MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Bonus Vacation Mailbag: Favorite Non-UFC Champions | Future of MMA | Jon Jones

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell are on vacation but have you covered with a bonus mailbag episode. Who are the guys top 5 favorite non UFC champions? What changes do they see coming to MMA in the future? What Changes can be made to the current MMA system? Would the UFC ever trade Jon Jones for A.J. Mckee? Are the best featherweights in the world at UFC or Bellator? Which MMA fighter would you like to see a documentary on? Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, hello, everyone. How are you doing? I don't know what day it is, so I'm just going to say, hi, my name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of your hosting duo on this lovely podcast. We call ourselves Morning Combat. Our gig here is we routinely accuse other shows of gimmick infringement for no good reason. name is Luke Thomas turns out we might have been wrong Luke we may have been the infringers I don't know yes I don't know I don't know but that's a different discussion for a different time here's what I do know it's time for a mailbag episode hi I'm Luke Thomas that's Brian Campbell the king of Connecticut but what's up BC how are you doing yeah so here's the deal this is a normal slot Monday Wednesday

Friday 11 a.m eastern on the YouTubes for this great show morning combat, but look at our vacation it's August. And, but yet, you know, our producer Mikey Morms is like, nah, brah, you got to still fill this hole. Okay. So, so, you know, if you're, you're going to come, come on, bro. So, you know, we're coming. They were here. We're here. All right. So here we're here all right so here we are this is uh we'll have a couple of these this is about sports today stuff different stuff in mma but uh we're not going to do like crazy you know would you do a bong out of a dead body type questions we're

going to keep it mostly related to mma and things like that uh of course it's scamming the system to get these questions to us we have we to get these questions we ask you to scam the system by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and then we go from there. As always, like the channel, subscribe. Like the video, I should say anyway. Subscribe to the channel and yes, tons of great content as I have to watch

BC's stupid, stupid face. Why don't you dye your hair jet black again there, Wayne Newton? Yeah, yeah. Alright, you want to get this started be sizzle um yeah watch all of our stuff all right maybe you know i don't know i don't care what yes get showtime go to morningcombat.store you know get showtime and get ben yeah there you go there you go all right bc let's kick this off we've got some questions from people who helped us scam the rating system there. We'll go to number one.

This person has no name. They're just a drifter. They come into town, they bang all the girls, and then they leave. You know, like all 80s heroes. Who are your top five non-UFC champions? Is this a favorite? Who do we think they're the best? What's the deal here?

What's this? I mean, you got to simplify here. So I'll say, like, when I think about who my top five, I mean, if they're asking currently, that's harder to say. If they're asking, like, historically, you have to go pride with Fedor as heavyweight champion. There's probably a few pride titles. So who are the five best fighters in MMA history who have never been a UFC champ? Is that really what this

is saying? No, no, no. Who? Well, here's what I was going to say. So Fedor would have your heavyweight title, right, from pride. I think you could even do Aldo WEC featherweight champion. That was non-UFC at that time when he was that.

You could probably, if you wanted to, you could add Dan Henderson if you wanted as either a double champ in Pride, the first real kind of double champ. Michelle Watterson, female Adam Waite is there. There's Rumble on the Rock belts. There's

Icon Sport belts. There's Rings. Who are some other ones? I've given you two or three here um was it alvarez bodog champ at lego i mean what are we doing here bro what are we even doing right now i would say wouldn't you add um you could add who was like the best strike force champion jake shields was champ for a time luke rockhold was pretty as, you know, didn't have a lot of defenses, but was a great fighter and was Strikeforce champion, right? Yes, that's true.

Jacare was for a time. Technical classic. Yes, that's true. And obviously there's been dream champions there. Oh, you know what? You could say Alistair Overeem when he was dream and Strikeforce and K1 champ simultaneously. Pre-Usada. Yeah, right. It was awesome. star over him when he was dream and strike force and k1 champ simultaneously pre usada yeah yeah

right it was awesome uh you can say whatever you want about it was not a bad time to be a fan um that's probably god we didn't name any billet or champs jesus joe soto you know what i think you could I think you could add Pitbull to the list. You definitely can add Pitbull. Give me Featherweight, Pitbull. You wanted to do Featherweight all though. But you can do that too. Okay.

But there you go. Those are some answers to your questions there. All right. This is from Danan or Danan. Hi, guys. First off, you guys are my number one fave combat sports podcast yeah goddamn right and he goes and i listen to them all well you shouldn't do that you audio whore yeah right yeah you absolute slut of audio um you guys are blah blah blah not a bunch of nice things and whatever

i'm not gonna read it uh okay given the flash evolution of the quality of athletes that are now entering mma the speed in which new techniques are being developed and perfected along with improvements in training skill tech blah blah blah how will mma adapt do you imagine time when more moves are outlawed where dna tests become standard like peds will rules need to change to protect fighters? I'm not really sure exactly what he's asking. I mean, if the question was simply based on fighting style and strategy, I've been waiting, Luke, for the evolution of some type of new,

not a new base, but a new way. I mean, I'm not talking about just calf kicks, how that may have altered the game in recent years. I mean, like, is there going to be a discipline? I mean, it was rare to see a karate star like Machida or Thompson. It was rare to see a top level judoka like a like a Ronda or whatever, or my guy Caro Parisian. But I'm talking about, Luke, is there a fighting discipline

that hasn't made its mark within the cage that will or some sort of variation of one that could become a trend where people are like holy crap i gotta start doing that luke like jujitsu in the 90s american wrestling in the early aughts and uh what have you am i speaking out of my a-hole luke i don't i don't think so i think that's probably right but he's talking about a bunch of different stuff. Here's the question you got to ask yourself, BC. I'm not sure what the DNA tests have to do with everything. There's one thing to be like, oh, it's the NFL where they'll run a series of offensive schemes,

and by the end of that season, or at least the beginning of the next, a lot of that shit doesn't work. It's like how RG3, partly you have injury issues, but part of it was also just schemes that the nfl just kind of adapted to that's different than what's happened with the nba where the game is just is very much different than the game we grew up with it's much more spaced out obviously look at the scores defense is just not not only is it not what it used to be it can't be rule changes facilitated the nba's change because scoring was down in the late 90s and very early 2000s when the lockdown defense really took over. Right. That started in a lot of ways. Well, with the bad boys, but really came to Providence with the mid 90s. Pat Riley, Knicks and eventually Luke David Stern didn't like the way this game was being presented.

It was thuggish. It was defensive heavy. So he opened the lane and he really created an avenue for guys, first Steve Nash, then all the way through Steph Curry, to be smaller but can take over a game. Will there be a rule change akin to that in MMA or rule changes, which would open the door for a fighter who in the past would have been considered marginal or average, but because of this rule change or adaption,

think Steve Nash's MVP years, Luke. Before that, Steve Nash was an adequate, good, above average, but not an all-star starting point guard, right? Then he became a back-to-back MVP because of the rule changes, although let's also give credit to Mike D'Antoni and the seven seconds or less offense system that they ran. Will you see an equivalent like that to MMA at all? Well, I think you kind of already are a little bit like to me it's not a coincidence that you have fighters like leon edwards and cyril gone existing at the same time right and again they do

they they have their own ways of fighting they have their own ways of managing risk and rounds and positions and they go to things in their own proclivities in their own ways but what underlies them both is they fight at distance they don't take a lot of damage they're good at neutralizing their opponents and there's not necessarily a little bit this is different for serial gone but um there's not necessarily a ton of you know action heavy fun associated with their game that there's a reason for that is because while it's difficult to pull up what they can do and to an extent I would put Volkanovski in that group as well a little bit a little bit it's a once you can master that it's a very difficult person to beat very very difficult or you know you take something really special some kind of major specialization and obviously

a lot of people might have those but they've moved away from hardcore Habib like specialization. And obviously a lot of people might have those, but they've moved away from hardcore Habib-like specialization. So I tend to wonder about that. I also tend to wonder two things. I would say, to what extent does knees to the head of a grounded opponent, or strikes to the head of a grounded opponent, to what extent does that change if that begins to open up? We just saw, I think it was in Colorado, they're going to allow different rule sets, pride and one style rules with the fights being judged and whatnot. That's to me an interesting development. And I think the other one I would say is beyond just like knees and whatnot.

What if judging changes? What if we went, I mean, this seems to me highly unlikely. BC, but what if we went to like a pride-like system, judging a fight as a whole versus not? There you go. That's the potential change. What does that mean?

That means you're not fighting for rounds you're fighting exclusively for damage in big moments and you could say well you're always fighting for damage well no there are there are round and point fighters people are looking to control the terms of a fight to win it that way if you are exclusively and only scoring one score for the whole fight you're going to score the guy who had the bigger moments, even if it came in pockets. So I wonder that could alter or change at all. But your point about what if 10,

the trends changed and suddenly you could kick a down athlete or strike the head. Like you said, with, I mean that, I wonder if that you always wonder at all, what rule change? I mean, like, look, the head, like you said. I mean, I wonder if that – You always wonder. You change wrestling at all. What rule – I mean, look, the NFL,

they had to make rule changes to protect offensive players. Now, you can argue they did it to protect quarterbacks from missing games because people come to see these quarterbacks, but it's also because of CTE and concussions and all that. And what did it do, Luke? It opened up the game, the passing, receiving records, or through the roof comparative to when you and I were in high school and college. So I'm wondering or waiting to see what happens with that rule change.

I'm going to guess it's going to happen more, though, not in something in which we're opening up the rules like are like what you just said about, you know, making strikes to a downfighter. Maybe maybe people will say, well, that's archaic. Let's open that up. I think it may be the opposite. I think something may happen for us to constrict the rules more Luke, and maybe that would have an effect on things changing. Maybe I think any kind of alteration is going to have some kind of an impact, some negligible, some significant, some good, some bad. I wouldn't deny that. But the only thing that's kind of interesting is I can't prove this.

I don't know this to be true, but I have a hunch that a fighter, not that that type of fighter you get. I mean, Volkanovski is very, very good. Leon Edwards is very, very good. And obviously Cyril Ghosn is very, very good. But there are going to be other people who kind of try to do that. I don't think, let I'll say this. I don't think a lesser version of that style works as well under a pride style of judging.

I think it works a lot better under a 10 point must system. Can't prove that it's just a hunch, but that'd be something I'd be paying attention to. To what extent rule sets create incentives for fight styles. And I don't know that the best incentives yeah rule sets have changed the damn nba it's a thousand percent true it's still a great product but you know if you're a center that doesn't shoot threes and you're not wiry and and have a high vertical there's no there's no home for you there's no room luke so you know i always say this as a joke and it's not true

because seth curry steph curry i'm sorry not seth not the bootleg brother, Steph Curry. He, Luke, he has range. That is, it changed the game, right? His ability to hit from like 30 feet consistently. It certainly changed the game. But if you told me a six, one guard in the success he had with multiple MVPs was parachuted back into 1994 when Seth's data was playing as a six man for the Hornets, dude, he's Dana Barrows. I'm sorry. Okay. Maybe he's better because Steph can really shoot it, but you'd be a specialized oddity like a Dana Barrows, a short quick guy who, you know, who, who can do certain things,

but he could drive the lane because those big guys will send them to the first row of the bleachers. Look back when you used to be able to follow people. All right. i don't know if they'll see something that dramatic in mma where guys that we know now as point fighters or iq guys who don't rely on power will that be taken out of the game because some of some kind of rule change maybe scoring as we said it's interesting to think about luke but again i think it's more likely to come as a result of some catastrophic injury or something bad that happens on national television where we're like, we got to change these rules just a bit. And then you'll see from that, can more people thrive who wouldn't have had an effect in a former game? I don't think they're ever going to open shit up, Luke.

I don't think so. I think it's going to, if anything, you want to put some lipstick on the sport more, right? You want to wide in the audience i mean i tend to think that the public has gotten a lot more used to it than we realize i remember when basic mma kaos would would make people real and horror and now it makes them stand in glee there's been a dramatic shift on the palatability now to your point i do think there are going to be some pretty clear limits. And those limits, while maybe seemingly arbitrary and not consistent, they just exist for whatever reason. I take that seriously, no doubt about it. You're right. There's a point where you just you can go up to and then once you cross it, even just a little bit, you've gone too far. But that

Overton window, so to speak, has grown dramatically. Are you looking for the fountain of youth underneath your chair? No, the the armrest on my chair came off the screw came loose i got a few screws loose over here luke so i'm trying to tighten it with a pen cap put it back together let me go to the next question it's from it's from uh jose jose says hello brian and luke do you think the ufc would agree for the following talent trade i don't know where, okay, I'll answer it. No, no, before you go further. Luke, I love these type of questions. Why wouldn't you entertain this?

Why wouldn't you love it if promoters could actually trade like the Demetrius Johnson thing? Because when I tell you what the terms are of the trade, you're going to realize the question isn't really about that, but rather this person greatly misjudges what's going on. Okay. All right. Jon Jones for AJ McKee is the first part of the

question i mean absolutely not they would never do that and then secondly do you think jones would like that which is sort of a separate question imagine bellator and ufc were interested would jones like it now that's a little bit different to me but first let's answer this john jones for aj mckee not a million years would they make that trade no right now the value is still yeah proven pay-per-view draw against McKee who obviously has a very bright future but is still somewhat uncertain do I think Jones would like it I don't think Jones would mind leaving UFC but only if Bellator could pay him shit tons of money which I don't think that they can necessarily I mean Jones is the greatest fighter of all time and he's still under 35 so uh yeah

he's you know that that's still and he could still be your heavyweight champion within the next six, eight months, a year for all we know. Right. I mean, I don't know if I'd favor him anymore against Singanu, but yeah, he's still too close to there. You'd have to, that trade would be better. He was washed. Look, if he was washed and it was only about Bellator getting a must-see attraction, then

you could argue, are you mortgaging the future of giving away McKee thinking you may not be able to keep him anyway to try to get someone proven right now? That's the spirit of that trade. Right now, we ain't there. Let me ask a question. Could you do Jon Jones versus Rumble on pay-per-view prelims on big CBS? Okay. So you're going to put the prelims on big CBS and say, well, Bellator is going to do it up like they did for the McKee and Pitbull card where, you know, they're putting on their, their best, their Sunday best. Right. You could do that. How much would it sell?

So we're talking about that headlining and we'll say promoted correctly with the available channels. John Jones on a Bellator pay-per-view you're saying yep prelims on big seat on big cbs you know media tour the whole nine yards who's he fighting though fader rumble johnson oh shit dude um that's a million by paper well a million is a lot these days i don't think it does a million but i bet it does well and so for that reason, AJ McKee can't do that. AJ McKee's got the brightest future I've seen in the longest of times, but he's not there right now.

I mean, it's hard to really know. Like, is AJ McKee, if you put him in UFC tomorrow, would he go, you know, five wins and three losses against the eight best lightweights out there? I don't know, five wins and three losses against the eight best lightweights out there. I don't know. Right. Or is he, is it possible that he really is that sort of special generational guy who will have a Mayweather type effect on a certain division where it's just like, nobody can touch him and he can do crazy things. I don't know, Luke. I tend to, I don't know if MMA allows for a Mayweather, even you have someone like Habib who was undefeated. First of all, Mayweather had 50 fights. Now some of those, you know, at the end were not the best of his career but still he got to 50

of them let's just put that out there and second of all like he would take breaks and you know it wasn't as hard on his body and blah blah blah like Habib almost quit the sport a couple times over terrible injuries like you know John's about as close as you're gonna get to that kind of transformational figure and even he at 34 is just like it's kind of had enough you know, John's about as close as you're going to get to that kind of transformational figure. And even he at 34 is just like, ugh, he's kind of had enough, you know? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, do I think Jones would like it? I think if you could line up like Romero, I mean, other boys,

but if you could line up Romero, Rumble, maybe, who's their champ over there, the Russian kid? Not Moldovsky. Nemkov. Nemkov. Nemkov. How, imagine a, a Bader rematch for the heavyweight title. I'm into that.

Luke. That's interesting. Yup. That's interesting too. Like there are some ways for him to make things work, but the biggest possible, I mean, come on,

Tim Johnson, bro. Right. You know, that's big. That's big. That's big. Plus it'd be like brand new free john jones able

to get sponsors and blah blah blah like yeah yeah it'd be big all right this is from uh jesse from australia after watching the last bellator card pitbull versus mckee i have a serious question are the best featherweights in the world at ufc or bellator i'm australian so obviously i have a biased view of volkanovski but if i really sit back and think about it, is AJ McKee a better all-around fighter than Max and Volk, or would these elite UFC featherweights find a way to derail him? One thing I want to say before I pitch this question to you, BC, is this is how you know AJ McKee made a big splash. When fans start asking us, us hey could X from Bellator beat Y and Z from UFC

that's when you know X is on people's radar in a way that they were not before they're beginning to take him seriously yeah so what do you think could he what are you pulling a Luke Thomas and listening to not a fucking word I am telling you

no I couldn't find this. I had some old gum and I don't know. I didn't know where I put it. I found it. I found it. You just put gum out of your mouth and then put it back. Yeah, usually before before I do HQ or an interview, I usually have gum. And sometimes I have to I put it down.

I forget to put it back in. I just have used gum sitting around. You know, it's gross. But it's my office. You truly are a disgusting man. I'm just going to give the same answer I always give to this question, which is, yeah, it's gross, but it's my office. You truly are a disgusting man. I'm just going to give the same answer I always give to this question, which is, yeah, he's probably somewhere in that top five. I'll say this, BC.

I'd have to look at their ages. Let's pull up the rankings here right now. So AJ McKee is 26, correct? Luke, we cannot answer this because we haven't seen AJ's profile. Follow me here. Follow me here. How old is Brian Ortega? I think, yeah, right around, right?

Because he took a bunch of time off. So he's 30 years old. So let's do this. I'm going to go through the top 10 of the UFC's featherweight division. So Volkanovski passed 26. Yeah, but before you even do that, I'm telling you that we can't do this because we haven't seen him face any kind of adversity. Some of that is due to his dynamism. I want to make make a point i just want to make a point i just want to

follow me here follow me here volkanovski older than 26 holloway older than 26 ortega older rodriguez how old is yair rodriguez he's pretty young i think he's like 27 okay so he's sitting at 28 28 and he'll be 29 in october um so that's him so then you've got calvin cater who i know is older arnold allen is young let's see how old he is arnold allen he is 27 and just turned 27 well january so not just but okay so he's still uh older then you go to uh josh emmett older dan igay i think is like 29 dan igay is 30 31 30 okay edson barboza older giga chikadze i don't know how old Giga is. Giga Chikadze.

Yeah, but what's the point? What's the point here, Luke? I'm going to get to it. 32. Okay, so that's your top 10. That means AJ McKee, I don't know if he can beat those names. Probably some, maybe not all. But he's younger than all of them.

He's younger than everyone inside the UFC's top 10, meaning even if he couldn't beat them now, he's got a lot of time to catch up. Some of these guys are 32. I mean, how good is AJ McKee if he stays on the straight and narrow going to be in six years, BC? He's going to be fucking good. So that's sort of the point.

I can't figure out again if the Pitbull win is just a byproduct of that. He's a super exciting, like MVP, Luke MVP could, could be anyone on any given night. Cause he does super ridiculous human video game things. Right.

But he also on any given night can be absolutely solved. Now you could say that about anybody. I get that, but I can't figure out if what we've seen so far from aj in his most toughest in his toughest fights on paper has been mvp like flash and he just hasn't run into like fernando gonzalez yet to kind of go oh whoa okay this guy is no superhero right or if he's freaking tiger woods of mma luke i don't know yet you i don't know yet either i don't i don't know yet all right uh let's go here abc one two three dragons love tacos okay name three mma fighters and they put in parentheses

no boxers bc name three mma fighters that you would most like to see a documentary about their lives like i said you guys find them much more interesting than I do for this kind of a thing. All right, this person says, here are my suggestions. Rose is one. Matt Linlin, because you have the Olympics and the fall of Team Quest. Takanori Gomi, the pride and alleged Yakuza influence. Alexander Emelianenko, of course, he went to prison and has hepatitis.

He's also fedor's brother shinya aukey what do you say bc sexy yama that seems like a very uninspired choice if i saw what his personal life is like luke he's really who i aspire to be in life people think i hate risen and japan is of not not bro not bro okay um Rose would be interesting. You know, Joanna apparently did one for HBO Poland. I'd like to check that out.

I'll say this. I don't want to see any documentary if it's made by the athletes, like with their production company, like they hired them to do. I don't give a, I don't need your RG3 self-worship I don't need to see it at all like my wife told me like oh we gotta check out this documentary on Amazon it's about J Balvin J Balvin is this like sort of famous music producer slash

Rigatoneiro and uh and it was about all the stuff that was supposed to be like you know all Colombians were like raving about it dude I watched it it was his film he made it and he made himself look like the greatest most you know pensive and deliberate human i've ever seen i was like man then you need somebody with highs and lows then luke you need it non-self-made and you need someone who had highs and lows both in and out of the cage right to really tell an inside story and tell it accurately about their strengths and weaknesses of character and all that Luke. So you keep that in mind,

right? So it's also, so this is what I mean. If someone was able to get his participation, but he couldn't control it. How do you not pick John Jones? How do you not? John Jones would be massive.

Chael Sonnen would be great. I'd like to give you another go. Well, you know why he's wired that way. And in certain, certain Brock, you know, you know, because of the language difference, I'd like to know why he's wired that way in certain... Brock? You know, because of the language difference, Jose Aldo would interest me a lot.

Yeah, again, there's hagiography stuff made about him. I'm not interested in that. People are like, oh, did you see the Connor documentary? I'm not interested in that. It doesn't do anything for me. I want to see somebody independent tell the story. But Don Fry would kind of be one that would be a little bit interesting as well. That whole era of like hard-nosed wrestlers turned fighters

around that Mark Coleman kind of, you know, 98, 2000 era. There's a lot of cool shit from there. Obviously, the Smashing Machine was kind of the first of those. That's good. That's a good flick. Yeah. Boz Rutin hasn't had an interesting life i feel like you know i don't know i'm going a little old school i don't this is dude when when the fights are over i tune this shit out i'm not i'm not i'm not that i'm not that guy well you have to go old school because ufc does such a good job today with embedded and with Embedded and Countdown, you kind of feel like you know a lot about the active fighters, correct?

I know what you mean. Like, there's a ton of information. I don't take the public view of things as all that accurate, though. Like, it's a lot of just, you know, here's the version of the truth we can tell, not the actual full version. Show me the facts. Show me six fighters up, six fighters down the actual full version show me the facts show me

six fighters up six fighters down on resume review show me the facts right ensign in a way is another one bj pen bj pen bj pen yeah yeah all right this is from the dragons rage dragons love tacos bc they also love rage apparently all right here we go uh question for luke since you caught the whole thing from barry boxing about the rhythm step i'll explain this in just a second bc how often do you notice it when you're observing a fighter so on like pad work or even during a fight i saw it and now i can't unsee it do you know who this is barry uh forget his last name i always get his name wrong it's get good at boxing or get great at boxing as his Instagram account. He has trained a lot of boxers. He's trained some MMA fighters like Dan Hooker and some other ones, but he has this idea called the rhythm step. And if you watch

what happens is two guys are facing off two girls, whatever, and they'll interact, they'll fight, they'll, you know, they'll faint or whatever. And then you'll notice that one of them, as they change angles or as a reset moment, typically it's almost always a reset. They'll bring their feet together and then they go back to the exchange or whatever. And he sort of noticed that like this doesn't just happen at low or intermediate levels. This happens at the very highest level that there's a lot of people who are basically the argument would be he calls it the rhythm step. But the idea would be they're resetting in the middle of these fights. And if you time their reset and you pick up on their reset you can attack the reset and i have to say

it's been a very influential on my thinking about certain fights have you known stuff like that so is it the equivalent of teddy kjb with the oreo twist on rounders luke it's a tell it's a tell it's a tell but it's a particular one that a lot of people do. You'll see they'll step out and then step back, bring their feet together, and then they'll reset. But when they do, they let their hands don't necessarily drop, but their mind is when you have when your mind is resetting, your defense is not cued as acutely as it's supposed to be. And you can you can land on these fools when they do that. So that's similar to the angle DC found in the first Stipe fight, that Stipe exits with his hands down just a bit, and he filled that hole, Luke, right? Yep.

Let's hope the rhythm style is a lot more effective than the rhythm method, Luke, which helped produce you into this world, right? Yeah. This is... Okay, for folks who don't speak Brian Campbell, let me translate. He's very moderately interested in this topic not really and he was looking for an exit from it so we could move on and making a joke about my parents fucking is his way of doing that

let me just say one thing bc and i will move on to the next one which is um folks have asked me like how are you able to pick up on all this stuff in a fight? And this is like, it's not really my secret, but I'll just present it as such, which is dude, here's the big key to understanding fights. Yeah. Sometimes they're over in 13 seconds. Sometimes they end for reasons that have nothing to do with how the fight itself was going. Right. There's all MMA is crazy, but what I've noticed most of the time with most fights, especially at the elite end is everything's a pattern. And once you decipher what the patterns are on either side, you'll see it repeat itself over and over and over.

Not merely over fights them around, as you say, but fights themselves. So yes, how they got to those positions, what they mean, the very fine details. Yeah.

You need to be a really good coach and and a former fighter to have the the the full amount of information i make no claims otherwise but if you just understand you're looking for patterns a lot of this stuff is a little bit easier to pick up on than people imagine it is so you know what i thought turned into a good story do you know that bloke in in the uk named lee wiley who used to for years on, put out those historic boxing breakdowns where he'd take like sugar, Ray Robinson or Harry grab or whatever, and break down the film. Like you're saying,

picking up little patterns and showing you the Luke Thomas, like, you know, the equivalent and MMA, what you, what you used to do with a very, very well, you know,

visited what was it called? Dissected. Very good segment. Hope we can see the return of it. Luke, you may have heard of him because remember when Kenny Florian had that plagiarizing incident? Yes, that was Lee Wiley's videos. And then he ended up having Lee on the podcast. Apologize.

I didn't realize good old Lee who I followed for years got hired by MTK, you know, that management team that manages fury and Billy Joe Saunders in the UK. And he was part of the team what we didn't talk about was on the zone last week it didn't make have you seen the shit there was a title fight at featherweight there was that guy zucan um yes i did see that i saw that fight i literally saw that fight he got upset by a by a uk guy named lee wood who um knocked him out in the 12th round but was on his way to winning that fight because they had figured something out on the video. And Lee Wiley was the guy they used in camp

to really figure that out, which is wild because Lee Wiley was just some dude who worked at a factory in the UK that loved boxing, would put out these videos, and he got all the way to that level, Luke, and to your horn, not that you're just some factory worker, although you do a show with a former one um you also have had teams work reach out to you and be like you know interest in

doing the same thing correct is my i'm not yeah they didn't want they didn't want to pay me for it but uh yeah i've had a few ufc fighters reach out and ask for some help um that's awesome and uh yeah it's pretty great it's pretty great so So I will say this lastly, Sean McVay, who's the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams. Did you see he hired some like guy who was like a reporter for NFL network for a long time? Maybe he played football in like high school or something, but was not in any way would you consider an athlete?

He got hired to be like a coaching analyst for him. Yeah, plucked him from me. I always find it when they're like when the coach sees someone in media and it happens quite rarely but when they see someone in media and then they pluck them out for like a very specific but also highly important job and they can kind of fill that niche in a pretty those are always interesting to me when i see that it happens along like i've seen like people do with like financials for teams or looking at tape or whatever it's always there was that guy's name daryl mori or morally they call him dork elvis he was the rockets gm and he was like a a stat cruncher of a guy and he figured out trends and it led him all the way to the front office luke you'd be amazed what you can pick

up on if you just watch a bunch of this shit okay this is from more moi i guess he's in japan hi luke abc in the dillashaw sandhagen fight, the commentators were talking about TJ's leg injury in the first round. Does that news reach the other corner? We see. I guess it could during the fight if somebody watching at home texts the cornermen of Corey. I usually think that that kind of information makes it. That's why we even saw when Floyd Mayweather ran up on

Javante Davis and the, um, the fight against, uh, burials on pay-per-view on showtime and was like, you know, the broadcast has you down. So yeah, that stuff I think gets there, Luke. I don't think it's like formally done, but I think it gets there. Yeah. The, some, I could, I need to double check this. People can dead wrong me if it's wrong. I'm not committing to use it anymore i i need to double check that but like you know also like dude they're not i mean you know it wasn't like a hidden injury or some shit the guy was favoring it pretty clearly so um sometimes i think that

thing can reach but it doesn't give you that much benefit you got your guy still has to know how to fight all right i got time for a couple more here from QBKilla77. Hey, guys. Love the show. Been listening to BC since the ITC days. In this corner? Oh, yeah. It was a great podcast in CBS Sports.

Then we got copyright sued, so it became the State of Combat, and now it's Morning Combat, Luke. Right. And also have endured and grown like, uh, have endured and grown to like LT, uh, great chemistry. I love the way you're pulling each other,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. Okay. Makes for awesome theater. Keep it up question. Here we go. Considering pit bulls loss, continuing to uphold the resume review curse. Can you guys do a resume review for Chris cyborg for her next Bellator fight

to either prove or disprove the resume review curse is real? What do you think, BC? No, we would never do one just for the sake of trying to mess with the curse. The curse is real. We do, as you had said, an almost offensive of the curse. Like it's a lot of times you're doing the fighter that is more has a deeper history than the other fighter to make the to make great content to make the resume review make sense you're not going to do it on a guy who's got you know four major fights right so that tends to lean towards doing

it on the older fighters and i think over average younger fighters in their prime are going to be older fighters more often than not so maybe that explains some of the resume review curse, but I am interested to see Luke the first time we do it on a fight that really isn't 50, 50 ish that when it really does, or who's the first fighter that beats the resume review curse, right? Especially if they do it as an underdog, that type of stuff interests me. Although we, I don't think we would ever, we're never going to do like

that meme last week go oh colby covington's kind of lame let's do a let's sabotage his career you know yeah we only i mean again i know people are like oh and you know you're killing these guys you know obviously it's whatever but it's not designed for that it's designed to be uh informative and kind of candidly a little bit of homage to the person who is the subject of it so that folks can understand the significance of the moment and also what brought them to that moment. Obviously, it's been a case where we have picked. But wasn't it true that Ariel had done a series of interviews with ESPN prior to his departure, and he had done the exact same ones we had done for resume review not as many but he was doing those those weird uh pandemic ones where he would do it from like the basement of a factory it looked like or something or something right yeah and he'd be looking at the tv and they would set it up that

way and they were you know they're well shot and well done but he was picking you know he picked mcgregor which is the guy you would want to talk to heading into a second pourier fight right he picked out a sonia which is the guy you would want to talk to heading into a second Poirier fight, right? He picked out Asana, which is the guy you would want to talk to going for a second title against Blachowicz. So it's not like rocket science, but yeah, he picked Masvidal, same thing, Luke. It just shows you that we have similar, like he and I and you, in terms of what we find interesting, we all have similar news judgment. That's really what the common denominator is there. We kind of spotlight, oh, what's interesting to us us we all have similar sensibilities about what that is now as a prediction engine it's uh it's a disaster but it's not it's not designed to be that um so you know a scenario very similar

i agree with you very similar all right last question here bc here we go from tyroo no wait Ty Rue. No, wait. Ty Rushurter. Rushuter? I love this show before and after every big fight. Luke and BC three times a week, never disappoints, blah, blah, blah. Question for you guys. Who do you think should be next to be hit with a lawnmower? Brian's cat or Brian? No, seriously.

Who do you guys think should be next for ufc featherweight josh emmett as he is awaiting his return from knee injury has that dude fought since the uh what you call it the um not since the fight against uh burgos burgos no no we need him back luke this division's hot we need him what's up with that cat bro this is the longest she's ever let me hold it hold her so i'm kind of just rolling with it this is emma she's amazing she's actually pretty chill yeah she's she's awesome she loves my office she doesn't really love me that much but this is great you know i mean who does yeah i'm more of a reggie guy you know i track crazy like a lot of hey why don't you lick and put your mouth closer to the place your cat uses the litter box you filthy filthy cracker can you pick up this purring

on camera here luke tell it i'm telling them oh yeah look at that that's great theater this is great content i mean you can't get the you can't get this on on dc and hawaii i'll tell you that much this is how you know brian has checked the fuck out. I mean, look at this. Brian's the kind of guy in the middle of a conversation, he'll just lean over and audibly fart in front of a table just so that the conversation can switch to something different. He's like, I'm tired of this topic. It's not true. It's not true at all. Let me make a Miguel, what was his face, with the mullet,

who made the rape van joke? Miguel Torres. Yes, yes, yes. Wow. It was a deep dive right there. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Like, yeah, I don't I don't know about the rape van jokes as a good idea. Well, I can say this, BC. This has been something. You know, can we take people behind the fourth wall? Luke, you and I are going to film a few of these back to back to fill out our vacation. I said, look, why don't we change T-shirts to make it look like we're not doing it on the same day? Back to back to back. You're like, I ain't changing shit, man.

I'm wearing the fucking T-shirt right here, man. I'm wearing this shirt the whole time. How lame is that, bro? Right? Yeah. Why don't you go commit more unspeakable acts with your feline cats? Why don't you do that? All right.

You had a question. I'm ready to answer it. Let's do it. I don't give a shit this morning. What's the last one here? Oh, yeah. Josh, who do you want to fight? I got the top 10 right in front of you, right in front of me.

How about Ilya Toporia? He's a little bit ahead of him, though. No. Dan Ige, you could do. Ige is coming off a win, correct? No, I think. Didn't he? Hey, Arnold Allen hasn't been exposed, right?

Nope. He's good, dude. He's tough as shit. That'd be a good fight. Or Calvin Cater, who's coming off the Max fight still, right? Yeah. By the way, Ige lost to Chan Sung Jung in his last fight in June. Good call.

Yes, yes. What the hell do I know, Luke? All right. Well, we can call it a day on these. We appreciate all of your questions. Continue to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. And, of course, if you put a question in there, we'll eventually get to it. You can like this video.

You can subscribe to the channel. And of course, you can go to morningcombat.store for any pieces of merch you want to wear for this boring, boring podcast. BC, anything else? No, I got to go change your shirt for the one we do next after this. Luke, hold on.

I'll be right back. All right. For BC, I'm Luke Thomas. Thank you guys so much for watching. Until next time, may all of your gains be loyal.