MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Chimaev OUT Of UFC Fight Island 8 | Garcia vs. Campbell | End Of Year Awards | Ep. 100

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

It is finally here, the 100th episode of Morning Kombat has arrived and the boys end a crazy 2020 on a high note. Luke and Brian hand out their end of year awards () and discuss the news that Khamzat Chimaev is OUT of UFC Fight Island 8 (). Plus, they preview Ryan Garcia vs. Luke Campbell (). --------------------------------- '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

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Reveille, reveille, dogs. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell.

This is Morning Combat. It is Wednesday, the 30th of December, 2020. It is episode 100 of Morning Combat. And my name is Luke Thomas. Welcome, everyone. How are you doing? I am from CBS Sports. It is a grand occasion. I am joined by my co-host. He is the most well-liked man in all of MMA the last two weeks. But you know what? I love him. I support him. But we got a lot to get to today. Yes, we do. We have a lot to get to today. It's Brian Campbell, everyone. Hi, Brian. How are you, buddy? Yeah, Luke. Sorry to ruin a lot of things in your life, including this show. This will be our final episode, episode 100, the last of 2020. Luke, what a way to go out in a crazy year already. Obviously, there's a large elephant in this room we'll be getting to shortly. But Luke, welcome.

Monday morning here, or Wednesday morning, excuse me. Great to see you again. I see you're letting that beard grow. That's very nice yeah i have to get it into control because i've noticed my if i keep my beard trimmed it doesn't itch with a mask on uh but once it starts getting a little uncomfortable that's usually the sign to like you know do something about it and i'm at that point so i got you're right i actually have let it go to a point where it's not serviceable anymore so i'll fix that but uh we have a lot to

get to today. We'll talk about some of the controversy from Monday's episode, but there is a lot more than just that. We have to get to our awards today. Actually, there is a fight this weekend. We will preview that as well on the boxing side of things. There's a bunch of fights, Luke, lingering under the radar in both sports right now. Yes, that's true.

There actually is a little bit, there's no UFC, obviously, until the 16th, but there actually is a little bit of else outside of that for the folks who want to go to the record store, BC, and dig through the vinyl crates to get the good stuff here and the good stuff there. Those are my people, Luke. My people. All right.

So first things first, please give the video a thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button. I want to make sure that we thank everyone with our last live episode this year. If you have subscribed to this channel, thank you so much. We really, really, really appreciate it. We have grown in leaps and bounds, especially since the whole thing went full-time. Obviously, we have a lot more to do at that point, but still, I want to thank everyone, whether you were there from day one or today is your first day, whatever the case may be,

thank you so much for being a part of this ride. We really appreciate that. The people who make this show possible, of course, are Showtime. If you want to try Showtime for free, you can get a 30-day free trial. Just go to Showtime.com if you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can pound sand. If you want to get some MK merch, I don't, do I have any? I don't think I have any around me, but if you want to

get some, store.show.com is a great place to go. There it is. You can get hats, mugs. This is my mug? Ah, not the right mug. Hats, mugs, shirts, sweatshirts. Yes, all kinds of stuff like that. It's nice quality too. Very nice quality. So that's out there for the taking as well. And what else am I forgetting? I think that's it for right now. Oh, we will have one more episode. It will be prerecorded, and it won't even really be an episode.

Normally, we would have a Friday show. We would do this on the Friday show. We'll have a show for you. I think it will come out on Friday. The homework from Monday was to watch the Michael Bay movie with Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, and Sean Connery, rest in peace, to 007, called The Rock. We're going to react to The Rock. We'll have a special episode for you coming out on Friday. So if you have not watched The Rock yet, BC, I discovered this. You can watch it for free if you have Roku. I put a new Roku audio bar

underneath my TV on my mantle, and I was able to watch it for free. I had to watch a few ads, but it's unedited other than that, like all the curse i had to pay uh i think i paid 3.99 on uh hulu for it or no on prime for it last yes yeah hulu or uh like san dingo now or whatever it's like three or four bucks but there's a free option for from some folks out there as well okay all right so we have a lot to get to today one note brian and i were supposed to drink but brian felt it better to not do that is it in bad taste luke after the controversy the the yes the unwanted but understandable controversy that has come my way not your way although people are now actually the the uh the the pitchforks have now extended to you luke for not uh for not taking a public stand on this but um yeah i don't you know i

don't think it's right. Should I be pounding beers and getting white girl drunk? And yeah, that's not a good look. All right, well, that's probably fine. But maybe depending on what time we record the episode for Friday, if we can record at a time closer to the evening, would you have a few beers then? It's very possible, Luke, okay?

But can we just clear the air I mean yes all right all right so on Monday's episode I tried to do a Ryzen 26 preview and my preview was not very good but uh partly it was because my lovely co-host over there the Vanna White of this show decided that he was gonna have some fun at the expense of Ryzen. Now, since then, it has been... Dude, you got sent to hell worse for this one than you did for the Dana White video. It's quite amazing. This is like the Mike Perry hang-up swear job mixed with the Tyson Fury hanging up on me,

mixed with both Charlo brothers separately dropping F-bombs on me, all rolled into one, Luke, okay? I'm not trying to victimize myself here. I'm just trying to point out that I took it to the face, Luke, okay? In the face. The blowback was strong. It basically falls along two lines. One, you didn't want to cover the event because you didn't think it was

worth your time, which is one kind of argument. Two, the other one, a little bit more of a problem which was karate chopping the air and saying the dude's name in a way that could be interpreted as not the most racially uh sensitive all right bc floor is yours what would you like to say about all of this this was a a perfect chit storm and it's my fault and i take full responsibility so let's get the most important parts first and foremost out of the way. I am good. God, am I sorry? God, apologies across the board to, uh, everything I love, which are people, the listeners, viewers of this show,

the sport of mixed martial arts, Japanese MMA risen, despite me sort of, you know, comedically attempting to frame myself as this idiot neighbor who only watches you know american boxing and can't be bothered with risen i love risen okay there's a lot of things in there that were badly misconstrued again my fault so let me apologize for uh anything in our shitty comedic sec my shitty comedic segment that was construed as uh as uh insensitive, racist, ignorant, across the board. I mean, the fact that this escalated to the levels, Luke, of the main eventer of Thursday's Risen

26 card tweeting you and I and so respectfully, right? Kai Asakura? So respectfully being like, I hope you guys get a chance to watch it and this will change your opinion and I will do my best. Good God, was that awesome of him. Okay.

Did I block many people who came at me on Twitter? I did. I went to the Luke Thomas playbook because it became a shit storm. It was a little alarming how much it became a shit storm. But again, Luke, it's my fault. So here's the deal. We do a fun off the rail show here the the magic of this show is that it's you and me and jay or you and me and gaff or maniche our producers or or mikey morms or whomever and it feels like

it's just us and the viewers right hanging out having a beer cracking jokes needling each other and oh by the way sometimes providing some really good preview, review, analysis of the combat sports game. But like any locker room talk with you and your boys, things can be taken out of context, misconstrued, or you can just say something inappropriate that, if pulled out of there and thrown to the masses, really can make you look like an asshole and really can sort of change publicly what your attentions might have been. And this is really what happened here. And again,

this is my fault for maybe keeping this too much like a boys club and not realizing that we have extended our reach pretty damn far. And we do have major companies behind us and sponsors and all that great stuff. So Luke, me shitting on Risen was not really me shitting on Risen. You know what it was? It was a stupid bit of me shitting on Risen was not really me shitting on Risen. You know what it was? It was a stupid bit of me shitting on you.

So I apologize for that. This Risen card is worth your time. You should always feel free to shit on me. It is quite okay. Okay, like, here's what the equivalent of this is, okay? And I got it wrong, but here's the equivalent. There's a really good boxing match this Thursday. It happens to take place in Japan, by the way.

It's a WBO super flyweight title bout. The boxing hardcores are going nuts over it. It's Kosei Tanaka on beat and 25 years old moving up in weight, trying to become a four-division champion against Kazuto Aoka. I mean, there are people in the boxing world fired up.

Luke, if I came on this show and was like, good God, this is going to be awesome, I would almost expect you as resident stereotype MMA guy and hard-nosed a-hole to be like, all right, BC, you and your boxing hardcores can go, you know, jerk off to this. I'm going to be doing important things like reading books and raising a family. This was the equivalent of that. This Risen main event is fantastic. The rest of the card, though, I did look at it and go, yeah, right. You know, it's not really moving me all that much. I'm much

more excited about Ryan Garcia, Luke Campbell. It's a little bit more on my radar. Am I more the boxing guy than MMA guy? Sure. But I'm also not ignorant to MMA. Good God. I mean, I don't want to pull the sword and read you my resume, but it goes back to, you know, pretty damn far. I was playing out a bit against you luke almost like oh you're overly excited for this here take this crap i'm gonna read the arnold schwarzenegger book the problem along the way was that i never thought that 30 seconds would be pulled out and thrown out there as american prominent american journalist craps all over the risen card no prominent american journalist craps all over his co-host and that was my fault the real issue was the me imitating the great japanese announcer stereotypical voice which

good god framed the way it was and framed the way all these people came at me on twitter yes it looks horrifically racist in hindsight i apologize for that do you know what it was me celebrating something awesome about the japanese culture, about New Japan Pro Wrestling, something I've been a diehard fan of for the last few years. All the Japanese MMA I've watched through the years, the passion of the announcer, which reads the names and goes nuts. And you know, you just listen to that. You want to go, yeah. So I kind of went, yeah, like that. And in hindsight, does that look like Mickey Rooney and Breakfast at Tiffany's? Unfortunately, Luke, it did. And good God, am I sorry for that. If you know me, the person, as you do, Luke,

yeah, that's not the lane I'm trying to take. That packaged with a bit that made me seem very ignorant to all things Risen MMA. I had so many Japanese MMA journalists, fans, fighters coming at me. Andre Sukumath coming at me. I mean, everybody coming at me. Andre Sukumath coming at me. I mean, everybody coming at me. And rightfully so, if the only snippet you saw was that 30 seconds. So I need to be more knowledgeable of that.

I'll sit on that. But I got improperly framed, Luke, for the whole, I've got nothing against Asians line, which was ill-placed. But really, that's a long bit of you and I making fun of President Donald Trump, who always says, I have many black friends after saying something, you know, inflammatory or whatever. It was ill-placed, packaged together. It looked really bad. I take the L.

I apologize if I block you on Twitter. It was really because the shitstorm was getting overwhelmed and I was really shocked at how far this stuff can go. But, you know, it's a wake up call. So I'll take that L. It was my fault. I was ins shocked at how far this stuff can go but you know it's a wake-up call so I'll take that L it was my fault I was insensitive um you know what it's hopefully there's a good that come from this hopefully people will now open their eyes to this risen card and be excited about it and oh by the way I did care about the main event and I do love Horiguchi and have watched many of his fights so I did frame myself as ignorant a-hole factory town American opposite you there luke for a stupid bit

i apologize i'll take the l you could unfortunately luke take any snippet of 30 seconds from the history of you and i being on microphones together uh your constant hatred of my people i could put out there on the internet and we could probably shut you down but i know luke it's a bit it was a stupid bit i'm sorry when you say your people do you mean whites well yeah you are very inflammatory against white but i really meant i really meant my fellow christian soldiers in this game luke who you just can't give the benefit of the doubt to but that's fine luke i don't hate you for it and anyone who's coming at luke saying why didn't you come out and make a statement because it was a stupid shitty little thing there okay i did the announcer voice

out of celebration like they are awesome i get that it was misconstrued i'm sorry i don't think we need to go too much deeper on this luke i will be watching the risen fight um i will also be looking going out of my way to check out who wins the tanaka ioka fight which is just as good by the way in terms of uh fights that hardcore fans want to and need to see by the way where is that boxing fight airing not in the u.s unfortunately there is a um japanese subscription service that you can get a trial for for like 395 like a three-day trial and that will allow you to watch it but unfortunately it's not going to air in the u.s and it's a great fight and every new year's eve just like risen does you know there's usually a big boxing card as well.

And these two specific fighters, I don't think they've fought in 2020 since last New Year's Eve. So it's a big deal. It's a big fight. I'm not who you thought I was. I get why you thought I was who you thought I was. And I apologize. But from there, Luke, can we stop with the, you know, BC was an ignorant slut all along. And Showtime only hired him because he's the boxing guy

and this guy hates MMA and he wouldn't know a fight if Conor McGregor wasn't in it. Like, that mixed with the, you know, you hate everyone who isn't white talk. Can we just get past that, please? Yes, we certainly can. I mean, the only thing I would add to this is I take BC at his word.

I know who he is. Like, you'll note he didn't apologize about the dana white stuff because there was nothing to apologize for right but in this one you know listen we're trying to do a show that we want to be remembered for our best stuff not our worst stuff but in the attempt to sometimes do uh a mix of levity and everything else uh listen sometimes it doesn't always work and when it doesn't you gotta own And when it doesn't, you got to own up to it. And I don't have to add anything out about it. And Brian did a great job and he'll be fine. But listen, Brian is one of my best friends in the business. One of my good friends, I think,

generally. And when he says things like this, I absolutely take him at his word. I don't think he has any malice whatsoever in his body. I hope you understand that. He is a student of the game. In fact, all he's ever tried to bend in his life is somebody who gets by on knowledge and passion and everything else. Listen, someone was making fun of us on the internet, BC, and they were like, oh, it's two guys in their 40s trying to relive their 90s, like the 1990s. And I'm like, yes, but in an ironic way.

We don't actually think we're cool or edgy enough to do that. We're just trying to have a little bit of fun. But to the extent that we err in either direction on this, we have a whole segment called Dead Wrong where we ask the audience to hold us to account. It's part of what we do here. Yeah, I was dead wrong. I was dead wrong.

I'll take the L there, okay? So that's it. I don't think anything else has to be said. People wanted me to come out and condemn you. No, I'm going to let Brian have his say, see what he says, and then we'll go from there. I'm fully satisfied with everything you had to say because I know you don't mean any malice. You did trip up.

You tripped over your ski. I mean, look, why did I say I have nothing against Asian people? Because I was expecting you to say, what, you're not going to watch this because you're racist? It was a shitty comeback joke. I know, I know, I know. Listen, we should be granted the ability to make the attempt at levity. If it doesn't work, then we also have to acknowledge it didn't work. And that's what we're doing here.

That's exactly what we're doing here. Final question, and I mean seriously, because this is a good teaching moment for all of us, me included for my ignorance there. Can you imitate someone's voice without being racist? I mean, I watched Sean Connery say, welcome to the rock, and that's a horrible impersonation last night. And I must have said it 75 times after that.

And then I threw my kid's names in it. And then I was like, welcome to the bathroom. And I was really good. Does that mean I'm, you know, I mean like, am I against Scottish people now? No, I'm celebrating a, a, a sort of fun thing there. All right. Yeah. It's just, everything has to be, I don't want to do a show that's careful, but I'm not trying

to do a show that's like shitty to everybody else, which I'm sure you feel exactly the same. And so there was just, listen, it could have been communicated a lot better. That's really the long and short of it, I think. The one thing I would say is, I do think that there's a, I said this before on Monday and I'll say it again. Listen, I'll throw in my bone here. Japanese MMA fans, they love what made,

and to an extent still does, make Japanese MMA a little bit different, the pageantry. It just feels something like it's removed from the normal North American sensibilities. It's often, and this one will be in a ring, for example. So, and a New Year's Eve is like the most hallowed part of that tradition.

It used to be a really big tradition, and it fallen on hard times uh for a lot of different reasons and so going after them on their most special day and occasion even if it's not as big as it once was they're going to be sensitive about it i think they're a little again the comments about like the karate chop in the air and shit separate from that just about the fight itself uh you know they're a little bit uptight about it if you ask me but i will say it also deserves to be reiterated here and credit to kaya sakura who tweeted us for crying out loud that main event is legit it's super super legit if you're into that kind of thing there are other gems down the card your mileage may vary on that like brian's and i's i mean i like a little bit more than he does but not too much more it's not that whole thing is not

necessarily for me so just on the arguments about the fights, you have to recognize where the, the, the legitimacy is. That main event is as good as anything and better than most you would see in North American MMA. Beyond that, whatever, I acknowledge it. But I think on those things, they got a little bit uptight about it. What killed UBC, and you've already answered it, we don't have to go back over, was the, was was the was the two-step between that and the imitation but okay we're you know we i think we clear that up and so let's move on from that i bc you have been a rough couple of weeks in your household but you know what tells you something spotlight's on you buddy people are aware of what you're up to i mean it's a wake-up call you know it's a wake-up call it's a it's a

positive wake-up call so thank you Thank you to everybody who constructively criticized. And yeah, you know, you got to own up to what you say, Luke. And while, you know, you can do a boys club show and you can take fun shots at each other, not everybody's in on the meta joke from episode to episode. So let's remember that. That's exactly correct. All right.

Well, with that out of the way, let's now move on. And by the way, we will do a recap of it on, I guess, Monday's show. But for now, let's talk about something else that was in the news bc and then we'll get to your garcia uh and campbell preview but first things first comes out shemayev was supposed to fight next well i know yeah next month but in a few weeks basically on that uh i forget what show it was either the wednesday or the sunday show it was the wednesday one which by the way luke sorry to interrupt you has a preliminary start time of 9 a.m eastern which is like yes oh that is awesome we might have to we might have to do a different morning combat that day so we can react to the show afterwards we'll figure it out at that point

but he's out now we don't really know why he's out although he did in the week leading up he was posting with pictures of him with a ufc belt and now he's out you know that not not necessarily the best karma to do that kind of a thing, but whatever. I hope he's okay, whatever the situation may be. BC, your reaction to one, Khamzat Shumai not being against Leon Edwards, and two, Leon Edwards made it explicit.

He is still looking to be on that card. And BC, I got to say, if anybody deserves to get something right at the beginning of 2021 after the shit they had to eat in 2020, it's got to be Leon Edwards. Your reaction? Yeah, it's Risen fans number one, and it's Leon Edwards number two here. Look, it's tough to see this fight fall apart because it's like the second time you got all CTs'd for it.

Let me sanitize the show moving forward here. You got a little CTs action, and it got taken away from you. We need to find out really badly. It comes out on that level. Can Leon beat the company's new favorite toy to get to the title? Well, it's not going to happen. So, yes, I want to give Leon Edwards really every possible biggest name. Like, look, who are they going to put in there opposite him?

He should stay in the main event and he should get the fight he has deserved up to this point. Not the title fight. If you think he deserves title fight, look, you got an argument, but I don't think he has. I don't think he's beaten enough guys really proven in that top five area, but he does deserve a giant top five type name to prove to you that he's ready in his next fight to extend that win streak into the title chase. Can we just put him in there with Jorge Masvidal? Probably not on short notice. Really bad idea. Not for a Wednesday in between regular TV fight night.

But he needs a name on that level, Luke. Is there anyone that we can get on two weeks? No. So you might as well want to take him off the card altogether. Am I right? Well, if he doesn't want to, then I think you have to at least acknowledge the wish which means uh who's available Neil Magny raised his hand uh Vicente Luque wants another crack at him and there was somebody else as well I forgot oh yeah yes it was another one it's like dude those are not like those are not bad choices any of those three, I'm not exactly sure what it gets Leon

other than through the finish line to say, I got a fight, I got it done, it all happened, which he wants to get paid probably at this point, I would imagine. That's a concern as well. So it gets you that. And those are quality opponents, but I think in the case of Luque, he already beat him once before, right? So that doesn't do a whole lot for him.

Magni is an interesting one, and Chiesa I think is a very interesting one, because the way Kiesa could fight him. Of those three, which one do you like the most? I like the Kiesa fight. If this is just, you know, Edward saying, I'm training, I'm ready, give me the main event spotlight, give me a chance to beat a name so then I can call

out a bigger name afterwards. And Luke, maybe this satisfies that. I've been saying, look, he needs a top five name so we can leap into that higher picture maybe just being willing to save the card for the ufc will give him that if he fights somebody like kiesa i mean good that's that's a very reputable name at this point that would be a very good fight on paper i'll go for that one luke okay i'll go for that one and if leon edwards wins that then you're you're at the table you're at the table where the next time we go to figure out after Usman finally fights Gilbert Burns who's next,

you're going to have an argument to either be next or maybe to get Masvidal or to get something that rewards you for the win streak you're on. You know, he hasn't been marketable enough to put forth, to have his critical success equal his commercial. But I think we've beaten that horse a little bit too much. He doesn't hurt himself,

marketability-wise. He's not making you not want to watch him. He's a great fighter. So at this point, let's give him the chance to hold that main event spot, get that spotlight, and if he can get a win here, yeah, you're right there. You're right where you need to be. My power rankings would be Chiesa 1, Magni 2, and Luke A3.

The only reason I would put Luke A3 is because they already fought each other, which would make a rematch interesting if it happened more organically. But just to kind of force it, it doesn't appeal to me as much as a fresh matchup. The Magni one I do think would be kind of interesting. Magni's rangy. He has great cardio. He could make it a five-round main event, I think, without any kind of issue, right? Because this is supposed to be a main event fight, I believe. So there's a lot of ways where I think he might be the most appealing option,

but I don't know what UFC is going to do. I hope that if, in fact, as he's indicated, Edwards wants to stay on that card, they can find a way to accommodate him because that poor guy has just been through the goddamn ringer. Okay, now it's listed as January 3rd, BC. I'm looking at these odds here. Maybe you can correct the record, but there is a big boxing fight coming up, in fact, with a guy who's not some kind of name that fans are sort of expected to know by virtue of their tenure in the sport. No, this guy's an Instagram star.

He's out there in viral videos. I see on YouTube constantly all the time doing crossovers with other people his age. Ryan Garcia, who might be the future of Golden Boy, if Golden Boy can hang on at all, certainly now with the departure of Canelo Alvarez, he is their Golden Boy, takes on Luke Campbell.

BC, set this up for us. Who are these two, and why is this bout so important? Okay, this is a great fight. A lightweight bout. It was supposed to happen in December. It got moved last minute when Campbell got hurt. Did he get hurt?

Did he have a COVID test? I forgot. He's back. He's back, and he's ready. Here's the deal. You know what this fight is? If you're looking for a UFC MMA equivalent, this is Kamzat Shumaya versus Leon Edwards.

It really is. Only in boxing boxing things get stretched out ryan garcia didn't isn't an overnight sensation we've been talking about him for a couple years but you know in boxing it takes a little bit longer to get to this point but this is his big close-up moment if comes out shemaya went out there and beat leon edwards look we'd be like holy crap the the kid the overnight sensation is ready now for the title level. Brian Garcia, who I have named many times as one of the five sort of pillars who have next in this sport, 22 years old. If he beats somebody on Luke Campbell's level,

like we're having a different conversation Sunday morning. This fight is Saturday evening on DAZN. And because Campbell's a big star in the UK, Luke, they're starting the main card early. I believe it's 6 p.m. Eastern is when you're going to see either the main event or the main card. Check your local listings. The main card itself starts at 3,

so your main event a couple hours after that, yeah. I mean, first of all, shout out to Eddie Hearn, DAZN, and Oscar De La Hoya for that. A 6 p.m. Eastern start on that. But you asked me to lay out what this fight is. Here's the deal. Luke Campbellbell super elite at 135 pounds he's 32 years old he won a gold medal for the for england in that star-tastic olympic class that got a lot of people in the uk excited about boxing he's got three pro losses but here's the deal um he lost to ivan mendy in a really tough night

early in his career by split decision. He had a bad night at the office. He went back and avenged that loss. And by the way, Mendy's still pretty good. He's not a bum. Number two, he lost to Jorge Linares by split decision like five days after his father died in a pick-em action fight that could have gone either way. And his other loss, Luke, to Vasily Lomachenko.

But if you remember Campbell kind of put it on him early and had some great moments so Campbell super elite at this point we're gonna find out right now what Ryan Garcia has is he just you know five million Instagram followers and and a lot of shirtless pics of him singing and and hitting the bag in the quick hands or is he legit in the real deal? Here's what I've loved about the build of this fight. Ryan Garcia kind of knows his place now on Golden Boy, as you mentioned. They also have unbeaten welterweight Virgil Ortiz Jr., who also looks to be a future star of the sport. But with Canelo gone, Ryguy's the face of everything

that Oscar and Golden Boy is going to do now. And you know what he's acting like in this build? Not a pretty boy. An absolute badass. Luke, his quotes have been like, I'm going to be the best fighter in the world for the next era. I'm going to knock Luke Campbell out cold. He doesn't respect me. I'm going to break his bones.

He's got nothing for me. I mean, there's been some kind of, I mean, look, it's just talk. But up to this point, Ron Garcia has been all happy-go-lucky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, no, he's serious now. that change i think means something each of his step-ups he has looked fantastic since joining forces with canelo alvarez's trainer eddie reynoso they have sort of ironed out the defensive holes that he had his hand speed is blazing fast he's got power because of that speed great combination puncher and luke first of all luke

campbell should be our favorite fighter because it's two of our names together but um he says after he knocks out luke campbell that he's going right at gervonta davis and he predicts a knockout he thinks in the next two years he's going to be able to fight gervonta devon haney and teofimo lopez jr which by the way those are four of the five guys that have next in this sport along with Shakur Stevenson um he's ready there's no holding them back but Luke Campbell is a southpaw who's tough he's big for the weight class he can box he's got great technical ability and probably one of two things are going to happen here Luke either Ryguy is going to be all that and a bag of chips

and stop this guy mid-fight, and we're all going to be like, holy crap, make fun of him all you want. He's got next. This guy, this is an overnight, we must take him seriously, or this is going to be a really close, difficult fight that goes the distance, and Ryan Garcia needs one of those because Luke Campbell is the underdog, but he's got much more experience.

He's the better technical fighter. He is a live dog in this one to win it, and I cannot wait to see what this looks like. This is very, very much like somebody like Chemayev or Kevin Holland skipping the line and going right up to the top at the title level to find out if they are the goods. Luke Campbell is the guy that's going to, you know, he's the perfect not gatekeeper, not elite gate know, he's the perfect, not gatekeeper,

not elite gatekeeper. He's the perfect title contender right there. You beat him. You can call out a guy like Gervonta. We can get closer to making this fight. Great matchmaking. Let's do this. Yeah.

I mean, the only thing I would add, you know, whatever MMA analogy you want to make, the one that I think of is, is less about a a fight but more about a guy who had positioned himself in a certain way, which is Michael Chandler. Michael Chandler coming from Bellator. Who should he fight? This guy, that guy, this guy, that guy. And he says, either I am the guy I think I am or I'm not. But either way, we're going to find out.

That's what this fight offers to you. And again, it'll air on DAZN 3 p.m. It starts 3 p.m. in the east, and it will take place at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. I'm assuming with limited fans. Are there going to be fans of this one? Yeah, there will be.

There's a couple thousand they're planning, yeah. Going to be just COVID central up in that bitch, huh? Just spreading that cove. Look, Texas Forever Street, right? They don't care. Come on, bro. They really don't give a fuck. We might as well embrace Texas because we ain't getting big boxing fights in 2021

unless they're in Texas in a giant-ass dome, okay? So we better get used to this. Luke, it doesn't mean you have to go there, though, by the way. Yeah, well, thank God. Okay, well, that's it for us for legitimate news stories, so to speak. So now, BC, we have to do our awards. Do we not? We do.

First, real quick, Mikey Garcia, the great three-division champion of boxing, he's the younger brother, of course, of the future Hall of Fame trainer and former world champion Robert Garcia. They did lose their mom this week, Luke, due to COVID. Just want to give some condolences out to the Garcia family, one of boxing's best families, by the way uh salt of the earth type people tough to see that but yes this is not only episode 100 luke and we do have some bonuses off of that plan for the future but it's award season so um we got a mixture of uh the comedic, the ridiculous, the good. No racism at all in this one, Luke.

So I'm pretty excited. Good. A racism-free award show are usually the ones that people tend to like. All right, BC, you can go first. I'll just set up the award name, but then you go through and tell the story. You would like to give an award for deadbeat matchmaking. Yes.

Look, in boxing, you can see all different kinds of matchmaking. And boy, did we see it in July. Dazon put out a card. Golden Boy promoted fighter, Sinisa Estrada, a very talented world champion in the smaller weight classes. Luke, do you remember when she fought that soccer mom and it lasted seven seconds in the first round? She literally walks over just like this and then knocks her the fuck out.

Bop. Oh, my God. That was, yeah. Look, I get where we were in quarantine. We were trying to get back in the ring, trying to stay busy, trying to put on these Eddie Hearn backyard cards, you know, or whatever. And, wow, this was a little bit gross, Luke. She basically fought, you know, I would insert my Uber driver joke,

but instead she fought the lady who gives the orange slices at your daughter's soccer match, Luke, okay? Dude, they literally went to Planet Fitness and found the fittest person there and were like, hey, would you fight a pro boxer? And that's what she got. And she got sent to hell, Luke. Worse than I did by half of Japan.

Rightfully so, by the way. But yeah, wow. Yes. She got sent to hell by all of the world. I mean, this was ugly as shit. Seven seconds. I mean, the best part was it was seven seconds. But good Lord.

I mean, what commission sanctioned this, by the way? Let's see. This wasn't a Nettie Hearn backyard party, right? No,

this was USA. Was this in California, at like the Indio California, at like that casino with no crowd?

Maybe. Fantasy Springs Casino. This may have been, Luke, a, sorry,

Native American, not Indian. What are we doing here, Luke? Shut us down already. This might be a California State Commission thing. It might be a Tachi Palace type deal. I'm not really sure. Well, whoever did it screwed the pooch on this one. Good lord. That is

Yuga Lee. Alright, Luke. Our next award least appreciated. Is this moment of the year? Is this figure? What do we got here? A lot of things get under the radar in terms of appreciation. Jay's producing ability, not one of them, by the way, Luke.

But shout out to this entity that was underappreciated in 2020. Well, there's two of them. The first one, of course, will be my actual YouTube channel. BC loves to slander it, like he does many things. But the reality is, one, it's taken a major backseat. But two, it taught me everything I know about YouTube, which has really aided our efforts over there at Morning Combat. So for all of the insults that you have hurled my way

and towards the beautiful channel that I have cultivated, and yet now let the weeds grow in the garden because I'm an asshole garden dad about it all. I just want to say it has actually been one of the more beneficial things that I've put together, although I've got to change the SiriusXM thing at the top of the header there because I no longer work with him. But in all seriousness, BC,

that was more just a thing I wanted to do to needle you and to insult you and get you angry. The real thing that I want to say was least appreciated, if I can say that. Josh Emmett versus Shane Burgos. We've always talked about fight of the year and which direction it would go. The two big choices, I think, for a lot of people were Poirier versus Hooker. And then, of course, Yonionijic versus Zhang Wai Li. But...

Or Figueiredo Moreno, Luke, okay? That's another one, too. But the week prior to Poirier versus Hooker was that Burgos versus Emmett fight, which was an absolute cracker of an affair. And I saw at the end of the year, it just did not get the praise that it deserved. I don't think that it deserved to be put on the level, of those two five round fights it was only a three round fight I

think it ended before the end of the third I have to go and check the result again but um you know it was just also this wild back and forth and Emmett was you know super injured and blah blah blah and it was you know crazy uh striking these guys were fucking killing each other just a little bit of a shout out to two guys who are very, very good featherweights who maybe got a little bit ignored when award season came that I thought deserved a little bit of an extra, you know, tip of the cap, so to speak. Tip of the tip, right?

Tip of the tip, that's right. BC, we go to our next award for boxing. What was your fight of the year? Look, I don't think there's a debate on this i think boxing ko of the year you can get a hell of a good debate going but fight of the year you got to go to that top rank bubble mgm grand conference center october espn that 140 pound thriller between jose zapata ivan bar, Luke. Five rounds, eight knockdowns. Zepeda got up off the canvas four times, including twice in the first round.

Let's remember, Jose Zepeda, they call him Chone. He's a counterpuncher. He's a classy boxer. He got dropped twice in the opening round against a former world titleist. Had to get up and become a brawler. Got dropped twice more, including right before the knockout. And he got up and he sent Ivan Baranchik to the deep, dark depths

with a knockout of the year contender that was brutal. Here it is. Good Lord. Oh, my God. Got him on the chin. Snapped the leg back um here was a fighter Luke who found himself in hell found himself in the deep end of the pool but he but he kept swimming and this was a a beautiful fight it it wasn't a title fight but it you know it catapulted the

winner certainly toward a world title and it was just one of those special goddie ward type nights where a rocky movie broke out in front of you and you were like i i don't care if you like boxing or if you hate it call your friends turn on espn right now you're watching something special break out and uh you know you never know what fights like this can do to take off years in their lives but these guys were warriors on this night and would not be denied until one was removed from their consciousness. And you guys, you and Rafe did a podcast on the whole thing because you were so moved by it, correct? Yeah, I had a boxing hardcore hard-on from here to Hanover, Luke.

Good lord. How far is Hanover? Like five inches? It's only about two inches Luke from the floor okay well we've had a unanimity on this one I had no better choice certainly than BC's so I echo everything he says about the Zepeda and Baranchuk fight he was the one who put me onto it because I did not actually

watch it live I had to go back and watch it and it was you know I'm one of these sort of cynical bastards. Someone's like, oh, you should go back and watch it. It's great. I'm like, eh, how great could it be? Pretty great. Pretty great. In fact, if you're an ESPN Plus subscriber, I believe it's accessible to you right now. And if you've not seen it, he's right. Five rounds, eight knockdowns. It's fucking insane. So go to check that out. Now, BC, the next one is also your award as well it's blue balls of the year bc to whom do you donate your blue balls uh people might misconstrue where i'm going with this award luke but what it really is is the single fight across combat sports that we were

most insanely excited for that completely failed to deliver. It turns out, Luke, that Dana White was correct. And I'm sorry, he was incorrect. Because remember the matchmakers told him, don't book this fight? But he did it anyway. It was UFC 248. It was March. It was Israel Adesanya defending the middleweight title against Yoel Romero.

Luke, I was like Dana, out there telling anyone who would listen to me on a microphone that this was going to be the best fight of your lifetime, that Romero was going to put Adesanya through a deeper level of hell than Gastelum did, and we were going to find out, can you swim against this rock, this man that he's built out of cast iron not skin and bones luke i don't think any of us expected yoel romero to come out and try to like uh you know bob and weave and and fight negative and oh by the way like i'm not gonna rip him for this this was his strategy and i thought he won the fight three rounds to two he ended up losing a close decision and i don't think dana

ever got over this because he didn't deserve this opportunity right he had been coming off three losses questionable ones but three losses dana basically said adesanya wants to fight you he's going out of his way to prove his manliness i'll give you that chance and this was joel's moment and and and he didn't do it luke he you know he almost backdoored it but this was not the action fight it should have been in many ways we were dependent upon romero coming forward and also let's like let's say this i love adesanya you love honest you god you ckb for life brother okay but um i felt that he took an unnecessary chance in not putting his stamp on this fight he

could have lost this decision luke you know you put three different judges in there he could have lost this and i feel like he got away with one on this night maybe you're maybe you could tell me i'm wrong maybe it was smart for him to stay on the outside but he got kicked in the face early and he never really came forward he kind of did enough to kind of you know work from the outside did he have a guy unwilling to fight him yes a guy who was fighting a negative style but uh this was supposed to be a war luke i was wrong two counter strikers i was wrong okay i'll take that l thank you it's not exactly true that out of sign is a counter striker which i showed in one of the episodes of dissectsected.

So it's worth pointing that out. I mean, he does a lot of counterstriking, that is true, but I don't know that it's correct to describe him as that kind of a fighter specifically. But I agree that relative to the hype, what did you get with this fight? Not a lot. Now the good news is Adesanya afterwards goes out and absolutely puts it on Paulo Costa in a way where the fight is so dominant that in a way it almost didn't deliver because you thought it'd be a little bit more back and forth, but at least there was a finish and one guy was landing and blah, blah, blah.

Like there was many ways you could look at that as a, oh, he made up for what happened in the Romero fight. So that I think all as well, it ends well for Adesanya. And then for Romero, I mean, I didn't want him, see him necessarily cut from UFC, but going to Bellator and what they're trying to put together could be a blessing that you didn't, maybe in disguise or something. There's a lot of ways where both guys have a lot of opportunity going forward to do the right thing. And again, Adesanya already really did with the Costa fight. To me, it's like, I really forgive Adesanya because, you know, yes, I'm a fan of his work.

I think if you're not, something is wrong with you. But more to the point, he, as you indicated, did not have to take that fight. That was supposed to be the Costa fight, which they couldn't make on time. And then they had to push it back until a later date. He took on an unnecessary risk, which is exactly what you want to see from champions who really believe that they're the best it didn't live up to it but

then he rebounded right afterwards with an incredibly dominant performance and you know i do think that the fight was close as you argued i just have a hard time being like romero cleanly won you know if any it was close but if anyone deserved to win, to me, it was Adesanya. It's the kind of thing where if you're Romero, I could say I thought he won, but he can't really argue any kind of screw job because he didn't bring the fight, and neither did Adesanya. It wasn't as bad as Ngannou and Derek Lewis, but yeah, it was what it was. Luke, just real quick though, did you have the same expectations I did?

I was there, and I had one of those feelings. Like, you know, remember, I was at 236, so I saw Adesanya Gastelum and Poirier Holloway back-to-back, and it was one of those like, what a gift to my fandom. I was here on this night sitting in the John Morgan seat in an

orange shirt, not a blue one, and I thought I was going to relive that with this fight. God, was I wrong. Did you have those intentions coming in as well yeah yeah I think I did as well I think all of us did I thought for sure it would just open up in a certain way that it just never did they never it was a lot like Pedro Hizzo and Rico Rodriguez now that was really two counter-strikers in a very clean way but they just couldn't find a way to get the other guy motivated to do the thing that they wanted them to do. And sometimes fights are like that.

Sometimes it's not anybody's fault. Sometimes that's just what you get based on how these two guys want to assess risk and find a way to win. So, you know, the award is deserved, but both guys, I think, still have a lot of fight life, and obviously in the case of Adesanya, especially so,

some life left in them. All right. So we go down to one of my awards, if we can. Can I set it up to you, Luke? It's most conspiratorial of 2020, and there's a lot of people to choose from if you're a big MMA fan, Luke,

because these MMA fighters, they're speaking my language here. Well, funny i've been reading studies um at night about how many ordinary americans relative to how it used to be are believing conspiracy theories and it is a extraordinarily high number but if there is anyone in mma who takes it to the next level and i like the guy this is not i mean I wish he had different beliefs, but I don't think he's a bad guy in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I think he's a doting father and probably a wonderful person. But boy, my man loves some conspiracy theories.

No, it's not Eddie Bravo. No, it's not even, who's the guy who tore his nutsack, BC? Bryce Mitchell? Was it Bryce Mitchell who tore his nutsack? Yeah, I believe so. I believe so. Yeah, no, it's not either of them. In fact, it's Jared Cannoneer. And if you don't believe that, I believe so. Yeah, no, it's not either of them. In fact,

it's Jared Kennedy. And if you don't believe that, check out his Twitter feed. And in particular, his likes, you can go through, you can see like tweets, photos,

media, whatever. Uh, and then you can click on their likes. My man has gone all the way down the rabbit hole on this kind of a thing. And he has entered a world that frankly, I don't necessarily understand bc but it's a lot of q anon stuff he's tweeting at barack obama that they're gonna get him that they're

gonna arrest him and a lot of other things crystals the crystals told him to right oh the crystals thing to me is the most normal thing about some of his other broader worldviews i know a lot of folks do by the way this was another thing during the pandemic people getting interested in rocks and i don't mean in a geological way necessarily like counting them rocks biatch yeah yeah they're just interested in rocks to me i don't find rocks in that way all that interesting but uh if you are if you want to see someone again this is i love jared he's a great dude you know but my man has bought into conspiracy thinking honestly in a way that i

don't think any other mma fighter has spike carlisle kind of dabbled with it the tv fighter the ginger ninja but uh he got a little he see he treaded towards the anti-semitic side which jared has not done and then spike had to pump the brakes and then apologize so he kind of went out of it jared is on the q anon let's get the pedophiles thing you know so he's still got something of a something of a wholesome worldview i would say say, a little bit. I mean, we've seen this in MMA. Ronda was controversial at some point too, remember? Yes, she put out the video. No, she put out a tweet or something being like,

you know, the shooting in Connecticut. What was the kid's place where they killed all those kids? Sandy Hook, yeah. Yeah, Sandy Hook. You know, look into it. Like, sorry, Ronda. No, there's nothing to look into except your brain. to look into by the way i'm certainly not going to stand up here for the sandy hook conspiracy i just want to say somebody's saying look into

something it doesn't mean that they're batshit crazy and should be locked up luke okay have we seen enough government secrets i mean let's look at the plot line of the rock right it was all based on exposing government secrets okay thank you it's also a fictional movie designed by Hollywood for maximum entertainment. Can I tell you a good story about crystals real quick? Yes, please. They make good burgers.

You think I'm a big-time trash panda? Have you ever hang out with one of my best friends in this game, Brett Okamoto of ESPN? I think Ioana was right, Luke, in calling him the best-looking journalist.

I think you want to fuck Brett Okamoto more than anyone else does. No, I just love that guy. Including his own wife. So Brett and I are at UFC 201 in Atlanta, right? Robbie Lawler, Tyron Woodley. And he's driving the rental car, and we're working together at ESPN. And I'm like, bro, I got to get some of this Atlanta fast food, right? We don't have these type of chains up north.

We're driving down the road. We come up on a crystal. I'm like, Brett, go't have these type of chains up north. We're driving down the road. We come up on a crystal. I'm like, Brett, go through the drive-thru, bro. We're going to rock it. This is going to be great, right? We're going to eat the crap out of this. We get up to the window, Luke. This man is driving.

I order six things off the dollar menu. I haven't seen a fast food place that has mozzarella sticks, wings. They had all kinds of them. They had crazy stuff at this place. I ordered six things off the dollar menu. Brett Okamoto refused to eat anything from there, Luke, because, you know, he's so like salad-y and in shape and stuff. And he not only was disgusted by my order,

he passed them across through the window with just such like disdain and displeasure and had to open the window as we were driving to get the smell out of the car look i'm just trying to sample the local cuisine of crystal it was fan friggin tastic i had six different amazing items off there this guy's like i am not hanging out with you anymore and at some point did you spill coke on his crotch and then offer to clean it by the way atlanta has great food best breakfast best place to eat a good ass breakfast in this country atlanta georgia thank you uh yes it does have really good food crystals dude crystals used to be i gotta tell you this is uh it sounds like a sad story BC but it's not I'll make it very quick when my mom passed away did your mom have a body at all? yeah keep going

hold on when my mom passed away we had to go and settle some of her affairs at the at the court I don't know if it was the courthouse

it was some administrative building in Georgia and I remember you know this was not a great time and the weather was nice and we were out there in the town square

if you don't think about Marietta Georgia there's this little square next to these train tracks and right by it was a crystals and me and my sister and my brother were like you know we were not having the best day of our lives and we were like what could make this day better and i think it was my sister she was like why don't we just go to crystals so i i let them stay in the park i went over and got i must have gotten 50 of those little burgers that they make. And we went over and I got to tell you, you know, serious things in your life are not going to be helped by fast food indulgence.

But it definitely made the best of a bad situation. I will never forget. That was some of the best fast food consumption I've ever had in my life. You got fast food high. You know that three or four minute high you get right after just consuming way too much fast food beef before it sets in and you want to take a coat hanger and repurpose that food and get it out of you? That three minutes?

Fantastic, Luke. It's got to be the first hit of smack, right? I don't know, but smack must be the shit because people love it. White people love it, Luke. They certainly do. Okay, BC. We had a mutual agreement on this as well.

Fight of the year at MMA. What is it? It's very easy. I forgot what UFC card it was earlier this year. It was Ioana Young Jacek Weili Zhang. Luke, am I saying that name right? I don't want to be ignorant anymore. Okay, don't have to overdo it either.

I mispronounced it. No, I'm serious. I'm serious. I got made fun of this on the Aaron Bronstetter podcast. It's Zhang Weili, correct? I don't want to be ignorant anymore. Okay, you don't have to overdo it either. I mispronounced it. No, I'm serious. I'm serious. I got made fun of this on the Aaron Bronstetter podcast. It's Jung-Hwa Lee, correct? I think that's right. I think that's right.

Thank you to these incredible, incredible warriors. Luke, this is the greatest female fight of all time, greatest fight of this year, and again, I was lucky to be front row that this job affords, and I was not only humbled is not the right word. And we have referenced this in the past. But Luke, being this close to war, like this was not a fight. At some point in about round four, this stopped being a fight. This was a war of attrition, a test of wills, where neither were going to back down until

like that Zepeda-Barancik fight. One finished the other, only it didn't happen. And while it didn't happen, Joanna's body was just, I mean, going to epic alien proportions. Their willingness to keep that hellacious pace, to not say, you know, to never say die, to never put on the brakes and keep coming at each other. It puts you in that weird spot as a lover of fights and a journalist when you're this close to the action where you are afraid of what is going to happen next. And, you know, very similar to the first Mark Hunt giant Silva fight where you're, you know,

Bigfoot Silva, where you were just like somewhere around round four, you're like, I don't think we should have five round fights because these guys might kill each other there was a moments in that at least for me this close seeing yoana's head sitting right by you know near her corner um wow this the reason why it wins against all the others luke is because it was for a title but because the the pace never wilted now did it it didn't have crazy character moments that we love in fight of the years meaning one didn't get knocked down and almost out or nearly submitted and have to come back it was largely a stand-up war of two trains that just kept colliding but again the pace and the will shown by both and when you consider that we were looking at this as joanna's last stand at the title level now we don't know where she's going to go from here right she's like 33 we don't know where she's going to go from here, right? She's like 33. We don't know where she's going to go.

But this was looked at as sort of her last chance to prove that she's of this level. She was of this level and then some. You scored the fight for her. I had it for Weili very close. But, you know, Zhang Weili was just that much better. And for a young champion to have to be put into this type of hell and to live up to it. What a humbling night at the office. I will tell just as well as I will tell my grandkids one day that I was at, you know,

Adesanya Gastelum and Victor Ortiz, Andre Berto won. And all these great fights I've been lucky to be at or near in the building. Being in the building for this was different than all those. And it was special and uh i'm glad they're okay luke because there was a will in the air that said this is not a sport anymore we're we're fighting we're if we are this is karate kid part two right it's not a tournament daniel son we're in okinawa right now okay you know we want to go full circle on these japanese things but we're in okinawa right now this is not for tournament this is not for sport uh this is you know they were going for it luke and credit to them for

doing that because uh it created this gray area which is dangerous and fun and scary and uh we lived that ride luke i'm sure you saw this and felt this through your tv screen back in what february was this yes i I was not there because CBS, I was not working with them and they did not fly me out and lots of other things. But there was a lot of consternation and debate about why this should or shouldn't be number one. And one of the things you look at is,

I think one of them exceeded it. It may have been Ioana, but I can't remember. But they either exceeded or were nearly at each of them uh attempted 400 significant strikes in the course of five rounds which is just unheard of in the case of Poirier and Hooker they were sub three a lot of other ones are mostly sub three minutes I mean even in that four excuse me that fifth round um they were combined for nearly 200 significant strike attempts between the two of them which is to to me a big difference, right? When you end the fifth with that amount of volume, and you'll see UFC fights where guys are like going pretty hard at it in the course of three rounds. They don't even have an accumulated

100 significant strike attempts. And you know, we have almost 200 in one round. I mean, it's a shocking level of output. And you can say, oh, well, how much does it matter if you're not hitting each other that hard, but they were badly beaten up. Ioana Njacek was disfigured. Now, I did think she deserved to win, but I can't complain because it was very, very close, very hard. It's always hard to judge when there's not much offense and when there's a shit ton of offense. And here you have the latter of the two. And so it can be really hard to parse exactly what mattered the most. The leg kicks for Ioana didn't seem to count as much in the judges minds as some of the body work and some of the the head hunting that jeng had done and that's okay that you can understand that so it's

a very fair um a way in which it was all adjudicated given what we uh we sort of know and can understand about the fight game but you just have to take your hat off to it i mean it's such a demonstration of the growth of the women's game such a demonstration of the growth of the women's game, such a demonstration of the globalization of MMA. She had this Chinese fighter, and she had all these fights on the Kunlun circuit. You're like, okay, I've definitely heard of them. They've done some good stuff. How good could she be?

Yo, very, very good. And she's probably, for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, BC, probably going to be the tip of the iceberg if they can really develop that Chinese market. There are a ton of good athletes there. There's a ton of martial arts tradition and there's a ton of hunger, I think, to compete on the world stage and getting what you got with Jiang Wai Li was probably a prelude to a much more ambitious and successful future for China. And look, what a boon for women's mma like you know i mean look look at the troubles women's boxing has had not just being considered legitimate but really your criticism

overall which is putting out fights that deserve being considered legitimate women's mma not only went from nothing to really formidable and good but you know that was five ten years ago to have fights like this though that where you're like forget you know those great male fights we saw this year this is the best fight of the year it's the best fight of all time I mean the we've seen where we can compare the craft of women's MMA favorably to men. But now we saw one where we saw the will and the, the, the gruesome action of it. I mean, this again, the, the fighting spirit of these two, I'll never forget that moment. Okay. Well, with that in mind, we move on BC. I'll set you up for this. You had a, um, you had a moment of the year, but it wasn't a moment inside the cage, was it?

No, it wasn't, Luke. It may have been inside some people's package, inside their satchel page there. But, Luke, the moment of the year in combat sports took place on Instagram. And it involved former women's MMA pioneer Gina Carano. No, it wasn't a teaser or a spoiler, Luke, for Mandalorian Season 2, which I'm halfway through and, you know, loving it, despite your discredit to fan service. Luke, Gina Carano surprised her legion of thirsty MMA fans

with a topless photo that Instagram made her take down. Luke, you discredited the joy people had in it right afterwards, Luke, in a very questionable way still to this point. But, Luke, it was a moment, okay? And, wow, I love it when, like, we can't even get the highlights to a Showtime fight that we're referencing, you know, but put nudity up there on the MK screen. Go for it.

That's fine. Thank you, producers. Luke, this was something. It was a great moment, Luke. What a time to be alive for all those thirsty MMA fans out there. Most overrated moment of the year by a million miles. By a million miles. All right, Luke.

Well, thank you. MMA fans have been thirsting after gina who yes is a attractive person but the amount of attention that they spend on like how attractive they claim her to be is like not proportional i'll put it that way and you know she puts out this racy photo which is fine nothing wrong with it but you know all you nerds and virgins like colby covington accuses you of being you know can't't get five feet without having an embarrassing boner on your way to the bathroom. It's like, you know, what are we doing here, folks? You know, you got to get it together.

Wow. Wow. Luke, can't you just say the goat? Thank you. Can't you just do that? I mean, do you have to like now you have to turn on all the people that watch our show, Luke. Okay, now you got to turn on all. I mean, look.

Yes. Yes. It's nice. It's okay. It's nice. Everyone's like, oh, like, you guys are those creeps on the back of the bus with the trench coat on. You can't help yourself. It's like, it's not that cool.

It's pretty damn cool, Luke cool it's pretty damn cool though it's pretty damn cool but uh you know this award isn't it doesn't touch me personally i didn't touch myself this is to the this is a salute to the mma fam luke okay thank you yeah all right very good uh you have to set up the next one yeah luke we have another award uh it's it's's the award for most helpful in 2020. Luke, what does this award mean? Well, I'm going to give it to something that it's going to sound like, please don't cancel me because obviously it's not about the more serious effects, but it was about something that I thought maybe I should have changed the title

to like clarifying. Too late now because you're going to put the lower third on there. But I'm going to give it to the coronavirus. Now understand. Helpful, Luke. this thing has killed many of people what are you talking yes i don't i don't mean please understand i do not mean helpful in the sense that the damage it has caused which has been uh enormous and been disruptive and calamitous for so many across the world not just in this country I don't mean it in that sense. Helpful in a different sense, BC, which is to say it has been very, very clarifying.

I feel like through this time, at least inside MMA, there were tiny little rifts, little separations between people, between groups, between entities, between sides of an issue. Yeah, we got Dana on one side and the media on the other, Luke. Is that what you're talking about? That's one example of it. That's one example of it.

That's one example of it. But there's many other ones. And what the pandemic did was it set into motion the acceleration of those differences, which I'm not necessarily happy about, but it was very clarifying. It was very clarifying to see who takes the coronavirus seriously, who doesn't. It was clarifying to see who believes in coronavirus seriously, who doesn't. It was clarifying to see who believes in conspiracy theories, who doesn't. It was very clarifying to see who thinks the media serves a valuable function and who doesn't. And you could go on and on and on and on and on down

that list. Which MMA media folks are cowards and didn't want to speak up when it was their time to speak up? It was clarifying. You could go and find any number of different issues related to that that the coronavirus set into motion so certainly i'm not happy about it it's been a disaster for so many people i'm here sitting in my goddamn office and can't go and do anything by virtue of this and i've had it good during the pandemic and to say nothing of you know for example the garcias who have lost somebody and and carl anth Towns lost seven loved ones during the coronavirus. All of these things are disasters. And did you see that senator?

Or not senator, that politician, that 41-year-old dude? Yeah, 41 years old. The Louisiana 5th House District was to be sworn in on Sunday, and he died from the coronavirus. The coronavirus has been a calamity in everyone's life but but it has also revealed major differences in these various communities in which the community grappled with how to deal with it that i feel like we kind of knew was there and now we know for sure is there pick your side because they're very very clear to pick at this point luke this is nothing helpful about the coronavirus. Well, it's a different title. If this helped you realize who's really who,

I mean, look, you know, going on at the same time of the coronavirus was, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement and a lot of things that also opened the eyes of us and saw what line, you know, what side of the fence we're on in terms of, I mean, you know, not my Japanese faux pas, notwithstanding, of course. But, you know, what side of the fence we're on in terms of, I mean, you know, not my Japanese faux pas, notwithstanding, of course.

But, you know, I will. Yeah, I guess I get your point, Luke. I just don't want to, you know, be a I mean, can't we just I mean, we we saw two giant melons. I'll give an award for that. I'm not giving an award for this. OK, yeah, it's not. I mean, you know, we're these are not really awards awards.

They're just kind of like moments to note things. But OK, we can move on. All right, all right. BC, I'll set it up for you here. Again, we had easy unanimity on this one. Fighter of the year in boxing, BC, speak for us here. I did not think this choice was especially difficult. Yeah, look, it's been a very weird and hard year for boxing, right?

Because there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. It wasn't as easy as Dana White made it look to just come back and make great fights, right? And we saw a lot of great fighters have one performance. We saw a lot of big-name fighters not fight at all in boxing or fight once against stay-busy, you know, forgetful events. So in some cases, you're looking at who had the best win to become your fighter of the year but i think when we look when we'll look back on 2020 years from now we'll look at it as the rise of teofimo lopez jr the 23 year old unified or maybe even undisputed depending on your knowledge of boxing politics lightweight champion who said he was going to go

out there and take on the pound for pound king vasily Lomachenko and do everything him and his dad said they would. Okay, they didn't knock him out, but they went out there and they beat him in a close but clear decision in one of the year's best fights in terms of drama and needing to see it. And certainly, I think the performance of the year. I mean, you go out there and you beat a guy who so many had as number one pound-for-pound for years and do it not with one big punch because you're the younger, bigger, stronger guy. Go out there and become a problem and outbox him.

Outbox the best boxer. Some people thought of this era, right? Maybe the greatest amateur boxer of all time. You've made a giant statement. So even though Teofimo only had one win and one appearance, I think he's your fight of the year. Cause there's no other win. And I think number two in the voting is probably Tyson Fury for that, for claiming he was going to knock out Deontay Wilder and then doing just

that. But there's really no other win in this category. Those guys who had had nice years, Errol Spence came back with a big win. Joe Smith Jr. at light heavyweight won a world title out of nowhere and knock people out. But Luke, uh, this was Teo's year.

And, you know, sometimes that happens. You look back, you know, who won MMA in 2011? Well, that was Jon Jones' year, right? You know, in 2020 in boxing, that's Teo Fimo Lopez's year. I mean, there's so many things you could say about this win. It wasn't a rematch like the Tyson Fury one where Tyson Fury had 12 rounds to sort of figure out Deontay and what worked and what didn't this was your first go obviously the results of the second fight with Fury was a lot more dramatic but nevertheless it was a second crack this was

not this was the first one and you had a situation when I told you about we discussed it pre-fight BC which was some guys man it doesn't matter what combat sport it is they just jump off the screen and Teofimo Lopez was that guy to me when he was hitting people with behind-the-back shots and knocking out folks within a round that he was not supposed to even beat. There was just this real ability to rise to the occasion and incredible athleticism. Lomachenko coming out to the Matrix theme and Matrix shorts and this huge reputation. And from the word go, Lopez was totally unintimidated. Not intimidated even a little bit.

Knew he could win, went right after it. And then when Lomachenko began to rally in the second half of that fight, Lomachenko got bodied, basically, in that 12th round by Lopez, who just made sure whatever little moment he might have in the second half, it's not going to be enough to take this fight from me, ended it with authority as the better man. I just thought it was one of those moments where, you know, you're just not going to see a guy capture this kind of titles

with this kind of an uphill climb against this kind of an established figure on this kind of a stage. And remember, it wasn't even on pay-per-view. They did the right thing, and they put it on network television. Man, what a win for Teofimo Lopez. By the way, speaking of your MVP of all combat sports in 20 weeks, let's give ESPN that credit. Shout out for them putting a few extra dollars in the pot

and putting that on regular television, because that's the type of win that the masses deserve to see, a breakout star moment, and Teofimo had that so very enjoyable uh okay bc with that in mind we have to set this up now you actually were better about making this happen so why don't you walk us through it we wanted to put out an award donk of the year for morning combat in 2020 what's a donk well it's luke's uh sort of salute to the donkey-ass followers of our show. But it's really, we've got some impactful, consistent, loyal viewers, subscribers to what we do who have become contributors in a lot of ways. Why do we have segments like fan submissions?

Because one specific guy went out of his way to love our show so much and share his gift and talent with us to start a revolution. So it was pretty clear to Luke and I when we looked across the board of many people who had big years in supporting us. And by the way, unsung heroes, like people with great Twitter accounts, like Kaposa or Timboxao, who fuel Have You Seen This Shit, The Drunken Swan, who's in my DMs all the time, giving me great videos. To all the people who spread the word on this show.

But nobody, Luke, was a bigger donk in 2020 for what we did here at Morning Combat and what we do than a man who lives in Italy of Greek origin. Christos Christoforos. Otherwise known as Webscream. Your 2020 Donk of the Year. The originator. The innovator. The man who started

a graphic, artistic revolution of taking the inside jokes we do and putting them to great pieces of art. Luke, this man has been so valuable and loved and adored in this sphere for his handiwork, for his love

of all things ridiculous that we do, and the translation he has done in creating these great memes and videos and whatever, that I had to reach out to the man and say, we need you to speak. I don't want to speak of you. We need you to speak for this great honor. So if we can Luke throw to the videotape

I haven't even watched it yet because I wanted to hear it the first time as long as our Gaff can make sure we can hear it. I'm not even sure but let's hear from web screen Me dunk of the year 2020 it has been a weird and difficult year, but Morning Combat has been a pillar, a point of reference for all of us. This is why it has been a pleasure for me to give back to the show and to the community and to bring some joy during these green times.

It has been absolutely astonishing to see the community rise up and fill the fan submission segment with amazing material. Shouts to every single one of you awesome creators. And shouts to you, Luke, Brian, Rashad, Rafe, Jay, People of Malka, Showtime and CBS Sports. I raise my totally legit morning combat mug and say may 2021 be less weird for all of us and may all of our gains be hey guys this is web screen oh salute salute to the great uh wow wow

yeah he did, Luke. And by the way, we don't have Dick Hulls and Scott M. Rizzo and all these guys without this man creating this platform for us. It should be noted, lots of good creators, many of them doing some of the best work. It's amazing. We're grateful to have them all. But I feel like the guy who kick-started it all,

it's got to be WebScream. And the best, the best of the group you know arguably as well i mean really the you know look at it look at this handiwork luke very nice man as well so shout out to uh christos we wish you and your family well in 2021 thank you for giving back to us and supporting us so often and thank you look obviously to all of our viewers listeners even the people that hate us for uh you know helping us get to where we are episode 100 a century mark luke all right who would have thought right pretty pretty amazing pretty amazing uh all right so uh we just you want to throw it to me or you want me to just

set it up here yeah luke we each have our own picks for uh for mvp of LVP, least valuable player of 2020. Let's start positive. Luke, who is your MVP of combat sports in 2020? I'm going to give it to CBS Sports. And I know that sounds like, oh, he's kissing his own boss's asses. Well, sort of. I guess I am. Because they made this all possible.

Like, we would not be doing this show on a Wednesday as we're doing it right now were it not for them. Now, of course, I have to give it to Showtime as well and the folks at Malka. And there's a lot of players involved. But the engine behind it all was our mutual boss, Kieran Portley, EBC, who had this idea of a dream for morning combat. Not just a three-day-a-week podcast, but, you know, when the world gets a little bit back to normal, doing a little bit more road work and building upon what shows can be inside combat sports, folks have only seen just a little bit, a tiny sliver of it,

because the pandemic has made it what it is, unfortunately. But that will not be forever. That is not a lasting thing. It will be a lot more. Hopefully, there'll be some Bellator stuff that we get a chance to do, some UFC stuff, too, and, you know, we'll see how it all goes. But I'm not sure whether we're showing, you know, oh, I guess it's CBS Sports is the television channel I meant the company but okay neither here nor there you get the idea BC somebody made a commitment that allows this thing

that we built to grow into what it can be we still have barely scratched the surface but at least we are full-time multiple days a week and slowly starting to hit the road, at least with some of the more Showtime boxing stuff, which is great. But again, also just a little bit of what it's going to be. So got to give shout-outs to the folks who made it all possible. Timing is everything. CBS opened the checkbook and said, you know, we want to expand on what's going on, and they wanted to bring you on.

And look, if people aren't even – people love Morning Combat, still have no idea what CBS Sports HQ is, our live 24-7 streaming network that Luke and I are on all week, getting you previewed, reviewed, recapped, all that on all things Combat Sports. Luke's a big part of that. It's going to be a lot more,

as Luke teased, on the road in the future. You know, think of like, incredible live coverage. But it was a perfect storm. Timing is everything that the Viacom CBS merger happened, that Combat Sports played such a big role in that, that CBS Sports became one-on-one with Bellator MMA, that Showtime Boxing is, you know, poised to have a huge year.

So, Luke, everything being everything, yes, this has been fantastic. When we launched MK, one day a week, Mond Mondays in the bomb shelter, I was excited. I was optimistic. I was, you know, cautious. I was, you know, hey, one day, one day down the road, if this thing can stick, I'd love to be basically like, you know, five days a week, which we almost really are right now. We're three days live. We hit you with enough bonus around that where it's basically MK all day, nearly every day. But to see CBS Sports come get on board as they have and make you a co-worker of me day to day, Luke, it's been awesome. I never would have in Vegas at the Conor McGregor cowboy fight, and I got a call from one of our supervisors that's like, you know, you think Luke Thomas would be interested if we went

after him, you know, to join what we do here? And I was just like, wow, this thing's really going to blow up. So as much as we want to shout out CBS Sports, obviously Showtime was the label that paid us and Brian Daly and all the great folks there who came up with this idea, who are still fueling us and have great plans for us for the future. But yes, Luke, thank you for shouting out CBS Sports. It brought you and I together. If this is our last episode based on everything that happened in Risen, then I will say it was the most fun time of my career. Yes. And I can go back to my personal YouTube channel and tilt you forever. Thank you. Luke, my MVP of combat sports in 2020 i almost offer it

with lament because of how much i've been sent to hell by this man recently luke but uh regardless we are truth tellers in this space and morning combat probably would not have had the success it has had this year and maybe we wouldn't even be rolling in dough and in in so good if it wasn't for dana white so tachi palace disaster notwithstanding once dana white secured state commission support federal support and he took the chances he did to get combat sports back on the map i came on this show and told you this guy could be a folk hero in the end because i believe that it would set the groundwork for boxing to come back for team sports to come back dana white and his team and let's not give dana all the credit despite that four minute jerk off scientology video luke um it's it's the pr

team it's the matchmakers it's the you know the people that get out there on the road and and set up the the logistics to make this happen d Dana White and the UFC was very valuable in 2020 to putting what we do back into business. Luke, you and I filled time in March and April the best we could, reviewing movies, having fun drinking episodes. Showtime let us watch some shows from the archives. We did that really fun show with Mauro Ranallo and Scott Coker looking back at Strikeforce Classics.

Could we have done that for six, seven, eight months? I'm not sure, Luke. And Dana White and company getting the ball rolling, getting back on track. It did set a precedent and set some momentum. And, you know, sports isn't all the way back. We're trying. But whether you agreed with it or not,

we did Spence garcia and gervonta santa cruz and domes with 10 15 000 people there and it and it worked out in boxing and we've done ufc every single week pretty much and we've done bellator back with some big shows and none of this would have happened you know as smoothly if dana didn't do things the responsible way which is when by the way we all turned and supported him and said, yes, you're taking a chance, but you're doing it the right way. I wish you luck. And yes, it's not lost on us, Luke, even on us clowning on that ridiculous video or arguing against it. It's not lost on us that Dana's the MVP, that you and I had things to talk about every week, had a reason for CBS and Showtime to keep paying us.

And MMA, let's not forget for that, UFC in particular, for about two months was the only show in town. CBS Sports was sending me down to the studio after UFC events to do a half-hour live show on CBS Sports HQ because it was the only thing going on. Those were some fun times. We don't have that without Dana. So, Dana White, you are the real MVP of 2020,

and it's a shame that you went to the extremes you did to take that victory lap and let Tom Brady and Shane Victorino slam dunk on us in the Instagram comments, but thank you, Dana, just the same. Yeah, he's not my MVP. I would say that the fighters and the coaches the people who actually put themselves at great personal risk deserve much more of a shout out but that's just me being literal uh okay bc last you have an award huh you have a an lvp do you have a least valuable player in 2020 in combat sports

god i'd have to think about that not not the top of my head why you have we have to get through this fucking shit it's we've already been doing this an hour and 20 minutes wow wow this guy ain't why don't you why don't you how about you drink already luke okay why don't you do i know i was i was i was fully expected to until another coward bowed out but okay why don't we just do this i was just gonna shout some some shade at dionte wilder had a bad year all right a lot of people have great years through this crap he had a very bad year taking the L against Tyson Fury coming up with 86 excuses firing his co-trainer uh that was a rough year across the board uh Luke do we have fighter of the year in MMA do you want to take

this one Luke yeah this one's not very hard again it was unanimity between BC and I we didn't really disagree hardly at all I don't think how you would you would be hard pressed to disagree with this pick no matter what. If you wanted to pick Tyson Fury in boxing, wouldn't argue with you too much, but me and BC didn't agree. But the one we think just feels like it's just a runaway choice in MMA. Devison Figueredo, your UFC flyweight champion. Now we know his last fight ended, of course, with a draw against Brandon Moreno, but how do you pick anybody but this guy? I mean, here's what he does. He beats Benavidez, okay, misses weight, but then does it again even more authoritatively, then goes and beats Alex Perez, and then goes and has a fight of the year, one of the best,

if not the best fights in the history of that weight class. So you have a weight miss, and you've got to draw in the end, But everything else in between is just so magical. Now, that doesn't mean that it was the round of the year. I would say round two belongs to Poirier and Hooker. Maybe not even performance of the year. If you wanted to find one single fight, you could maybe pick Adesanya against Costa if you wanted to. Or, you know, there's a lot of ways you could go.

But the body of work. In 2020, who did the most at an entertaining way or just did the most at a high level? The runaway choice here is your flyweight king. Now, I can't wait to see what happens next. Maybe they'll run it back and do another fight with Moreno. Maybe Cody Garbrandt will go down to 125. I don't know exactly what the future holds for this guy. But in 2020, despite all the ups and downs and some of the, know listen making weight was our missing weight I should say was not great I can't I can't slight him for the draw it's one of the most satisfying draws you're ever going to see in combat sports and everything else was absolute crushing domination not merely on the ground with that unusual entry into the guillotine against

Perez but just the vicious way he beat down Joseph Benavidez, putting him to sleep, knocking him out. I mean, this guy can do it all. Didn't get tired, by the way, despite the weight cut in that five-round fight. Devis and Figueiredo had one hell of a 2020 BC, even if it wasn't exactly perfect. Yeah, look, even if you want to argue, well, he gets the nod because he fought four times and most guys fought two. That's not even the reason. He hit every single category, including, you know, more ceremonial ones,

like he may have saved the flyweight division by becoming the face of it at the right time. He had three finishes on the title level. And in the fourth fight, good God, he was in the hospital the night before and had no reason to be that great, yet went out there and had five round stamina at a hellacious pace and was tough as nails and nearly won probably should have won if we're really going to fine-tooth comb it he saved the division he catapulted himself from largely unknown unless you're a hardcore flyweight fan to like a legitimate top three or four or five pound for pound contender and when they gave him

commercial opportunities to have a close-up right to main event two pay-per-views within three weeks now look i don't have the numbers i'm not going to guess that both both pay-per-views did big numbers i'm not saying that but he delivered in his role which was go out there and finish alex perez to show that he's a badass and that division's fun and then author arguably the fight of the year against Moreno and he did that in three weeks time apart from each other just an insane year I do want to shout out though Adesanya had a great year with the two wins even with the Romero one being you know weird and Jan Blachowicz is not getting any more any love it seems Luke in anyone's top two or three voting. God, what else do you want from him? He finished Corey Anderson, he's 37 years old,

and he went in there and upset Dom Reyes to win the damn title by knockout. I get he didn't go through Jon Jones to get it, but that's a hell of a year, Luke. It is. It is. It's just getting out there back-to-back like that against Moreno after Perez and putting on the fight level that he did, it's just too it's just

too much to overlook you'd have to really people to vote for Jan I just want Jan to get some respect people are like forgetting everything that happened you know yeah I still think Adesanya is going to beat him and beat him quite quite easily but you know what are you going to do all right so let's get to this uh you know BC got sent to hell by the fans of Japanese MMA this week. And then before that by Dana white, but he also got sent to hell a bunch during his interviews. In fact, we've cobbled together a nice little montage of them. Let's take a look. What kind of question is that? Get your own life.

You don't want to fucking talk to me about mine. Why do you give a fuck? Cause you're a journalist. You don't get paid for this shit? What are you doing with your life? Fuck you, bro. Goodbye, CBS. Well, that sounds really easy there.

Sorry about that, Luke. But, like, I don't know. To see the success you had after that? I got time. What do you want to talk about here? We don't have time. No, I mean. You have time.

You have time. I forget we're on TV with the ESPN, but I'll keep my swearing down to a minimum, man. This is CBS Sports right here. You can tell ESPN to pound sand. All right, come on, man. You're a busy man. Hold on, hold on.

I'm talking, brother. Hold on, I'm talking, brother. I love it. But then who's the fucking guy out there? Are you not entertained? Brother. Brother. Yeah, brother.

Please, please. Nice to hear you say my colleague. I didn't know you respected me like that. You have a bunch of little chocolate brownies left in that box for Bud Crawford here, brother, okay? Yes, I've got plenty. He's got some little chocolate brownies. Whatever the hell that means, waiting for you. What is that, a punch?

I don't know. Edibles? Where's Bob Barham? Oh, I know. Best of luck. Brandon Moreno. Huge huevos. waiting for you i hope what is that a punch i don't know edibles where's bob baron oh i know best of luck brandon moreno huge huevos love talking to you my friend i mean i'll say it's true you said so i believe you 23 years old i was probably in a basement doing some things you shouldn't be like one time i got really messed up and i ate two meatball foot long meatball grounders back to back.

And then two slices of pizza on top of that. That was a good day in my life, man. I'm really proud of that. Do you have any kind of a eating record that stands out? Um, I guess you said I ate a whole pack of weenies just because I didn't want my brother-in-law to have none. I think you're the only man to know it. Oh, where's Ronda Rousey's fine ass at? Ringside, wherever we're going to see you.

It's always an entertaining time, sir. Open your door, man, and put a hand out. I promise you guys, I ain't going out like no bitch. Keep your stick on the ice and don't let your meat loaf. What kind of question is that? Get your own life. You don't want to fucking talk to me about mine. Why do you give a fuck?

Because you're a journalist? Shout out to mikey warmile our great cbs sports producer who put that together lucas it was a wild ride okay doing these interviews did you like my face of disgust as you ran over my opportunity to ask justin gaethje the best the best part about that was before we got justin gaethje on the horn you were like we need a community communication system so we don't step on each other. And I'm like, Luke, we'll be fine. We don't need to hand-hold. I don't need to text you every time I'm going to ask a question. And then first question, I completely talked over you, like people think

I do every episode. It's as if I've done this before. Okay. That was great. Good job on Mikey Mormile. And your interviews, it's not the way I do interviews, BC, but that's what makes them good and different and why we need them. So congrats on all of those. Okay, BC, let's do high point, then low point, then fan submissions,

and we'll call it a day on this fucking shit because it has gone on forever at this point. Well, it's a great episode, Luke. That's why. This is for the people, okay? So don't try to run out of here. Where do you got to go? The doctors? Come on.

I mean, dude, it's going on to the point where even I'm losing interest. Okay, high moment through 100 episodes. What would be your high moment, BC? Where do you got to go? The doctors? Come on. I mean, dude, it's just going on to the point where even I'm losing interest. Okay. High moment through 100 episodes. What would be your high moment, BC? Well, Luke, my high moment really involves the success of you and I, but specifically you. Your success on this show. All the work you put in through the years on the Luke Thomas YouTube channel.

You being an independent marauder, not dependent upon companies like CBS Sports to fill your paycheck and give you legitimacy. You worked yourself to the level where the great Joe Rogan reached out to you and said, come to Texas. First California, but then to Texas and join me on this podcast. And Luke, my high moment of through 100 episodes was when you went on the Joe Rogan podcast and shouted out Morning Combat, Showtime, Malka, CBS Sports, and your co-host and gave us all the spotlight with you and the rub for all the success you had with Joe. Wait, with Joe.

Wait, you were out for four hours, right? What did you have for four hours? Three and a half, three and a half, yes. Three needles? Yeah, three needles. Yeah, I, but you were out, you were out for four hours, right? What are you on for four hours? Three and a half, three and a half. Yeah. Three needles. Yeah.

Three needles. Yeah. I did scrub through the whole thing. I did. I didn't find the spot yet where you shouted this all out, but Luke, congratulations in all seriousness on getting to that point. I mean,

look, you know, it's like you in, uh, in the, uh, the Elon Musk guy, right?

You did two biggest names. Luke's, uh, Joe's put on that show. Well done, Luke. Yeah. Well done, Luke. Yeah, well, I also didn't shout out my personal YouTube channel, so somehow you will find a way to sleep through the night.

But yes, that was very fun. My highlight through 100 episodes, BC, is you know you've got a good podcast when you can do a podcast inside of another podcast, Inception style, which is exactly what was born when you and I got together for the Charlo pay-per-view all the way back in September. And we figured out that we can do another podcast that's irreverent, that's probably going to get us fired, but still will be fun along the way. Room Service Diaries was born in September. It was one of those things where we figured out that when we go live, there's so much more.

Not live, excuse me, full time rather. There's so much more that we could do. And I believe that the birth of this podcast, it will be the greatest thing that we do. And it will absolutely be the thing that terminates our careers effectively when HR finally listens to any of the episodes. It's almost good that they don't give a fuck about us i'm i'll say i i'm glad you picked this as your high water moment because i'm surprised it was as successful loved received and downloaded as it was because it's literally you and i cracking beers me getting white girl drunk off two beers you claiming you need 56 beers to feel a buzz and drinking yet whiskey with a

diet coke like a jerk off and us just laughing and sometimes answering people's questions and usually saying offensive things. So if you're a fan of JMMA and risen, and you feel like this show has done you wrong, watch room service, Tyrus. There's plenty more. You can get offended on probably watching,

but Luke, I'm shocked that these have been this well received. It's it's easy work it's really you and I just uh the same stuff we do off camera and it's really a celebration of the rare chemistry we do have which is probably what has made this show so successful and I don't take for granted because you can't just put any two donks in front of a camera and say go ahead produce something uh I didn't think people would love this like they have but they have and i'm grateful for and i would also say um look at those barracks fucking pandemic haircuts that i was rocking jesus christ can you put up some of the slides one more time

look at how fucked up my haircut was jesus i thought i thought it was better than this that one's that shot's okay. Let's see. What else we got? Look at that fucking angular piece of shit haircut. High and tight like your college girlfriends look. Wow. Yeah.

Just absolutely. Your haircuts aren't any better there, guy. You're going to fucking hair colleges and getting haircuts for free. Yeah. All right. All right. Let's talk lowlights, and then wecuts for free. Whew. Yeah. All right. All right. Let's talk lowlights, and then we'll get to fan submissions. BC, what has been the low moment through 100 episodes for you?

Luke, you can argue. Me saying Asukara was the low moment in the announcer voice, which, again, was a celebration of what we love about the pageantry of Japanese combat sports. But the real low moment Luke may have been when we were very excited to interview Greg Kelly of Showtime documentary outcry fame. And by the way, Greg had a fantastic 2020 much love and respect to him and Gabriel and him

getting the college football scholarship and all that. But my ill-timed Pat Tillman joke led not only to that interview being on the uh the the shelf for a month luke but showtime legal getting involved so uh hey as we always say luke we're always one joke away from being unemployed shout out to your boy bc for uh almost screwing the pooch on that one yes not not great not great and then it came out like long after the buzz of the show had worn off, although it's a tremendous show. And there again, I have a barracks cut from the fucking pandemic,

just looking like an absolute asshole. Look at that handsome guy right there. Yeah. Why did you have a tan? Where did you go that you had a tan? I think it was just the nice weather. I was outside every day, you know, working in the yard, walking the dogs, you know.

Getting that vitamin D, huh? Anyway, weeks would go by, and we'd be like, dude, where the fuck is this interview? And then they finally put it out, and it was a good interview. It was great. I actually really enjoyed it. Bit of a dud, BC. Bit of a fill-on deaf ears there. It was a great interview, by the way.

It's a great documentary. It's a great story. It was like, well, by the way. It's a great documentary. It's a great story. But yeah, it was literally like, it was like, well, it might get published today, but I think there's one more crack you made that needs to be edited out. Yeah, BC starts it being like, hey, you guys want to hear some pedophile jokes? We're like, no, BC, we really don't want to do that.

That is not true, Luke. Luke, what is your low moment through 100 episodes with Morning Combat? Well, it's less a a moment bc and it's more just a condition right like if you've got jock itch sometimes it itches more than others but you still just have jock itch jay is our jock itch my low moment is every day with jay here we have this jock itch of a producer who is desperate for fame in ways that shock even a careerist asshole like myself. He wears the worst glasses. He does the worst on-air stick. And while he does a decent job when he's actually in the studio, we can't even rely on him enough to be in the studio or to train other people effectively

although now you know i think we're in a good place obviously but you know he's just mr unreliable and yet wants the world and can't even deliver as much which is why we sent him to fucking hell on our documentary abc are we gonna look at this absolute zero? I mean, could you imagine a bigger putz in your fucking life than this zero? He's a pretty smart guy. And again, people don't realize off camera, he's very witty and entertaining. On camera, he's like a, yeah, he's a slow dying carcass. I love Jay, and Jay also continuously screws up. So I don't know how he's still our Monday producer,

but you know, he's a great documentarian and I did want to shout out to you. A real high moment of MK, all things considered. I don't know how Malka followed us around with cameras for 48 hours and came up with that gem of a donkey man. That thing overachieved shout out to less than Jake. One of our,

one of the great Malka editors for being the, the heavy labor on that. But yeah, Luke, that documentary was beautiful. And that was really just a bunch of you and me being hungover and angry most of the time. So I can't believe they did that. He wears, less so here, he wears white regular glasses. And his favorite sports teams, and I'm not making this up,

the guys from New Jersey slash New York, his favorite sports teams, and I'm not making this up, the guys from New Jersey slash New York, his favorite sports teams are the Dallas Cowboys. I think he likes the Yankees, which, okay, I can understand. And then Duke. I mean, could this guy be more of a front-running douchebag if his life depended on it? I don't know. I honestly don't know.

So, Buck J is what I have to say. Wow. Wow. Wow. All right. So, Luke, you want to close with fan submissions this week? I think there's a world record number of them. Let's do it.

Let's do it. All right. We open up. And thank you guys for sending your fan submissions to morningcombat at gmail.com. Or you can DM me with them, your artwork, your merch picks, whatever you got for us. We'll play it on here. Thank you, WebScream for shouting starting this phenomenon derrick bell this week luke hits us up with a picture of him and his morning combat mug let's do that

oh he's got the poirier sauce in it luke yeah the hot sauce which i'm gonna put my review up here soon well done on that one, Derek Bell. Looking great. Thank you for supporting our show. You know what needs to be sold, Luke? Those MK mugs that we got on set. Remember those? Those need to be sold, not the black ones. These are MK merch picks from at River Kitty Ransom.

He's got his cat involved in both of them, Luke. Check out this first one with the MK shirt. And then the second one this this all black cat on halloween this guy's great can we show the second one here gav oh okay we don't have the second one anyway it was two picks with the with the cat on the t-shirt shout out to river kitty ransom for supporting us all the way number three hey our cbs sports brethren jack crosby rocking his new mk sweatshirt for the holidays. Look at this handsome man, right? Look at that.

Got the Yankees hat, which is regrettable, but otherwise Jack's great. A yingling enthusiast and one of the better people on this earth. Shout out to Crosby right there. We got a great MK submission here from Dan Sillyfantzcat. His cat is named Millie, and apparently Millie wants to do the business with Reggie Jackson my cat But look at the markings on that cat loot. That's a handsome piece of P uss. Why right there, right? All right, I guess I guess I'm the only cat guy here okay luke shout out to uh moco reggie jackson

zoe and now millie all right uh ian kelly has some mk merch to share a pic of him uh with his mug relaxing and watching our show from kildare ireland how did he get that mug luke i don't know but he found a way it looks better than the bootleg one that WebScream has, and I'm amazed. I'm amazed. Yeah. By the way, I support anyone that watches us on TV. Thank you.

Thank you for blowing us up like that. All right. Yes. Josh Montgomery has sent in a pic of his MK Tumblr in action, Luke. And he's got two pics, by the way. This is his vinyl setup. Nice little hi-fi there with the MK Tumbler and the Dr. Dre Chronic album and the My Morning Jacket artwork above it.

You impressed, Luke? I am. I am. The least cool thing is the Morning Combat Tumbler, but you know what? We're in good company. All right. Can we show the other side of Josh Montgomery's living room? He's really showing us the full arsenal here. Gaff, you got any more from this guy? All right.

Apparently we dropped the ball on that as well. Josh had other picks of his set up there in his living room. Great set up for music and combat sports. Oh, that is fucking awesome. Brandon T. this week. Luke, Brandon T. has sent us some MK Holiday ornament, love. Okay. That is fucking crazy and weird, but great.

That is awesome right there. Brandon T, that is awesome. Very well done. Ring in the holidays, morning combat style with that real creepy pic, that photo shoot we did, Luke. All right. We got a man named Ritz who wants to show off his dog, Kenzie. I have not seen this one in advance.

Look at Kenzie rocking the MK sweatshirt, Luke. Kenzie looking all right. Shots to Kenzie. Yep. Big fan of this dog and our show. Jesse K's wife got him this mug for his birthday near the holidays here. And look at that white man fit into that medium, that medium T-shirt right there. Love Jesse K, right? you can't just get one

piece of mk merch you gotta have a couple jesse k probably a huge risen mma fan love this guy all right paul d scored some gear last week and he says hey luke i only touched my glasses thrice fuck these guys i i have a i have a bad habit can I say? But my man looks sharp in the gear. I'll say that. Do you think he looks more like... Who's that actor, Luke? You know, the actor that he looks like? You know, the guy?

All right. That was a good talk. He kind of looks like you with the beard, the glasses there, Luke. Nice MK combo there for the winter. That'll keep you warm. Let's roll on, Luke. Shout out to Paul D. there. Gordon R.

says, got some merch for the holiday and smuggled the goods into Costa Rica for an MK Christmas. Yeah! Yeah, brother! Gordon getting it done, Luke, if you know what I'm saying. Do you know what I'm saying? I know what you're saying. Wow!

Alright! Well done, Gordon. looking great in that santa hat what do you think she asked santa for can we go to the next slide all right uh marty has a late christmas submission here luke it's a little bit ms paint but i'll let it go okay all right uh kato a has provided us with this this Photoshop changing out the show name to Morning Wood. And because we're homoerotic now, we're doing something else? I don't know. It's a little bit uncomfortable. Those are your viewers.

This is at Matt.229 who says, I'm coming for Wem Scream's ass. He has submitted four picks to us this week, Luke, including this first one with Jay riding the scooter and you and me in the background as the baby. These are mostly uncomfortable rather than being good. I mean, his quote

is, I'm coming for Wem Scream's ass. Let's see the next one from Matt. This is the MK crew partying. Degaf, can you hit the button? Thank you. Nope. Nope. Nope.

That is not it. There we go. There we go. That's the three of us out at the bar with Jay fish hooking someone's eye. And look at that young racist donk there in the back. Look at Remy from Higher Learning. Look at that. Yes.

The 90s counter should be hit. That's a good pull. That's a good pull. By the way, this is how we would probably look and act if we all hung out at the bar. Yeah. It's actually not too distinct from what the reality might be. Yeah. All right.

Hey, Matt229 also has a new movie tip to tip titanic style here luke gaff okay i mean what are we doing here there we go near far luke wherever you are your tip will go on you got that uh this is definitely going to be our last show so let's just go out in a blaze of glory, I guess. Keep going. All right. Matt, 229 closes with co-host day off and a new movie poster here, Luke.

They shouldn't have put your name at the top. Like, there should just be no allusion at all to who you are. All right. Bueller, Fry, Bueller. brandon b luke you're gonna love this has a dying fetus album cover spoof fuck yes look at that that's descended to depravity is the uh is the album here it's maybe my favorite album that they've done holy fuck i cannot wait to post that that is so awesome all right good. Kevin L. is celebrating

MK Bloodsport style. Yeah. I'm Chong Lee. I'm Chong Lee. Shocker that you're the one hitting the Asian guy. Yeah. How dare you? How dare you?

Kevin L. has one more meme, Lukeke and he says i have come here to have technical difficulties and kick ass and i'm all out of technical difficulties look at this look is that the uh is that the one for like where they had the glasses and they can see like the obey thing that's the rowdy rowdy piper movie what What is that? They, uh, yeah, they live. I think. Yeah. Yes. That is awesome. That is fantastic. Um, now we need to honor the rock,

our homework for this week. Derek P has sent in this Luke. Is that Dana? That's Dana as Ed Harris. Apparently that's not bad. That's not bad. I'm Nicholas cage. Does it quite work, but okay.

Gaff, what does that say in the fine print? Can you read that, Gaff? Oh, yeah. Which is a great line from the movie. I don't know if the people heard that, but it's the prom queen line that he just repeated. Yes. All right. Los heard that, but it's the prom queen line that he just repeated. Yes. All right, losers complain,

but winners go home and F the prom queen, Luke. Very well done there. Matt S has also returned with another one, staying with the rock theme with this movie cover, Luke. A little more subtle, and they put Jay's awful fucking smile in there, but yes. And Luke, we close with a trio from Dickles. Alright. The first one is The Donk,

a spoof on The Rock. So I'm Sean Connery, and you're the chemical weapons specialist in this equation. Yeah, I'm Goodspeed, right? You're what, Harris? Goodspeed, Godspell. Yeah. And he's got, Dickles is back with another one with Dana Trump. Let's see.

Bryant Campbells. Yeah, that's on point. And Dick Coles finishes strong here with this celebratory episode of 100 for morning combat check out this graphic luke oh wow i believe this is uh his message to us i'll read it 100th episode in honor of the 100th episode i thought it was only right to celebrate with some of mk's favorites luke fauci and brian tinfoil hat campbell blowing out a 100th tip-to-tip candle, enjoying some 40s and Arby's fries, along with some of our favorites like Dana, John Jones,

Ariel, Ioana, Mike Perry, Logan Paul, and it wouldn't be a party without Luke's bench bum buddy or Brian's gym locker lad, as well as Jay making a very special and unneeded appearance. It's a celebration from Dickles. And look at the candle. Look at the candle on the 100th cake. Can we go full screen on that, Kev?

Thank you. So who's that old bastard on the right? That's just the dude at the gym who has no clothes, and Jay is covering up his Johnson. Dude, this is shockingly good. Shockingly good. Yeah, that is like, dude, this is, this is shockingly good. Shocking. Yeah,

this is really good. Tip to tip candle right there. That is fantastic. Oh yeah. That Canadian fellow on the left. This is great. Great. Well done.

Dickles. You know what? Round of applause to all those folks. BC round of applause to all of them. That is shout out to Millie. The cat big fan, big fan of Dan. Silly Finn,

Millie, the cat. All right. of dan silly fin millie the cat all right finally you can go home finally okay uh all right i think that is it so why don't we say a couple of news and notes we will have an episode for you if you have not seen the rock it's only a couple of bucks to rent it if you have roku it's actually free i watched it last night on roku that's how i know um we'll have an episode out for Friday on that one. Like a little bonus thing, you know, for New Year's Day, just to keep the train on the tracks here. So go watch that.

If you want to follow us on social media, you certainly can. We'll put up the graphic here so you can check that out. It's Morning Combat consistently everywhere in just those terms. There are names for Twitter and Instagram for BC and I tend to differ there a little bit. You want to email the show, you can go to morningcombat at gmail.com.

That's for dead wrong. That's for any way to just reach the show if you need to reach the show for whatever reason. Blah, blah, blah. If you want to try Showtime, you can go to showtime.com and get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, go do something else with your life. Store.show.com for all the merch that we got to show here shouts to everybody who bought it and sent us those

pictures we really appreciate that when you do and uh yeah thumbs up subscribe thanks for making 100 of these we got a lot more assuming we don't get fired bc any final thoughts yeah enjoy the risen 26 card i know that i will uh full disclosure and uh again apologies to anybody that was ruffled rightfully so but uh this is who we are luke we're wild and unfiltered and sometimes we take l's and i apologize and thank you for following us along on this journey fall down seven stand up eight that's what i always say uh in fact i never say that but i'm saying it now. All right. Well, for everyone at Malka, CBS Sports, Showtime, and the whole crew, thank you so much for making the first 100 great.

Here's to 100 and many more. Until next time, happy new year, everybody. Be safe. Don't text and drive. May all of your gains be loyal. Thank you. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.