Nurmagomedov at the head of the pack, it's ready for one. I really can't wait to see what it looks like because you're going to have some dynamic matchups in that weight class, and they're all going for this dude, so it's going to be fun.

Wait, that was the Grand Prix that was announced for next year, correct? Correct. What do you think the eight-man field is going to look like right now? So let's pull up the rankings here. You can get those at CBSSports.com for Bellator's lightweight division. Here's what it looks like, right? So you could have, obviously, Usman's going to have to be in it. Patrycki's going to be in it.

You could have, I'm just going to pick names. These may not be the names you could pick these. Benson Henderson could go in it, right? And this dude by the way also beat the previous champion Tawfiq Musayev you can add him in there you could do another how about another Russian hammer Alexander Chablis uh you could add him in Brent Primus Islam Mamadov AJ McKee there's eight right there that doesn't even include Sidney Outlaw or Peter Quealy all right what all right you know I like. You know, I like when some of the last remaining gauchos, cowboys are there and they look at the stock of things. I know we're talking about Patricio Pitbull, the pound for pound king in Bellator, the face of the poster, maybe trying to like, you know, double down on his greatness as much as he could, potentially cutting down to a 135 title shot to try to become the first three-division champion,

which is something, by the way, that one championship's Rene Derrida, who I interviewed, it'll be out this week, he told me that's his goal, Luke, to become the first in big-time MMA to be a three-division champion. He's got the potential. He's special. What if Patricio said, you know what? I don't want my brother going out like that. I gave up my lightweight championship in Bellator. Okay, they didn't win it.

Usman didn't win it. I gave it up. I'm entering the tournament, brother. Well, I mean, are you right? Come on, right? Only if Patricio is not in it, because I don't want to get to some bullshit where they have to fight and then they refuse.

Okay, put them on opposite brackets. And then if it happens and you got, you got another inner piece of weird entertainment. Okay. But I'll opposite brackets, and then if it happens, then you got another piece of weird entertainment, okay? I'll say this. Patricio against any of those guys is competitive, and maybe better. Obviously, we're talking about a very special fighter in Patricio Pitbull.

I'm telling you, that lightweight Grand Prix is going to be fire, dude. They've added Russian names to it enough now between Chablis, between Mamedov, Nurmagomedov, Musaev. Just that alone, the russian side alone is fucking amazing you think aaron pico should move up and enter no no no no okay he just got surgery no he just got i know i know i'm just i'm trying i'm trying to put as many you know herbs and spices in it as i can luke okay i'm trying to put herb in it. That's really what I'm trying to do.

A big pot cake. Yeah, there you go. There it is. Okay. One more note quickly about the Nurmagomedov and Petriki fight, at least the after effects. So on Saturday, or I guess sometime Friday night, Saturday morning, Patricio Pitbull had tweeted that his brother was still in the hospital at four in the morning and hadn't received adequate care,

and he was lashing out at the Illinois Athlet athletic commission and kind of tagged bellator in the tweet as well being like it's not the first time this has happened so i reached out to both parties to get more information and it seems like some stuff there's here's basically as i understand it there actually was a doctor on site by law there has to be by the illinois commission my understanding from what i've been told and again i was not there i want to be very clear about that what i was told was that there in fact by law there had to be a doctor there was the doctor looked at the cut and said this requires more stitching than i'm actually able to provide it required deep stitching inside the tissue so they sent him to the hospital now apparently what they tried to do now both parties say that this is true both parties say that the doctor on site at the event called ahead

to the hospital to get the surgical tech ready to go so that when patricki got to the hospital he could get care immediately for whatever reason that failed both sides agreed that that for whatever reason it didn't work and so hello let's just be honest about it the american health care system is garbage and if you show up to a hospital at you know midnight you're just gonna have to wait it's just the way that it goes so they eventually here and here's i think why the the pitbull brothers were a little bit upset the doctor whatever they were at receiving didn't get them so they had to wait and then when the surgical tech person did arrive they decided that they actually didn't need the deep tissue stitches that you could just

get the normal stitches on top and so he got 10 to close it so there was some miscommunication along the way the doctor in the arena was the one who basically made the call to send him to the hospital tried to set it up it didn't work and it all fell apart i don't know what the answer is do you get another one there do you get a different doctor i i don't i don't know how to resolve this bc but that's my understanding what went wrong here i would counter your harsh statement against the american health care system and the supposed made-up idea of what it's like to go to a emergency room at 12 midnight if not for the fact that you've lived that nightmare luke and i was there okay back his hospital after that although

we got pretty we got pretty swift care there i have to relatively speaking if you died there and people were like yeah he had a great life but he died in new london connecticut you probably deserve that look okay you know that you deserve i mean listen nobody can say that the american health care system whatever solution you have for it no one can say that you get you get care quickly and that it's cheap no one can say that you get you get care quickly and that it's cheap no one can say that you just don't so yeah but even with it sit there but even with the you know the perfect ideal ideological canadian system you got to wait a long time for some of that care too luke if sure i mean here's the answer it just would have been better if the doctor that was

required by the illinois, either a had done the stitching himself or B I think it actually think it's fine that he sent him because here's what, this is a true thing. Poor my, my poor daughter. I don't know if you remember this BC when she had that big cut on her forehead, we had to take her to the hospital. She, they, the doctor there actually had did the same thing to us. He told us we're going to wait for the stitch tech to get here because they're better at it for the stitch tech to get here because they're better at it. And they had to get, I think it was 14 stitches on the inside

and then like another seven on the outside. And so we had to wait for that whole thing to go through. So I've actually lived through this very thing exactly. But I guess it all would have been better for all parties if that guy either A, had stitched them up there, or B, if he made the call to the hospital and that would have worked i think that would have been that would have been fine but you know what if the attending uh stitch physician was uh jacob stitch duran would you have been

would you have okayed that luke he would he would have put vaseline out there and just been like go get him tiger go get him tookie back to the real world there you go back to the playground all right so that's that let's move on if we can uh let's talk about ufc because that card was it was not great going into it and it ended up somehow even worse it was a weird night of fights dude a lot of yeah there was a lot of ball kicking there was pole dancing there's a lot going on on this car there was it was not a normal night. Before we talk about Derek Lewis, BC, let's quickly talk about the fight that ended up did serving as your main event. A 205 contest between Kennedy and Zetch Q.

I can never pronounce this fucking guy's name. I'm sorry. I'm so bad about this. You drop the N. You go right to the Z. And Zetch Q. I'm going to say that. I don't think that's right.

Adesonya. Adesonya. He stopped Iwan Kutelaba. Although Kutelaba started out strong, he eventually had a comeback. What can we say about Kennedy Zetsch Q that stands out to you that is reasonable? He's really tall for the division, Luke. All right? All right.

That's what I can say. No, look, he showed a ton of heart in this i mean iwan kutelaba we said coming in hey they really need to win here really really needs a win but one thing he can do is fight downhill when he's got you hurt and just come out guns blazing he did that he got kennedy hurt man that first round was was was epically bad for kennedy you know what i mean it was almost like dallas luke for a kennedy hurt man that first round was was was epically bad for kennedy you know what i mean it was almost like dallas luke for a kennedy i mean it's not like too soon i'm not saying it was like a great connection you know in the moment but i mean you know it's like it's not it wasn't like it's you know we had a lot of time to do you know all right um here's the deal though look does

this jump through your screen you know as guy up. He's a contender. No. But this was a big win against a guy you have to beat to advance. I don't know what's next for Kutaylaba after this, but in relation to Nzekwu, dude, he was tough as nails. Luke, if he can use that size to his advantage, which at times it looked like he was trying to on the ground when he was on his back after Kutaylaba took him down,

he could be something. There's something there. There's a fighting spirit. There's an unusual size, and he showed a lot to dig in, hurt the monster back, and get him out of there. I still need to see more, but for a last minute, unlikely main event, these

two, at the very least, they were willing to risk it all, and they showed up for our entertainment. I was impressed. Did you take more from Kennedy, Luke? A little bit. that he's got a big future here's the thing here are his it's hard to know exactly what his real upside is he's obviously quite talented and this was a great win by him by the way he's got losses to paul craig triangle choke but that was his uh ufc debut so you know okay whatever and then he's got losses to uh da un jung and then nicolai negomirano who he lost to via split um he does have wins ko wins over carlos olberg he's got

wins over danilo marquez he's got back-to-back tko wins over carl roberson and now iwan kutelaba he's clearly getting better he's clearly getting better he clearly put on a pretty good performance he's got an 83 inch reach one less than john jones one inch less than john jones um and training with fortis mma has really put him in a good position rallied here didn't panic to me the more interesting story here is like where is kute laba in all of this three losses in a row he's only won one in his last seven dude he's won five and one one five and one over seven first on kalaya fight was just a weird one you can throw that out but then he lost cleanly the second time had the draw against dustin jacobi he did beat devin clark but then has lost three being finished

in the first round against span walker and then the second round here against kennedy here's the thing bc he came out like a fucking bat out of hell in all of his early fights he gets an extreme couture and he tries to tighten it up and he is tightening it up he did look like he had a more um streamlined like thought processed kind of way of fighting but it has made him either more hittable or less dangerous or how would you diagnose where things have gone wrong for him i mean his defense is not great. And he takes so many chances offensively that he puts himself in the line of fire. You know, I think he's the type of guy, man, it's like 28 years old still.

There's such an explosive frame there to work with and a willingness to make car crashes in action. If somebody, which as you mentioned, going to extreme mature was a smart move, if somebody can really tone that down a bit, it's a little similar to what we were talking about with Johnny Walker going to John Cavanaugh and company, but I don't think you caught him here despite that record. I mean, one five and one is a damning stretch. He is willing to fight anybody at any time, and he is willing to play the role of the crazy foreign guy, the Hulk,

and he's also willing to let it all hang out, which he did right here in his last second main event opportunity. This type of guy this company loves. That doesn't mean there's still a lot of work to do behind the scenes. Luke, is Eric Nixick his guy here? Is that the new coach? I don't think he's the only one, but he's one of them, yes.

Alright, I'd be interested in talking to Eric and really get a breakdown. I'm like, what parts of that game would you mute a bit to allow other more fundamental areas to shine because this is a guy who can do a lot and i guess a certain level could look explosive as shit and exciting which is why i don't think you want him to just walk out that door and go somewhere else but you also can't really take on much more losses than this. This is about the limit. So if you were in that gym, Luke, what are you going to tell this guy? I don't know. This is beyond my purview.

This is beyond my pay grade. This is a level of difficulty in problem solving I just don't have because I do think they're trying to do right by the guy, and I do think he made the right call in going to a gym that we know turns people into champions. You just know they can, but they can't turn water into wine either so it's really a question of like what can they do for him to tighten up his defense and and make these fights go a little bit longer I think than they have been um beyond what they already are doing I don't know the

answer to that I really just don't know the answer to that unfortunately um but i guess we're going to find out now there's two other stories from this car that we have to get to real quick do you think kennedy and jack will can dunk with these i mean if he can't that's kind of some bullshit he's 6'5 with an 83 inch reach he better be able to because you know spoiler the guy can stand up and scratch his knees we're gonna have anthony smith on uh room service diaries, by the way. So circle it on your calendars here on Morning Combat. But he told us at 6'2", he can't dunk. And I was like, you're a world-class athlete, bro.

You were one lie away from being the world champion. You can't dunk? He might have been being humble. No, what he said was he could touch the rim. Yeah, but that's not the same thing as putting the ball over the cylinder and through the hoop and i know some people but my point is my point is if he okay but if you can already touch the rim you can train to dunk like he could dunk if he worked at it right i don't know it shouldn't matter in real life but luke i come from a place where there's certain currency and things like getting a lot of chicks dunking a basketball being a diesel

man and consuming more alcohol than the regular fare um you know these are like not bad you know these are things you would tattoo on your arm like a crazy fraternity would make you do luke just to show people who you are right so when i see that i don't i bet you i bet you kennedy dunks windmills that's what i think okay you, there you go. He might. All right. What do you want to say about the main event? Derek Lewis falling ill once the event had basically already started. They sent him to the hospital.

He was eventually cleared. Some kind of stomach illness, as best I understand it. And they had to pull it. Is there anything to say here, BC, or is it just bad luck? I mean, it is just bad luck. Does it come at a bad time? I don't know. I mean, he needs a big win. But at the same time, I don't think this hurts his standing. And obviously, for all the

talk we are about injuries and Dillashaw's arm falling off 20 times before that fight, if somebody's not up to speed health-wise, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often, right? You would rather have this happen if somebody's not there. But given the fact that Derek Lewis needs a big moment to keep his career on track, it was tough timing. But you're going to put him in a main event any time he fights still, so he'll be back there soon. But tough to see that, Luke.

But this story doesn't hold a candle to the interesting legs or arms on the branches there from the tree of what this next one does, Luke. Holy shit, James Krause. So James Krause might be in a little bit of trouble. We don't know. I want to be very clear about that. I don't know exactly what kind of peril he faces. I don't know exactly how to look at this

other than to say the following. According to one of the fighters who was on the card, who won, who trains at Glory MMA and Fitness, James Krause was pulled from the card about a day before and not allowed to even corner. Now, I don't even know how that is the promotions call. That seems to be like an athletic commission call, but whatever the case, he wasn't allowed to.

And it turns out that the state of New Jersey had alerted their, the gaming board essentially in New Jersey had alerted all bettors to not take any bets on any fight Kraus was related to, either as trainer, cornerman, coach, you name it, because of this previous, we talked about it last week or two weeks ago, the Derek Minner fight, where he went in, the lines switched quickly for his opponent, and then he went in there and won via first-round KO in a very, all very surprising, unusual way. BC, I'll ask you this question.

How much trouble is James Krause in? Well, it's going to depend right now on what they find, whether this is just, okay, we're taking this investigation seriously. So because of that, James, you're going to sit this out until we can clear your name. That is a possibility here. But the other possibility, the one where they have information right now which meant he definitely should not have been there and they went to the steps to make sure of that and to make this the story it deserves to be you're you're in extreme trouble and i don't mean you know necessarily what that means in fines or or or the penal system and all that i just mean

that here's a guy who makes his living in this game and is one of the best in the world at what he does. And these are the type of offenses, if this is all true and there's a big network, and I know it's hard for Kraus right now because he's got that deep connection in gambling with the discord he runs and the podcast and all that that he's looked at as a gambling guy. If there was some impropriety in how the Derek Minner fight went down or any other fight dude that's like banishment I mean look at

the headlines with Pete Rose still begging everyone to get in and have his moment that you know there's like lifetime banishment built in there potentially if that's the way nobody knows because we didn't investigate it we don't have that inside info unless you're part of that greater circle. But Luke, in professional sports, in the history of this type of thing, which is why anybody that said anything bad about the UFC putting the ban on fighters betting, this is exactly why you do that. So well done, UFC. And maybe you have to ask yourself, did they get a whiff of something like this?

And that's why they put that in. Either way, that would be a smart call. what is this to have a potential to be a nightmare for james kraus if he was either sharing inside info that that would have to be protected you know when you have access to that given how much money can be bet and how you know gambling's not a silent thing anymore you can't watch a ufc broadcast for two seconds without seeing constant constant things related to betting or urging or commercials to push you to make a bet. This could be very bad. So I applaud everybody for pressing pause and giving this the investigation it deserves. I hope for James' sake this is all blown up and there's a lot of assumptions being made. But you and I watched that Derek Minner fight.

We reacted in morning combat. Although none of of us have proof that did not look good i hope for james cross's sake this isn't some deep network here that's going to get blown up and busted luke because he's not going to be a lot to work in this sport if this is the direction it's going i mean listen we live in a sport it's not you just UFC. It's every sport across every platform. Gambling now, sports gambling and MMA or sports in general are just intertwined. Even on this show, we occasionally certainly have sponsors where we offer people lines and whatnot. And I'm proud of that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I don't think the state has any compelling interest in banning it. But, of course, we all have to be responsible actors as it relates to this and again i don't know what what the situation is with james krauss james krauss we're gonna have to wait and find out i will say the one thing that surprised me about all of this bc is that as far as i can tell only bloody elbow.com had an article about it i didn't see i could be wrong if i am by all means no espn's been on top of this luke mark espn did the story originally mark ramundi and then there were some other ones as well. But in terms of the MMA sites, I think Junkie and Fighting, I didn't see a single article about it.

And to me, this is like a fairly important issue where, you know, I mean, just think about it rationally, right? Imagine someone hires a coach to do gambling picks for ex-UFC, I'll just say UFC since we're talking about it, ex-UFC event. And it's like, where is the line being drawn here in in one world you'd be like well this is just harmless analysis you know make of it what you will on the other side it's like there is there's not enough it seems to me as this process gets going i don't know that we have enough guardrails between guys using their knowledge

to make money in very noble or otherwise you know non-pernicious ways or as it relates to the other side where it all becomes quite below board and potentially illegal or otherwise damaging the line between them is not so clear you're right the ufc tried to introduce some language around that to create some barriers i think that helps i don't think the job is done yet um i don't think the job is you need in any sport you you tend to need a major moment whether it's like the black sock scandal of 1919 or city college in new york college basketball betting scandal in the 50s or you know tim donahue for the nba you you need someone to push that wall down to remind you and let you know that you actually do need a wall and you need them to be firm. So, you know, this is going to end up good because this –

look, this is in some ways a day one situation for pro sports to be this tied into gambling. Just, you know, we got a football team in Vegas. We're going to get an NBA team. We are at a level that I just imagine like when we watch Total Recall and we see the third areola luke we're like damn first of all the future is going to be awesome right but beyond that we're like you know i wonder wow imagine that you know we're there we're there on the imagine that right

now so um it's you're it's going to take these type of scandals potentially to to find out where the you know where that wall is and where the rules extend to. But, I mean, look, do you feel bad that you have... Let's just imagine a scenario. Let's imagine. I want to be clear about this. We are talking about something in theory. In theory, what if this investigation finds that there was some level, whatever it means, of impropriety around Krause?

Is he going to be banned from the sport? What could happen here? Okay, so while that sounds extreme, there are punishments handed out in situations like this to prevent it from ever happening again. So you go, look, there's the example of why, right? Pete Rose, yes, there's the example of why you should never do it. We are going to drop the bomb on you to to scare everybody else if he's connected in some

type of network where information is being passed like that and if this fight which well by the way just for fairness um not only minner uh latifi a couple other fighters got just they got fined right it was it was breaking news for uh not disclosing injuries to the state commissions that's another good step to enforce that but um yeah i don't know where i was going to land this plane luke but let me just say what could happen if they find that something below board happened they i guarantee you they're going to drop the bomb does that bomb mean you are banned from the sport i don't know how i don't know how you regulate that but you know specifically beyond saying you know you're not allowed in our buildings but there's something potentially very

bad that could happen here so let's hope for Krause's sake that this was just a one-off weird coincidence. Yeah, Luke, I mean, you wouldn't want... I mean, look, Tim Donahue's never going to walk into an NBA arena again, right? And there's a reason for that. Yeah, well, okay, but that was like chronic malfeasance. Right, let's hope

that this isn't, right? Let's hope that this... By the way, just to put my cards on the table, Krause called me like a year ago and asked if I wanted to be the host of that podcast. Oh, dude, you could have been... And I just didn't have the time. Huh? Wow, you could have been subpoenaed, Luke, okay?

Could have been subpoenaed, but I didn't have time. I didn't have any interest, so I politely declined. No reason to debate anymore in these gyms who's sleeping with who. This gambling thing is front page news, Luke. You know? All right, you're just the the worst you're the worst human in america all right let's uh finish our top five here if we can bc with one championship they had their prime one god i hate the naming convention one on prime video four on friday night and i gotta say bc i

keep we keep telling people these one cards dude they, they're not bad. They're not bad at all. They're pretty quality. This one delivered in your main event, Christian Lee becomes a double champ beating I'm not even going to pronounce the guy's first name, but Abasov. Had to come back. Isn't it? It looks like Keon Riam, but it was actually like Cameron

turns out, Luke. Yeah, I don't know how to... Exactly. I can't quite get it right. And I don't listen to the commentary very often, so I missed it. BC, amazing fight. Lee gets dropped bad. I was surprised Herb Dean didn't even stop it. Then the fight slows down in the middle rounds.

And then round four, Christian Lee comes out and just sticks it to Abasov, getting two enormous belts as a consequence. How good is Christian Lee? Really good. Really good. I don't know the ceiling. I don't know how far he can take it because let's not forget, the reason why this fight was so much fun at the end of the day

was because Abasov missed weight and wasn't allowed to win his title, but he knows he needed a win and a big statement to be able to go back and fight for his title once again. So he came out with a chip on his shoulder as the bigger fighter and put Christian Lee through hell to get to this eventual victory right here. I mean, look, the first two rounds were mayhem and Lee took the brunt of that for the most part. Although you saw the beginning of that rallying spirit in him at the end of the first and certainly through the second.

Look, the amount of the chin he showed, the durability, the comeback, already the champion one division lower, but to step up and take this opportunity. Look, Chaudhry and company over there at one, every promotion needs something. They need that one hook to get you in, to give it a try, or the reason to want more MMA in your life. This trend recently that he's doing of so many of these one fight cards are headlined by champion versus champion fights, whether it's somebody moving up or moving down and trying to go greatness. And what it's producing is insane batshit efforts right here. Can Christian Lee sustain this, get into brawls like this and be the last man standing? Probably not long-term. How good is he though? He showed me so much in this fight to stand through that level of punishment, make the adjustments and then just start putting it on the bigger fighter.

I don't know if it's a gimmick, a trend or whatever, but a lot of guys are given the chance in this promotion once they win a title to to look across the line at another division and pick out whoever you can make the best fight with and usually that's champion versus champion and we are seeing people go for it left and right christian lee man man i mean look at where's he 24 24 we had two 24 year olds claim titles over the weekend i mean you know they give you the chance there to potentially get noticed and be a star he's taking that opportunity um i what else what could you say about this look he went through hell and back to get this yeah i mean here's my biggest takeaway he's raw he's raw in terms of his abilities he's he's clearly got um a lot of

ability but a lot of you know he's a little bit loose here at times, and that caused him some problems early. Although Abasov is obviously quite gifted as well. I would say that at 24, he's a double champ. He showed unbelievable grit and determination, and I will say I loved his striking where he was constantly threatening side-to-side action. He would throw a high kick up to the left and then a body shot to the right. So he was corralling him and cornering him, but going sort of high, low, left, right, top, middle. He was constantly playing with the location of his strikes,

both to be different and to control his opponent. And it worked a beautiful effect. Those elbows in the fourth round to then start the finish. I mean, he clearly has a ton of upside. It's just, even though he's a double champ, it's still a little bit hard to say exactly how far he can go. Right. But his resume already is remarkable.

His, again, the level of determination it took. He even said in the post-fight interview that with Mitch Chilson that he, like, didn't even know where he was when he was getting hit. It was amazing that Herb Dean didn't stop it. He was out on his feet. What round was that? Was it the first round? Round one.

It was round one. He's not even throwing punches. Look, he was doing like that Teen Wolf dance at the end. And they couldn't stop the fight right there. He barely hung on with like a lazy, like, you know, best he could do. Just hold on to him kind of shot and then eventually controlled it and got back. The thing was, Abasov's weight cut fucked him big time. He didn't have hardly energy, any energy after the second round.

And that's why he came out just like, look, I'm going to come out and knock you out and make a big statement. And he would have knocked most people out with that effort because he's a hulking puncher. Luke, I do want to ask you sort of this thing. There's a bit of electricity in one that's different. Not only is this a promotion that's emanating from the other side of the world, but we talk about how you can feel the Bushido spirit coming through your screen.

You don't see a lot of trash talk. You don't see a lot of, well, I don't want to say you don't see a lot of gimmicks. You do see some Asian fanfare in the way fights are presented. It's much more theatrical but you don't see the type of stuff that american fight promotions throw at you yet the fights are are crazy or just as crazy if not crazier here what is fueling that's that sort of magic that one can show more often than not that these two people are going to like fight to the death to win this thing i think partly it's a little bit of luck to be quite honest with you it's a little bit of luck i think also they don't have a ton of like american style wrestlers you know whose whole

bit is just kind of grind you out they don't have they don't have any john fitch types right not many of them anyway so i think that's part of it i will say this too and again we took a dump i took a dump on one on friday for their silly weight cutting system that people have put an enormous amount of false confidence in however however in fairness to them dude their rule set is better like if you hurt someone and they scramble to their hands and knees to get away you can drill them right in the head with a knee it makes the stakes of that way way way way more dangerous at any moment and so it creates a little bit more drama a little bit more theater so i think between having less guys who are interested in that sort

of grinding top control wrestle pressure and then on top of it a better rule set that drives action you just tend to get a little bit more magic as a consequence right now the magic's flowing so shout out to what the rod tank fight in the co-main event was you know good was muay thai theater at its best luke we're gonna get into it and have you seen the shit about oscar willis mac life mma journalist turned insane amateur fight taker and he was in a three-round war no one i didn't know what was going to happen he has a certain level of respect now like ekc light and when the fighters look at him that's just different now because he went down to the to the to the red light district with him and put his heart on the line if i somewhat similarly but you might disagree enter season two of one championship apprentice edition and i win the

job with chatri what will the mma industry think of me after that like we're about to praise oscar willis's crazy balls what will they be saying about me chatri is fucked now that he has to work with you all right all right luke that's that's fine but uh him and i could tear up singapore together you probably could you probably could but christian lee you're double champ now lightweight and welterweight oh did you see um what's her name on the grappling undercar luke danielle kelly you see she got a great win and then she responded some trash talk from angela lee and now they're considering hyping up some grappling

superfight. Are you into that at all? You know, I've always said this. Anytime they put pro grappler versus pro MMA fighter, it's not... Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's

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to fucking happen here. That's why all these fights about MMA fighters versus boxers are just silly. It's like there's not a lot of mystery about what's going to happen here uh to be quite honest with you so yeah i think daniel kelly will if it's a jujitsu match we'll beat the fucking shit out of her like i don't think it'll be close at all um but you know i've changed the rules a little bit and it's a different situation right like if you do some kind of rod tank versus demetrius type like gimmick rules per round or something i I don't know. Yeah, if you did that, it might get a little bit different, but even then that was

I mean, you talk about one doesn't have gimmicks. That's an old gimmick, not even a new one. I'm trying to catch up on what I've missed in one. I just watched the Angela Lee stamp Fairtex fight. Look, that was wild as shit, man. I don't know, dude. Like that damn smart

cage entrapping me last year for my feels, although I don't know, dude, I'm there. I'm like, like that damn smart cage in trapping me last year for my feels. Although I don't know if I've reciprocated them back this season. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm getting high off the supply here lately on one, but we'll see. They'll have its work cut out for it. When those pay-per-view buyers don't come in. I mean, how smart is your cage? If they can't get in front of that and be like, Hey guys, not a good idea here. Our numbers are telling us that, uh, yeah. All way before we uh transition to dms i want to do this

i forgot to do at the end of the bellator uh segment should you be interested in more bellator content remember we have two more events just this uh sorry we have two more events just this month or i should say before the year is over december 9th bellator 289 i believe i don't it's not official yet, I believe I'll be there for fight week. I think you will be for just a little bit as well. This, of course, is the Rafael Stotts, Danny Sabatello, who, by the way, they were there on Friday night

yelling at each other. That was funny. Liz Karmush is going to rematch against Julian Velasquez and then patchy mix for the other side of the bantamweight bracket against Magomed Magomedov. So that's going to be interesting. Dude, let's just say it. Bellator's on fire right now.

Friday Night's card had one of those old-school coker tent pole feels to it in terms of the top end of it. You're going to do another one that night. You just mentioned December 9th. You got the Bellator versus Risen card New Year's Eve, right? It's promotion versus promotion. And then around the horn, you're going to come back on February 4th on CBS for Fedor Bader 2 along with Nemkov versus Romero.

Dude, shit's heating up for Cobra. Yeah, they're having a good end of the year, good start to the next year. And by the way, we don't know yet official, so this is not Luke telling you official Showtime news, but my understanding is the Bellator MMA versus Ryzen event won't be aired live on Showtime. It will air sometime later that next day at a time that is more suitable for American audiences, I think.

That's my understanding, but that's not an official proclamation. All right? So there you have it. BC, that's it for my top five. I want to remind folks, we're getting closer to the end of the month and you know what that means. It's almost time to select the first ever Money Lion Hammer of the Month. For those of you who have missed it, a few weeks back, we decided we wanted to start spotlighting undercard fighters who aren't getting the recognition they deserve. BC, our new sponsor, Money Lion, agreed. So we

came up with Hammer of the Month, which invites you invites you guys the viewers to nominate which undercard fighters blew your effing mind and deserve to be rewarded for it you can go to moneylion.com slash morning combat to learn more bc anyone on your radar related to this particular week i mean uh is vanessa demopolis allowed to be on my uh hammer of the month i was wondering if you were going to say that yes the answer we're going to see a lot of her and have you seen the ship but that was actually like a really good win for her. She's starting to put together three in a row. You know, I loved – this month has produced a lot. I'm trying to think who else.

Look, you know who I thought might enter this conversation again was Roman Feraldo on the Bellator card at 8-0 with 8 knockouts. People were killing me because they were like, I bet based on you. I'm like, first of all, don't bet based on anything I tell you. Not a good idea, number one. Number two, I also thought he fought. He looked frustrated to me. I don't think he fought up to his potential.

Now, Levon Chokoli, you could add to Hammer of the Month because he had a really, he, in fact, did have a smart win. Well, you know, why did he frustrate Feraldo? Once Feraldo realized that, like, Chokoli's not going anywhere if you unload on him and this is going to be a sloppy war, was like a fight or flight moment and Geraldo I don't take anything away from him he chose fight and he just went for it but when you don't get the finish and your gas tank's down to nothing and you haven't been in this type of fight at this level that's when you look that's when you start to expose the things that you typically can only add through experience

this will end up being a huge experience for Roman for all those future but man he seemed to unload the kitchen sink and Chokely kept coming so that that is a hammer of the month worthy performance out of uh late what is his name Levon? Levon Chokely yeah he's Georgian as well. He shall be Levon Luke he shall be a good man all right. Yeah also by the way Sullivanllivan cauley sullivan cauley was on the prelim card matched up with an enormously jacked opponent right i was like holy fuck and both were undefeated heading into it i forget the guy's name but sullivan cauley his opponent tried to take his back very inadvisably didn't set it up well at all misses it ends up on bottom and sullivan cully with two fucking shots completely

put his lights out dude how about the terrifying ground about how about dan what's his name uh what was the guy's name daniel james on the main card yep dude he's like a bodyguard to a famous rapper 40 years old he was a bodyguard to uh twista yeah he just goes out there and i you know tyrell fortune looked like he was good you know he's had a he's had a couple blemishes but he looked like he was on his way to getting that title shot and dude he ran into somebody who was hungry ready you'll see him as well and have you seen this that dude looked like daniel james is old he's like 41 or something yeah but that dude looks fucking big man he's like six six yeah yeah he's a fucking big dude

you know so look you know at moneyline on twitter at moneyline inc on instagram hashtag hammer of the month holy hammer balls bonanza hey whatever you want to hash it out hashish legalized whatever you want to do i'm sure uh moneyline hammer of the month is ready luke somebody's going to win that big ass hammer okay i can't wait to see who yeah uh all right with that in mind bc it's time for the dms let's see what we got let's let's let's see what our male viewers are asking us we've got male yes mostly male viewers name three female fans go ahead hold on name three female mk fans go go Go. Jay Paquette's wife.

Dawn. Yeah, the boss lady. Let me think. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, another one emailed me. I can't say her last name because I don't want to give it away.

But Sasha is another one who emailed me. She emailed me over the weekend. Is this a real person, Luke? Or is this an invitation to? No, no, no, no. She. She. Okay. an invitation to uh no no no no she's she um she okay she is tired of hearing you and me complain how pathetic we are and she goes if you're this upset about it fucking do something about it i was like yeah fair fair no that's maybe that's what we needed but she gave constructive

advice about what her husband had done, who's a similar age to you and me, to get right. So I appreciate that. Did it involve TRT? It did. As a matter of fact, it did. Viagra? No, it didn't involve Viagra.

Just TRT. And some other stuff, too. But there's that. And yeah, I couldn't name a third. All right. All right. Shout out to Melissa Loves Nachos. Oh, yes. Melissa Loves Nachos. I think she's going to Brazil for the big card, the pay- I couldn't name a third. All right, all right. Shout out to Melissa Loves Nachos, Luke.

Oh, yes, Melissa Loves Nachos. I think she's going to Brazil for the big card, the pay-per-view card coming up. World traveler there, Luke. Hey, I wish I had the time and the money. All right, from at Jack Craig double underscore, worst name ever. The Superman jab was one of GSP's best weapons, and he seemed like he couldn't miss with it

for his entire career. Why haven't more people incorporated that strike into their game such a difficult shot to see coming because you have to leave your feet it's not so easy to do it's very very difficult to do yeah look why yeah i don't i don't know why look i mean you could see it coming right people i mean it's it's this well-disguised strike but it became so regularly used right yeah but it's like any other thing you have to learn how to blend it into the rest of your game you have to learn how to do it correctly you have to keep your elevation low you still have to leave your feet to do it george saint pierre would do it in a way where sometimes he would do it just to cover distance to then land

an outside low kick so he would pump it get back to stance and then fire and chop you know he would pump it, get back to stance, and then fire and chop. You know, he would do that. But, you know, it's like it's not because one guy makes it work well doesn't mean that it would work well for everyone or that everyone wants to do that kind of thing. It's a perfectly good strike, but it's not some kind of strike that's so good, so amazing that if you don't have it, you don't have complete striking. Have we ever seen, at least in UFC, Pereira or Izzy throw a Superman strike? Maybe once or twice at most between them, not really. And yet you can see they have very complete games. So it certainly can be valuable.

So it's perfectly fine as a technique. But folks think of techniques as like, these are good techniques, these are bad techniques. And yes, there are some that are more high percentage than others, and there are some that are done incorrectly. But among the universe of correctly done ones, you don't need all of them. You just need the ones that are best for you. Yeah. Look, real question here. What if GSP and I right now switched lives, meaning all the things I do or don't do for my body and intake and ingest and all the things he does

for his body every single day we switched it completely we slept in each other's houses who would tap first meaning that like that lifestyle was was just killing them you know i mean that would it be me early on in the fitness or him once the deltas and the in the food and the in this you know this the sedative lifestyle just just caught up with his mental health and he's like i gotta get out of this yeah i think he would quit after like five cheeseburgers he'd be like what the fuck am i doing well i don't have that anymore because of my liver luke okay after after two two late nights ordering acai and pad thai he'd just be like fuck all this that's accurate that is accurate wow next uh let's see i do like aca see you later tonight though it's good all right

what do we got uh from trex underscore 38 again worst name ever would kimbo slice have been the king of bkfc fucking great question shame the timelines didn't cross bc i'm gonna say no because i think after the gannon fight he was really never the same to be quite honest with you um yeah i think we can't overlook great like we always talk about like a crazy war you know think ufc five rounds 25 minutes what it takes off your life hendo versus shogun one those type of fights you're like oh god thumb the corrales castillo they'll never be the same but thank you for that theater dude that sean gannon fight became like life or death that battle that was That was like insane. Right. It was like a half hour or an hour or something. And it was just like,

just, they just killed each other basically. Yeah. Until, until one of them couldn't stand. I'm told, I'm told, I'm told by people who were there that fight and like knew him afterwards that Sean Gannon was never the same afterwards.

Like both of those guys left that shit fucked up, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, their face, Gannon's face was just, I mean, I can't like what, you know yeah yeah i mean their face gannon's face was just i mean i can't like what i you know nothing will ever compare obviously when we first all got into

kimbo and we that was like youtube was just on the scene and we all stuck to him because it felt grimy it was like it was a fight that felt like watching gross porn right but that sean gannon fight was that's that's probably the end for him of that feeling like that was as gross and grimy watching that remember that I watched that a million times though it's like watching somebody get executed it's like faces of death and fighting look it was just grimy yeah it was like a freaking warehouse I mean but the answer about Kimbo dude I I mean dude Kimbo could obviously sling the dogs you know but his chin was not elite um so I don't think so. Do we have full proof of that? I always thought gas tank was always his issue. Now he did have a lot of steroid.

He's like two minute rounds. I mean, I'm not here to say like, Oh, Kimbo had a bad chin. That's not what I'm saying, but he didn't have, there wasn't much evidence.

He had a super elite one. And I just feel like a BKFC, you would get some guy who, you know, just have a kind of tolerance for that sort of thing. Also, by the time he got, folks forget this too, by the time he got popular, he was kind of old. His knees were fucked from like day one.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So it wasn't like they got Kimbo at 21 or something. I'm trying to think of time where he got, outside of the Petrozzelli quick knockout, I'm trying to think of a time in MMA where he got hurt from strikes that wasn't related to exhaustion, where we could even comment about the chin let me pull up oh dude i mean he got hurt from a lot of different ones hold on let me pull up his resume here real quick um since i'm going off memory and that's not i mean that shamrock fight became a

became i mean the data i mean come on These are late model fight. But even Prime, like... Obviously, Mitrione whooped him. Mitrione whooped him. And then I was at the James Thompson fight. You know, he was getting hit with big shots there, too. Again, not like it's a bad chin. And you're right. Cardio also played a role there. A monster role.

Monster role. But, like, you know, when it came time to go mano-a-mano like that, there was a lot of times where he just couldn't he couldn't keep it keep up with it for either exhaustion or damage related reasons dude i was how old was kimbo when he died hold on kimbo was kimbo was 42 god he was 42 when he died jesus um dude i watched i watched the build and the actual fight to when he fought Ray Mercer in that mixed rules fight. I was so dialed into that, being a boxing guy who also discovered Kimbo. Luke, that was also as low level as it gets, that fight, that build to that.

Sort of. It was Cage Fury Fighting Championships. It was regional. It was an MMA debut. But I'm saying it felt like county fair level uh you know professionalism and i think colonel bob was calling it i mean it was you know it was yeah like it could they could have had it at a diner is really what i'm saying look you know like in the back yeah yeah yeah it could have it could have uh all right let's go to the next one from pat mccain 34 not the worst name but not a great one who wins in a three-round fight, Oscar Willis or CM Punk? Luke, did you watch his entire fight?

I watched a couple rounds. I didn't see the whole thing. Okay. Let's break it. We're going to break down his fighting style and have you seen the shit when we see a little bit of it. But, dude, CM Punk sucked, but he was all in, and he seemed to train hard on the wrestling part of it. I mean, he wasn't ready for it. Also, dude, Oscar Willis is cheeky-teaker.

He's a little man. Oscar Willis had a fighting will. I mean, he was willing to go after it. I think CM Punk would take him down and control it. Yeah, yeah, he would. But you know who's got the moxie oscar willis got that moxie i mean dude he's at another level in terms of his willingness to roll the life dice and i can respect that okay yeah he's fist fighting in cages and banging midgets i mean the guy's

a complete degenerate i don't know any part of what you're talking about on that ladder i don't even know if you're allowed to say that he did a podcast with uh dan hooker where he talked about banging uh excuse me i shouldn't say that banging little people i don't even think you should say anything related to that but that's uh you know wow that's a yeah i don't think i'm not i'm not revealing private information this is all out there they do basically room service diaries european edition right or something like that well dan hooker's from new zealand but yeah strange accent addition anyway. Do Australians and New Zealanders love each other like we just assume because they're down on the other side of the world next to each other?

I tend to think that there obviously are some rivalries. I know when the All Blacks play, what's the team name for the national team for Australia? It's not the Springboks. That's South Africa. Whatever. When they play, there is a fair amount of consternation and whatnot, but I tend to think there is some solidarity between them.

Oh, you know what was lost in the have you seen this shit purge this week? Did you see those videos with Gordon Ryan and Jason Momoa wearing like handkerchiefs over their dongs, Luke? Did you see that? No, I did not. That's a real thing. People won't see it this week because I lost all all my links for a full week i mean i was devastated devastated

okay uh the australian rugby team oh they're called the wallabies not a very uh you know not a very intimidating name if i can be honest okay right all right next uh from how do you pronounce these irish names sharon i'm just gonna say sharon uh the yeah who do you think will win the world cup i don't know some fucking dude this world cup is gross as shit okay i'm not gonna watch a second of it not because soccer sucks i mean obviously i'm into world cups i'm into super elite soccer when the crossover the world cup is not the best tournament in soccer like no i agree with that and i whenever the crossover mainstream vortex is pulling me in for some major reason i watch it it's great but i don't care about this shit at all but that's not political political related i'm just you know i'm in my own world luke are you really going to go the distance and not watch

one second of them going back to one of your hometowns see here's the problem it's not possible for me to avoid it because my entire twitter feed is full of likes like i follow all these soccer journalists and all these soccer outlets like i i am getting it no matter what am i sitting down to watch no that's what i'm not doing what am i sitting down to watch no that's what i'm not doing i'm not sitting down to watch it's fucking it's it's beyond gross like thousands and thousands and thousands of poor people died to make these stadiums the way that which they got here is because the whole system was corrupt and and they were bought and paid for i mean the whole thing is absolutely fucking disgusting in every way.

And then today, this is why he's like involved at all. Who? James Krause. I don't think so. But this is this is the part that just drives me. This is like a different kind of conversation. Like, listen, if athletes want to take up causes that matter to them, I don't begrudge them that. But you always need to be careful about like oh well the nba

supports x causes or y causes because it's clearly very important to them no people will take up progressive causes just to make or i shouldn't say people organizations excuse me will take up causes just to make themselves look good so i don't know if you saw the controversy that happened just today like hours hours ago, BC, where all of the, so the captain of the various teams, they wear an armband to designate who is the captain when they're playing on the field. And the ones that they had all had for this tournament

were like, it was like one love. And then it had like, I think some of the gay pride colors inside of a heart. And FIFA said at basically the request of of qatar that if any player wears that they're going to get an automatic yellow card and of course those can pile up in which case you get you can obviously get fined and then remove from matches if you get enough of them it can it can be a competitive problem and they all crumbled immediately they all said yeah no problem we're not going to wear anymore it's like dude i don't need you to wear that if that's not a thing you care about but if you're going to promote these

causes then you have to promote the consequences of these causes as well you don't get to promote them when it feels right to you like all these like we are disney we care so much about corporate social responsibility shut the fuck up you made that mulan remake in the same region where they're holding all the uighur muslims in you know in utterly indefensible conditions all of this shit is so phony it's so ridiculous so on either side i really just want no part of it to be honest with you all right well luke uh by the way the other day i took my kids to um wakanda forever in 3d how is it it's one of the best movies i've ever seen and no get out of here with that i'm not okay i'm not putting it up on the on the bc fave all-time list with like 1917 and you know uh the deer hunter and you know uncut gems and

uh beautiful girls and stuff like that luke, or Episode 4 or Rogue One, you know, my favorites of all time, Tommy Boy. But for what it is in that category, which is not a category I tend to live in outside of the Star Wars universe, it was freaking awesome. And it was one of those. No, so I saw it in 3D, mind you, okay? So, you know, you automatically feel like you're in the movie to begin with right especially if you're sitting in the eighth row but uh i will also say luke that uh

like it made you it was one of the it reminded me of what it was like to watch a movie as a kid when like you are sucked into like one of those in theater you know amazing life-changing experiences when you are sucked in you don't know what time it is you don't know that you have a real life you only know what's going on in that movie um it was great and kamaru usman yes mikey kamaru usman was in it he's got a cameo and he's awesome in it like tyron woodley as sensei odell in the cobra kai season five which you'll never see luke uh but we'll never see that dude this was it was awesome teenagers are stupid and uninteresting yeah like i want to sit here and pick apart this or that but i can't like this was it was awesome teenagers are stupid and uninteresting yeah like i want to sit here and pick apart this or that but i can't like you know it was top to front to back it's so

funny a buddy of mine went he's big into marvel um and you know love i love the first black panther i thought the first one was great uh but he didn't like this one he didn't like this one i mean he didn't hate it he didn't hate it but he was like like this one I mean he didn't hate it he didn't hate it but he was like it didn't have the majesty of the first one you understand that at all so I've only seen I've seen the first one but I saw it in like different at different

times in different pieces so it kind of screws it up to a degree but one of my sons said like best movie I've ever seen dad and then the other twin said yeah it was good but not as good as the first one. So, you know, I was on the side of, for this type of movie, that's about as great as it can be. Like, right there. I also don't live in this genre, as you know, and need to rewatch the first one to really get a...

But, you know, to give... But these kids aren't reliable. We went to Black Adam, and I thought it sucked, and they both loved it. So, you know... Well, your kids, need they need some movie help so let me get this straight were you dad of the year showing up to the movies high with your kids no that would never happen luke but i would never do something like that but we did you know i did a lot we got icies inside luke it was that big of a flick right you know when it's a big foot when you know it's going to be a you know a thing you know you gotta get the icy you gotta buy the candy next door at

walgreens first and then you've got to step up your game and get the big-ass large icy and just go after this film. They opened a really nice movie theater in my neighborhood finally. I've been meaning to go to it. I was going to go one of my days off. My wife was like,

I want to see that movie. Last question on Wakanda Forever. Do they navigate the lack of chadwick boseman well yes both storyline wise uh you know brief little cameo shots they don't like bring them back to life like luke skywalker or carrie fisher in the news thank god was once but uh yeah and then there's there's there's a new character the other sister who's played by that chick who was in uh us she was the star of that and she also won the academy award in the uh 12 years a slave movie forgot her name but she is tremendous luke as in that role as well so uh yeah it's it's uh dude again not my genre this thing kicked me right in the face right away i knew i was in for something special okay i'm on a good run lately luke even top gun's part of that run the remake i mean it's not you know it's not gonna

win the academy award but that was a great in theater experience i'm picking the right ones luke okay except for black adam starring the rock the top gun in the theater was very much the right call that was a great call that was uh do we have any more i think we have one more? I think we have one more. Oh, wait, dude. Look, did you ever, um, I forgot. Keep it going. Sorry. There you go. That's from Oso Aldaco. Oso Aldaco.

What are you two dogs thankful for? What do you think, BC? Well, I think we should have probably have like, you know, big picture items and then smaller ones, right? I mean, you know, I'm thankful for my for my for my health but really my family's health you know obviously the the things that really matter right in your life i'm my five animals luke i'm thankful as shit for them as well um but you know work-wise crossover wise thankful that we have a fan base that is um that is as voracious and weird and awesome and creative and loyal and honest, especially when they're like, all right, guys. All right. I mean, I mean, how many more commercials does one show need?

Look, we have like like that's why as much as we push to certain engagement goals, clicks, subscriptions that obviously help us. And, you know, I'll push you to that, too. Let's go get like and subscribe. Yeah. Vote for us on that award so we can get a live show out of it. Okay, cool. I don't care about the numbers. I'm about quality and, you know, we could have a hundred diehards look. And maybe at some points in my podcasting career, I only had a hundred or a thousand diehards, right? These 120 something thousand, and maybe let's say even if you know a third of them are hardcore they're hardcore as shit like i almost feel like if i posted randomly in the middle of the night on twitter and was like i was just wronged by this person grab your grab your

your tree branch light it on fire and take them out for me you know i'm not trying to say i'm trying to develop the mk proud boys look i'm not but i feel like these people would show up in line with kidneys for me and i and i will you know and at least you know thought wise maybe not in physical action i would do the same for them luke okay that's a weird way to answer that question uh yeah i mean i think that it's not my life is not super complex or remarkable beyond the normal contours of anyone else's life so what am i thankful for two things quite obviously one i am extremely lucky to have you know my wife in my life my daughter who's like the center of my life, frankly, at this point. And my family more generally, like those things can all be taken from you. We all, you know,

we've lived through a year where we lost Elias Theodoru and Anthony Rumble Johnson and like, you know, the, how life can be quite ephemeral in certain ways. So I'm very grateful for that. And also dude, like it's hard to maintain jobs in this industry you know it's hard man it's hard year after year to be relevant it's hard to to offer um the kind of content people want and i am beyond grateful to be sitting in this chair like this chair is i'm lucky and blessed and um i don't take i don't take one episode for granted ever i mean i might do good episodes and bad ones like when i'm breaking down Adolfo Vieira fights that aren't happening, but I hope folks understand that mistakes aside,

I'm not owed any of this. This could all be taken away like that. And so the fact that I get to live it out as long as I have has been I am the luckiest man alive some days I feel like that. Don't go Gehrig on us. I mean, you know.

Yeah, I mean, I look in the mirror and I want to spit based on what I see back in the reflection. So, you know, not everything's hunky-dory, but there are a lot of things going right, and I'd be a fool to not recognize them, you know? All right. I mean, you know, do you have anything you're thankful on a, you know, micro, not as important level?

Like, Luke, I'm thankful for the 1970s because my vinyl collection is just taking me on journeys that i never you know they're just every night luke i'm just you know i was thinking about this the other day i am thankful for having gone like i'll be honest like when i signed up for the marine corps and it started to get closer and closer i'm like man i don't want to do this shit you know what i mean like i don't want to go and spend seven years, eight years, whatever it was doing this shit. I just don't want to do it. And then I just went through with it. And there were long stretches where I did not like being in the military. It wasn't for me. And I would not, I would do it again, but I, I wouldn't, I would make the same choice that when my contract is up, I would move on. Uh, but I'm really glad I did it. Like really glad I did it. It was very difficult and not fun for long stretches,

but it was so helpful for so many life experiences I would later encounter. And I feel like there's a lot of young men out there lost about who they are and how to navigate the world. And based on the experiences I've had, not just the Marine Corps, but other ones too, I've never felt that way. I've never felt like, gee, what's the next stage to work towards? I'd always had a clear understanding of the ladder. Whether I could climb it,

different story, but the path was never dark. It was never dark. I think that's a very important thing, Luke. I didn't enter the service, but I probably had my own similar experience i mean i delivered newspapers at three in the morning every day of the year for a year how long did you do that while having a full-time job as well that shows you how desperate i was to not have to try to move back into my parent with my parents um would you say how old was that no no how long did you deliver papers that like that early in the morning uh a year and a half and uh eventually i i paid somebody to do my weekends but uh yeah like you know i mean when you're when you're already like supposed to be an adult and you're

out on your own and you like i said you have a full-time job but then you're like oh man i i i don't know what i'm doing in life i can't i can't function i can't be an adult i can't pull this off and you're like okay i just need something else to get me through. So I took on that job. And, man, when you're out there and, like, it's snowing and sleeting and it's, you know, negative degrees and you have a lot of those moments, probably like you had in boot camp where you're like, I never want to do this again.

I don't know if I'm going to make it through this, but maybe one day it will all be worth it. You know what they used to do to us? Marine Corps boot camp is the longest. It's 13 weeks, and the Army and the Air Force are much shorter. They used to tell us at every interval, like, hey, if you were in the Air Force, you'd be done today, but you're not, bitch.

You know what I mean? They would remind us at every, if you were in the Army, you'd be done today, but you got five weeks left, you fucking whore. You know, they're just in your face with it all the time. I used to want to fucking strangle them when they did that, but, you know. But you're thankful for having, you know, survived that. Yeah, exactly.

Like, in the end, I'm glad it turned out the way that it did. It's just when it's difficult in the moment, it's so hard to accept, you know. But afterwards, you're like, shit, that was, let me let me just say one last thing we can move on the answer okay hard work won't solve all your problems that's not true like you can't just work your way through everything however the answer to probably a lot of your problems is on the other side of hard work oh yeah you know what i mean hard work has to be paired with you growing through your setbacks and weaknesses and trying to become a better person and doing, making the life changes you need to do that.

Then you pair that with hard work and, you know, mountains can move. And it typically does when you sort of get it right. Quote unquote, get it. You put it together. You're like enough of delivering papers in the snow, like, you know, enough of that shit. But yeah, at the same time luke you get to a certain level where what separates everybody hard work okay and luck don't forget luck that's relevant too yeah there's a few other sprinkles of ingredients you'll need but uh build

that foundation though that no one's gonna outwork you that you'll bleed for this life and uh you'll have a lot to be thankful for in whatever endeavor you choose. All right, there you go, Luke. That's our DMs, right? That's it. All right, let's see. It's time for BC's Feces. All right, look, I can't vouch for this group.

I put it together angry and last minute, but what I did in purpose, in theory, and sorry if all your favorite ones won't get shown this week because of that purge, is I scoured the globe for the good, the bad, the in between combat sports beyond bitch this is called have you seen this ish bc's feces y'all all right i want to see some elder abuse you sack of shit uh i don't know if we have that this week here's what we do have and let's shout them out look i don't know the promotion i don't know what state this took in,

but MMA journalist Oscar Willis had an amateur debut. It went three rounds. I mean, could he telegraph this punch more? That's him and the... These motherfuckers are standing right in front of each other. He got dropped. He dropped the other guy. I mean, this was a war.

Oh, man. Oh, shit! And they went right into his guard, yeah yeah he pulled out a split decision over three rounds you can watch the entire fight including background footage of him behind the scenes on oscar willis's um instagram page and probably elsewhere but uh dude shout out to casey lyden who did the same thing i didn't know oscar was planning for this i just think when we see him with his shirt off interviewing people it's like part of the gimmick but apparently he's been getting in good shape I mean look he's got some stuff to work on in terms of like head movement and stuff but dude he was an animal in this fight yeah he's got some

intensity I mean I'm to be clear I'm killing him out of love we love Oscar Willis I had him on the show one time when you were out we'll have him back on again we we get along, if you guys don't know Oscar Willis, this is very cool and commendable that he did this, but just this aside, you know, listen, this isn't as true as it used to be, but let me sort of state this outright years ago. It used to be the case that MMA media, and they still do to an extent, all secretly kind of hate each other. To be honest with you, they all secretly like jab at each other behind the scenes and they all secretly fucking are jealous of each other or whatever oscar willis is just one of the nicest guys now i'm not saying that like you know oh i'm just finding something nice to say no really he's easy to get along with he's funny he's experienced in the industry he

knows his work he knows his job he does a phenomenal job with the stuff over at the mac life and let me just say this a very bc would you agree a very easy guy to cheer for oh yeah absolutely love talking with that guy's a fun i mean he's a i don't go out at night look because i'm an old pos but i'm sure that guy's a great hang but uh dude like he never broke in this fight this fight was a war it was like sloppy as shit at time he just stood in there and i'll give him so much credit man for for getting to the finish and then getting that win dude um i mean he did what most of us aren't either brave enough or crazy enough to do and maybe it's a combination of both so shout out to him getting a taste of it dumb enough there's also that possibility it's also that

speaking of getting a taste of it luke vanessa demopolis making headlines as always at ufc fight night this one was going to be on your radar. You are unbelievable. So her fight with Maria Oliveira had a contentious buildup, and then she got the win relying on her game plan for the first time, she said, after the coaching and all that. But, Luke, this Lambeau leap she's got going on, it's gaining momentum, would you say?

It is. It is. She's making it a signature item, and it's working. gaining momentum would you say it is it is she's making it a signature item and it's working so let's see well look the greek goddess of war herself also took to the microphone after the fight let's hear from her i mean look it's a little bit i heard that not at all it, it's a little bit. I heard that not at all. It's a little bit of a lame gimmick, but, you know, it's good to see somebody who has kind of arrived on the scene, wild story, background, all that. Starting to put it together now at this level of matchmaking, of course, but that's three in a row. Now, the gimmick is a little hit or miss at times, Lukeke but um she's fun she's fun to watch so there you go fun

to watch yes um and look here was her celebration inside the casino after uh correct me if i'm wrong she has done some uh let's say exotic dancing well it's not just that if you really read her backstory she comes from both of her parents were in that industry as well so it was she said it was like natural it was like expected and automatic that she would do it that she would enter into it and apparently she was elite at it luke she's not bad all right well luke let's see other uh times that people got hammered out here muslim solikov look this fight was a war like we told you it would be against andre fialo but there was the finish coming up here that spinning back kick dude solikov got his ass kicked for a while and then he just started unleashing video game strikes like for

a full round and a half dude this fight was crazy yeah yeah this one was a wild one for sure and solikov needed this too he came in with a bit of hype. He's a little bit older. He came in with a bit of hype, but it's been somewhat unfulfilled. But this was a great fulfillment. Dude, Fialo makes crazy fights, Luke. Yeah, his fights don't suck ever. I mean, you'd love to subscribe to more head movement,

but he's willing. He's very willing. So, wow. All right. You know who else was, Luke? Mr. Maddalena mr jack madda del man del ma della maddalena yeah now this was one of the ones that we did tell people that worked out well for us although not hard to figure out uh jack maddalena is a fucking hammer

he is excellent looking at some of the best among any prospect tko1 of danny hot chocolate roberts who's obviously a respected name but dude he just put it on him i mean it was it was wow yeah he's talented he's one of the best guys up and coming out of australia for yeah like he's in great shape he hits hard but he's also like his setups and his technique and in his field dude he flows like he really flows the whole time he's in there man he moves like a boxer yeah rolling under hooks changing angles on guys like he's he's talented luke hashtag holy hammer alert brought to you by natalia silva with the spinning back kick to open the night of newcomer teresa blada damn yeah i don't understand like going back she was shooting from pretty

fucking far away i didn't quite get that um let's roll that highlight one more time i mean that's gonna roll through but yeah i mean she's that's that's really far away for a shot uh by the way have you noticed there's been like a lot of people in mma this year getting absolutely bulldozed running into strikes when they shoot yeah people are people are getting better at uh attacking shots with strikes are you saying that they're getting askrend no because i mean yeah he was shooting but jorge ran across the cage it's not really the same thing exactly i mean like if you're getting pressured and then reacting to it you know know. Look, this flyweight bout between Charles Johnson and Zuma Ligov was nuts. Let's hear from Michael Bisping.

Zuma Gulov. All right. We didn't play the audio there. That was Michael Bisping basically being like, look, this is nuts. Why? Because, look, they traded an insane amount of fouls in this action fight and then did you see how long they hugged afterwards it was like they were like best friends now that was just a weird fight i did miss that part but also after this fight zumagulov said he retired did you see that

i did not see that really yeah he dude the guy has been on the on the losing end of a number of very close decisions yeah and you know it could be one of those things in the moment but it seemed like he's sick of it and he said he retired you know MMA retirements never seemed to last but he did he did say that um I don't I think we were supposed to hear that audio so hopefully we'll keep hearing it but Luke check out this let's go to Bellator 288 from Chicago six foot six heavyweight Daniel James 40 years. Look at the uppercut finish on a top 10 ranked guy in Tyrell fortune. Tyrell fortune's not a big heavyweight, but he's a great wrestler. And old James is a monster heavyweight.

Uh, and you know, just a fucking bulldozer of a man. Let's do it. And, uh, look, look, he's got the predator thing going i mean how do you not like that i mean he's the american predator let's do a slow-mo replay of that uppercut because that thing was perfection there it is it drops him by the way people were complaining about shots to the back of the head i did count some so he gets out of the way of the overhand throws the left and then meets him with his own uppercut right up the middle. Play you like a fiddle. Holy hammer, brother.

Wow. Alright. Well, then Daniel James shot his shot to one Scott Coker. Who is it? You just took out the number five guy with a big time win. Who is it you should be fighting the next time you step in here? I am number five five i'm number five

excuse me but scott scott coker i'm here baby you need some aid you need a pretty chocolate heavyweight i'm here let's go straight up we got the market we get everything might help longer look good or build ice let's go i can fight i'm number five what's next i'll wait let's go. I can fight. I'm number five. What's next? I'll wait. Let's go. Coker would go on to tweet. I heard you loud and clear, Luke. Like, he kind of made a massive leap here. Like, really, in the Bellator top 10. I mean, he was unranked and not well known, and he just knocked out number five, who was coming on.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know exactly how far he can go. I mean, the dude is older, even for heavyweight heavyweight he's past 40 but he's fun as shit and he can hit hard and he tries like i'm all in i mentioned the wholesome joy shown by usman nirmaga medoff on the phone in the cage afterwards with habib and this is him backstage luke i mean it was expected but to see how much it meant to him to get to this point so early it felt good it felt good luke yeah yeah you could i mean again i i think he was feeling the pressure a little bit listen it's not just that um you know he has to fight that opponent you just think about all of the pressure being from that family being from that camp like excellence is expected and you have to deliver and he did he did but i think he was i think it was a big relief when it was all

over you know uh you know who else delivered vadim nemkov as we mentioned here's just a piece of his handiwork uh we're breaking out some spinny shit on cory over time yeah dude this was at the end of round one which was a close-ish round. This sealed it for Nemkov completely. Nice shot indeed. Bellator undercards. You know, if there's a good fat heavyweight, it'll show up on this show. Vladimir Gouveia, though, on the right, delivering big. This looks like you and me fighting.

Oh, yeah, great performance. Oh, what are we doing here, fellas? All right, back to the salt mines there we go let's go let's go to the boxing ring uh luke this may have been the biggest knockout of the weekend greg hardy filled in on short notice for vitor belford he took on hasim rockman jr and watch out catching he dude catch and shoot he caught the first punch on the gloves and then he immediately fired the right down the middle dude greg hardy looked all right in this fight can i be honest with you he looked all right this is you know on paper it's a horrific loss for hasim rockman who

was going to fight jake paul and then was going to fight vitor belfort it ended up going the distance for four rounds and it was basically three rounds to one plus the knockdown it was a unanimous decision for hardy and what But look, we can't overlook one thing. Hardy came in 94 pounds heavier than Rockman, who's a small heavyweight, kind of a bridger weight, if you believe in that type of bullshit. But I'll give Rockman credit. He fought his way out of trouble in the first round.

He was landing big shots, but that size, I mean, they're like two weight classes apart. They look like, right? Yeah. The size definitely played a role. Let's just be clear. And in defense of a seam Rockman Jr. However, if this was Rockman's attempt to get these like silly ass fights, you know,

with, I don't know, Deji or whoever the fuck out there, this, this audition did not go great. You know? Yeah. Gaff. I'm now realizing I never emailed you the Hardy celebratory dance video. I don't believe we have that. So let's skip.

No, we do. There you go. Oh, wow. Thank you, Gaff, for pulling that out of nowhere. Luke, needs work on the dancing? Are you into this? Is this like a shitty Fortnite thing or whatever? I don't know.

But he looked great. He deserves it. He he's gonna get a payday out of this luke you know he will you know he showed more cardio in this fight than he did ever in five minutes in mma well he called out tommy fury and tyson fury afterwards although shannon briggs was in his ear kind of like pushing him on but does he in a weird way now enter the larger jake paul sweepstakes i know jake's you know at kind of the light heavyweight cruiserweight area, but trying to be more of a light heavyweight 175 in boxing. I mean, is this a potential fight? Seriously?

Jake Paul versus Greg Hardy? You got a villain? I was thinking about this. I don't know because I don't know how much, like, interest there is in Jake Paul versus Greg Hardy right now it seems to me at least in the immediate aftermath certainly if you're Greg Hardy this is decent for your fortunes like obviously it's definitely not a bad thing by any stretch but it just feels to me right now that this was more deflating for Rockman Jr. than it was boosting for

Greg okay it's very bad it's a very bad. If you're trying to be a legitimate boxer for Haseem Rockman, there's no question about it, but this was a 316 pound Greg Hardy who did cut down to 265 during his UFC days. I wonder where Jake would try to make him cut to, if that was ever at all, even possible, Luke, because there there's a hundred something pound difference there. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. But again, Rockman Jr. Look bad. Yeah. All right. You know what was bad?

Luke booking an unbeaten guy. We love in Jaime Munguia once again against somebody you never heard of. So this is Munguia improving to Dan Raphael on Twitter was fucking killing Munguia and Golden Boy for making this. Who's a bigger boxing fan than me? I didn't even know this fight was Saturday. It was like I didn't realize it until like last night. I was like, oh, Munguia fought?

What? Dude, he fought a guy we never heard of that we ripped when it was announced. Yeah, he's 41-0 now, but like he's not going out of his way to fight Demetrius Andrade. I know he's always wanted Charlo, and that's a hard fight to make across network lines, again, unless it's a big fight like we're doing with Ryan Garcia and Tank Davis. But, dude, I i mean put him against golovkin put him against somebody what are we doing here even now he's fighting not a top golovkin he's fighting a lesser version of

it if they even made that one dude he's fighting people people throw the term can crusher out there a little too often i don't think it's unfair against moongia i really don't all right well that was a different zone card but back to that first zone card that with greg hardy that was a misfits card uh here's a uh weird offer to ksi who was ringside look can you marry me uh luke that marriage proposal went nowhere from that kid i mean what are we doing i couldn't hear it and the kid looks stupid anyway all right well luke you know what's going on here uh ksi was there well we'll get to that in a second the only thing lamer than that marriage proposal to ksi was the boxing form shown in this YouTube fight. Yeah.

Did he have a... I'm not doing a bit. Did he have like a seizure or something? No, no, no. There was a few highlights from this guy in the white trunks. Clarissa Shields was clowning him and sharing it. Yeah. So this was a...

What's it called called don't play that don't play the this one yeah hold on it's uh what is that his own misfits who who runs that ksi's brand i think that's right i think that's right i think it's its own promotion that that's there okay so like that yeah um as we know there was a lot of build-up with dylan danis showing up luke he ended up having a crazy weekend the of course, is that they announced that the next big DAZN pay-per-view misfits fight would be KSI versus Dylan Danis, but here's how his weekend started.

Sad as shit on earth. This is Danis whose teammate got slapped by Nate Diaz last weekend after the UFC card. This was a premeditated planned attack here from Danis, pro wrestling style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Dylan Danis' This was a premeditated planned attack here from Dennis, pro wrestling style. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he touched his.

This is Dylan Dennis' brand now. This is who he is. He is the guy who shows up and has commotions that people film on their phone. Usually he's taking an L. Not always, but usually. Well, we'll get to his big L in a second. That's it. That's all he does.

So he kind of tapped KSI with his left hand on the face and then came over the top with a drink on top of him. And then backstage, he assaulted this boxing videographer, Luke, but payback would come back in the form of a karma bitch. And that karma bitch was delivered by Anthony Taylor. You know him. Remember he boxed Tommy Fury? Pretty boy, yeah.

Despite the fact they were like eight weight classes apart. Whoa, a leaping right hand from anthony taylor connects on dylan dennis so you're right luke his new brand is to just show up and kind of get punked right he just shows up gets punked and then you know tries to leverage it for some kind of attention dude i i can't tell you how sad this hall is so i think it was around 2014 maybe 2015 um maybe 2014 because it was before he was ever associated with connor um i did an interview with him for mma fighting and it was on at the time this is before he had any notoriety about this shit in fact this was at the time he was part of

marcello garcia's brown belt all-stars he i can't remember exactly when he got promoted to black belt it was right around that time. Anyway, the, the, him and Jonathan Satava and a man, sure. Kara. And there were some other ones. I think we've played it enough times here. Sorry.

Yeah. We, these all got, these guys were all, there was, there was more than that, but these three and some other ones, Miguel,

excuse me. Um, uh, Marcelo Garcia had like five or six brown belts all at one time that were fucking assassinating people at competitions. And he was one of them. And not only was he one of them, he was arguably the best among them. And you just thought he was destined for greatness at the black belt division.

In fact, I think in 2017, he had a match with Gordon Ryan at the ADCC and gave him his very toughest match the entire time, at least among the ones that he was able to prevail he lost that one too but i was like damn fucking you know he gave it to him there a little bit he has turned into a uh a parody of himself i mean and uh did it start with habib giving him the flying drop kick is that the beginning no no it started when he became i'm not i'm not blaming connor because i don't know if connor to blame. But what I am saying is once he got associated with Connor and then that sort of paparazzi-ish kind of life, he became obsessed with it and seems like this is his only path forward anymore.

And I want to remind folks, I did an article on like, it's called, you can look it up. It's called The Rise of the Guillotine. And it was at a time when people, just before that, the guillotine, not that it was going out of fashion, but it was really low percentage, and then it had this boost in fortune as people began to make adjustments to it, a lot of which came from Marcelo Garcia's team. Anyway, I did an interview with him about it,

and back then he was normal. He was informative. He was friendly. He was smart, and now this is what he has become. It's really quite unfortunate. Dude, I know he's had injuries that's prevented more MMA fights in theory, but the i know he's had injuries that's prevented more mma

fights in theory but the two times he's fought he's interesting to watch because of that dominant skill and to just kind of seem like he's giving up and now he's doing like can he box luke he's you see his interviews he's like he can't box no he can't but he's like you know ksi doesn't know what it's like to fight a real fighter it's like no but i don't know does anybody care all this shit all this shit is for simpletons dude all well they're gonna fight in january ksi can box a little if you remember his fights his boxing matches with logan paul i don't know will we watch i don't know but that's not the last l that dylan took luke check out this bbl security guard who gives him the tumbo when he gets too handsy no no no no not not in not in this house no that reminds me of my wife every morning what the fuck you talking this is very familiar to me yeah well that was

accidental he wasn't pulling a mike bone in the cockpit that was accidental it seemed luke but it happened there you go all right hey let's rate that tat okay luke a lot of people sending me this luckily because i deleted all the files yeah that's the worst tattoo i've ever seen yeah i mean this is officially this is officially an l my god does that take anthony smith's grenade hands off the hook luke or what i don't mind the grenade hands i don't i don't mind that at all um anytime you tattoo the top of a hand you know you're making a very conscious choice but this is uh this is a hardcore l right here luke remember when i showed cubby's fan uh josh montgomery big mk viewer remember i showed his slash tattoo too early here is the promised

finality so you can make let's see let's see a true statement here on this even even now it's still a little fresh uh because you can see it's got a purplish hue see that oh it's a little purple um that's only because it's fresh i'll say this it's it's good that's really good good yeah um and this is i don't love go back full screen for just a second go back to that yeah i Yeah. I mean, the hair is exceptional. Yeah. I mean, it's an exceptional tattoo. It's good.

I would have loved to get if I think if you're going to do ones like these, I don't prefer them to be black and gray. Also, the right arm is a little jacked a little bit. But in general, this is a this is a quality tattoo. In general, this is a shot of his other arm, Luke. I hope he doesn't mind me showing all of this bare parts of his body. But this is a shot of his other arm luke i hope he doesn't mind me showing all those bare parts of his body but this is badass he took a couple of the pink floyd album cover ideas from animals wish you were here and combine them look so look at the guy on the left's right hand the one that's doing the handshaking it looks like he just has a giant fucking banana slug yeah yeah you know but

you know thematically it's pretty badass i guess them him a lot of credit. Yes, thematically, it's very cool, and I do like the idea. But I'm telling you, man, good tattoos are hard to get. They're not so easy. Not so easy. That guy's a huge fan of great music and MK, so shout out to that guy. That album cover he picked is tremendous. Yeah, it's Smoke Em If You Got Em time. Check out this from the Weed Assembly line.

This is how pre-rolls are made. It's beautiful to watch, right? Just bury me in this, please. Just bury me in this. I mean, what are we doing? Oh, this is how they make them? Dude, we should work there. We should, you know, we should go,

or we should take Jake and a camera there, right? Yeah, you can just leave me there. We don't need a documentary you can just drop me off yeah i'll be i'll be there and that'll be that well look the vape assembly lines showing a little bit lack of quality control lately these are the people that are preparing your habit luke i'm gonna guess this guy doesn't have much to live for. Well, he's sampling every douche flu, as Michael Chiesa would say, that you put in your body, Luke. That's his job.

To try them all. Damn, he is. Boy, they're just spreading those germs. Look at him. He's on top of that. Now, with that said, are you envious? Do you want to work there? Would you try it out?

Not with them. You could just vape all day dude like the conveyor belt bc i already do all right uh your ko of the week comes from octagon the promotion in europe and with a k yeah they allow soccer kicks luke so this is in honor of the world cup in cutter of course luke this so there you go there's the golden boot for you just have a seat asshole yeah das boots right in your in the face thank you very much hey luke remember when deontay wilder made out with his own statue i was seeing if gsp would do the same turned out he wouldn't but you know that's pretty cool they make the crotch more

protruding on that thing although it's it's not it's not bad it's pretty well done yeah they should have put him in those jorts he was wearing when he called out um matt hughes that time yeah that would have been great all right uh let's go to i know you hate gender oh jesus i mean just the stupidest fucking oh that's pretty decent dude it's pretty cool right it's kind of cool here's my agenda reveal it's a boy congrats yeah well dude that guy went up with two hands and dunked that shit yeah he's got he's got i mean he's at the local park hanging on the rim but his wife threw the lob too i mean you could have gone to a nicer facility, but maybe that's all they got, Luke, okay?

Or just don't do shit like this. You can just do that. Big time in sports and combat sports for the Poetons. Here's his sister, Aileen Pereira, making her MMA debut with Poeton in her corner, and she got dropped, Luke. Although, did you see the part where she gave her opponent middle fingers? Don't spoil the content, Luke. But yeah, so this is Aileen Pereira.

Well, hey, dude, her older brother lost his MMA debut, too. There you go. Well, she also showed tribute to the Diaz brothers, of course. Was this a contentious fight? I didn't see the fight was it I don't I don't remember being super contentious uh wow maybe that's just how they roll down there Luke this is how BC greets me when I ask for a hug yeah pretty much um hey but big upset at at the LFA 147 card and how about this highlight Rafael dos Nascimento he kicked Justin Wetzel right in the face, and they're telling me this is a big upset.

Luke, your thoughts? Yeah, this is actually a teammate of E.K.C. Leiden, the videographer. Damn. He's the winning. Yeah, it's a nice win, bro. Rafael dos Nascimento was the guy's name. I think it's Nascimento. Yeah, something like that.

Damn, he just kicked the guy right in the face. Wow. all right. Let's see what happens on the street corner here. Let's watch this. Is this kid going to get hit by a dump truck or something? Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. Oh, shit.

Tag her in, bitch. You're supposed to hear the audio. He said what's up to that girl. She made fun of him, and then he took her out. Oh, that's sick. Yeah, that's pretty sick. Hey, who said chivalry is dead, huh? No, no.

Hey, look, friend of the program, Giovanni Marquez. You know that 21-year-old boxer, son of a legend? He improved to 4-0 in Texas on Saturday. Watch this knockout from geo that's geo on the ropes right now yep yep let's see finish him finish him oh good lord stuck him with the right that's assault brother i mean come on coach rafael marquez and el diamante improving to four and oh with with uh with him as well so uh uh shout out to they call themselves tmt luke the mar Marquez team. Does it stand for anything besides...

I'm sorry? I'm going to see that right here one more time. Yeah, that's a hell of a shout. Damn. Sat him down. All right. Hey, look at the unit on this squash, Luke. You impressed?

I mean, it's incredible, right? It's fall fair season? all right all right all right mom is mom is skanky huh yeah that's that's interesting all right uh that is great hey luke how about this how high off of edibles is she right there i think this is just her natural you know she's impressed by it yeah um who said Gaff says she looks like the mom from Bob's Burgers. Can you? You think? No one besides Gaff watches Bob's Burgers.

Can we just be honest about that? Luke, check out this hospital recommendation. I think they're honest with their people. You know what? That's fair. That's fair. Don't want to get pregnant just do anal you know here it is there it is finally somebody said it was finally okay besides uh claudia that time

remember wow remember that luke yeah let's bring really aggressive about it let's bring back the punch machine we always get great lols from that check out this old guy is this old man about to bite it from this one? I bet he is. Yep. There you go. Yep. Yep. You don't realize the average person has the worst balance ever. Well, let's rate the balance in punching power. Excuse me. I said that weird.

Of six foot seven boxing promoter Eddie Hearn. Dude, he hit that hard. Yeah, not bad. Put a little steam on it. Put a little steam on it. Yep. So Eddie tells a great story that he said when he was a teenager, his dad, Barry, who's a Hall of Fame promoter,

took him in the boxing ring to kind of like make him a man. And Eddie claims to have dropped his dad with a body shot and ever since then his dad knew that Eddie was coming on Luke you and your dad should recreate that I don't want to drop my dad with a body shot I mean my dad's 82

it might be therapeutic in the long run Luke let's close with how about some pinata kid abuse this is what kind of parent does this i mean my guy you're supposed to have the kid hit the pinata with the bat not hit the pinata with the kid yeah look you ever see it guarantee these people did like a dumb ass gender reveal when this kid was formed. You know, those conspiracy theorists that always say like all the Disney logos have like secret penises hiding inside them. And like, it's all like, you know, a big conspiracy.

I can't say that I do. All right. Well, it turns out they were right. Look at what these hidden cameras found at Disney World. Dude, what the fuck is this this is not disney world dude what the fuck is this this is the dong factory like somewhere yeah yeah i don't i don't know what to call it look it's incredible though right i mean you'd only see that shit on this segment right that's what i can guarantee you

really this is the worst show they don't play this video on ariel's show ever not one time luke okay yeah probably not probably not all right that's my shit of the week sorry i lost the good shit that was my replacement stuff yeah uh very good bc well that is it for us here today want to remind folks we're're back Wednesday, right? We are doing a Wednesday show, however inadvisable. Yeah, we're doing a Wednesday show. An event that we're not going to watch, probably. PFL Championships, yeah.

There's a good boxing fight this weekend, too. It's on pay-per-view, unfortunately. It's Rougarou, dude, right? Oh, the Rougarou is back. Yeah, he's fighting Zepeda. That's going to be a good-ass title fight at 140. But, as Mikey just reminded us, Friday we will have a show. We will answer your mailbag

questions, right? Yeah. So what you got to do is you got to send out tweets to get questions. We'll put some up, and you can also email us, morningcombat at gmail.com. Tweet us, email us, whatever you got to do. We'll take those questions. We'll do a Friday mailbag. Don't email us like, you know,

would Habib have beaten Charlie Olives? Like, you know you know we're gonna do a fun holiday show with you okay all right you know what we're talking about yeah um yes i'm trying to think there's anything else we had to get to that i was reminded of i think that's it i think that's it oh morning combat dot store one more reminder luke for our great merch that um you want the Black Friday deals, go to our website right now, put your email address in there. Your car title will also be fine as well. But no, RJ is going to give you an email with all the bundles. They're all the discounts. So get out there, all right?

Get out there on the web and get your husband in that bomber jacket already. I mean, he's going to look fantastic, right? I guarantee it. All right. Do you think Jay Paquette puts it on like Mr. Plow? There's not a doubt in my mind. There's not a doubt in my mind. I want to remind you, showtime.com is a label that pays.

Go to showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce. Of course, you already heard the merch stuff and then morning combat at gmail uh thanks to everyone who watched we'll be back on wednesday we got you covered the whole week as a matter of fact tomorrow the anthony smith room service diaries comes out so give us a follow on social to stay up to date on all of our content and to find us there youtube.com slash morning combat and that's it today so i got one more breaking news announcement.

It was supposed to be tomorrow, but I don't know if I'm going to do it tomorrow. But, Luke, people have asked for it, and it's going to happen within a week or so. Okay. The BC live chat is going to be a real thing. Not every day, not every week, but it's going to be a real thing. We're going to make it happen. You told the people to speak to me if they want it, Luke. They seem to really want it.

Now, I don't know if it's going to do the same type of traffic that our docs do, disappointingly. I mean, that's soul-crushing, the amount of traffic our docs do,

given how brilliant they are. They are brilliant, but people just want us to talk about Connor, really, is really the answer there. All right. So, for BC, for Malka, Showtime Sports, as well as CBS Sports,

we're out for today. We'll see you guys on Wednesday. Room Service Diaries tomorrow. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal.