MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Charlo vs. Castano Reaction | UFC Makhachev-Moises | Bellator 262 | Ep 181

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

On Episode 181 of MK, Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell recap a big weekend in combat sports. Jermell Charlo fought to a controversial split decision draw with Brian Castano. What do the guys make of the 117-11 Jermell Charlo judges scorecard? Plus, on UFC Fight Night, Islam Makhachev submitted Thiago Moises in round 4. How high should his stock be? Also, what grade does Miesha Tate deserve for her comeback win vs. Marion Reneau and they recap Bellator 262. 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, it is the 19th of July 2021, and it is time for episode whatever number it is of Morning Combat. Hello, everyone. As you can see, I am merely one half of your hosting duo. My name is Luke Thomas. I'm from CBS Sports and Showtime and some other places. And the man on that side of the screen, I think I did it right, the king of Connecticut, the king of sending his kids to basketball camp himself.

It's BC Brian Campbell. What up, BC? Oh, Luke, it's great to see you. Luke, you always look like a substitute teacher when you wear that shirt. I know your wife bought it for you. You look handsome in it, but you also look like you're ready to just babysit us, which is probably your role in the show. I'm going to get the VCR on the TV on the moving crate,

and then I'm just going to show you kids something, and I'm going to mail it in. Exactly. Great to be here, Luke. I'm going to mail it in. Exactly. Great to be here, Luke. I have not been mailing it in as Mr. Mom over the weekend, so a lot of stuff getting done in my hands. Can we value our wives here for a second, Luke? They are incredible and indispensable in terms of our daily life, so filling in for that role is a handful. But I'm here.

I've watched fights. I'm here. I've watched fights. I'm ready. Luke, I do realize something, that you and I are the Lennon McCartney of combat sports analysts and showmakers here. So the good news is that we're dynamic and brilliant, and there's no one like us. The bad news is that Yoko's coming, right? That rift is coming between us eventually where we'll break apart, go our separate ways, write songs, scathing songs about each other, like how do you sleep at night, and then eventually you'll die on a sidewalk by an enraged fan. Oh, wait, I'm the guy who gets knifed?

Yeah, you're going to get murdered, yeah. I'll get knighted, though, in the end. So it's a net win for me in the long run, Luke, but until Yoko shows up, I'm happy to rule the world along with you. Thank you. Well, I had a great weekend. Took the kids to the pool, as I mentioned, and I know you have been playing Mr. Mom. My wife actually leaves for a business trip tomorrow, so I have to double in that role on this side of things as well.

Hey, we can share cooking tips, Luke. I've been sautéing all kinds of shit. Yeah, all right. Yeah, here's my cooking tips. Uber Eats. What does my child eat? I'll just do that. But it should be a lot of shit. Yeah, all right. Yeah, here's my cooking tips. Uber Eats. What does my child eat? I'll just do that. But it should be a lot of fun.

Over the weekend, there were a lot of great fights. We had Bellator on Friday. We had UFC on Saturday. We had Castaño and Charlo on Saturday night as well. Plenty of controversy all the way around.

So we had a lot of stuff to get to here. As always, folks, and if you're new here, thumbs up on this one, of course. Subscribe if you haven't done that already. Trying to push the subs numbers up. You can see where we are on social media.

These are all of our places to reach us and all the various names. Morning Combat's name is consistent across all outlets, though, so that's a good thing. If you want to try Showtime, if you still haven't done the thing, go do the thing. You can go to Showtime.com, 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can move on. But you missed a lot of good fights over the weekend if you didn't have Showtime.com 30-day free trial if you like it you can keep it if not you can move on but you missed a lot of good fights over the weekend if you didn't have showtime i don't know what you're doing i'd also say if you want some merch that neither of us are wearing at

this point you can go to morningcombat.store and uh you can change that although billy oh how did you get it bc how did you get it how did i get what this this mug yes remember we were given two at the uh at the old bomb shelter i took one home and left one there for for a live show oh you sneaky sneaky little man all right well and anyway that mug is bc and i bc and i never really discussed it but i think we both agree that's our favorite mug right it's not even available on either of our merch stores i guess i know if we make a third merch store, it'll be available on there. Hey Luke, can we get Factory Town MMA shirts out there? I feel like we're losing money

just by not getting our best shirt. Yeah, there's lots of things we could be doing that we're just not, so I blame me. Alright, but final warning to our fans. Look, seriously, if you're on board with what we're doing, but you're physically not yet on board, you haven't liked and subscribed, you haven't gotten your 30 days of show time to find out what's going on.

What's wrong with you? We're on the seventh date. Can you put out? Can you get in my backseat already? Can we consummate this thing already? I'm not taking you out to all these dinners because I think you're beautiful. You know what I mean? If you're going to come.

Or that fart. Fart. Oh, Jesus Christ. I was going to make a joke. I'll just stop and bathe in my own L. Come on. Come on already, all right? Let's go, okay?

Also, as a reminder, if you got any fan submissions or dead wrongs, morningcombat at gmail.com is the place to send any of those. People send them to me. Usually, they're all wrong, and I have to correct them. But you can go to morningcombat at gmail.com. That's the best place for that. And I think that's it, BC. You ready to get this party started?

Yeah, let's get this party started right. Let's get this party started quickly. All right, let's do it. Let's do this thing. Okay, here we go. We're going to kick things off with what I think was the biggest fight of the weekend. I think BC agrees as well. Jermel Charlo, Brian Castaño, there was

no unification. There was an attempt at unification, but ultimately did not succeed in either direction because it was ruled a draw. You had one judge, I think I had a 116-113 for Castaño. There was a 117-111 for Charlo and then a 114-114. Brian, let me ask you the question in this way. When I watched it live, it was close, no doubt about it. And each guy, if you wanted to say that they won, did very different things in order to get there. Still, when the fight was over, I thought Castaño deserved the nod. Did he? Yeah, yeah, he did. He did 100% on my scorecard, which, as I talked about in the Instant Analysis podcast,

which you can check out on our YouTube channel from Saturday, eight rounds to four for Castaño. But let's be honest, Luke. My initial reaction of using words in tweets like, Castaño was robbed, Castaño was screwed, it has a lot to do, do obviously with that rogue scorecard, but look, at terms of the result, a split draw, was Castaño robbed or screwed? Not necessarily. Look, I scored at eight rounds to four. I felt like if you were going to lean, you can even lean in the other direction of giving Castaño more rounds. I do acknowledge and

understand that not only did two of the judges, but a lot of my peers in the industry watching at home and scoring were closer to a draw, and that's fine. So from that standpoint, not just a close and competitive fight, an awesome fight. This was a fantastic chess match, which got heated up late by Charlo's comeback. Let's praise a lot of things, Luke. The defense of both, the technique of both,

the adaptions made by both, the drama and the intensity. This was a great fight. There were very close rounds. In fact, three of the middle rounds I scored to Castaño based a lot on just his flurry in the final minute. I thought he did great. You can't call it clock management per se, like it's comparative to basketball, but just

knowing the situation, there were some really close rounds where I felt like he flurried at the end, knowing the situation, knowing that if you're going to try to win it over in the judge's mind, it's not dissimilar to what Sugar Ray Leonard did against Marvin Hagler in their fight where at the 32nd mark, you know, his corner would yell out and he'd go on a flurry to try to be the last thing the judges remember. So what does that say? That said, a lot of those flurries won me over, but we're talking about very close rounds with low punch output in which, yes, it could have gone either way. So Luke, I thought Brian Castaño deserved to win this fight. I thought at absolute worst, he deserved what? I guess a split draw, which is what he got. But my problem is you can't separate what happened there from what happened in that

third scorecard. Nelson Vasquez, 117-111 for Charlo, nine rounds to three to Charlo. Luke, before I throw it back to you, I want to make this point. I've seen a lot of people online saying, look, okay, that scorecard sucked. We all acknowledge that. We all hate that scorecard. We don't understand it. We want to see change, blah, blah, blah. But hey, bro, the scorecard didn't affect the fight. That guy had Charlo winning anyway, and it was a close fight. No, I got problems with that, Luke. That scorecard did affect the fight. Not just in putting a bad taste in the mouth of boxing in general on the way out, but it gives the illusion or the perception, and tell me if I'm wrong, Luke, seriously, put me in my place. It doesn't give the illusion of a bad night at the outing for, you know, a bad outing for one

judge, one bad night at the office. It gives the illusion that Castaño never had a chance, that he was coming in there, you know, one wing clipped from the beginning, that he was going to have to get a knockout or win incredibly wide to have a chance. That's what that scorecard says. That third scorecard says to me. And that's just some bullshit that we deal with on a regular basis in boxing, unfortunately, but I'm sorry. It's hard to take that stain out of my mouth and just be like, great fight. We'll put that to the side. No, Luke, the lead story is that third scorecard sucks. And we got to change something here because that was a great fight that i hate that the first thing i'm talking about is nelson vasquez and not brian castagno or jermell charlo's

late surge um tell put me tell me if i'm wrong here draw okay but but split draw with a shit ass scorecard no not having it not having it not going to sit here with a with a with a clean bill of health and tell you don't worry about that, boxing fans. No, worry about that. That sucks. That's not cool. Yeah, I mean, this is the way I did this. We'll talk about it for the main event for Bellator here in a little bit, where I saw some people getting really upset at the result for Velasquez winning a split decision to

retain her title over Denise Kielholz. And what I told folks at the time, and I really stand by it, it's not that you can't disagree or make a really compelling argument for why Denise Kielholz deserved to win. You probably could. In fact, again, we'll get to this later. I think if you judge it under pride or one rules, I think Denise Kielholz did win. The problem is that if a fight is close, really, really, really, really close, where there's actually not a lot of action and there's not a lot of differentiation between the two, you can complain about the car, but it's really hard to get righteous indignation about it it's when the judging is relatively easy or the scores are like completely off of of anything even remotely where it should

be so for example i think it was 116 112 116 113 okay uh yeah for castagno i can absolutely see that you know 114 114 I don't necessarily agree with that, but that seems like they're making a good-faith attempt at trying to get a very difficult fight right. Jermel Trullo was pointing out after the fact that a lot of the punches that people thought were landing were not. He was blocking them. So I actually went back and I watched in slow motion on some of it.

He's right, dude. A lot of that stuff did not get through, although it obviously looked pretty good for Brian Castaño to have Jermel Trullo up against the ropes. 1-17, 1-11 is just so far outside what even seems rationally plausible that you're asking yourself, was this person who was judging on that night, were they really the best judge you could have had? Were they really up to the task?

Were they really capable of doing this job correctly? So I'm with you. I understand the point that like, could you find somebody who was doing a good faith attempt and maybe came up with a Charlo scorecard? No doubt about it. You probably could. But if you're getting to 117, 111 territory, you have somebody that has difficulty ascertaining what they're looking at. And that's a totally different ballgame. I will say, though, BC, it deserves to be said a couple things here. One, I did think the fight was good, really good as a matter of fact. Two, I thought that Castaño won.

Three, here's something kind of interesting. Even Charlo's trainer, Derek James, in the last round was like, dude, you have got to knock him out. He was repeatedly warning he thought Charlo may have been losing a little bit. You know what's kind of funny about the Charlo brothers this last, let's say, month or so that the two have fought? Montiel is not the same as Brian Castaño in a number of different ways. Their skill level is different and tactics are different. But in the sense that a come-forward guy gave them problems, which is sort of a generic way of describing it. I think what's kind of interesting is Jermall won his fight, but I think we both agree that like,

was that the very best of Jermall? I did not agree that it was. I thought you got a much better version of him in the Derevyanchenko fight. Different opponent, but still. Same with this one. I did not think this was the best that Jermall Charlo had to offer. He had moments. The second round was great. Obviously, the 10th round was phenomenal for him, and he had moments all in between where he looked dynamite. What's kind of interesting to me, BC, is that I don't know if there's any kind of connection between them. They don't even train together.

I don't know what it is, but the Charlo brothers, I think, are super underrated, especially and including Jermell, but I don't think we got the best of them on this night. Credit to Brian Castagno for not allowing that to happen. It makes me more intrigued, though, I will say, for the rematch, given the opportunity for other things he could be doing that I think would be more in his interest.

Yeah, who can improve in a rematch without question, Jermell Charlo. That's why he was the favorite coming in. In a lot of ways, Castagno fought perfect to try to put himself in position to get a decision over a guy, which is hard to do, right? And it's why, to be honest with you, it's why we get extra mad when we feel like the rogue scorecard given to the bigger name fighter, that's when you start to feel like, is this on the up and up? And that's why it gets us really mad. But let's talk about what Castaño actually did. Luke, first and foremost, okay, because Charlo's heavy counter-punching style was working in the first couple rounds. Even though I scored the first three rounds, two of them for Castaño and one for Charlo,

I thought Charlo did a great job at sort of disarming Castaño and bringing down his punch output with the threat of the counter shots. But it was the adjustment that Castaño made to that Luke. And specifically his defense was off the charts. Castaño was known more as a guy who almost squares up when he gets inside. Yes. He'll wear you down to the body. He's got great, a great chin.

He's got great stamina, but when it, when push comes to shove, he's more of a aggressive overachiever that we thought, than fully skilled, high IQ guy. No, that wasn't the case. He came out with a beautiful defensive effort. And the key adjustment, Luke, I thought was going to the lead right hand, which is a certainly unorthodox approach when you're not facing a southpaw. It's a great punch to get a one-up on a southpaw.

Not an easy punch to land against a coiled cobra like Charlo, who's just waiting for you to make that mistake. Yet Castaño used that looping right hand, which I don't even think he was putting a lot of power on, but just the fact that it was landing, it was making Jermel recalculate, have to reset, and then that's when Castaño would close in.

So he was able to get inside really without paying a price for it. Also, Luke, if we're going to talk about the things Charlo didn't do great, abandoning his jab for big stretches was just, that's bad news. That is bad news. It's going to create closer rounds than need to be. But most importantly, Castaño doesn't have to pay the toll to get inside. What I didn't see coming was Castaño's defense,

which I had said was responsible coming in. I didn't think it was going to be brilliant. And then two, he found ways to get inside without having to pay that big toll. That was the key. Then you had some very close chess. And, you know, chess meaning we're not seeing a lot of output, but we're seeing a lot of fainting and a lot of setups and a lot of adjustments. And from that standpoint, Luke, it was great theater. I thought Castaño got the better of Charlo. I'm here to give Charlo a lot of respect on seizing the sense of urgency that I thought he lacked throughout the

middle portion of the fight when it was time down the stretch. I gave him the last three rounds. He was really going after it. He looked like he was on the verge of a knockout or a knockdown in round 10. But Luke, I think if anyone has a lot of room to grow, it is Jermel Charlo. This was not his best performance. If he comes out there, Luke, and looks to work off the jab, it'll make his counterpunching even more dangerous, I think. And also, he's got to realize that some guys, you're just not going to get out of there.

So you have to make sure, without a question of a doubt, that you have done enough on the cards to outwork them, especially given that certain judges have certain strike zones. I feel like Jermell did none of that, and although he's lucky to come away with a draw, I think you've got to look at this almost like a loss in a lot of ways, Luke. You know what I'm saying? Like, where he's got some things he's got to go back to the

lab and work on. The skills are there. I think the IQ's there. I think just putting it in the right place in the right times with him and Derek James, there's some adjustments that need to be made. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would say about Castaño that I did not see coming as well, even though we knew it was there,

you had homed in on it, is the defense. There were so many times Charlo was stepping back or pressed against the ropes and he would go for one of his patented, you know, thunderous counter punches. There was a lot of different kinds he was looking for. Uppercuts a little bit later. I thought he could have gone to that a little bit earlier,

but, you know, just a lot of different kinds he was looking for. Uppercuts a little bit later. I thought he could have gone to that a little bit earlier. But just a lot of counters, hooks, whatnot. And you saw Castaño just be so defensively responsible. To me, the offense of Castaño did not necessarily blow me away. But what he was able to do was he was able to pressure Charlo backwards, throw things, then block and roll with whatever Charlo was throwing, which allowed Castaño to continue the onslaught. It allowed the rain to keep going.

It wasn't a hurricane. It wasn't a torrential downpour, but it was just steady by virtue of the fact that he could not get out from under the weather. That, to me, was brilliant. I've seen so many counterpunchers and, I should say, so many come-forward brawler types like Castaño in MMA and in boxing. You've seen those as counter punchers and I should say so many come forward brawler types like Castaño in MMA and in boxing because he knows as well as I do. And what's their ticket to fame? They have a big punch.

They stay in your face. You know, they'll put their forehead in your chest and just go to work. But they take a lot of abuse along the way. Dude, Castaño does not. He does not take a lot of abuse along the way. He is so good about taking a style and it makes him a little bit less offensively potent than some of his sort of stylistic cousins. He doesn't quite have that same, at least not in this fight anyway, didn't have that same kind of overwhelming presence. But at the same time, he was much fresher throughout the duration of this fight,

maybe for his career, because he just wasn't taking the kind of shots that previous Charlo opponents get backed up off on. you have to make think twice about certain scenarios i have to really wonder about he was putting himself in a position to just do more volume work even if each individual shot i did not think was necessarily game changing watching that and you're like what's jermell's problem man pull the trigger the reason why he wasn't luke i think is look a little a little bit off on the game plan but also like casano wasn't making mistakes, and that's what a counterpuncher like Jermel Charlo waits for,

you to make a mistake, overreach, go for something big and miss it, and, look, he'll get you out of there with one punch. But, Luke, Castaño, did you agree with me that not just the flurries in some of these late rounds, but he was sort of figuring out, look, I'm not, because, look, let's give Jermel also credit. Jermel's defense was fantastic as well. Like, that's why this fight was so close. Jermell, outside of what, that right

hand he took in round two against the ropes where he looked like he may have been a little shaken up and his knees buckled, or maybe that was round three. Either way, I don't think there was another punch where you were like, Charlo looks damaged or hurt at all. But what Castaño did knowing that, Luke, was he would just kind of throw these three-punch flurries knowing I may only land one of these.

And I may only land it partially, but it gives that image that I'm taking the fight to my opponent because I think you saw that Charlo way too willing to put his back to the ropes and if anything Luke that just gives the wrong impression to the judges last thing I'd say on this is Charlo's style up to this point was the one that has evolved into obviously you know he's not been a static fighter for his career he's had changes himself but there's been a lot of situations like the Harrison fight BC including the rematch where Charlo will just give up rounds and then lose but then have these like thunderous moments sometimes early but certainly you know midway to later in the fight where he just wins and then you just forget about that fact the the the hole

here for him against Castagna was he just didn't have those thunderous moments. Okay, you know, second round, tenth round, whatever. But he didn't even get a knockdown. He just kind of wobbled and hurt and backed up Castaño. Like, man, if your whole style is predicated on you've got to hit the home run shot, okay, maybe you're hitting doubles, maybe you're even hitting triples. But without the home run shot, what is left of your game there, that is something i think he's

going to need to adjust to brian castagna was when they rematch and they will he is not going to go away quietly man you have to really land on a guy who's hard to land on or you got to do more volume work and i think that was a problem for him well i think there's potential in a rematch luke for it where this one was exciting from a drama tension mixed with skill, I wonder if that rematch has a chance to be just more all-action. If Charlo is realizing, look, I've got to take more chances, I've got to jab more, I've got to have more of an output, I wonder if that allows more opportunities for Castaño

to step on the gas with more combinations, and then we see a lot more of two-way fighting, which is almost even better. But to talk about when will we see the rematch, will we see it, there is some potential for boxing politics and pitfalls, Luke. I'm really hoping that those with power in this case, meaning PBC, Showtime, meaning Castaño's promoters and advisors, really push the sanctioning bodies to make this rematch sooner than later.

In fact, maybe even next why because you had a lot of questions you had some some of course some hangover from the crappy scorecard where i think you want to put all that behind you so let's run it back both fighters have the opportunity to retool come back and get a deserved clear win the problem we could have is because there's so many mandatories do and that's again why you don't end up seeing a lot of undisputed fights i'm hoping that the the sanctioning bodies don't go, well, no, you've got to fight this guy first, you've got to fight this guy first, and it delays it, Luke.

Even though the mandatories in these cases, there's some good options there. For example, Erickson Lubin is the mandatory for Jermell Charlo. We'd all love to see that rematch. And for Castaño, we've got Tim Zhu from down under, Luke, the son of the legend Costa Zhu, who's been just destroying folks. He's the mandatory for Castaño, we got Tim Zhu from down under, Luke, the son of the legend Costa Zhu, who's been just destroying folks. He's the mandatory for Castaño. Good God, would I love to see that fight. But I want to see those fights after we get concrete closure from this rivalry

and after we get what we were supposed to get. One name, one face, one division, one champion, the undisputed king. Let's find that out first. So if you're a sanctioning body and you're out there thinking, One face, one division, one champion, the undisputed king. Let's find that out first. So if you're a sanctioning body and you're out there thinking, can't wait to get them sanctioning fees here, can we do this one more time, please? Can we fix what comes out as a great close fight but also comes out as a little bit of a shit stain

because of the way that third scorecard played out, Luke? Last thing I'll say on this is you had a tweet about it, about to what extent should referees or judges be made available to the media following events like these. It's something I've talked about in mixed martial arts as well. And it's interesting. Texas poses different problems for MMA and boxing,

yet they end up in a similar kind of position. So, for example, when Jon Jones fought Dominic Reyes, part of the reason why Reyes lost that fight is because he literally backed up because Texas uses an outdated scoring system where just walking forward is supposed to carry a's so much the rule set, but you just have this sort of like Texas lack of effort at doing regulatory affairs at a high level. They don't have the same kind of pride, for example, that the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board does. And so you get these scenarios and like, I don't really know what the way to fix this is

because Texas is still a great place to take fights to for a lot of different reasons, both for MMA and for boxing. You would obviously want to service those audiences. But, dude, as long as the promoters keep going there, there's no real mechanism to crack down on the athletic commissions themselves. If the fights keep going there, I don't know what to tell folks. This is just what you're going to get.

Well, fights are going to keep going there, Luke, not just because Nevada and Texas and Florida in a lot of ways are considered, in some cases, soft commissions where you can get things done that maybe you couldn't elsewhere, but because all three states offer such great tax laws for the main eventers that that's why why do so many big fights end up in those three

states? Because the tax laws. There's no question. That's why a lot of big name fighters won't fight in New York at Madison Square Garden because the taxation is so brutal. But more importantly, we need accountability. And until we get a national commission that has a backbone, we're not going to get that accountability. We demand it, right, from the commissions? We don't get it.

So what I need is some built-in accountability, which is the theme of my tweet, which basically says, Luke, I was referencing it in the instant analysis, and I didn't remember the name, and the viewers jumped in and told me, do you remember that perfect game attempt by Andres Galarraga? Not Andres, the other Galarraga. He was a pitcher for the Tigers, and he was on the verge of a perfect game, no-hitter, like 10 years ago.

And there was a play at first, and the ump blew it, right? It blew the call. He called the guy safe. He was out, whatever. And afterwards, that ump did like freaking three days worth of media. And in the interviews, he had to explain himself, and eventually he came to the point where he's like crying ump did like freaking three days worth of media. And in the interviews, he had to explain himself and eventually came to the point where he's like crying. He's like, dude, I screwed up. I saw the replays. I screwed up. I cost this guy this moment. I'm sorry. So do I want accountability to the judges and commission members so I can get them

to cry and turn around and say, no, not necessarily. I just mean, if there's no built-in accountability, like you have, have you know one or two controversial scorecards and you're suspended or fired or there's some kind of better you know workshop there to keep everything clean then let's have the built-in forced accountability of facing the music on camera on the microphone even if luke the response is just one-sided bs at least we got record of that at least the fans the fighters promoters, everybody is looking right into the face of that person who made that decision. We get a chance to hear them explain it because there may be cases where you're like, oh, okay, I get it. And also, you know, there's always things to take into account, like sitting closer, you see things

differently. Sometimes you can't see things because your view is blocked by the backs of the fighters. It's a lot to take in, but wouldn't you rather hear somebody talk about why they may have scored it that way, rather than just continue this narrative of boxing's broken, boxing is bullshit. So I would love to see that, Luke. If they're not going to sanction themselves the right way, at least let the court of public opinion jump in

with more facts and be able to see that. I think that'll put more pressure on the judges. Look, I respect, by the way, the great judges. I respect the pressure that they have on them. They're like a field goal kicker, you know, where they come out for that one moment in the main event and they got to be perfect or not, or they're a go. And I get that.

But I think there's a lot better ways to do this. And one more point on boxing judging, Luke, which sometimes people lose. In the case of this fight with anyone who scored in the draw or close, we do have to realize one thing about boxing judges. They're not giving a score at the end of the fight saying who they thought won the fight. They're giving individual scores for 12 individual rounds. And however the math breaks out, that's who won the fight on their card. So even if one fighter looked better,

it's still a 10-9 must scoring system. The judges at the end of the fight aren't saying, I think it was Castaño. Here you go. No, it's a math system based on round by round. You got to remember that, though. Even I have to remember that when we get going hard and say, oh, this fighter got screwed. Okay, nine rounds to three, Charlo.

Yeah, they got screwed off that. The other ones, it's what you see in the moment. And you got to remember that it's a full fight. It's not just little pockets of it. Last thing I'll add, then we'll move on to the UFC is part of the reason why i don't have a whole lot of hope is that i don't think texas cares about doing a great job right the folks involved in the government there you know it's your standard bs you know department of

motor vehicles kind of attitude old boys they got a shitty resume they got a shitty reputation luke it's like a good old boy system it's like nobody cares so like unless they are pressured by the entity that they have to answer to the governor or whoever else this is just what you're going to get it's a it's a tragedy but um you the only way you get you get real force of change in combat sports is when the outside pressure's in but we don't have that okay let's talk about some of the MMA. But hold on real quick. That's why it's up to us, I believe. Tell me if I'm wrong.

We care about journalism. I care about entertainment too, so I'm sometimes in the middle there, but it is up to us to be like, this sucks, it needs to be fixed. Here's the people that did it. Let's do something about it, right, Luke? I mean, there is some responsibility here.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you are a media member, you have an obligation to call the how dismal the situation is and why it is the way that it is as accurately as possible of course but at the same time like i've come to this with mma too like dude take fighter pay for example i am very i'm a dude mma's DNA, at least initially, was before certain factors got involved, was to be outside the bounds. It was to be the most outrageous. It was to be, oh, yes, a call to truth, but it was from a regulatory standpoint designed to be really pushing the boundaries. The only way MMA has ever really changed is, yes, there's been times internally where folks tried to change it from the inside out. But the overwhelming majority of times that MMA has changed in any capacity whatsoever, any kind of real way, is because outside pressures

forced it to. That's really the only way you're going to get any meaningful change. And so, like, unless the commission in Texas for MMA or for boxing has outside pressures that it answers to to force it to change. You're just going to get what you're going to get. So I understand your point about the principle of truth telling. I think that's real, but I don't, to be clear,

I don't think you were saying this, but I'm just sort of reiterating. I don't think that leads to any kind of meaningful improvement. That's all. Yeah. Okay. But if we don't see improvement, Luke,

you're going to keep losing those, those people that are ready to give you their money. Those casual fans that want to be full-time fans that get turned off by the idea that they feel like there's no rhyme and reason right and wrong at the end of the day. That's right. And by the way, we're going back to Texas for the

UFC for this Amanda Nunes vs. Juliana Pena fight. Texas Forever Street, right? Clear eyes, full heart. Always lose. I'm telling you, dude. I am very convinced that Jon Jones was only able to retain his title against Dominic Reyes by virtue of their primitive way of scoring. And who knows if that's going to rear its head again when we go back out there in a few weeks.

All right. Point number two here, BC. Let's get to some UFC stuff if we can. Islam Makachev scores a fourth-round submission win over Tiago Moises. I saw some debate about to what extent it was like dominant in the sense that, you know, did Moises get absolutely thrashed the whole time and just beaten up and was surviving for his life? We can have that conversation here in just a minute, BC.

But the question I want to ask is this. How high should we be on Islam's stock as a future title contender based off of this performance? How high? You got any rolling papers, Luke? That's how high we should get. Pretty damn high. Look, he's not Habib. He's a little bit different. But there's a lot of Habib systematic dominance built inside of Islam Mahachev that just leaps through the screen

I mean he is calculated and deadly Luke and he is poised beyond friggin belief you know what I liked about this was that Moises did have some sort of potentially scary moments there like when he took Mahachev's back in round two and you know

there's some like little transitions there where you're like oh let's see what Islam can do here. And the way he responds to the potential of adversity is seriously, Luke, there's like a next level poise and operation there. This is a guy that like belongs, knows he fricking belongs and is ready to put on the cape of what we talked about leading into this fight, which is unfair to sort of just say he's the next Habib because he's Habib's boy and he got Habib in the corner and it's, you know, a similarly dominant style of a guy from the same background and all that. His game's a little bit different, Luke, but I'm ready to embrace, as long as we realize it's not Habib, I'm ready to embrace the idea that he's going to take what Habib did and sort of carry

that flag and try to keep that going. And from that standpoint, Luke, he is methodical as all hell. It may not be exciting for everybody. You may be able to pick apart certain moments or whatever, but he is a force to be reckoned with right now, Luke. And I feel like he is only going to continue to figure this game out and find those Habib-led shortcuts. Habib seems to be a great coach, and obviously Habib had a mind that was just different for this game.

It seems like Islam's picking up some of that second-hand smoke. So how high should we get, Luke? Check my THC levels, bro, okay? All right, I'm ready. Fill up the sink with water, cut off the top of a water container. I mean, you know, get that,

whatever contraption you need, Luke. Let's get high, bro. I'm high on him, but not quite as high as you, at least not yet. I certainly I'm stoned immaculate Luke on this guy. I certainly accept the possibility that, uh, listen, this guy is obviously either going to be a champion or he's going to fight for a title one day. I'd be very surprised if he's not like real, real quick one day. It's common Luke. This guy's got it. he's not on that trip. Like, real quick one day. It's coming, Luke.

This guy's got it. He's got it, dude. Yeah, yeah, hold on. But there are some meaningful differences from Habib that I think folks should take into account. On the good side,

I think his stand-up is just much smoother. He has much better understanding of position and range. He's very calm in there, no matter the on-the-ground or standing. But, you know,

you really can tell there's a certain fluidity to his stand-up that Habib was a little bit more mechanical with. Okay, but there's a certain difference that Makachev has relative to Habib that needs to be underscored, which is to say, dude, Makachev doesn't have nearly as much offensive output. He has a lot of grappling control.

That's true. He's firing an underhook. He's got a body lock. He's working for positional advancement. Fine, but there's not a torrential ground and pound he does tend to go to the back you saw that a lot in this one and he was very very effective from there again dude he easily won this fight this is not especially a difficult one to to win for him but i also at the same time part of the reason habib was able to elicit some of the responses from his opponents that he was able to elicit was because he had

torrential ground and pound because he was forcing them to turn their back he was forcing them to make bad choices part of the reason why this fight didn't get stopped even earlier it took him to until the fourth round to do it which is not some like blemish on him i'm just saying is because he takes a lot of time to get to the places he's going to it sounds like it's a knock i'm just trying to say there's just a lot of talk around this guy about Habib and I understand that hell Habib was in the corner they come from the same part of the world they have similar styles by the way you did see that we previewed it on Friday talking about the clinch scenarios with a guy like Makachev that proved to be quite true and how strong he was in those positions but at the same time this is not the offensive juggernaut in that

kind of way with strikes that a guy like uh Nurmagomedov is he's going to be a little bit more patient a little bit more methodical and I still think he's capable BC of beating the very very best I think he will get to that point but I I gotta say not having that kind of ground and pound not having that kind of almost hurried pace will result over time in some different outcomes along the way. That's all that I'm saying. Let me give you a breathalyzer test and check my sobriety for a second. We're closer than you realize. I may have presented it wrong.

I say, you know, he's coming soon. Here's what I really mean and why I was so impressed. You're right. You sort of sobered us back down and we're like, he's not going to be as dominant as a B at his best. And, you know, he may be challenged more and tested and certainly what i'm not trying to say is look when hamza shemaya put those wins together we had to quickly recalculate like how soon could this guy be ready tomorrow like this guy's so good so early we haven't of course we haven't seen him

tested to see what his tangibles are and if there's a weakness there, but it was so overwhelmingly flashy and great that we were like, shiny new toy. I got to find out right now how it is. That guy, I'd be more willing to roll the dice and say, let's get him into a title shot situation. I'm not saying Islav Makachev is ready tomorrow to win the lightweight championship or that you should favor him against anybody in that absolutely loaded top five. What I'm saying, Luke, is I see the foundation and the structure that when you add the experience of each rung up the ladder, which he's going to have to prove it the hard way and climb these rungs up the ladder,

I just think he's going to be ready for it. And again, even if that means he takes some shots here or is not as dominant with the opportunity here, I'm just seeing like a rock-solid guy where it's like, oh, he's got what it takes. Let's wait and see. He's going to get there. But this he's got what it takes let's wait and see he's gonna get there but this guy's got what it takes to get there luke um yes i think there's a lot to be impressed seriously look at the robot from there's a lot to be impressed here this guy's

ready yes i agree he's a he is a player right now in that division at the very top just to point out though some things i was mentioning earlier if you look at the ground and pound numbers from fight metric from Islam Makachev to Habib, Habib is literally more than two times per round, per minute, excuse me, than Makachev is. I mean, he's double the speed. And, dude, when someone is putting that kind of heat on you, it tends to produce certain responses. Although the flip side of that, BC, of course, is that if someone's just pouring that on you, there's a little bit less time for control. We know Habib had really good control, but maybe he could play with that a little bit where Makachev just seems like a much more, not much more, a somewhat subdued version of Habib. And I think if that's true, and again, he's got meaningful differences in other directions,

but to the extent that he's a somewhat subdued version of him, then you're going to get somewhat subdued results over time, probably. But I agree. He has a complete game. This is the thing that we got to talk about too, BC. Dude, this guy takes almost no abuse. I mean, he is fresh as a daisy. He didn't have a mark on him when that fight was over. He found the back. He has good control. He has very good control. Once he gets there, he's got great takedowns good timing he's calm i just want folks to know there are some differences and they will play themselves out but he is a beast instead of although he's going to get the rub of the next habib and all that stuff we talked about like the push all the promotional push the rub the attention all that do you think he's more like uh like like an rda with better wrestling i mean do you think

he's he's more angled to be a like he can still get there he still can fight for a title potentially win it but like don't expect that just full-on ridiculous habib domination technique speed finish mentality all that on top of it he he reminds me a little you know this is a crude analogy bc but this is the best way i can explain it. Just imagine they're ground games. Not everything else, just the ground games. If Khabib is Kamaru, Islam is like Colby, where Colby does not do torrential ground and pound. He has high volume striking on his feet, yes. But on the ground, go back to the Robbie Lawler fight.

It's a lot of control positions without a lot of, in his case, submission threats. Although, this is the difference. Islam is a serious submission threat. I mean, that armbar he sat for was beautiful. Didn't have enough time to get it, but Jesus, that was really, really nice. So that's a little bit of difference to me. Whereas, Kamaru is just hammering you at all times. When you're in a disadvantageous disadvantageous position colby is looking to

maintain those positions through control islam's difference is that he is much more of a submission threat in that regard all right all right luke you know what i do like about what him look this was a uh sort of a tryout for him in some ways main event role let's see where his stamina is past three rounds let's see a lot of things and I think we both agree that he passed the test with flying colors. I mean, I do to the points we've been saying, maybe think when he gets into that top five elite, he's more apt to

outlast these guys and win decisions than maybe potentially just dominate and finish them. We'll see how that plays out. But what I like with this win said, along with what it said about Mahachev, is what it's saying about, I think the reloading in this lightweight division and how quick it's happening. I think that's important because Luke,

you know, just a year ago, we were making claims like, this is the deepest division in the sports history. And the fights that came out of it are insanely exciting. And there's so many more matchups that we want to see. And then Michael Chandler dropped in the middle and it's like, holy crap.

But then we lost Habib and then both Connor and Tony Ferguson kind of look like they're going in the wrong direction. So it was like, you know, is this division kind of falling apart right as it came together? No, dude. Between Brad Riddell, Islam, Armin Saryuki, and, like, we're starting to see that turnover again, Luke, and it's pretty damn exciting. No doubt about it. There's no doubt about it. And I think, you know, what a good next fight for Makachev might be. The RDA fight, to me, seems to be the most sense. I don't know exactly where both competitors are for that. I don't know. He

didn't like the Dan Hooker fight. I actually would have liked the Dan Hooker fight. I think it would have been kind of interesting to see, but he's not there. Do you have a preference if it's not RDA, who you want to see Makachev against next? It's a great question, Luke. Considering that he's ranked, what, ninth right now? Yeah, I'm looking it up. He is currently sitting at nine, Hooker at eight, RDA at six.

You know, you could, although it's a step backwards, I think the guys right after him in the rankings, Gregor Gillespie and Kevin Lee, are both very interesting fights. But you would like the RDA type from the standpoint of somebody who is more veteran but less established to sort of give us

a gauge of exactly where he is. I mean, him against Tony Ferguson, Luke? I gotta tell you, you know who's sitting at number seven? It's Conor McGregor. Dude, that's a terrible fight for McGregor. Terrible fight. It's a terrible fight. Yeah, do you think that's a terrible fight for Tony, too? Pretty terrible, right? Yeah, it's a bad fight for Tony, too. Terrible fight. It's a terrible fight. Yeah, do you think that's a terrible fight for Tony, too? Pretty terrible, right?

Yeah, it's a bad fight for Tony, too. At this stage, and here's why for Conor. Dude, Conor can light anyone up on the feet. I really believe that. I truly believe that. Whatever happened in this fight with Dustin, it happened. But on the feet, I still think he is extremely formidable. And I think his power carries at 155.

And I think he can hurt a lot of people for as long as the fight's standard. But you're talking about a guy in Islam who is strong in the clinch who hardly ever gets tagged on the feet yes the Adriano Martins fight is one thing but that's a long way in the past he is so different from that now and since then the numbers prove he barely gets touched and then you have that kind of command over control positions and you're that kind of a submission threat especially from the back dude that's a terrible fight You can see why Ali Abdelaziz wants that fight for Makachev so badly. They won't make it,

but obviously a guy like Makachev would, I think he would feast on this version of McGregor. I found it, Luke. You know who the next opponent should be? Ali Akinta. Ray Janelle. Give him Ray Janelle. We'll find out a lot.

I don't mind that fight, but here's the problem for Makachev. He's sitting at nine. He might go up from here. He's looking for somebody ahead of him. The only names ahead of him are Poirier, Gaethje, Darius, Chandler, Ferguson, Dos Anjos, McGregor, and Hooker. That's it.

I know Paul Felder just retired, but Paul Felder, if he was coming off a win in his late 30s, that'd be the perfect guy if he was ranked right in the middle of the top 10. That's who we need. And Quinta, even though he's coming off of two elite defeats does sort of fit that mold he does this is the rankings problem it's just going to be hard for him to get a fight all right let's stay with this card but go to a different part of it namely the co-main event topic number three all right BC Misha Tate back in action she wins her return to the cage she gets a third round sub over the now retired Marion Renaud.

We knew, of course, Renaud was going to retire heading into this fight. She said that was her last one. She's 44 years of age and teaches school. All right, BC, my question to you is as follows. Not even a question, really, a statement. A request, even. Give me a grade. What grade would you give Misha Tate's return to the octagon and why?

I think you have to weigh heavily the opponent even though Reynaud's tough as heck and she came in in great shape she was a retiring 44 year old fighter who had lost four in a row but I think you have to flip that with also taking into account five freaking years out of the game giving birth to two children including one within a year ago John Anik was saying on the air. I mean, like everything about this screams hugely impressive. And then when you see Luke, we talk about the shape she was in. When you see that shape weaponized and put into action in the fight, it's like this is a completely new, different fighter.

I'm going to give that all things considered Luke an A minus here. This was great. This was one of those sort of almost like feel good things too you're like you know what damn right Misha like score like you know you forget that she started the sport so early you forget she was only 29 when she retired the first time but there is a thing to being burnt out and I think more fighters could could gain a lot more if financially they were able at certain points to take long breaks. It doesn't always make sense, especially not financially in this game.

But to be able to take the break she did to clear all of the grind and all of the whatever and get a new taste in her mouth, Luke, I mean, she's a she walked in like she's Shane Carwin, Luke. She is a physical specimen. She's a tank. And when you mix that with

already great wrestling, grappling ability, athleticism, you know, her striking wasn't perfect here. I thought she took too many right hands. I thought, you know, there's a couple of things you can nitpick. But the fact that we went into the third round and she was the dominant force and seemed to have great stamina, she may be able to do some things here, Luke. I mean, we're going to have to see her against a different level opponent to really figure out where she's at.

But let's never forget how shallow this division actually is, women's bantamweight. You know, it's not going to take her long to get to Nunes, whether it's for celebrity reasons or it's because she earned it. She looked pretty damn awesome. And, you know, shout out to Misha. She has a new nickname. Cupcake's not working here, Luke.

She came in there like demolition man i mean this was some this was some like five years in the making dialed in ready shit going on and i and i salute her for that yeah i'm gonna give right around where you are a b plus or a minus i think is very very accurate she looked great for the most part i do think you picked up on the one thing that really kind of gave me the heebie jeebies a little bit, which was she was taking a lot of right hands. There were some head movement issues as a consequence. Okay, fine. She did not have a perfect performance. And there are some things definitely to build on.

Okay. But at the same time, one, here's what I thought. I thought if she wanted to make this a singular performance about how fast could I get her out of there and take it to the ground this fight could have been over earlier right there was a massive skill difference on the ground in favor of Misha Tate and she looked dialed in her pressure on top was good her shoulder pressure her good half guard retention she just was doing a really good job on top of maintaining it and then doing what she needed to do to of course pass position there when when required so I really thought like for her grappling game A plus it looked

to me like there was absolutely no difference between what it used to be and what it is now that was actually the better part I also thought BC and maybe it's just my imagination I've hosted several shows with Misha we're not friends or anything but I certainly know on a professional level this might be the best physical condition

I've ever seen her in she looked to be not even might be luke this is almost like vitor belford 2013 should i be scared like she's a freaking machine in there dude she she she has dialed in her training and sometimes you see this man like i remember my wife when she wanted my wife was very careful about how she ate when she was pregnant obviously you're going to gain a little bit of weight along the way but she was pretty careful about how she did it and was pregnant obviously you're going to gain a little bit of weight along the way but she was pretty careful about how she did it and then she had a plan immediately on how to lose it all and like the way in which she did it the methodical approach to doing that is uh it actually enabled her to reach like fitness school she never even

reached before so like i can sort of understand obviously she's a professional athlete there's a much greater degree of difficulty but i'm just just pointing out, like, it looks like she just never let herself go. She never let herself get too far out so that when she wanted to get back to it, she could. And then she was able to build upon existing resources. The thing for me that needs to be worked out a little bit is, I don't mind that it went to the third round. Again, I think she was intentionally taking her time. I got to say, dude, we haven't talked about this that much. The UFC gave Misha Tate the Marion Reneau fight.

They don't do tune-up fights that well, but if we're going to live in a world where stars come and go for long periods of time, getting that first fight back the right way, dude, they nailed it with this one. They did a really good job with this one. And I would just say the things to work on for Misha it looked like to me was head movement, setups, feints,

striking defense, a little bit of lateral footwork, but everything else looked fucking dialed in, man. Yeah, I want to ask you a key question about her future. Again, taking into account that with her name, she's more likely to get a big fight sooner than later. Also take into account, it's not an overly dynamic division. But the people at the top, the Amanda Nunes, Holly Holmes, GDR, maybe an Aspen Lad if she comes back next week and looks great.

They're a complete great fighter. They're really good fighters, great fighters. We see the potential holes in Misha's game. Now, she passed the test hugely from the standpoint of coming in, great shape, great stamina, stick to her strengths, looked great. But Luke, we know that the five years out of the game does not hurt you, does not help you from an evolution standpoint,

from the standpoint of what we just said with head movement and certain things. We can assume that Misha's going to be a little bit behind. If she fought Jermaine Duran to me tomorrow, I'm going to start thinking certain categories I'm worried that she's behind. The one intangible Misha has always had, Luke, is not just an ability to move up when the lights get brighter and sort of raise your game to that level, but she's had this dramatic flair.

Do you remember when she beat Marlos Kunin for the Strikeforce title? In a fight, she really had no business being that good that early in her career. She did not have the same ground game as Coonan, yet she won that fight by dramatic third round late submission. She obviously did the same thing against Holly Holm, down on the scorecards, but just scrappy as all heck. Can that scrappiness at this age with this new body kind of be her lead muscle where, okay, she's going to be behind in certain

categories here, but if she is going to come out and want it this badly, she does have that superpower to lean on Luke where no matter the situation, no matter whether she's in a less dominant position than she wants to be, she has a way of finding ways to make things happen. She does. I think she's very, very clever on the ground. She's got a good, you know, heavy top game when she needs it, but she can find the back, as you mentioned,

with the first Holly Holm fight. By the way, I think the rematch between them is exactly the fight to make. I love that fight because Holly fucking beat her for most of that fight up until she just didn't when she was able to find that extra. You know, listen, Misha's always been someone whose ground game has been better than their striking game. That's always been a case

for her. But you know, the thing I think about now is dude, she seems ready. She seems motivated. I think, you know, working with extreme couture, they can get her to a pretty good level pretty quickly. The thing that stands out for me about this all BC is, um, I, if you can you can take you know i bring it up even though she lost the fight but if you can take the misha tate scrappiness from the kat zingano fight right where that that will to win and you know yes kat zingano was pretty amazing that day but dude fucking misha tate was putting it on her too or the misha tate even from the julie kedzie fight whichever one and you can marry that with a more mature mindset, now that she's a little bit older,

a more dialed in, focused kind of approach to training. I'm sure she was training hard before, but even then she talked about some of the difficulties. And then, you know, getting a modern update to her striking game. Dude, I think there's a real possibility. You know, could she beat Amanda Nunes? You know, Misha Tate told me when she got hit by Amanda Nunes, it was the only time she's ever been hit by a woman,

and it felt like she was getting hit by a man. Okay, let's cross that bridge when it's relevant, when we get to it. That's a disturbing revelation there, Luke. I hate that shit. She said when she got hit, she felt like she was getting hit by a man. It was that hard. That took me by surprise, too, when she said she said that okay put that off for just a second can misha take get back relatively speaking to the top of that division based on what i saw here i

absolutely think that she can yes yeah shout out to her right there and you mentioned the the scrappiness it's like what again people still don't understand why i thought even though connor lost by injury in this third fight to Poirier and hurt his reputation, you know, personally, and there's been a lot of shit that came out of that, why did I overly praise just his scrappiness? Luke, sometimes when you're an older fighter, that willingness to go to the next level or go to a dark place,

it leaves you sometimes, you know what I mean? Sometimes, you know, fighters get to that point where, like, age catches up with them, they don't have the same skills they used to but can you dial in and figure out something deep why was someone like Muhammad Ali in the 70s when he was well past his prime still putting out those fights and those miracle finishes Luke because it was just a next level scrappiness willingness hunger in him that's something I hadn't seen in McGregor in a while so to see that against Poirier, I liked it. I think Misha's got that. That could

be her wild card factor as she continues to improve in a short window here and climb the ladder. It's going to be fun to watch, though. Good business development there. Absolutely. UFC has to be very happy with this. Again, dude, I give them all the credit in the world. Perfect opponent to come back to. The last thing I'd say of this is,

dude, go back to the Holly Holm fight. She was you know maybe i think she had a win in the second or third round when she got a takedown but for the most part i mean right up until the very end she was going to lose that fight until she wasn't the the ability to stay in a competitive mindset where you still think you can win and you're going to act in such a way where you think you can win. And in her case, making that come to life. Not everyone has that. That's a very, very rare skill she has. So you could take that with this new physical tools

that she appears to have and maturity and wisdom and Eric Nixick and everything. Dude, she could be a handful. She could be a real handful. Can people wake up and realize that that first Tate home fight should be considered as like a top five best fight of all time in the UFC

and for some reason never gets the love, Luke, it doesn't. It deserves it. It's because it's one-sided, then one-sided, then one-sided. It's a little weird. That's why. Absolutely. It's odd because of that. You did nail the part that maybe keeps it off some people's list, but in just straight drama and feeling and purpose, that was one of the largest noises from a crowd that I was ever in person for.

I mean, it was insane. All right, let's go talk about Bellator now, if we can. So Juliana Velasquez, your women's flyweight champion over on the Bellator side of things. She beats Denise Kielholz, but oof, it was close. She wins via split decision. It was 48-47 in either direction. BC, we both thought that Velasquez was

going to win, but I think we also both thought it was going to be by a much wider margin than it was. What did you learn about Velasquez by virtue of this result? I mean, I kind of learned from Velasquez what I already knew. I don't think this performance improved on what I knew about Velasquez, although it was a gritty, tough win against somebody who realized they had a legitimate chance to win this and gave, you know, everything they had. And Kielholtz was what, who made this fight so dramatic and really fun, even though it was very technical at times, there was sort of this drama lingering around it. I learned that, you know, what you need to learn from a champion in their first title defense, that they can dig in deep and figure out how to win this.

Velasquez did. I almost took away because Kielholtz impressed me so much by overcoming the reach and height disadvantage by, you know, by being so scrappy and being quick. Was that one thing I'd said in the lead up to this? I think she needed to create a little chaos to have a legitimate chance to win because Velasquez is so great when she's in control from the outside and could just play that that that counter game all day because she hits hard and she's accurate when Kielholtz was able to let her hands go more and make this more into a fight she had better chances of getting inside and trading and landing something

big now she also had to pay a price and that's why her face was banged up but Luke I gave her the first round and I gave her the fifth round both based on her pressure both based on her ability to figure out how to land that right hand I just wonder if she took more chances and was willing to maybe risk getting knocked out if she could have won this fight Luke and I know there were some people that thought she had won Josh Thompson included and it was that close of a fight yes because even though Velasquez was steady she wasn't overly uh demonstrative and showing you that i've you know this is my round right she sort of edged a couple rounds i wonder if keelholz might kick herself and say you know i came close but i may have been able

to get over that hill yeah so for me this is what i was talking about with judging controversies if you're going to be mad about a judging controversy wait for a scorecard that makes no sense so for example if somebody had had a 50 45 for Velasquez you'd have been like I don't even understand how that's possible right that's one thing but 48 47 while I can understand a disagreement about it absolutely it's not crazy it's not it's a hard fight to score that's the other part you got to wait for fights that are a little bit easier to score this fight was not easy to score a couple rounds easier to score than others, fair enough, but some of them were really kind of tight in the middle. And so I can understand why people might be upset with the result, but I don't think

this is a robbery for those reasons. Now, as it relates to Velasquez, BC, I scored this fight 48-47 for her under the 10-point must system. I scored it for Kielholtz under pride and one rules, where you sort of judge as a whole. To me, she did a lot more volume. I think she probably, she wore damage worse. I think Velasquez wears damage better, but I wonder if in actuality that doesn't tell the full story. And I certainly thought she was putting in a much better effort with much better, I thought even she took more risks than Velasquez to try and get the win. But I'll say this about Velasquez. I thought that on the good side, her jab was great, her poise. She gave away the first round. I don't even think she tried to win the first round.

So she was spotting Kielholtz around as a consequence. She had to win the next four basically to get it done. So her calmness, her jab, her check hooking, her ability to stay composed throughout the course of a fight, these are things that are going to keep her champion for a while. On the other hand, the fact that Kielholz was able to make it as close as she was, I mean, listen, Velasquez is not doing any fainting, not really trying for a couple of takedowns, not really able to get a whole lot with him.

I was impressed by some of the things that Velasquez showed me, but I got to tell you, I don't know exactly how long she's going to hold that belt because there are some other parts to her game that are not nearly as advanced in ways that it should be for someone who wants to hold a title for a long time. So she did what she had to do to win it, and that's remarkable, but I hear you.

Does she have a complete plus game in every category where she could prevent a leak from happening? I'm not sure. Luke, the one thing I took away from Kielholtz that I was a tad bit disappointed in is I felt there was going to be an opening for her to take the fight to the ground. She has a sneaky good submission game, but I don't think Velasquez's takedown defense is all that elite. I've seen other fighters get somewhat surprisingly easy takedowns for her

at key times by disguising the shoe and sort of taking advantage. I feel like Kielholtz should have at least tried, Luke, one, two attempts per round even, to not try any takedown attempts at all. I feel like there was an avenue there where she could have swayed the judges in her favor to maybe secure this fight, and that would have been a great test

of whether Velasquez could have been stingy in that area, too. But Velasquez put up the right amount of defense and leaned on her strengths, and she got the job done. I think the better news for Scott Coker and company is this division's fun, Luke. I mean, between the fact that Keelts came this close but couldn't get it done,

Alimaleh McFarlane, who was on that announce desk, is certainly aiming to get back in there and get a rematch. And then you have who's probably next and who deserves to be next is Liz Karmouche, who really raised her game and excitement quotient extensively by being that willing to go after Watanabe in that last fight and get her out of there. This is going to be interesting with Karmush getting a title shot

if she's willing to be this offensive against Velasquez. Luke, do you feel like Gorilla could have watched this main event against Kielholtz and kind of saw some avenues where she may be able to take advantage? Maybe. I have a feeling that fight's going to suck. I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just being jaundiced at this point.

But, like, yes, you're right. The Karmush we saw last time, I mean, let's get plenty of that. That was tremendous. And Liz can take her down. Look, Liz can wrestle. She can. She can. It's absolutely true.

But one thing I'll say is Velasquez is huge for this weight class. She is big, number one. Number two, I think she might be able to match Karmush in strength, at least like functional strength in certain positions. And the other part is like, you know, we saw Velasquez, listen, you're a champion. You got to do what you got to do to win. But against Karmush, who has shown, you know,

sometimes an unwillingness at range to engage with competent strikers, you know, I'm not saying it'll be bad. I don't know what it'll be like, but do I at least take those chances? There's a chance. Well, she has been at times and she hasn't been.

So like, this is what I'll say. If Karmush is willing to like lay it on the line, the fight will be great. If she's not, I actually think it will not be great, and I don't think she'll be able to win. She's got to really go in there and just grab the fight by the scruff of the neck, so to speak.

Here's the difference, though. When Karmush chose not to take chances against Shevchenko in the rematch for the title, it was because, Luke, maybe if she did, she was going to turn into Jessica Ai, right? Against Velasquez, I think there's more potential for Karmush to get dinged up over five rounds with some hard left crosses, but not the same potential for a straight-up knockout loss. So I think there is an avenue, should Karmush be unafraid of taking damage,

to really make that a fight. I think it would be a fun matchup. And, Luke, I wonder what Alimaleh is working on in the laboratory to come back, because when she gets a second chance at this belt, I bet you she's going to go after it. It should be fun. Just one note, it wasn't only the Shevchenko fight where she had sort of a really boring, tepid affair. The Vanessa Porto fight from Bellator 256, almost the exact same thing. So she's sort of propensity of late to do this a little bit.

It was just in the last one, she just walked down Watanabe and then blitzed her out of there. It's like you know what Karmush is capable of when she wants to execute in a certain way. The question is, what is Velasquez going to allow? What is she going to try? And so I would have some managed expectations for the excitement of that one, but it looks like it's probably going to get in one way or the other. So there you have it. Okay. Last but not least, BC, there's a lot going on this weekend. I'm sure we've skipped over. Any other combat athlete that you think stood out this weekend for topic number five? Who do you think?

Boxing or MMA? A few of them. Let me hit it with one boxing first. Luke, that opener and that triple header went such a long way for Showtime in turning in just a slam dunk, three fights here, which really I thought, with the exception of that scorecard that I harped on earlier, this is a great night for boxing that elevated the sport. And the big part of that

was Emile Carvidal, the unbeaten Uruguayan slugger there at middleweight, went in there against that just tough-as-balls-out Emmanuel Aleem. And look, it was Aleem's willingness to make that an absolute war and step in there against the bigger puncher and go

for it. Dude, this fight was awesome. It'll be the kind of fight that'll fall just short of, like, being in contention for fight of the year, but is one of those where you're like, holy shit, both guys left it all in the ring and went after it. This is the exact type of test that somebody like Vidal should have to pass to prove to us that he's legitimate and not just 12-0 with 11 KOs coming in against

cab drivers. And for Aleem, Luke, this is a story of this guy's career, man. You know what I mean? It's like the fights he's... I thought he won. I thought he won. I agree with you. I thought he won, although not any kind of controversy that he didn't. It was a close fight. But Luke, when he's supposed to step up and look great,

he underwhelms and in the in the fights where you're like assured that that Aleem is the b-side he tends to over perform and lose in this type of heartbreaking style where you're like man Aleem almost deserved better he was that close to you know maybe he should have won that but it goes down as either a draw in a lot of cases for him or in this case a close loss. Shout out to both these guys, Luke, for absolutely bringing it. No doubt about it. You have another one you wanted to go to or is that the only one?

Yeah, I didn't want to ignore the UFC card. I just had to wait until this morning to catch up on it and watch it. But Luke, I came in sort of phrasing that lightweight duel between Gamrot and Jeremy Stevens as sort of Jeremy Stevens is going to have to do something big to make another recharge to not fall into that dangerous territory. Dude, should we put respect on Matus Gamrot's name moving forward? Because that was alarmingly easy, what he

did to take down Stevens and then submit him like that, Luke. Let me explain something to you, buddies. If you're stepping over somebody's head for a Kimura, that's the close of the show folks because you can do kimuras without them you actually don't need them but if you can step over and secure it and you know what you're doing with your balance you're gonna rip that arm right out of the socket it is bad news when that happened

as soon as he did that i was like all he has to do is free this hand which is a little bit harder to do than you might imagine but it can can be done, and obviously he did it. Dude, that is a nasty, nasty Kimura. Look at him. Hold the slide there. Look at it. His weight is down, and you can see Gamrot is leaning behind and then backwards into a circular fashion to get that submission.

Dude, that is vicious. He was going to break that thing if Stevens didn't tap immediately. And he got it like that, lightning quick. So I want to wake myself up to everything featherweight or lightweight. Well, this is a lightweight bout, but look, this guy's a featherweight, right, Gamera? No, no, no. So Jeremy Stevens went from featherweight

and moved back to lightweight for this. So this was a lightweight fight. Hey, look, another young lightweight to take notice of because I think this was a head-turner at the ease of it. And then, Luke, can I shout out Billy Q, our guy? Billy Quarantillo? Yes, one quick note, BC. We always talk about how all these guys are coming out of Georgia

and Dagestan and blah, blah, blah. Hey, Poland. Poland produces a lot of really good fighters. Here's another one. Absolutely. I want to shout out Billy Q, Luke, because he's a fun fighter. And, you know, he had to walk through hell at certain points, but for the most part, he gave us, you know,

three rounds of smashing dominance before the finish against Gabriel Benitez. I mean, is it time to look at Billy Q as a player, or is he still just a young fighter figuring things out, but he makes really fun fights? That's one of those fights where it's like you think to yourself man i'm not sure how to say this exactly like you always know there's a risk of fighting where you could lose a tooth or you can get knocked out or blah blah blah and then there are those fights where you go in there and it looks like someone ran over your face with a lawnmower and that poor benitez dude i mean he i'll give benitez credit dude that guy is

fucking tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough guy. And obviously, he can do offensive work on his own. But Billy Q had this attitude like, if I don't win this fight, I'm going to hang it up. Of course, he never said that. I'm just sort of saying it felt that way. He was just marching Benitez down, damaging punches the whole way through, and then never letting his foot off the gas. Dude, that was a nightmare for a guy like Benitez. Now, where it goes for Billy QBC, I don't know. I'd be curious to hear what you have to say.

I don't really know. I haven't thought much about it, but that was a fucking performance. I mean, dude, to stop a fight where you have back control and you're just punching the guy and the referee has to intervene for mercy for the guy who has his back taken. There's no submission threat there. Wow, dude, that is unusual. I'll put a pin in this because we'll see video proof of some of these on Have You Seen This Shit Later.

But, yeah, look, at the very least, man, our guy Billy Q comes to win and makes some excitement happen, so that was great to see. Luke, who shined for you, though, this weekend that isn't getting the love in this show up to this point? I'll say for me, he did not have a perfect performance by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have one that I thought he needed. I'm going to go with Rodolfo Vieira. You guys know I love the BJJ crossover guys into MMA,

and Rodolfo is basically about as decorated as you're going to get. He's won every title you could win in the Gi at the Black Belt World level. He's won every title you could win without the Gi at the Black Belt World level. He's won every title you could win without the Gi at the Black Belt World level. And he had a good run through MMA. But obviously in his fight before this one against Anthony Hernandez, he had a really rough run of it. He gassed. He looked like shit. He got submitted, which is just a bad thing.

And I disagreed with Michael Bisping. I love Michael Bisping, but I disagree with him that going to the sports psychologist with some kind of a red flag or whatever. I actually think this is the guy who needs it and he had a bit of a rough start early BC. Not rough, he had a mixed start I would say. He had good jab, he was calm but you know taking a little bit of damage here or there but by the third third round, man, he said, fuck this, and when that guy wants to find your back, good luck stopping it. He found it like Batman, you know, just at the top of a roof. You couldn't believe the ease and speed and quietness with which he got into it, and then once, of course, he got the choke, I mean, it was all over. That was the kind of win he needed where he could prove he could take his time he yes obviously he used his

ground game so to speak to win it but he showed significant improvement in the stand-up and there are plenty of things to work on this was hardly perfect bc but i think he was finally he even said it he was finally calm he felt like he belonged he wasn't nervous and i think the results in general spoke to that yeah he needed this luke because when you have the type of loss he had against hernandez that's like a scarlet letter that could follow you around if you don't if you don't remove that demon from your past luke and this guy's built like a uh a brick shithouse as they used to say in my in my factory town luke uh good lord this guy's body is a wonderland i like specialists in the modern game they're fun to watch in this regard but uh you

know good to see him uh back where he needs to be luke could do you like his striking do you think he could he could really work on that i thought his jab was pretty good i thought his jab was pretty good you know i mean this is what you want to be when you're you know it's what you want to be when you have this kind of a ground game you don't ever want to forget it you want to make sure it's there uh whenever you need it but you got to have these other pieces that allow the fight to breathe in a way where you can compete in those conditions, obviously with the exception if you have another specialist in front of you notwithstanding.

And I thought that there's a lot to work on BC, but I thought he took a real big step to getting to that place. He's not there, but this was the pivot he needed to make the appropriate journey. It was the first time I thought he can do more than just work from the back. He can do more than just wrestle and do submissions. He's still going to have that be a major dominant part of his game, but now he's got some other pieces too. Luke, you mentioned Bisping.

He's not always perfect. I don't always agree with everything, which really shouldn't be a prerequisite, I think, to liking somebody. I like to be challenged, but I think he's growing on me leaps and bounds. I know DC's sort of the guy at the moment that they pair as the third man with Anakin, Rogan, and that trio, by the way, I think is fantastic, even if they sometimes get into like they're watching in the Rogan's podcast studio by the cage. I don't tend to mind that a lot,

but Bisping's growing on me where I'd kind of like to see him more in that third spot with Rogan and Anik or even, you know, with, with DC and Anik more. I agree. I told Michael in person that I always thought his commentary was, was good for sure. But in the last like nine months or so, or six months, I don't know exactly what the timeframe is. he's really taking another step up to commentary level but because he's engaging you could tell he's all in on the fight he's excited and the level of detail that used to be

i think one of his weaknesses not that he didn't know it but he wouldn't share that information as readily now you can see he's homing in on the key details and telling folks, there's two, it's always bad if I'm watching an MMA fight and I'm picking up on details that the commentators are not. That tells you that the commentators are probably not that great.

That's because I'm not good. And if I'm seeing it, they should see it. You tend to text me a lot when this happens in real life. Yeah. You don't see a lot of that with, in fact, I don't think I've ever texted you

when Michael Bisping's commentating for something like that because, again, people miss stuff, but he gets the details. And he adds, like, a wild card plus one on post-fight interviews, too. I think he does. I think there's, like, a part of him, whether it's the comedy

or sometimes he gets really serious when he needs to be. I think he's very good at that role. So great to see. I do love Dom Cruz. Love me some Paul Felder. But Bis very good at that role. So great to see. I do love Dom Cruz. Love me some Paul Felder. But Bizping making moves, Luke. So good to see you. All right.

Well, instead of you and I asking each other questions, it's time now for the audience to ask us questions. It's time for DMs from dogs. Hey, all. Hey, all. All right, here we go. Well, this is an actual question that i did leave in the uh in the chat or the comments so they're gonna ask it here from me bc oh why is luke smiling like a

fucking idiot in this picture can we show the picture or not does it make sense did you yeah dude look at this smile it that looks like i just farted in the library and people vomited because so so can i say something about that photo shoot which is some of these are hilarious and i love how our team's been using them to market our new merch although we were both fat in those pictures um my wife's you know i love her she's she'll she'll tell me what she feels she's critical of anything she needs to be in that moment she'll'm not a star in this house, Luke. She hates this photo shoot because she thinks all of these make us look like a married couple. Every single one of them.

Yeah, dude, we're definitely a gay couple. I mean, there's no... I mean, she won't even say, like, oh, you look fat or hey, that's a cool shirt. Every single one she sees, she's like, what is this? She's like, you and Luke are banging, and that's the end of it. Yeah. So, you know, that's fine. Luke, it's 2021.

If you want to spoon me in a picture, that's great. Okay. Did we go ass to ass in this picture? I can't comment publicly on that. BC, want to bang? Yo, Tui. Yo, Tui, you want to bang? Yeah, Luke, why are you smiling like an asshole in this pic, Luke?

I don't even know. Like I just finished touching myself at the bus stop and no one noticed or they kind of did and I'm gleeful about it. I mean, this is the worst picture ever. So I'm glad they used it. All right. Maniccia, our producer, just reminded me that I did get on a knee at some point in this photo shoot.

So, yeah. Yeah, dude. I needed an adult at some point in this photo shoot so uh yeah yeah yeah dude that was i needed an i needed an adult chaperone for that for that photo shoot it was not comfortable can i say that out loud uh our director was very in on the idea that you and i get very close to each other in touch it was like we had to stop and go like is this guy trying to get is he trying to facilitate you know man love here? What is happening? Yeah, and I was like, dude, we're not fucking. I mean, I know you want us to, and that's cool if you want to do that,

but I'm not banging BC. It's not going to happen, okay? Not without money. All right. Let's go to at Greg Leach 99. Not with that haircut, at least. Yeah, all right. Not with that.

BC's like, you think I'm going to fuck you with that smile, Luke? No chance. All right. From GregLeach99. Has Luke watched the Four Kings docuseries yet? I've seen part of it. Yeah, look, there's a lot of good shit on Showtime app that you won't watch. What the hell is that?

No, it's not even about... No, no, no. Dude, please. Please don't misunderstand me. The last month in my life has been a little bit difficult. You know about this because I texted you about it. My kid had to go to the ER, and it was a whole fucking thing. And then my pet died.

And R.I.P. Booger. Look, R.I.P. Booger, okay? Yeah, yeah. My awesome cat died, which has been kind of devastating here in the house. Absolutely. It's just been a weird. So I lost track of this a little bit. But, yes, I want to 100% get back on track.

And to your point, BC, we had this very conversation with Ben Folks in Vegas. You open up that Showtime app, man, and there is a fucking wonderland of content. Have you finished the entire series? Yeah, oh, I watched this in like a two-day span on the road when the great Showtime PR folks gave me that early stream. This thing is fan-freaking- freaking Texas. You know the same way that

that Last Dance Michael Jordan documentary just took a subject, which we already know we love, how can you get it wrong, and just elevated it to another level? I mean, seriously, that Jordan docuseries was insanely great. This has that same feel in its own way, Luke. The way the director tied

in the politics of the current events of the time frame in the early 80s with the fights and the nationalities of the fighters, it was brilliant. And then, Luke, just alone, to just revisit these fights, remember, these great four fighters fought each other nine times total in a ten-year span. Just to revisit, because although we know we all know like you know the the the war haggler hearns we all know uh leonard haggler we all know a lot of these sometimes you forget about like the leonard hearns rematch the one that was a draw that that

time hearns kind of got robbed which was a great fight between them when they were kind of getting washy and we forget some of these other chapters and certainly the stories behind them. This was brilliant. Our Showtime friends like Al Bernstein and Steve Farhood were great on it, but Teddy Atlas was on this. And look, he's like the soundtrack to this. He was fantastic as a talking head in this one.

That's crazy. Nine times in 10 years is, dude, they don't talk like that anymore. We're just trying to get Spence and Crawford to fight once. We're trying to get Ryan Garcia and allford to fight once we're trying to get you know Ryan Garcia and all these other young lightweights to fight nine times in ten years and Luke each of the fights were like

record breaking pay per view buys record breaking purses like these were stop traffic events in the sporting world and sometimes beyond the sporting world like the reminder of how good not that long ago, how great when boxing was still freaking front page news,

not just twice a year for Mayweather or Canelo, like, you know, every couple months. I mean, damn, Luke, if we... Now, I grew up in that, so that's what made the foundations of me as a fan, and I thank the lucky stars that I did grow up in that,

but imagine if we could have that right now, Luke. Imagine if we could have that shit right now. Steak for dinner every night. Livers are safe and happy and healthy. I mean, come on, bro. I know. Come on. I know.

All right. From Alan E.K., Alan Eck, however you want to pronounce it. Who would you say faced a higher level of competition in the first 10 UFC fights. Habib or Islam? So let me read you, BC, what you think. Here are Islam's first, for the audience's sake as well. Leo Kuntz, this is for Islam Makachev. Leo Kuntz, Adriano Martins, where he got KO'd.

Chris Wade, Nick Lance, Gleason Tebow, Cajun Johnson, and then it picks up a big level. Armin Saryukian, who I think is also a future title contender. Davi Hamos, Drew Dober, and then Tiago Moises. For Habib, his first 10 would be Kamal Chalarus, Gleason Tebow, Tiago Tavares, Abel Trujillo, Pat Healy, Rafael Dos Anjos, Daryl Horcher, Michael Johnson, Edson Barbosa, Al Iaquinta. I'm going to go with Habib.

I got to go with Habib, and that trail end of that was great. And then people also forget the RDA fight for some reason. When Habib, before the knee injury, beat the bags off RDA, just beat the living shit out of RDA, and that was before that. I mean, dude, okay, for all the lament we can have about Habib retiring right when he figured out how to be pound for pound best and brilliant and for the fact that the injuries and the ferguson saga like we didn't get to see habib against everybody we wanted everyone realizes that i'll say this guy had a two year knee injury that could have completely changed the direction of his career and he came back after two years and he was freaking better, Luke.

Like, it's really fine wine. Fine wine, Luke. I mean, when I say that, I mean, we know how great Habib is right now. But his legacy is just going to continue to blow up like a balloon the more we look back on this and the more we let it sink in. This guy's fucking amazing, Luke. So, yes yes his 10 are better and it gave him more experience than he needed and all that but that don't mean islam

isn't coming luke and if you're gonna come mahajev come on bro come on okay no no islam is a beast it's kind of funny both khabib and islam had rough route rough outs in their second ufc fights so against kamal shalaroos forget this, he won that via rear naked choke, but he actually rocked Shalaroos, I think with a head kick on the feet, and then took his back and then subbed him out. And it was the Gleason Tebow fight afterwards where he won, but it was a little bit dicey. Same for Makachev, he beats Leo Kuntz in his debut, and then gets head kick KO'd against Adriano Martins. I'll say this for Makachev, BC. His last four fights, Armin Saryukyan, who, again, I think is a future title contender,

Davi Hamos, who won ADCC with a flying armbar against someone from Sitting Guard, Drew Dober, massively improved, and he subbed him. Tiago Moises, you know, I don't think is on the level, but still a very good fighter, and he subbed him out, too. Dude, Islam Makachev is coming, bro. He's coming big time. And these lightweights better be on their game. Looks like Makachev's coming big time, bro.

Somebody needs to clean this up. Yes. All right. From Khalid, but I'm going to mispronounce his last name. And I've actually DMed with this gentleman back and forth. So please forgive me, Khaled, if I mispronounce your last name. Khaled Beydoun is what I'm going to say. Khaled Al-Amin?

He's verified, by the way. He writes for, I know he's done some work in a bunch of places, but he wrote a Mayweather Paul feature for The Undefeated and ESPN. He's a professor as well, besides his obvious skill and promise, what role does filling the Habib void in the Middle Eastern marketplace in the UFC's pushing of Islam Makhachev? Here's what I'll say about this. Obviously, it's good to have a highly successful Muslim athlete. Even in soccer, when you've seen the guy out of Egypt, Mo Salah, plays for Liverpool, it's a huge deal when you have a celebrated international Muslim figure

for the Muslim world, not just the Middle East, but other parts as well. On the other hand, though, BC, here's one thing that gets lost. Even with the language barrier, Habib's a little bit more entertaining as a person. Like, Islam's a little bit on the boring side, right? Yeah, yeah. as a person like islam's a little bit on the boring side right yeah yeah yeah there's more john fitch and now and mahachev than there is uh the habib fluffy hat and the you know uh send me location please you know i'll smash your boy with all that great stuff but uh you know you can still you can still add to it luke as we build but i think it think it's massive for the UFC because let's not like underplay.

Is that the word? Underplay? Underplay? Let's not underplay, Luke, how big Habib's star did rise. You know, he got the McGregor rub. They had probably the most heated rivalry, you know, this side of Jones Cormier that we'd ever seen

at this level. And then Habib became a legitimate top billing this side of Jones Cormier that we'd ever seen at this level. And then he became a legitimate top-billing A-side legitimate pay-per-view star and then walked away as soon as he became that. They do need to fill somebody there. And whether it ends up being Chumayev, whether it ends up being Mahachev, whether... Good, I'm still

hoping Zabit can figure this out health-wise, Luke, and get back into this. There's going to be an opening there once you activate a certain fan segment that wasn't die hard before you do need somebody to keep carrying that flag up the mountain so i think that's why it's a it's a great spot for these guys because they're going to get every opportunity to be great and get the type of push from the standpoint of like placement in main events and these fight nights you know this type of thing to be great and to do that. So it's going to be up to which one of them can grab the baton

and stand out in their own way, whether that's through a little bit through commercially, although let's be honest, Luke, a lot of these guys have a very quiet militant persona almost. Maybe sometimes that's the translation. It's lost in there, or maybe it's just their natural makeup to be hard-nosed grinders. And Luke, coming from my factory background,

even though I may not have the same self-discipline as these guys, I get it, Luke. I just think that I was there at UFC 205 when Habib fought Michael Johnson and then went backstage and was like, this is number one bullshit, and then actually got on the microphone after he won and was like, Ireland has three number one bullshit and then got on them actually got on the microphone after he won and was like you know ireland has what was it three or five or whatever million people russia has 100 million send me your irish chicken like makachev's not that dude there's a certain level of like swag so to speak even with the language barrier that a guy

like habib has that makachev hasn't shown to this this point. He did say afterwards in some of the interviews, like, I'll smash everybody. They said, who do you want next, Makhachev? He's like, I'll smash anyone. Bring them right now. Like, I love that sort of attitude, of course, but I get it. Habib had a charm that I think has been underrated that he doesn't always get the credit for that really was, you know,

Madison Avenue. They really could have done more. Like, could you imagine? And Habib's not dead, first of all. And he's still got a very public role now, transitioning to the coaching. And by the way, it warmed my heart to see coaches scam on Habib and him

celebrate. I love hearing him in the corner. I love all of that. But he almost had this marketability. I could have imagined Habib, had he still fought and let's say he fought McGregor again and he just became a bigger crossover star, him doing commercials for shit, Luke. Seriously, he's got that fun McGregor again, and he just became a bigger crossover star. Him doing commercials for shit, Luke. Seriously, he's got that fun sort of goofball,

almost triple G goofball type of thing going on, where it's like, this guy's great. So I hope somebody can pick that up. Let me ask you, in terms of public personality and how jovial and whatnot, is there anything to the comparison? Again, forget the games. Just like their personalities and how social they are between what Floyd is to Tank Davis

and what Khabib is to Islam Makhachev. That's a great call. That's a great call because certainly UFC and these fighters are benefiting already from these guys being considered Khabib's boys. There's no question. And yes, that is the same way as when Floyd did this for Gervonta, when he used to do this for Badou Jack, or even Errol Spence.

Even though Floyd doesn't directly promote Errol Spence, from the beginning he's been putting his arms around him after fights and saying, like, this is the guy. Yeah, that matters. That gives you an extra stamp of credibility. So Habib's playing a very key role here. Did you see Dana the other day, Luke? It came out that he sat down with habib once more and tried to give him an offer he couldn't refuse and habib refused it again man right yeah right good thing he left us on pins

and needles on that time where it's like what's habib's decision okay all right neither here nor there one more of these bbc uh from from nick lozong like is this one of the lozong brothers that i'm not aware of? I know Joe and Dan. Is this like the black sheep of the... Yeah. Maybe. Do you think Dustin Poirier deserves more respect than he is getting slash has gotten,

considering he has beaten a former UFC, Bellator, or WEC champ in six of his last eight fights, BC? Yeah, we're not... We don't deserve Dustin Poirier in just about every category seriously like uh what we talked about just in the past week his response just personally as a man to all that shit connor was doing whether i like some of that raw dirty shit from connor or not i mean good god like dustin poirier is like the poster boy like he's the jerry west logo right now he is like all america do right you know what i mean yes he does not deserve

anything bad said about him and he is not because he doesn't have the same personality as connor and because connor dominates the storylines in their last two fights we haven't even properly given dustin credit for his ability for his resume for his just being a great freaking guy with the charity and all that we we throw it in there like sprinkling lube, but we don't make it the lead story. Why? Because, you know, people, the rare freaks like McGregor tend to dominate the storylines for all the right reasons, but

what Poirier is doing resume-wise without having even won the full championship, that's why I said coming into this last fight, like, had he come out there and just dominantly, you know, destroyed a healthy Conor, it's like, he may already be the second greatest lightweight in history, and he's never won the belt, Luke. Like, his resume, the last, really, what is he now, 12-2 since the first loss to McGregor, since moving back up to lightweight? He's 12-2,

and with the names he's beaten, like, holy freaking crap. Like, he should have been champion with, you know, four or five title defenses. It just so happened he shared this era with Habib no harm done he lost Habib but he's done everything else perfectly it's funny I did some radio following some sports radio stations here and following the fight with McGregor and I remember the guys were asking me like oh well Poirier is obviously better than McGregor and you know there's a debate to be had about that certainly but they didn't seem to understand how good he was. And I was trying to explain to them, whenever I go in these places that don't really talk MMA,

I always try to give them analogies so they can understand. I don't know if this one works either, but if you just imagine that, okay, Poirier has those two losses. One was Michael Johnson, and one was Khabib Nurmagomedov. The Johnson one, yes, it counts, it's legit, but you wouldn't pick Johnson to win in a rematch. You would definitely pick Khabib to win in a rematch. And so I was trying to explain to him, it's like, okay, if Khabib is, you know, something like Tom Brady, that doesn't mean every other quarterback after him is some shit. It's like, dude, Poirier is like an Aaron

Rogers, man. Like he's a fucking really good, really, really, really crazy high-level fighter. So for McGregor to, I was trying to explain, like, for McGregor to lose to that guy, okay, McGregor's not the best in the division anymore, but you're not losing to some chump, man. You're losing to a guy who's exceedingly talented. But I do think, BC, that as long as Poirier doesn't win the weight class belt, we're going to deal with this. Conversely, I think if he does win the weight class belt, all the things deal with this conversely i think if he does win

the weight class belt all the things that we're talking about are going to synthesize finally into like a you know a crystallizing moment where everybody understands what this guy is made of but we're not there yet yeah let's do that and then and look i do apologize that because i tend to love trash talk and ridiculousness that pundits like me don't, don't do enough to stop and say, poor is everything like a man should be in terms of the public persona that he shows in these situations. I don't know what he's like in his real life.

I'm sure he's a great dude, but like, you know, you want to, if you, if your kids watch MMA and you're like, who do you hope they be like Dustin Poirier? Yeah.

All right, BC. Well, with that out of the way, it's time for, we watch elder abuse and, um, people lighting farts on fire. Yeah. Look, look. Well, with that out of the way, it's time for we watch Elder Abuse and people lighting farts on fire. Yeah, look, look,

there's no other segment in the world like this. You know, that's why people tune in on Mondays for the shit that they haven't seen. Whether they've seen it or not, they need to see it again with your soundtrack behind it.

It's the good, the bad, the ugly, the highs and lows, and in between in combat sports and beyond, Luke. We call this Have You Seen This Shit? Oh, God. beyond, Luke. We call this, Have You Seen This Shit? Oh, God. Ow, ow, I shit my pants.

UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas, Luke. I said this coming in. I said it before, I'll say it once more. Welterweight Daniel Rodriguez, D-Rod, is just fun to watch, Luke. He's all tatted up in almost the jail variety, but he delivers beatings. He kicked the shit out of Preston Parsons and around three layer Luke and finished him. Um,

he's almost like growing as an action star in my mind. How do you like him as an actual fighter up to this point? I mean, it wasn't his fault that the guy he was fighting was coming on a last minute notice, but every time this guy has been asked to perform, he basically does. Um,

I think highly of him. I think he's got good stand-up he's got a good mind for it um he's well trained yeah i think this is definitely a prospect to pay attention to he fights nasty too i kind of like that it was it was great stuff all right luke strawweight amanda lemos 35 second finish of montserrat ruiz the announcers were playing it up luke that she's coming in the strawweight division. Do you have that same feeling after this? Oh, yeah, dude.

I mean, Montserrat, this was, she got tuned up in this one. And you notice, people were complaining about the stoppage, and I didn't think the stoppage was as clean as it could have been. But I'll say this, you didn't see Conejo say anything about it. She just took the L. She was like, yeah, yeah, maybe that probably came to an end when it should have. Dude, Lemos was going to end her one way or the other.

They saved her a beating. Yeah, hell of a finish there. We mentioned Billy Q did get the late stoppage there in the third round against Gabriel Benitez. Largely dominated Luke despite taking some big shots himself. Look at the finish here from back mount as you were mentioning early in the show it's rare

that you see this but luke he was just like little brothering him yeah you see it from back mount which is to say you see it when someone is on the other one's back but they're both facing the mat what you don't see is when someone has the back and then their back is on the mat that is unheard of oh i didn't even realize that fadeaway there from Billy Q was like put it up in the air right there. It was a little Sugar Sean-esque, right? I missed it. I was trying to look into the camera. His celebration was

the basketball fall away. Let's see. Kobe! RIP, Luke. Girl, dad, like yourself. Don't forget about Colorado let's keep it going here Luke you have

Bellator 262 from the Mohegan Sun Tyrell Fortune in this co-main event Luke took care of Matt Matrione unfortunately for Meathead

it was this takedown that caused another headbutt it's the same he had lost to Tim Johnson largely because of that headbutt that hurt him Luke

you heard Meathead after he was not happy, dude. This is a tough way to go out. I feel bad for him. It's not Tyrell Fortune's fault. You could say it's Matt Mitrione's fault for ducking into him, but he was just trying to. It's no one's fault, really.

It's just his really, really bad luck. I felt bad for Matt Mitrione because, listen, man, the guy had to do a media cycle, and the guy who we made fun of on Friday's show for asking the terrible question, he actually hit us both up. He seems like a good dude. He realized he didn't ask a good question. You know, but okay, so you're Matt Mitrione. You know you're, what, 43-44.

You're doing media days, and they're asking you about your losing streak. You know you have a losing streak. You know it hasn't been the same. And there's been, like, COVID and delays and injuries and everything else. He finally gets out there, and then within 30 seconds, he fucking gets head-butted in a terrible way and then loses the fight. I mean, you know, it's got to be frustrating, and you heard it in his voice. I felt really bad for Matt Mitrione.

I hope there's a chance for him to get back out there, and maybe not against Tyrell Fortune, but, you know, win or lose. I think what he's just looking for, BC, is what a lot of fighters want, is just a chance to prove what they can do at this point. I hope he gets it. Yeah, nobody wants, you know, he also had that stick kick fight with Karatanov. Nobody wants to be involved in these fights where foul in some way, you know, hurts the chances. Either if it takes it away from you or gives you a chance to win.

So that sucks, but at some point, Luke, you are what your record says. And it's the end of days here for Mitrione. Hopefully he gets another chance to go out in his own way and prove himself. Luke, middleweight Johnny Eblen caught your fancy with his wrestling against Travis Bam Bam Davis. What are your thoughts on this suplex takedown? Very good. Watch, he looks behind him, doesn't land on his shoulder, rolls through over his left, almost like a halfway Granby roll,

and then maintains control. And then watch, he comes up and then stiff arms with the left for the choke. Right there. They don't quite show it, but you can see he just about gets it that's textbook that's really really nice that's a great great suplex yeah ebb and lens are at it again luke saving you money at uh at eblens here featherweight cody law deep on the bellator undercard was giving me silva franklin vibes luke with this dominant finish of theodore makuka should I be paying any closer attention to Cody Law than I already have Luke no I've been paying attention to him as well he's only what four

fights into his career or something it's still very early early signs are that he's a hammer this is a guy that Bellator has signed and uh trains with a good team is a good fighter himself uh for what you have again we're still really early in the journey. Bellator has maybe 10 or so guys, women too, who are very junior in their career. Three to four fights, let's say five or less where you cannot declare that they're future

champions, but every sign kind of indicates that in a couple of years this flower is going to bloom. This looks like one of those type of guys. Luke, interesting bit of business here at KSW62. A fellow by the name of Tomas Sarara in his MMA debut suffered 10-8 rounds in the first two, Luke,

and looked disastrous and rallied back for this dramatic victory that set the Polish fans off crazy. I got so many DMs about this. Did you watch this shit, Luke? No. I do like KSW or whatever this is. I missed it, though. After two 10-8 rounds,

a guy rallies in the third, gets top mount, basically exhausted opponent, gets the win. And, Luke, this crowd's just going, they're just going off, Luke, okay? I guess it was lost in translation here. You got to hear the audio.

Wow, this guy looks like us at the photo shoot. Absolutely. Fantastic there. All right, Luke, speaking of fat guys, K1 was back at it. Check out Jitsukata Kosuke with his head kick finish. You know I love fat guys when they fight. Boy, fat guys who can head kick are the most dangerous men on earth. Let me just tell you that right now.

Good shit right there. Shout out to Gravaka hitman for always putting this type of stuff out into the ether sphere for us on twitter uh byb6 luke inside the trigon it's bare knuckle fighting at its best watch isaiah kinyonis with the one punch finisher oh and the back flip bro I like how they're like yo we don't want you guys ever six inches apart now go motherfucking fight we should just open up a promotion

called phone booth fighting or men's restroom fighting look this is what this is basically yeah dude we'll have a commode on one side of the little square and like a toilet you know like door on the other side, and then we'll just fucking fist fight. Luke, you ever go to a super elite gentleman's club,

the kind that have a stupid cover charge, and they put fresh ice in the urinals? I mean, that's the best thing in the world, Luke, isn't it? Yeah, and then you just pee on it with your hot urine to kind of melt it and feel pretty good about it? Yeah. It's not bad. It's not bad. What's the most you've ever spent at a strip club?

Look, I'm not having this conversation with you here. Come on, Luke. All right, I'm a reformed man. I don't have to entertain this part of my life in the past, Luke. All right, I spent $700 at Spearmint Rhino one time. The absolute dirt hole. All right, Luke. Do you ever go to Club Supersex in Montreal?

Mm-mm. Yeah, wow. Patreon edition one day, Luke. Let's keep it going here. BYB6. Everybody catches punches in this promotion. This guy had the best post-fight speech. He literally told everyone in the audience to blow him.

It was fucking amazing. I couldn't find it. I was trying to find it, but watch that. Look at the ref take the left hook, Luke. You see that shit? Yeah, I did. These old bastards are getting lit up more and more these days. That interview was incredible.

Paul Malnagy was the announcer there. Luke, speaking of the BYB announce team, good Lord, Luke, is this an exotic team they put together? This is like the new village people. What do we got here? All right, hold on. Let me see if I can identify them. So right to left. Can you blow this up, please? Yeah, blow this up. Let me see if I can do it.

Right to left, you've got Dada5000. Then you've got Paulie. You've got Mike Goldberg in the middle. You have a gentleman from the family guy brought to life. And then my accountant on the left. Yeah. I thought that was Chief Wahoo McDaniel from the WWF, Luke.

That was fantastic right there. Wow. This is a team. This is a motley crew right there. So shout out to BYB. They got a lot of clips off of this card, Luke. That's what you want. You want attention for the promotion.

Karma Coin is their chief sponsor there, Luke. You a big fan of them? Karma with a C. I'm sure it's not a predatory loan. You wouldn't endorse those, Luke. I know that. All right, Luke, let's keep it going here. Dana White appeared on Newsmax.

Let's see the results and hear them. Why was Poirier's wife texting or attempting to text McGregor on Instagram? Any insight? have you heard anything what's the word so there was a i haven't heard but what i would assume it was is there was a huge beef between both camps over the uh the donation to poirier's charity and i'm sure the wife was reaching out about the donation for the charity that's one theory well we'll see we'll see i don't know i assure you he was reaching out to him poor you know mcgregor was uh flying on saying all kinds of uh well but that's mcgregor for you look he's a showman and we appreciate uh

we appreciate the show. Luke, that's one theory. You think this, who's this clown? And is he trying to imply that Jolie was DM sliding here, Luke? I mean, I'm guessing because the show is called Greg Kelly Reports that this gentleman is called Greg Kelly. But it's just always funny to me. It's like, dude, Dana goes on like these, like, dude, this is not Fox News, which certainly has its own slant, he goes on like newsmax which is like dude newsmax is a mac remember

like in the 90s when your old relatives would forge you like the craziest fucking email conspiracy theory and it was like forward re re re re you know and it was like oh it didn't stop in the 90s still happens yeah that that but yeah but that's the genesis of it that those people those are the ones who watch Newsmax and you know listen here's one thing I've picked up on BC and either here or there I know this is a light segment we can leave it alone but uh the like the NFL and the NBA get a lot of positive coverage from like traditional media UFC gets a lot of positive coverage from conservative media. They really like UFC for a lot of different reasons. That's something to pay attention to. All right.

All right. That's one way to look at it, Luke. Let's keep it going here. Luke, dogs are the best thing really that ever happened to us short of cats. Luke, check out this dog. He's going to make sure, Luke, that if we're having snacks, we're having a good time, that he's going to get involved in this. This dog is like, fuck your barbecue bitch uh luke i have the dog love of my life named molly she's a part german shepherd part doberman part border terrier the first week we had her we had like a party at our

house and we just told everybody you know keep the back door closed so the dogs can't go back inside near the food somebody left the back door open so the dogs can't go back inside near the food. Somebody left the back door open, Luke. Molly jumped on the counter. There was a stack of bread. You know non-bread, like the Indian bread, Luke? Mm-hmm. I love it. It's thick as balls. There was a stack of it on top of a plate like this big.

Molly jumped up, grabbed the whole thing, pulled it down, and, Luke, she ate every single bite. Dogs are merciless when it comes to the the idea of illegally securing human food luke there's no i understand dogs dogs are scavengers that's what they are they're scavengers so you leave any kind of food even with like in a place that you don't think is around but if they are if they can physically get there in any capacity whatsoever, they're taking your shit, dude. That's what they are.

They're buzzards. They're vultures. Like, you know how you turn into like a rabid animal in Vegas with Taco Bell Cantina and in your old days before your gallbladder fell out, you were apt to buy $125 worth

of Taco Bell Cantina at one time. These dogs will eat stolen people food until their body gives out and they die in that moment, Luke. Yes. You leave chocolate around, they'll just poison themselves to death on delicious, delicious chocolate. Kind of like Luke with the dispensary.

I mean, it's just, you know, Luke's like, what do you got? What did Elvis take the day he died? Give me that. I'll take that. Was it fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches? And like 18 different injections of... Yeah, and like codeine and Coke and PCP. Elvis was an American hero.

All right, Luke, skater die time. Anytime we involve a roof in one of these clips, usually a white person gets seriously injured. So your thoughts on this, Luke? Can't believe they're white. So out of character excuse me while i kiss the ground here uh jimmy wow that is that is incredible all right uh if you're gonna do it off the roof you might as well do it off a bridge luke oh god i'm gonna show tony hawk what to do here i like how he's measuring it. Or she? What is this? I can't see.

It looks like a hipster male, I think. Oh, fucking Jesus Christ. You got balls, though, to try to pull this off, okay? Big ones. Yeah, by the way, I don't know the race

of this person. Yeah, can you stop Asian hate already there, Luke? Dana White's not doing that. I'll tell you that much. All right, that was a funnier bit. Shit, that thing opened up at the last minute man good

lord good god all right luke uh you gotta watch where you're going these days uh check out this lady she's gotta get out of the tanning booth quickly luke is there a car that's gonna crash into it oh god oh my god it's oh that's that's I like how the lady behind the counter sees it and then doesn't do anything about it. Watch. Oh, yes. And then she's like, oh, you know what? I'm going to finish this order to Papa John's. Fuck these booze.

Luke, day drinking gone wrong. Again, you got to watch where you're going. Check out this guy. Probably a big soccer fan, Luke. You know, just got out of the pub and just got put down again. Oh, hey, it's always a good idea to drink a lot of booze and then go play Frogger with your life. All right, Luke, speaking of monstrosities,

check out this young hooper. This female is only 14 years old. I say monstrosity in a good way. She's 7'4". God bless her, Luke. And look at the domination of middle school basketball. Who else wants some of Debo, Luke?

Oh, come on. I mean, Luke, this is like you just playing with your daughter right now. You're just tipping the ball to your son. I mean, this is great. She's got a future in pro basketball. She may not even be any good does she have to be she's gonna be nine feet fucking tall who cares yeah wow and she's

built too i mean she's gonna be a problem in the post if she's got any kind of touch to her game luke so hopefully she can keep the train on the track i mean yaoming was great in bursts luke but it's hard when somebody's that big and strong to that frame to hold it. You know, Luke? It's a cruel world we live in. All right, let's keep it going. Luke, it's time to let's check in on Tyron Woodley. His trainer, Pedro Diaz from Miami, put out this video of Tyron on the mitts. Luke, he's getting pretty good, dude. Listen, Tyron's a real fighter.

You can say whatever else you want about him. You can talk about the losing streak. You can talk about where he's at, and those are all real things. But what you can't take away from the guy is he's a real athlete and a real fighter. And that's what I'm telling you, dude. This, like, pro bout with Jake Paul, like, I feel very differently about it than I feel about the Logan Paul Mayweather fight,

which was sort of like a silly little thing. This is definitely higher stakes for me. August 29th, Showtime, pay-per-view, Cleveland. Luke, I hope you and I are at that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm about to spend the whole day there. You know why I want to go? Because the flight from D.C. to Ohio is not very far, so I don't mind. Oh, great, great.

So it suits you, you old ass. Luke, it's time to rate that tat, okay? Let's rate that tat. Here's a thigh tattoo uh your thoughts on this um it's pretty good it's pretty good um it's very good actually it's very good you know it's a again we're we're we're putting aside the conceptuality of it whether or not we would want it can you blow back up or not for just a second? I can't tell.

Are those McGregor's fingers or is the hand of this other dude catching McGregor's fist? Oh, good call on that. I think it's the hand of the other dude, but no, no, that's McGregor. It's McGregor's fingers. I can't quite tell,

but in either case, the coloring is interesting. I like how there is obviously like poppy color. This is what you would call a new school tattoo, BC, with the guy, I guess, who's some Dragon Ball Z character. And then you've got kind of like a portrait realist version of McGregor, and they've melded the two. This is a high-level tattoo.

It's not perfect, but it's very good. All right, let's see the worm grow into the butterfly here with full cocoon growth. Are you a fan of this tattoo? I guess it's a beetle, but watch when the fellow stands up. Yeah, I've seen this one as well. Yeah, I got to tell you, dude, there's people who get tattoos of insects. Okay, let me tell you what's played out.

Less so insects, although that's just not personally for me. If you get a lion and a and like a clock and like a crown tattooed on your arm you're a fuck boy that's that's kind of what you are this one is not that territory but it's like dude you want to get fucking insects tattooed on you i mean you know to each his own or whatever but i i it's not it's not for me yeah real real real g's get the flag of the of the city they live in on their forearm, Luke. I'm not asking you to like that either. I don't think that's for everybody.

But again, this person would tell me to fuck off too. It's not for Jared Hurd. It's not for Jared Hurd. I'll tell you that much, Luke. I couldn't believe he didn't write it. I was like, dude, what the fuck? Okay, whatever. Sorry, Jared.

All right, speaking of UFC lightweights, Luke, did you see Charles Oliveira went down to Yonkers, New York to the world-famous Yonkers Raceway and won himself a harness race, Luke. Is this ethical? I believe that's Doe Bronx on the left. And by the way, Yonkers is on the border with the Bronx, New York, Luke. So Doe Bronx getting it done here against some other jockey. Yeah, I guess this is ethical.

I don't know. I guess this is ethical. I don't know. I guess. All right. Luke, people come from different backgrounds. To some people, cockfighting is the way to get down. Luke, okay? Yeah, but I mean, okay. Yeah.

You ever been to a cockfight? In my pants, Luke. But no, no, not anywhere tangible. Could you be more of the dad humor in the station wagon today? Could you do that? Could you stop being yourself, BC, please? All right, you J-hole. I'll turn this car around, young man.

We didn't get an undisputed champion on Saturday night, but undisputed 140-pound champion Josh Taylor showed off his fire pit outside, Luke. Your thoughts? Badass. God bless that man. I got to tell you. A fire pit outside, Luke. Your thoughts? Badass. God bless that man. I got to tell you. A, fire pits, winners.

B, you unify a weight class, you can get whatever you want put on the steel of that fucking thing. So God bless him. That thing's pretty badass. I kind of want this now at home. I want to see if I can buy this exact one. All right. Maybe I'll feel like a champion. Luke, white people are going to white people.

You know that. So check out this husky girl going for a swing and a miss here with the kick was she trying to do the bottle cap challenge i i think so luke i think so you love husky women falling and old people getting hit by cars in ways that is hard to overstate. We all have our vices in life, Luke. Let's go on to this white gentleman here. Luke, I hear when you use shotguns, there's a kickback. Oh. Oh.

You'll shoot your eye out, son. Wow. It's like, first of all, I don't even know if that's illegal munition because he's got, it's a sawed-off shotgun, it looks like. I can't quite tell. And then he doesn't have two hands on it he's got just the one and even then the hand is bent he doesn't have it like kind of out in front although it's a little harder to uh to uh control that way it looks like the he looks like the caddy from uh happy gilmore the the kid right there was this

weapon that uh so a friend of mine fired years ago i forget what it was called it was like a 500 nitro something like that and he actually put it in his shoulder and it was the kick was so strong it dislocated it i forget which weapon he was firing but yeah maybe it was a desert eagle 50 caliber handgun luke desert eagle wouldn't dislocate your shoulder all right all right if i was going to buy a gun, and I'm not in the market, Luke, I would buy that Commando Arnold Schwarzenegger gun. Yeah. Yeah, that's a nice one.

All right. All right, Luke, I got one more for you, although I predicted our eventual demise to open the show. I hope we make it all the way, Luke, to the point that we are old bastards like these two going tip and tip and just having an Andy and the other guy Shawshank ending. Luke, what do you think? Look, a belly first on these two going tip and tip and just having an andy in the other guy shawshank ending luke what do you think look a belly first on these two whales look at these orca their willingness to go tip on tip though luke has to be commended that's yeah that's you on the right without question

that's you on the yeah with my underwear and diarrhea yeah and that's you in the singlet uh yeah yeah these two are gross but if we can be this happy this long in life i feel like you've won bc all right all right i mean even mike and the mad dog eventually got divorced luke okay how long you were willing to go in this relationship all right as long as it takes bro as long as it takes okay all right all right that's the shit for the week luke what do you got for the other thing we do uh odds and ends bc i usually pitch it to you first if you'd like it but i can go first if that's better for you. What do you want to do? Yeah, why don't you catch?

Why don't you catch? Okay. So, you know, I don't know what to make of this. Again, fighters are going to say what they're going to say. Pre-fight, you just got to let it be what it is. But just for clarification, since we discussed it on last Friday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission confirms that McGregor did not list on his pre-fight questionnaire

as having any kind of, you know fracture or lower leg uh any injury that would have in any way flagged them to pause the fight now of course the natural response to this is going to be well he's hiding it as a result of uh you know wanted to get the fight to happen yeah fair enough he might be you're not supposed to do that kind of thing i actually tend to think that fighters not disclosing injuries is fairly routine on pre-fight questionnaires i'm just pointing out we have a little bit more information now about this. We'll have to see what the Netflix documentary says, but there's not a lot of evidence to this point to indicate that, like,

short of a somewhat questionable strategy and bad luck, that there's anything else to attribute to what happened to McGregor beyond that. That's it. Yeah, I saw a lot of people reacting to our reaction when we were like, you know, if this is true that there was a predisclosed injury there, why would, you know, what the hell are you doing leading with an injured limb?

A lot of people took that as sort of like, well, it wasn't him being stupid. The limb wasn't that injured. You know what I mean? And he suffered it in the midst of the battle. Either way, Luke, it's, uh, either way, we're going to see it again. Luke, do you think there's any chance we don't see that? I mean, if McGregor loses in some kind of comeback fight, we're going to see it again. Luke, do you think there's any chance we don't see that? I mean, if McGregor loses in some kind of comeback fight, we're probably not going to see the fourth.

Do you think we need the fourth? We don't really need it, Luke. It's just a big money opportunity. Yeah, I don't need it. I think some folks need it. I don't need it. I don't need it. All right.

All right, that's fair, Luke. What do you got for odds and ends? It's time we have a real honest talk here about Rolando Romero, Luke, a.k.a. Roley. You love Roley. Your unbeaten vacant title holder, interim title holder there at 135. Luke, he was in the Colmane Saturday night against an out-of-control Anthony Yegat who missed weight by five pounds

and really couldn't find his balance throughout the fight. If you don't know who Roley Romero is, get learned quickly. His style is crude and raw, and his punches are telegraphed. But, Luke, the kid hits freaking hard as he turned this foul-filled brawl into a knockout win. And I'm going to give Roley credit in that regard. But the thing about Roley is, Luke, he's just that dude. He don't care. I don't know what goes on inside his head, but I'll have seriously what he's having that dude. He don't care. I don't know what goes on inside his head,

but I'll have seriously what he's having, Luke. There is not, I mean, I have beliefs that I cling to in life, Luke, that define me, that I get up and it, you know, depends on my day based on this belief. I believe in the power of Christ, Luke, even if you can't back me in that. I believe that, you know, good overpowers evil in the end. I believe in hope. I believe, Luke, that ketchup really makes any meat better until it spoiled my liver.

Luke, nobody believes, even in my personal beliefs that I just named you, more than one thing than Rolly Romero believes in his own power. He not only knocked out Anthony Yigit, but can we go to the video here

of his post-fight interview here, Manich? Check this out. What do you want to do next? I want Gervonta Davis. I want 40. You really think you're ready for that? Yes, I want him at 140. Why do you think you're ready for that after 13 fights? I mean, what, he got at 16, no? I have 14 now. So I'm ready for it. Time to stop him.

I'm going to knock him out. You think it's realistic? I know it is. I know what he can do, but I know what I can do. I'm a lot stronger. Luke, I've seen the full gamut reaction to this video, to the post-fight press conference when Romero boldly

called Devin Haney the Amir Khan of the lightweight division and said he'll knock him out with one punch. People look at this guy as an idiot, a clown, the bad guy that boxing needs, a villain. To some people even questioning if he's mentally there, Luke. I'm going to go on record as saying this. We need more guys willing to play this role. I am all in on the Roley Romero experience. Luke, it appears to be a little misguided since his style is crude as all hell. But this kid's power is for real. And his personal chutzpah is that a nuclear next level, Luke? Again, it could be very misguided for him to say,

hey, Gervonta, meet me at 140, bro. Meet me in Temecula. Let's do this thing. But I will be front row trying to find out what that looks like. Yeah, this fight was, I won't say a train wreck. It was entertaining as hell. Yigit was kind of all over the place, coming on short notice, overweight. These two got tripped up over themselves a number of times romero just kind of

going berserk without a lot of technique um but he does have a lot of power he's got a lot of gumption but dude a fight against tank davis i think tank would do horrible well that's the thing watching romero style you're like okay i already saw him got out but outboxed by jackson marinas who's not a big name but was a slick boxer and did it i'm like any of these elite lightweights at least from the eye test dude they're gonna walk in there against somebody this crude sidestep and figure him out and knock him the hell out but luke there's something just maniacal next level about the way Romero carries himself, and I've decided to embrace it and love it. It is, it's entertaining, dude. It is fun to watch. Yeah, let's see it happen. Let's roll the dice, Luke. Let's see this guy. I've seen him already compared to Ricardo Mayorga, who,

of course, you know, the former boxing unified welterweight champ. While certainly we look at Mayorga as one of the greatest, most ridiculous trash talkers of all time peak my org luke was so awkward and orthodox and just came after you that a lot of guys including the great late vernon forest got tricked up and caught into a war with him and they got knocked out i mean could you imagine roley against ryan garcia haney teo gervonta any of these guys, he should get the floor mopped with him. There's a difference between being like the concerted villain that Mayorga was. And then people like kind of poo pooing you. Cause you're a donk. Romero's a donk. Like this is sort of what he is. You know, he's willing to play that role, Luke. He's willing to act like everyone sees what he sees.

You do have to give the kid credit. The combination of balls and power, it does make him interesting. For sure. For sure. Like, next time he fights, I'm all in. I'm just saying, you know, you want to fight Tank Davis, boy, you call down the thunder on that one. You better be real careful with what comes your way.

Luke, we got to get this chap on Morning Combat. I've got to press this guy in certain ways. I've got to hear what he's made of. I've got to see this. Step into my ring, the MK ring. I did put Floyd on the ropes. A little bit. Then he came roaring back a little bit, but you had your moment. Was it 50-1?

Was it 50-1? No. But, you know. You took a couple rounds off of him. uh okay well that's it for us today we went about two hours here on this monday show we appreciate you all watching if you uh just as a reminder we are all over the socials we're all over everything uh so you can give us a follow on instagram you can give us a follow on twitter you can follow me in b BC on that space as well. For Wednesday's fan submissions for Friday's Dead Wrong, morningcombat at gmail.com. Send them in, please.

We want some fan subs, man. Let's see some funny Photoshop's, you lazy fucks. Let's see some shit out there. Yeah, why don't you step up your game, okay? Yeah, guys. Jesus Christ. And then what else? If you want to try Showtime, you still can.

Showtime.com, 30-day free trial. You'll like it. You can keep it. If not, you can go to something else with your life. We have morningcombat.store for the merch that we somehow don't seem to wear very much. And what else, BC, if I've forgotten anything? No, you nailed all the beats. Look, Showtime for 30 days free.

July 31st is Pitbull pitbull versus mckee and we're gonna have a resume review coming out shortly luke that's gonna be fantastic and uh you're gonna need to see that fight so you're gonna need 30 days of free showtime so get on that train if you're not on it but luke i wore this pro wrestling t-shirt to kind of try to reignite myself a lot of people know luke i stopped watching the genre back when i got taken off of that beat for cbs sports which coincided with right before the pandemic which coincided to be candid with just some of the most shitty wwe booking that i just couldn't handle it i just couldn't freaking take it well i've been in and out of aew lately and they've been fantastic and

they're ramping up but luke i heard money in the bank last night was just you know cno return there was roman reign stood tall um i'm gonna have to get back i may have to get back for just a taste look i'm not asking you to join me i don't want you to be a part of this i'm just saying to the people out there that you that care about like bc we want you back if we're going to do drugs we want to do the same drugs with you i may have to start i may have to start doing drugs again luke i may have to get back into this, okay? They're calling me. They're calling me, Luke, and I may answer. So it was great knowing you. And yeah, all right. Why don't you take the show home, Luke?

You know, we had a good run, though. It was fun. It was fun. All right, very good. That is Brian Campbell. I'm Luke Thomas. Thanks to Malka, CBS Sports, and Showtime. We'll be back on Wednesday.

And until then, may all of your gains be loyal We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.