MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Crawford Stops Spence | UFC 291: Gaethje KOs Poirier | Pereira-Blachowicz | Ep 471

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

On Episode 471 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian break down one of the best weekend in combat sports. The guys discuss Terence Crawford's dominant win over Errol Spence Jr., Gaetje's head kick KO of Poirier and the scoring for Blachowicz-Peireira. (10:30) - Terence Crawford vs. Errol Spence Jr.  (61:45) - Justin Gaethje vs. Dustin Poirier 2 (80:00) - Alex Pereira vs. Jan Blachowicz (90:00) - Rest of UFC 291 Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Luke Thomas I'm Brian Campbell This is Morning Combat You know, unlike Flyleaf, who sang the song Fully Alive This is MK, where we sing the song Barely Alive Hi everyone, we're old and washed and pathetic, but boy, do we have a show for you today, ladies and gentlemen.

We are coming off one of the greatest weekends in combat sports history in a long, long time. And so we have a lot to get to. I'm the man who is in desperate need of a haircut. My hair looks like a Henry Cejudo helmet at this point, only gray. My name is Luke Thomas. I join you from the capital of Los Altos needles right here in Washington, D.C.,

joined by my friend and compatriot, the man mouth-breathing and leaning. It's B.C. Hi, B.C. Luke, I wear this one love Bob Marley had today, not necessarily because I'm in the middle of a midlife crisis, but because for one week at at least my sport boxing, it was wonderful. It was perfect. I wasn't even at the biggest event in nearly a decade, but the, the, the two leading mixed martial arts journalists of the past decade were Luke and got a taste front row of how good this game can be. As did the people at home.

As did the MK Universe who begrudgingly have come over this calendar year to the other side. To find out what's inside the box. Even Luke. Even with two completely one-sided performances this past week. At the highest level of the sport. People still realize something. That in this decrepit pot. Once in a while. We can still cook up some art and luke i think you'd agree being there firsthand and being so emotionally

moved by terrence crawford that when this game box ayo is at its best right there ain't nothing else like it in the world okay brother thank you very much can i just be honest you know some people were killing me over being like oh how could someone get emotional i wasn't actually crying i was so tired i was rubbing my eyes but even if i had been it's not really the point the thing is it's like bc this is just the reality for me and everyone's going to be different i didn't think the fight game could make me feel like that anymore you know i thought like those kinds of feelings that you could get about fights were gone that I had seen too many of them that I you know it's you get to this point where it's like oh I've interviewed all the top stars but

I don't even mean it that way but like what happens when you interview most of the biggest fights and fighters in the sport it becomes not like old hat necessarily but um does it make you feel the same newness does it make you feel the same awe and wonder and wonderment that it did before I didn't know if I was ever going to feel like that again. And then it was that times a billion by the time the referee came in and just rescued Errol Spence. Nothing less. Yeah, man, I felt how I felt. I don't make apologies for it.

It was like it was I it was it was beautiful. It was really beautiful. It's a good way to put it. It's the peak of the profession. It's inspirational. It's it's it's everything and more. And obviously, UFC 291 also delivered. Oh, yeah, fantastic.

Fantastic. Yeah, and if you tuned into Bellator versus Ryzen 2, that also had a lot of crazy developments and also delivered. I mean, what a time, Luke. What a time. I mean, you mentioned the term old hat which would probably you know describe this piece of headwear I'm wearing but Luke one love boxing well I gotta tell you BC let me tell you this I know we usually want to get the show started in a timely way but

there's like so much to catch up on so let me just say this a lot of boxing people asking for you in Vegas a lot of people came up to me like, where's BC? Is BC here? Where's Brian? They call you. But you were in demand. Let me tell you. Folks missed you out there for sure.

Thank you. Thank you. I miss my sport, my people. Shout out to everybody. But sometimes, Luke, sometimes you got to protect what you have. And I would protect this house. That's what I did this past week. I know. Well, this is what MMA fans don't appreciate, which is, and BC and I have discussed this.

I'll just be honest. If you're MMA media and you roll up to an event, it feels like everything's on edge. Like there's all these like silent beefs and there's all these like this person's against that person. And boxing is just the complete opposite. It's like this big camaraderie thing. And, you know, it's much more about, hey, how you been versus like, what are you doing? You know, it's like the real hey how you been versus like what are you doing you know it's like

the real change so that was kind of cool bc also every time i go to a boxing event every time there's someone who knows my name that i did not realize knew my name last time it was uh it was uh joe goosen um but there were some folks out in vegas that knew who i was i couldn't believe it i couldn't believe it oh by the way i it. Oh, by the way, I got to say, hey, real quickly, shouts to the boys, Dan Canobio and Chris Algieri. Chris Algieri, former Errol Spence opponent. I got to go and talk to them. I mean, could not be better guys in the fight game. Yeah, could not be better guys.

They have one of the best boxing shows, digital shows in the game today. And Chris, by the way, with DAZN, Pro Box TV, ESPN+, doing some great analyst work. He's really made a nice transition right there. But, Luke, what a weekend. We're here to break down the big headlines. We're here to get you fired the hell up. I mean, Luke, there are so many matchups to make moving forward in both sports.

If it could, I complain coming in because we worked our faces off this week, you and I. I mean, even you, like, this morning, pumping out, dissected. I see you. And I complained that, you know, why do these two big events have to go head-to-head? Why can't us combat sports fans just, you know, get what we deserve? I think we deserved what we got Saturday night. That was so much fun. I couldn't fall asleep.

Luke, I was up all night just dancing, Luke. Just dancing. Okay? That's sobriety. That's sober dancing. Dude, the alarm went off at 4.45 for me this morning because my window to do Dissected is either before the show or not at all. After it's over, people won't care or whatever. It was like, that

was my window. And I worked all the way on the plane ride home, and that was my window. And I got it the way on the plane ride home. And that was my window. And, uh, I got it knocked out. But like when I got it before 45, I was like, dude,

it took everything in my power to get out of that bed. And I remember I sat up and I looked at my phone and there was someone in my mentions, some, some fan being like, man, I hope Luke is getting that dissected ready for Spence Crawford. I can't wait to watch it. And I was like,

fuck now I have to do it. So then I went out and did it. So let me just say this. To all the MK fans who supported us on CBS Sportsnet, we cannot thank you enough. To all the MK fans who watched what we did last week, can't thank you enough. To the MK fans who introduced themselves to me in Las Vegas,

can't thank you enough. To all the MK fans watching here today, thank you guys so much. It was a long two, three, four weeks for all of us to get this done. I feel like we're on the other side of it. We still got some great bangers coming up, BC, but I just want to make sure the fans know we saw all their support.

We saw all of their messages. We love you guys. Thank you so much for making that such a productive career weekend for me and BC. Everyone, thank you. We appreciate that. Now it so much for making that such a productive career weekend for me, NBC. Everyone, thank you. We appreciate that. Now it's time to break that shit down, Luke Thomas. All right, so standard stuff we have to go through here.

Showtime.com is the label that pays. Showtime.com, 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce. All right, also, morningcombat.store, the merch. Hey, here you go. You can get some of that in there for you right there. Oh, yeah.

Have a gander. And then, of course, if you want to email email the show morningcombat at gmail.com the producers will see it i will not okay all right with that i thought you had a producer's credit though luke you're sure you don't see those emails yeah i don't want the producer credits when it comes to the emails thanks i'm good on that i just want it on the checks. All right. But neither here nor there, BC. I got to talk all about boxing, but the boxing guy on this show hasn't had a chance. So let's get right into it. Topic number one. Terrence Crawford absolutely demolishes Errol Spence.

It was close for one round. The round that Bud took off. Round one. The only round that Spence won. And then that is it. By the way, he didn't win on all three judges' scorecards. He won it on two of them. But okay, neither here nor there. Question for you, BC.

Contextualize and ultimately rate this Bud Crawford performance. Historic or not? Oh, God. It's A+++++++. The question is, like, is there a proper frame of reference? Because here's what we have to understand. This was not only a super fight. Super fights can come in different flavors.

Sometimes it's old fighter against younger fighter on the rise. Think, like, Oscar De La Hoya versus Manny Pacquiao, which turned out to be a very one-sided affair. And sometimes that happens when fighters are cutting to a weight class or too long and past it. At 35 and 33 years old, this was still prime versus prime. You knew of the history coming in. Do you realize how rare in fights at this level with two all-time, two guys that were

already pre-established as all-time greats and were not, again, not talking about, oh, but he was past his prime, man, if only we could have saw that four or five years ago. Would I have loved to see this fight three, four years ago? Sure, but it still mattered massively. When do you ever get this breathtaking of a one-sided, okay, I'll answer. Tuesday morning in Japan when Naoya Inoue did the same thing to Stephen Fulton Jr.,

but that's the thing. When Inoue did that, what was our first response? Good luck, Spencer Crawford, doing something that could elevate above that in the pound-for-pound discussion. And then Bud Crawford's like, hold my beer, I'll be right there, and we got a fish fry scheduled Saturday night. You know, I wrote a column on CBS Sports. People can check it out if you want an even deeper, in-depth thoughts on my take.

But my take right now is this was virtuoso. This was Miles Davis, right? This was James Brown at the Apollo Theater. This was insert what you're talking about. Somebody, you know, to hear Bud Crawford at the post-press conference say the extras he did for this fight. He took a one-month pre-camp in Las

Vegas to physically prepare himself for training camp for this fight. You talk about no stones left unturned and then to go out there and basically a 50, 50 bite on paper between two all time legends and win every single aspect of it to knock down Spence on a perfectly timed counter jab early on catching him off balance. But then every other step of the way,

and you did a fantastic job, particularly on that seventh round knockdown via right uppercut. When Spence, when, uh, Bud Crawford's back was against the ropes, the, the calculated poise.

I think you called it silly or serial killer vibes. The calculated poise that even in the worst possible position there in round seven, cause let's give Spence credit. He had the worst night of his life, more or less. But he did come to fight. And in round three and seven particular, he basically decided coming off that stool that I'm going to do what I do.

I'm going to put my head down, get inside, and throw combos to the body. And for Crawford, with his back to the ropes, to so perfectly counter with that right uppercut you just could not see coming I mean you know you remember when Michael Jackson Luke was at the Motown award show in like 1983 and and he came out and Thriller was hitting the charts and he did the uh he did the moonwalk for the first time I remember watching that live as a little kid and like people were like oh my god I can't believe what I just saw. Were there strings behind him? Was that magic? Was that mirrors? There were elements of that for Bud Crawford in this fight. He raised above and beyond,

but here's the difference. We've seen this out of Floyd Mayweather before. For example, think the Juan Manuel Marquez fight when he came out of that brief retirement. Think the Canelo fight in which he was largely untouched for 12 rounds. But this wasn't what Floyd does great in just that Floyd makes you make mistakes, makes you chase and makes you frustrated, and then turns that corner and starts walking downhill and picking you apart. This also wasn't, oh, he just landed one big punch. Let's do a rematch and see if the story's any different. This was everything all at once. You can win an Academy Award for that, apparently. This was everything all at once.

He made Spence miss and made him pay. He walked him down at times and was the bigger man and got him out of there. If there's any other way I could put words together that would properly conceptualize in a boxing sense really what Bud did out there. This is the biggest fight of his career and the biggest fight of this era. And he landed 50% of his total punches, including an absolutely absurd 60% of power shots. Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. Help the audience.

Give them some other kind of sports metric that might help them understand what that means well first of all you always hear me say that the old boxing adage is if you can connect on 40 of your power shots you've probably won it's rare in a big fight that somebody will connect on over 40 and they lost think michael kessler and the carl frats rematch he connected on 60 of his power shots again this wasn't a three and a half round one side of the fair. It went into the midst of the ninth round. That's the equivalent of scoring 75 or 80 points in the NBA finals. That's the equivalent of tossing eight touchdowns in the Super Bowl and tearing up the best defense in the league.

He came out there, met Errol Spence exactly in the areas where Errol Spence thrives, and completely outclassed him. Mikey adding, throwing a no-hitter in the World Series, which is apropos. It's perfect. It's going to the highest level. It's going to the Olympics in the 100 meters and pulling a Usain Bolt where

you're so far ahead, you're looking behind you and already celebrating. You know, it's funny here, Luke. The knee-jerk reaction will be, oh, you guys pick spence so you guys definitely should have saw this coming how'd you not see this coming i want to address that specifically yeah sure i mean listen i don't mind getting shit wrong i don't pretend to know everything about boxing and also just just on just on my end just on my end i will say this

going forward i cannot do one- tape study. Cause for example, I did the one sided tape study for tank against Ryan. It didn't really matter. Cause tank was a lot better, but here it got like Spence. And by the way, people are like, Oh,

Spence is a fraud. Dude. No, the fuck he's not. No, he's not like my, my, my respect for Spence doesn't diminish at all.

It's just that what we knew about, but is even, is even what I want to make is BC. I can't do that anymore because what it ends up doing is just warps my perspective but i'd be curious to hear what you have to say about it so here's the deal one thing we did say that was right and look i'm happy to be wrong here i'm happy to see one of the greatest big prep performances in the history of this sport because that's what went down on saturday night we did say if one person could win this fight in a wide margin, it would be more likely to be Bud

because he is a more dynamic, little bit more well-rounded fighter in that regard, even though these are basically two perfect boxers. So we got at least a quarter of that right, right? But we got this wrong,

but I want to be fair. The reason why we didn't see this coming goes beyond just the fact that he was fighting Errol Spence. Now, Spence was completely humble. I give Spence so much credit, not just for showing an incredible willpower and constantly pushing through and trying to make something happen

when he was just outgunned, but he didn't make excuses afterwards. And I felt like he could have, he could have done the weight excuse. He was already ready to move up from 47, right? This fight took longer to get, to get built than possible. But still, Bud went through the same weight cut and Bud's also two years older. So I'm not going to use that as an excuse. But I do offer that to say, was Spence physically compromised? Probably to some degree. great that we did not see this coming is because bud was the victim in the end of being on the wrong side of the tracks business-wise and boxing since moving up to the welterweight division in 2018 you i'm honest here you just can't compare what bud and spence did over welterweight over the past few years because it's not comparable in my opinion the totality of bud's resume being a three division champion and now two division undisputed champion in the four-belt era. Oh, you can compare that. But Bud fought just once per year over the last four years.

Over this welterweight run, he fought one great fighter in Sean Porter and was tremendous in that fight. Fought a pretty damn good fighter in Jeff Horn in his first welterweight fight for the title. But everything else was B-, B- tier guys, second tier, past their prime guys, Kell Brook, Amir Khan. You know, you can only look so good against competition that you're that much better than. So I do think to a certain degree this just didn't look possible this exact way because of the footage we had over five years. Spence defended his title six times. He beat literally everybody he could in the division, not named Keith Thurman, who wouldn't end up fighting him. But there's a reason at the end of the day no no no no no no

no hold on there's a reason at the end of the day why the best have to face the best for the sport to work and and why we can't just have fights on paper that we debate in barber shops in water coolers there's a reason, because real greatness doesn't arrive unless real greatness across the ring brings it out of them. And even though in this specific instance Spence was so dominated that there really wasn't much

that he brought to the table in terms of bringing out moments, it raised the greatness of Crawford's game through the preparation, through that one-month pre-camp that he's talking about, it raised him to a level that was, you know, virtuoso. It doesn't even do it justice. A level where Crawford was able to finally, fully show us.

It's kind of like Floyd and Manny when they finally fought and Floyd showed you that there was a gap. But that came later in their careers. It was more defensive-oriented. This was Terrence Crawford showing you the full Monty. He's the best of this era with a bullet Luke. And I think the question we needed answered, right? Was what would this fight finally look like? Who's the best welterweight? Not only did Bud answer it, he answered it with a new series of questions, namely, how would he have looked against prime Paciao, and Mayweather at welterweight? How would he have done against the Four Kings in the 1980s?

Is it possible that Crawford moves up to 54 and fights Charlo, or moves up and fights Canelo at a catchweight? These are the new sets of questions we have, because that performance, when finally given the chance for the best to fight the best, elevated and brought out somebody who the past few years, not his fault, was on the wrong side of the road and wasn't able to show us exactly that. That's why at the end of the day for the health of the sport, the best need to fight the best. Because the answers are only found in the center of that ring. So thank you Errol Spence for taking this fight, for bringing it and showing up.

But Terrence Crawford got to show us that he's not just like the next Floyd. He's his own thing. He is an all-time great, and I'm humbled by what I saw Saturday night. BC, this was the question I wanted to ask you just a minute ago, but I'm sorry to interrupt. I just didn't know you were going to do your thing. So let me ask it now.

We're trying to help MMA fans understand the context. Now, obviously, this is going to be a crude way of saying it, but part of perhaps our belief in Spence was, again, I want to point out Spence was the guy that had three belts and, you know, uh, had beaten at welterweight much better guys and had been here the whole time. Bud was the guy moving up. Although BC, if you guys haven't seen it, I put out a dissected this morning as BC was telling you about on MK it's on the MK channel right now. I mean, you look where they lock up, dude. Bud was better, as you indicated, everywhere, including in any kind of wrestling or clinching exchanges, which I found just remarkable. But the question I had for you, BC, was as

follows. We're trying to help MMA fans understand some of the context here. Again, this is not correct, but is there something along the lines of for the welterweight side of his campaign this 147 pound weight class it's almost like bud was fighting pfl guys again i know that's not right because he was fighting names like amir khan sure and then this was his arrival in ufc and he was taking on the champion and then he just absolutely fucking demolished him is there something like that there is the only caveat there is we did at the very least in 2021 get him get to see him against sean porter right sean porter and pbc allowed right porter al hayman to cross the street go to esp and they made that fight it was needed to see bud against the super elite and even though that was the final fight of porter's career i've said it

in the pre-fight i'll say it again i think that was arguably the best performance but you're right luke when he was finally able to show it against somebody you know at his equal we ended up finding out they weren't equals okay i mean i mean that's the most remarkable thing that's literally the most remarkable thing that even if the weight cut affected spence and i do think it did to be fair he wasn't leaning on it but i do think it did he made spence look average the last time I said that about somebody in a huge fight was Floyd against Canelo, Floyd against Marcus, maybe even Floyd against Manny to some smaller degree. He made them look average.

Damn, Luke Thomas, damn! All right, so let me ask you, and I appreciate you watching the dissected. Let me tell you what stood out to me as like from like when we think about the game plan, when we think about what they executed. You know, listen, we'll be honest, dude. Bomack was taking a beating all week.

Bomack is the trainer, Brian McIntyre of Bud. And you know how Bud looks all ripped and he's got like abs? Bomack is the opposite. In fact, Derek James, the trainer of Errol Spence was like fat shaming him at literally at the press conference continuously. And I was like, dude, this is, this is, you know, this is terrible. Look for him. But, uh, in the end, dude, they had a fantastic game plan, but this is what I always

try to explain to people, BC. This is not me saying, if you like MMA, you have to watch boxing. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is you don't have to choose. Now, of course, if they're all at the same time you do, but I mean, as a fan, you don't have to choose and you can like them for different things. I love the variety of MMA. I love the, all the different permutations and combinations and how unpredictable it can be. But what I love about boxing and Bud Crawford is the highest exemplar of this I've, I've ever seen is how precise the details are. It is a quarterback throwing a pass and getting it through the narrowest of windows. It is the, it is the Archer in the Olympics shooting an arrow through another arrow already buried in the target. It was his ability to find shots, punch efficiently, land cleanly,

all based on what they knew they needed to do. And then his capacity to exact it in real time of all the things that I thought were just so amazing. Aside from he was a physical match for him. How about, dude, how about this? God, I mean, there's so many things BC. How about this? When Crawford landed on Spence, Spence noticed it noticed it when spence landed on crawford it didn't do shit and that was the smaller guy that was the smaller guy bc how can that even be possible my mind is blown by this i'm i i know i went in a million directions but i'd be curious to know what really stood out to you in terms of what in terms of what bud did uh first and foremost the hand speed difference was masterful he took away spent the best thing spence does is that jab that jab sets

up everything because like triple g like like really not enough elite fighters spence uses the jab as a weapon first and foremost a setup placement shot secondary right so crawford complete crawford mind you one thing we said about him was you can't give away rounds. You don't have the luxury this time to take that snapshot. Like you said, he only really did that for one round. But the difference is he didn't even mess with the orthodox stance. We had established from crushing bud tape leading up to this fight that he's not only more dynamic at Southpaw, he's more dangerous, he's more everything. He went to Southpaw right off the start, which was key.

Only needed one round to adjust. Then completely took away Spence's jab that I think really caused Spence and coach Derek James, and by the way, you could not have had a better defending trainer of the year coming in, a very smart man like Derek James. They had legitimate troubles adjusting off of that. That Crawford was not circling away. He wasn't pot shotting and getting out of trouble. He wasn't doing some of the stuff that Floyd had to do against bigger guys. Remember Floyd, the welterweight version, you know, always had hand truck problems. Wasn't a really allowed to be a big time power puncher, not just because he was rising up and weighed up

to 47 and 54, but because the hand problems meant he had to be more of a pot shotter. Crawford wasn't even doing that. He was standing in front of Spence at mid distance, but he was countering every jab with quicker counter shots. You saw that second round knockdown in which he landed a left hand, but came right back with that counter right jab to knock Spence down when he was off balance. So you have Spence, basically everything Spence was about to step into that's comfortable. You have a faster, more accurate, and the key, also powerful counterpuncher in front of you.

And we said a key to victory on Crawford was you have to gain Spence's respect and try to discipline him so he can't just walk right up your front porch and start getting inside on you. And Crawford's ability to do that, I mentioned that third round earlier. Spence got knocked down in the second round, and was the first eye opening like oh crap maybe Crawford is too much for him but Spence bit down to start round three he really pushed Crawford to the ropes he started flurrying to see how Crawford calmly dealt with that and then was able to get out of trouble and land something big and continue to make Spence trade. I mean, it was everything. It was literally everything that made this such an impactful,

one-sided performance at the end of the day. BC, if I may, tell me if I'm lying. Tell me if I'm lying to the audience. I'm so glad you brought up round three. So he gets knocked down in round two. Round three, he gets up off his feet and he goes and says, to your point, like, I mean, listen, the Errol Spence method is, you know, guys have landed on him before

and hurt him before. BC's right. Bites down on the mouthpiece and continues to apply and it works. What I want to say was, BC, when he does that re-biting down and he gets pumping behind the jab and he's pushing you around and blah, blah, blah, sometimes he'll eat shots, eat punches to just get inside and then he starts to work and it begins to have an effect.

Like Kell Brook was landing over the top of Spence's jab and giving him fits, but Spence bit down, broke through, and then eventually broke the face of Kell Brook. What I wanted to say was that thing that Spence was doing in round three, every other time he's done that against the world champions, it has worked. It has worked every time. He gets through, he begins to get in rhythm,

he begins to pile on shots, and they begin to crumble. It just never got out of first gear with Bud. Bud did something no one else even got close to doing. But you know how he got there, though? You know how Bud got there? He also ate some big shots. For as much as Spence in the first three rounds was getting lit up,

particularly rounds two and three, there was parts where Spence was like, okay, deep breath, I'm going to come back and do what I do. And he mixed, there was a little bit of variety. He was leading with looping left hands at times. But Luke, these punches were not remotely moving or bothering Spence. Here's the key question I want to ask you, Luke. Although we did see them face off multiple times before this fight,

sometimes you actually need to see them fully rehydrated in the ring against each other to see what their size really is. We talked about the idea heading in that Spence is, you know, I mean, Chris Algieri told me Spence is like the biggest welterweight he's seen since Thomas, Thomas Hearns. I did not expect Crawford to look as big as him in there. So Crawford showed an insane chin because there was never a time where Spence landed a big shot and Crawford showed you a look. Okay.

That he didn't like that. And Spence got confidence. There was none of that. But Luke, how about the size difference? I don't know about you, but I'm literally coming out of this fight going I think Spence I mean I think Crawford could could really you know contend for the undisputed championship at 54 and I don't even think it's out of line with that long body and the ability to add bulk to his to his shoulders and back and frame that he could he could fight as high as 60 even I mean he showed us that he's way bigger than i you know expected him to look against

spence and that size was ultimately a factor spence was unable to lean into and manhandle him even beyond the fact that crawford's speed and accuracy of his counter shots just snuffed out what spence did anytime spence was thinking wrestle anytime he was thinking anything crawford was there and the the, the power was too much. Yeah, I mean, the size issue for me was very surprising. Again, I thought the fights on the outside, for sure, Crawford was going to win, and you saw that. Like, that was clearly true.

But I thought, okay, well, if Spence gets inside, though, it's going to be his game. And he just couldn't get anything going. In terms of the size, I noticed at the weigh-ins, I was amazed at how much bigger he looked. And then on fight night, he looked even bigger. You know, it's funny. Everyone's like,

oh, the fight should have been made sooner. I don't know about that anymore, BC. Yes, it would have been nicer if there hadn't been the frustrating delays. But BC, at 35, Crawford will be 36 soon, he didn't look to me at all to be slipping or anywhere near the end of his prime.

He looked to me to be absolutely fully in prime. And more to that point, here's my view. Maybe it took waiting a little while for him to get into this size, for him to naturally grow into it. One camp of strength and conditioning is not going to get you here. It takes years and years of slow, steady building

for your body to get used to it, for you to get used to it, to really accumulate it, not have the right body to get used to it, for you to get used to it, to really accumulate it, not have the right body composition between muscle and fat, all that stuff. I actually think the weighting benefited Crawford when I thought it was going to be the opposite because I'm like, oh, he's 35 now. He really uses his reflexes and speed, and it's going to diminish.

No, no. The opposite happened in every way. That's where my reading on this. Now, you say 160. We'll get to that in a second. Let me say something to the boys in the back. I emailed you a tweet for Luke, Long Island Luke, and anyone else in the studio there, Gaff as well. I want you to tell me when it's ready. It's a clip of something that Bud Crawford did. We'll have the conversation here in a minute when they tell me it's ready. So BC, I do want to have one conversation if I can before we transition to what's next for Bud. I want to talk about Errol Spence on this one. My question to you is as follows.

I told you that my respect for him did not diminish, and I want to be very genuine about that. I don't think it diminished. It didn't undo what we saw him do to those other very quality opponents. And again, no one had ever put him on his ass before, but did it three times. Like we were just brand new territory here. But what I did want to ask was, did you learn anything new about him?

I mean, look, I like the humility afterwards. I don't, I think it would be disingenuous if we acted like the weight cut didn't affect him. That's why he wants a rematch at 154 and even bud was like yeah i'm not looking to you know necessarily cut down to 147 again either it's just not easy but i think most importantly luke what i learned about him was that there's levels to greatness and bud was higher levels and what i mean by that is how do

you win these these ultra elite super fights when they finally come around it's not it's typically not what your plan a is it's typically what your plans b c d e and f are and the adjustments you make spence was unable really to make any form of adjustments outside of little slight ones in the feeling out processes to change the tide and the momentum. And some of that is also because once Bud set up shop so close in front of him and was able to be so elusive and constantly sting him, particularly with a jab. All we talked about coming in was Spence's jab. Yet Crawford used his jab like a perfect weapon,

like a battering ram at times. It's just that he was a significantly better fighter in the moment. And, you know, Nigel Collins tweeted about this last night, who's a Hall of Fame writer and one of my— I had a chance to be his editor at ESPN, one of the most respected relationships I have with somebody who's that level of a historian that I respect. And the thing that stood out to him the most, talking about Crawford,

that Spence did not show in this fight, was that calmness in chaos in that moment. The best illustration of that for Bud was what we talked about. People can watch that on your dissected clip in round seven, when Bud was backed up against the ropes and Spence was coming on hard and he landed that perfect right uppercut. And you could see the focus, but how about that calmness? When things got a little bit crazy for Spence, I'll give him credit for biting down on the mouth guard and never wavering through three knockdowns. He kept coming up, kept trying to bring the fight, even when it was stopped.

And I do agree with Harvey Dock's stoppage. At that moment, he was getting lit up and beat up badly with clean shots. He was still protesting it and wanting to fight. So I have nothing but respect for Spence, but Luke, there was a Mayweather level of calm and poise in the midst of chaos that Crawford had that Spence didn't. And it's easy to say, oh, he didn't have it because he was chasing and he was knocked down early and hurt and his face was puffy and bleeding. And is it easier to have that poison focus when you're ahead in a fight? For sure. But you're not cracking Bud's shell in that regard,

because obviously we talked about coming in. There's no greater finisher in this game than Bud Crawford. When he smells blood, when he knows he has you hurt, look his calmness. So I learned that about Spence, that there are levels to greatness. It's just not on the level of what Bud brings.

That's a special, a special level of being able to operate in the moment, make those adjustments, think calm and clearly, and in the midst of chaos, just sidestep and deliver. Spence didn't have it on this night on that level, not even close, in fact. Yeah, I was going to say a couple things. One, the defensive issues really were shown here by Bud. Now, again, the thing is, it's like, oh, you know,

how come you didn't see these issues before? I don't know. How come Kell Brook didn't? You know, how come Sean Porter didn't? How come any of these guys who fought him didn't either? Like, no one... This is the thing, BC. Bud took the first round off, which he normally does.

This is what really shocked me. If you had told me that Bud was going to win, okay, that's entirely believable. Bud's going to win by stoppage. Okay, that's entirely believable. But what did to win by stoppage. Okay. That's entirely believable. But what did shock me was that the instant Bud turned it on, the fight never went the other way. Like when round two, when Bud decided to open up, it was lost from there on out because their assessment of his defensive issues was brilliant. Now it's one thing to have certain

tools to counteract the very good portions of his offense. That's impressive. But what they had clearly diagnosed well in the Crawford camp were some of the defensive issues that Spence has kind of gotten away with. There are times he doesn't, of course, bring his hand back to his face when he needs to. But the biggest one, BC, and I went over this and dissected, was how much he reaches. He takes long steps. And if you don't realize this, folks, take a short step, it's no big deal. Take the longest step you can while keeping your back foot planted and then see how your balance is. It's not great. Now think about retracting all the way back to your normal stance.

The longer you go, the longer it takes to get back. The further you go, the more unstable you are. And Crawford was able to pull him into these over and over and then set him on fire with proper positioning just one of the most miraculous things i've ever seen dude it's not that other guys haven't hurt spence it's not that other guys haven't won rounds against him it's that no one has been this immediately decisive against him in the most full-throated way that has never happened before and it happened in an overwhelming amount. One more, if I may, BC. I want to tell the folks about this. One of the keys, if you cannot beat Errol Spence if you don't have a strategy for his jab, everyone he's ever fought has had some

different kind of attack to figure it out. Some were successful, some weren't, but that's the key. You have to take away the jab. One of the things Crawford did was because they were both standing southpaw he would just use his own left hand to push Spence's jab it would be just far enough where he could see it he'd push it over now he has a lane created where he could come over the top as you guys all saw that was part of it but I love this BC where he would he would have almost like a Philly shell not quite right arm by his side hand up here he would have almost like a Philly shell, not quite, right arm by his side, hand up here. He would parry the jab over, bring the hand back, and then go back on the same side. He'd parry, catch, and then shoot while keeping his right hand down,

so it's always a threat if you need it. Or if Spence wanted to go to the body, he was fully protected. Dude, I've just never seen game planning for an opponent that good that precise and that effective all at the same time only only Bud Crawford could pull this off like BC you could give this game plan to a prime Kell Brook you could give this game plan to a prime Danny Garcia whoever they couldn't do what Bud Crawford did it's the marriage of the two and and i want to revisit very quickly that whole idea of like well you guys are experts you should have saw it coming or any of us really look it is the level of competition you face i mean bud crawford was

knocked down by aegis cavalioskis mean machine in their fight he got up and finished mean machine not too long after but like we also saw him against David Benavidez, his younger brother, in a fight that Bud scored a final round knockout, but it took him a while to figure out. I think Luke, with Bud, when the skill gap is so wide, that's where he really takes the time where it looks like some of these opponents are having more success against him because he's really taken four and five rounds to try to figure him out.

What's that early big win he had at lightweight to establish himself? It was the Urias Gamboa fight when Gamboa was unbeaten and Bud like almost completely took the first four and a half rounds out. And we were in the moment going, wow, Gamboa's hand speed really giving him problems. I think when the skill gap was wider, you saw Bud take more time to make sure he figured you out. Once he figured you out, he goes to South to make sure he figured you out once he figured you out he goes to southpaw and he gets you out of there and he's nasty and doing it and i wonder if some of that luke when he's kind of unknowingly fighting on you know down to competition that when we got somebody in there against him who he couldn't take that time who he had to deliver

it right now in the moment that he was so much better than we ever thought he was because he was so much better than he has ever really needed to be in any of these fights because as i always say about bud because the first time we all saw bud crawford at this at a high level was on hbo about a decade ago when he filled in at last minute and he moved up in weight and took on brightest prescott you remember prescott columbian puncher knocked out amir Khan early on. And he won that fight so thoroughly from the outside as he did his next fight after that against Andre Klimov that we were thinking like, man, this guy's going to be really tough to beat from distance and pure boxing style. Now, his game evolved way beyond that, but he literally has every tool, Luke. And I think it took the majesty of this moment, the stakes, the closeup and all of that for Bud to finally activate that full across the board,

everything he's got and will never be the same. We'll never look at him the same in that regard. I mean, I just, I can't, I cannot get over my own stumbling of words at how in awe I am of how thorough this performance was. And how, yes, it had been hiding all along in plain sight. You can go back and watch his rise through welterweight and you'll see some of those flashes. But it's not until somebody's coming after him who literally can hurt him and literally has the boxing ability to stay with him.

Did we really find out what we have here and i hope luke in my true moment of truth in my profession one day when i get the call for the big leagues and i get up there that i can deliver even half as thorough and calm and prepared and poised of this performance i mean that's the peak of the freaking profession right there in front of you yeah dude i said it i said it on air on Saturday. I'll say it again. I'm not saying you can't go and watch, you know, what Ali did on some previous fight and not feel differently,

but for something I watched live, either at home or on TV, just while it happened, it's the best combat sports performance I've ever seen. From that vantage point, it's by far the best one. Like, way, way better than anything else I've seen. Now, BC, you brought up 154. Let's transition to that for just a little bit here if we can. But let me throw to a tweet first. In the middle of Bud Crawford kicking the shit out of Errol Spence, he knocked him down and the

ref is sort of tending to Errol Spence, counting him down, whatever whatever look at what he did in the middle of it look at this here he is talking to Jermell Charlo and goes you're next and he grabbed one more time play that through he grabbed his crotch and did like uh you know I got I got big ones I got big marbles yeah so for folks who don't understand it remember this fight's at 147 you're next he's talking to the guy at 154 who has all the belts up there so he just knocks down a guy who's never been knocked down before did it for the second time turns over to the guy who's the champion with all four belts up a weight class and goes motherfucker you are next bc dude the cojones on this man are you shitting me if you're a combat sports fan if you're a combat sports fan how do you look at that and say anything other than god is real yeah look at this man i

mean that's how we want our our heroes to act that's how we want our our studs in this fight game to act it's incredible and i want to say one thing about Bud the person here. In reality it doesn't matter how these guys act. To the media to the fans, whatever, we're going to judge them on their brilliance in the ring for the most part, right? Out short of getting arrested a ton outside the ring and that changes at times your perception of how you cover and talk about people. But Bud

was never loved by the media and some of that was certainly his own doing. From the beginning he was never a good interview. He never seemed to try hard. Top Rank had issues with him from a PR sense in the beginning. Trying to get him to care more in the media. And some of that was certainly his own doing. From the beginning, he was never a good interview. He never seemed to try hard. Top Rank had issues with him from a PR sense in the beginning, trying to get him to care more in the interviews. Look, you've interviewed him before I've interviewed him. It's stale bread, right? But I don't hold that against him, whatever. Sometimes through that process, especially through the last five years when he's being asked about Spence, every single interview, no matter who he's fighting.

And there's this idea being talked down to him that, oh, you're not as good as Spence because you're not fighting the same level of guys because of where you are politically and such. That I think at times, I won't say he had a bad relationship with the media, but it just wasn't great. The totality of the personality that Bud showed through this performance and particularly afterwards, it was great to see. He didn't need to turn this into a giant baby face moment, but he did. The celebration in the ring afterwards with the family, the very humble acknowledgement of Jesus Christ and his God, you know, and the inspiration that he had to get to this point.

The humility he showed afterwards, suspense, even though at times it was, you know, back and forth with the insults, especially at the press conference leading up to it. I just feel all in all that we came out of here not just in awe about the in-ring performance, not just, man, wasn't he badass when he looked over at Jermell and said, you're next? Not just all of that stuff,

but I feel like he was a true sportsman, a true gentleman, a true family man in the process that I think it's all coming together full circle for Bud. He did it his way, yet he still got the big fights, still made the big money, and forever how long he wants to continue, which is this is the part of the conversation now where we say, what's next? What should be next? Like how big is the ceiling? He will be 36 in a couple months, but he is at a level right now. And I think he now has also the spotlight and people going, damn, he's pretty good dude. Like he's this dude. He's been this dude all along. He could do anything he wants moving forward, Luke. And for as long as he can keep up at this level, he may be able to lift himself historically to a spot that i just didn't think was possible because we had that long stretch where he didn't have access to the biggest names no one's going to take away what he did at lightweight he beat the post still beat

all the big names at 140 he became the undisputed champion even though that division was weak at that time but to go through spence like this to have done that Porter. And now Luke, there are people that are literally saying, and I want to get your opinion on this. Okay. Because there is a bilateral rematch clause. Spence said, I want this a second time, but I'd love it at 54. If you don't mind, Bud said, I kind of agree with him. There is a growing sentiment, even though Jermell Charlo has Canelo next, October 30th, huge fight.

Jermell said on the broadcast Saturday that win or lose against Canelo next, October 30th. Huge fight. Jermell said on the broadcast Saturday that win or lose against Canelo, he still wants to do business at 54 as the Undisputed Champion. Should boxing step in and maybe do Jermell versus Bud next for the to try to become a three division Undisputed

Champion in the four belt era and maybe Spence against Tim Zhu? I mean, what is the perfect scenario in how boxing takes this moment and then properly spins it off like how viable is a 154 rematch between these two luke thomas up next later this i had never even considered it and then after saturday i can't like i don't know what to do with it and again let's set the table here canelo fights september 30th everyone knows that against Jermall Charlo. Remember, it was supposed to be Jermall Charlo, who was the bigger of the two, instead it's Jermall, the 154 champion. Let's connect the dots here, fans. That's who Bud

Crawford was taunting. That's who Bud Crawford was looking at and saying, you're next, the guy who's going to go fight Canelo. So now it creates all this weirdness because it's like, well, shit, if Bud can do that to the guy at 147, what can he do at 154? And to your point, could he become undisputed in a third weight class in the four belt era? Which, by the way, no boxer has ever done before.

Given the constraints there. So, it's like, I mean, the die is kind of cast, right? Charlo is going to go fight up. The question is, are they going to make him give up his titles or not? We're going to find that out because Haney wants to go fight Progre, but wants to keep his titles. I guess we'll see what happens with that.

So it's a question of whether he keeps them or not. And BC, I don't know what the right answer is, but I'll say this. I'll say this. If they do another rematch and it's another blowout, and then Charlo loses to Canelo and is back at 154, yes, I want to see Charlo versus Bud Crawford. I cannot believe I'm saying that, but I absolutely want to see if they can make it for all four belts.

Give me Bud Crawford with the toughest test boxing can throw at him. I'm never going to doubt that guy from Omaha, Nebraska ever again. No, no doubt. So just to clarify, Spence is teammates with Jermell Charlo under Derek James, so they're not going to fight. But if Charlo comes out of that Canelo fight, win or lose, obviously Tim Zoo is still there and is still owed.

He has an interim or secondary title. He's still owed that shot. Injecting Bud Crawford into that 154 mix with all those other names, we would all love to see him fight for that and get that chance of history now to clarify in history there are a lot of historians that are tweeting after we are lifting butt up rightfully so in this four belt era which began in 1988 which we don't all love the four belt era right because we want one championship per division like it's bs but we do have to remember that like henry armstrong the boxing hall of famer he was

undisputed in three different weight classes at the same time back when there was only one title per weight class. That's, in my opinion, well, well beyond this in terms of, you know, what has been accomplished. But we'd be kidding ourselves if that victory from Crawford and how wide it was doesn't move him up the chains historically at welterweight in a monster way. And Luke, if he's willing to dare to be great and if his body can hold the weight and if he can move up and we know he has the chin, we know he has the speed,

I'm not putting it past him that becoming the undisputed champion at 154 is not out of the realm. You already have that matchup ready. How about this? I also don't hate the idea of him going up to 160 and fighting Jermall. I also don't hate the idea of Bud Crawford fighting Canelo at a catchweight. Bud Crawford has two more fights under his PBC deal, but he sued top rank for racism basically when his deal was up. That doesn't look like they're doing business anytime soon. Dazon and Eddie Hearn and Oscar at the moment are kind of going through a down season and don't have the guns that PBC does.

If Bud Crawford stays on this side of the street, there are monster fights you can make. I mean, Luke, am I being too crazy, too in the moment? Am I saying I love you after a one night stand if I'm saying let's do Bud and Canelo at a crossweight because Spence has been talking about Canelo at a cross at a catchweight for years. Did Bud show you in this performance that he can pile on weight and he can be a factor in these higher weight classes? Are we crazy? Again, if it had been close with Spence, I might feel differently, but it wasn't. It was a complete beat down in every way. Defensively remarkable, offensively almost impossible to describe. I am not going to doubt him at 154. I do think you have to ask questions when you begin to, like, where did Bud, what's the smallest Bud has ever fought at, BC?

135. 135, okay, so then you would have to say, yeah, so 160 is going to be close to the limit. 168 would be far too much for me. Then you're starting, I mean, that's when you're in, big boy territory like no you couldn't do that 160 would strain about the limit i think of what is possible well i think 154 is absolutely he has long arms his long arms the speed will carry he does have pop in a backbone and accuracy show against a big puncher against spence that nothing moved him uh you know, again, greatness brings out the greatness

in certain fighters. If the challenge was this big, and obviously if Crawford did this long of a training camp, this challenge was big enough to let him know that I need to be the best I've ever been. And look, when you saw, tell me this, when you were there at the weigh-in, when you saw Crawford take off the shirt and step on the scale on Friday,

I was like, oh crap. I mean, look, we've seen abs. Abs are abs. Dude, he had undisputed abs, if that means anything to you. And more than that, he had fuller shoulders. He had a bigger back. You know what I mean? Like, he had clearly leveled up to get ready. This is what I mean.

Everyone's like, well, why didn't you see that? Well, because I've never seen a weigh-in where he looked quite like that. You know what I mean? I've seen him look, obviously, he's a professional or whatever, but not quite. I mean,'ve seen him look obviously he's a professional or whatever but not quite I mean every t crossed every i dotted I mean knew they had the right game plan knew they were ready just really really really leveling up and dialing in at the same time but BC uh it makes me wonder like you've you know I mean I know this is sort of like a weirder question maybe but I'm wondering where you rank this all time among like welterweight

performances in boxing. All time, 147, stacked division, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Ray Leonard. I could go on and on. De La Hoya, Trinidad, you name it. This has got to be close to the top of the list, right, for a championship performance? Yeah, it is. Because, you know, we had this conversation when Inouye put away Fulton at the level he did moving up to a fourth weight division on tuesday of last

week that like look i don't think i've seen this one side because again it's different when it's older guy against younger guy and in you know the boxing food chain takes over and the older guy gets handled and we move on doesn't always happen but that's the way typically this was equals around the same age prime versus prime two all-time greats on paper. You know, you have Mayweather and Corrales in 2001. You've got Behop and Trinidad from that same year, but those weren't welterweight fights. I don't think there's a knee-jerk equivalent at welterweight

to a performance this great and this wide. I mean, look, Sugar Ray Leonard against Thomasomas hearns down on the scorecards you're blowing at sun in 1981 and him rallying back for a big stoppage late that's a different kind of you know star making performance and showing the true metal inside of leonard but what crawford did i mean crawford kicked the shit out of errol spence like Like, absolutely just... Damn. He dummied him. Damn, Luke. He dummied him.

He dummied him worse than what Volk did to Max in the third fight. It was even worse than that. I mean, this fight was so big, Mike Coppinger even found a way to get in the building, okay? But Luke Thomas, do we, like, how much, like, let's be fair on the other side for Spence here, okay? How much do you think that wake up bothered him so that if they did a 154

rematch do you expect a different spence they're definitely gonna have to here's one thing that i noticed and derrick james was all over him about it from the word go and you're gonna be like oh you're making excuses for spence i'm not i'm not but have i seen spence move better in terms of defensive responsibility in other fights yes i've seen him move much better um so here's what i'm going to say i don't know how much punch resistance will change some um but to me bc the issue this time was the errol spence who showed up while physically drained I'm sure dude you can't not look at the skill difference the issue was he was Spence was getting out thought he was getting out planned he was getting out executed and they had him positionally wherever they wanted him I

mean I mean again can 154 and a new chance at working on the things that didn't go right this time make a second fight better. Yes, of course, of course. If they fought again, maybe Bud wins even quicker, but I would expect Spence to clean up a lot of the things that got him messed up here. So I'm happy to see him at 154, but there's the other part of me too, BC.

It's like, remember this debate we were having about Spence, which was, hey, has he damaged goods from the car wreck and the eye surgery? And I was, you know, after the Porter fight wreck and the eye surgery and i was you know after the porter fight and you know the garcia fight was a little bit inconclusive but i was like maybe but then for me for me the ugas fight i was like okay well that's not i think he's back true well dude he got fucking thrashed in this fight i mean thrashed and i wonder dude i don't know about you after around seven when he knocked him down twice, I'm like, Derek James needs to get the towel ready.

They need to get the towel ready. This is starting to go real bad, real quick. So how much of, so my question is this. Car wreck, eye surgery, general wear and tear, plus the beating that Crawford gave him. How much will that matter in any kind of rematch? Also, and again, this is again not making excuses, just trying to make sense of it all.

Spence had been through harder fights, even in fights that he won and dominated like the Ugas fight. He's in the trenches trading punches. This is one thing you have to give credit to Crawford for, and maybe, and obviously Mayweather as well. Now Mayweather took a lot of time off in his 30s, right? He'd be off

for a year and a half and then fight, be off for another year and a half and then fight. A lot of that, by the way, was to preserve the health of his hands. But I think also Mayweather's not getting hit consistently throughout that. He's dominating people in one-sided fashion that I think that played into his longevity. And Mayweather going all the way up until age 38 in 2015 against both Pacquiao and Andre Berto here. High stakes. Shout out to this old relic of a t-shirt that, you know, he was still very close to his prime. I'm wondering, Luke, with Crawford only fighting once per year over the last four years and

not taking that same punishment because he's so elusive and able to outclass the opponents for the most part up until this point. Porter gave him a little bit of trouble. People trying to dead wrong me. I think I made the illusion that Porter was up on the scorecards against Crawford and then they showed me the scorecards. I believe it was even on all three scorecards at the sixth round. I was basically trying to say that Porter came out early and sort of took an early lead

and Crawford figured it out. But I do wonder, Luke, if this can lead to Crawford staying at a very high level and potentially moving up in weight in his late 30s by not taking that same pounding that Spence did to get to this point. Either way, skills still pay the bills and the skills were the difference. Real quick, Luke, because we have a lot of UFC to get into. I don't bring this up for the gossip element of it because there is video out there that the Charlo brothers,

that their significant others may have gotten into some type of fracas and that led to Caleb Plant trying to break them up. And then we did see video of Caleb Plant jumping in and hitting Jamal Charlo and this craziness. Did you see any of that or the fallout of that? I mean, are we building toward it? I wasn't there. So, like, after the presser, I was not in the back i had gone i was uh we were obviously you could see

where we were it was me ariel and kate abdo and we were kind of like just a just a you know a row of seats back from the floor talked to other showtime people about like the show tomorrow and then i walked out uh of that same entrance where like the VIP get picked up, where the media tent is. And I actually met, shouts to Steve Cofield, who does local radio in Vegas. I went over into the media tent. That's where I saw Chris Algieri. That's where I saw Steve Cofield,

and I did a little bit of local radio with Steve. And then I came out, and then I, you know, there was nothing there, but where that had happened was the nearby parking deck, which is right just over the way. I wasn't over there for it, but I did, and of course, Caleb slapped him right at the same kind of exit, but I didn't see any of it.

I saw the videos. I'll just say this, man. Like, you know, guys are going to do what they're going to do. I don't recommend hitting people on camera unless you're getting paid for it legally because obviously there can be legal repercussions. But aside from that,

I don't know what's going on in Jamal's life, but it doesn't look like it's as stable as it could be yeah yeah uh and it kind of bummed me out a little bit to be honest i took a picture of him i sent it to you when before the weigh-ins even started he showed up on his like he had his entourage or whatever but he was mostly by himself and he just walked up on stage and like started flexing for no one on the scales just in front of everyone and he was looking around like taking it all in it was i don't know it was like a sweet moment but it was also kind of like bittersweet at the it was just i don't know man i well that's why i bring it up because i wanted to acknowledge it when when that video first getting passed around we were like yeah man

let's do let's do plant versus jermall it'll be a blood war but then you find out that there was you know some inner family stuff going on behind the scenes. Caleb was actually trying to separate everybody. And I think that's when Jermall pushed him in the face and you saw that. But wildness going on there. But damn. I'll tell you what, Caleb Plant's feisty, huh? That's a feisty guy.

Oh, yeah. He is a G in his own way. I do have a lot of respect for Caleb Plant. He does not back down from anything, anything at all. There it is. Lastly, let's talk about this, the walkouts i we have to say something about it and then we could probably close and move on to some ufc bud coming out with eminem and i was saying if you're going to break the eminem you lose yourself curse there's one way to do it you got to walk out with eminem himself and dude when he had the fish net on as well badass walked into the i was like i was like

dude that was that was one of the coldest entrances i've ever seen and this is the shit that's missing from mma i mean you get in japan you get in some of the promotions that are a little bit less uh uptight about it but like can you imagine how much that would add to a ufc event if there was like some kind of similar like big fish line and then one of the guys walks in with that? Or, you know, RIP Sinead O'Connor, and we're showing that great moment with Conor back in the day. It's like, we should get more of those moments. But I believe this will be coming up, Luke, in DMs from Donks, so we can shelf Eminem and lose yourself into the UFC now.

All right, so let's do that now. Let's switch gears and get over to some MMA if we can. All right, UFC 291 in the books. Funnily enough, on my flight home from Las Vegas, I had a layover in Salt Lake City. Nice airport, by the way. Very nice airport. Beautiful. So beautiful. Say what? It's arguably the most beautiful airport in this country. It might be. It was actually, I mean, to go from JFK to that, I was like, wow, there's pigeons in JFK. I mean, this is a nice airport. But there's UFC fans everywhere.

It was kind of funny. All right, BC, but let's start with this one. How about it? Justin Gaethje absolutely doing the damn thing. Stops Dustin Poirier, wins the BMF belt, and he did it in the second round. So here is my question. With two wins in a row now, should the only fight next for Justin Gaethje be a title shot? I think he earned it.

I talked about this in the post-show Saturday, and, you know, these people, they lamented not having you in that UFC post-show. And, you know, I feel bad for them, Luke. You know, I tried my best to sauce it up a little bit for them. Hey, you did a great job, and if anyone didn't like it, fuck them. Oh, wow, wow. Yeah, take that. No, look, Luke, here's the deal.

This is the continued evolution of Justin Gaethje. And I didn't see this coming. I picked against him in the physique fight, but he showed that veteran guile and he's not done improving and adding to his game at 34 because he did not necessarily come out guns blazing. It was a little bit more calculated. They fought on largely even terms in that first round. People killing me for scoring that first round for Gaethje, but I gave a lot of credit to how he was hurting Poirier to the legs, even though he did get cut open in the standing there. But that was a weird ending because it came out of nowhere. And to see the breakdown on the film of how much that looked like in the same arena one year later, the kick from Leon Edwards, how it was the opposite side.

But there was so much craft in floating that right-handed punch marina one year later the the kick from leon edwards how it was the opposite side but there was so much craft and floating that right-handed punch to move the guard of poirier to land a partially blocked head kick that sent him to the shadow realms luke i didn't think he had it in him i thought gaethje was going to revert at this point of his career back to the caveman i thought the 2.0 of the bmf would lead these two to just go guns blazing yeah he's a viable as hell title contender now for the third time if i'm him i'm doing nothing but sitting by the phone and waiting waiting to see what happens there in abu dhabi and i'm getting there luke what were you impressed with from the highlight in this performance i'll tell you what dude i'll be honest

with you so you know around let's say let's say this around into the fazeev fight I'm like yeah this is the the the decline of Justin Gaethje is upon us you know and not that it would be like calamitous and quick but that it was inexorable like it would be it was going to start and like this was going to be evidence of it and then he rallies in that fight which I thought thought was incredible, right? I mean, we even said at the time, like, holy shit, what a dog moment that was for that guy. And then to go into this contest, and I thought that Dustin won the first round, but you know, it was competitive, obviously. And then to throw out the head kick. Now, I know Joe Rogan on the broadcast, I think

he was saying it was the first time. I think it was like the third or even fourth time he had thrown it. He had thrown it several times. But the thing that stood out to me, BC, was, and Justin Gaethje kind of alluded to it, like he just never stopped trying to get better. Not that Dustin did either, but you could be at different parts of creativity or different parts of how you're able to really level up. Like people don't level up at all the same times in the same way. Sometimes there can be different moments where people have bursts of inspiration and for Justin Gaethje to be nearly 35 years of age,

34 and some change, and to still be trying things that he, you know, could do before, but not very well. And then to beat in an opponent, this quality by kind of mixing his game up. Still,

we talk about him, you know, recentering his defense, which he did. He made defense a much higher priority, which means he was getting hit a lot less. And he throws a lot less to BC, but he throws much more, relatively speaking, when he used to, much more efficiently. And now what I'd like to add, BC, is he's throwing things more creatively. He's able to think and try. And I don't think this was like some huge plan.

Like, I don't think this is what Crawford was doing where they had like a really clear game plan and they had really thought about it. I think he was kind of in a flow state, perhaps more than anything else. But if you're in a comfortable enough flow state where you can throw something like that and put away Dustin Poirier in the process,

that is incredible. That is very, very incredible to have this kind of late renaissance-ish surge at the time that while you're barreling down on 35 at 155 pounds after all the damage he's taken born competitor born fighter you know obviously you don't win them all but in a way kind of a born winner and to see him investing in his game, even this late into the run of it and the dividends that it pays,

I take my hat off to him. Very, very, very good performance from him. Damn right. And I got to say this, it's a perfect timing in the rankings, almost a perfect storm for him to be considered a legitimate title contender again in ways I didn't realize.

Luke, coming in, I didn't think either of these guys, whoever would win this rematch for the BMF, would necessarily be in this spot where we are talking about. Now, I'm not naive. If Poirier had won, he does have a bigger star value than Gaethje. Could he have rematched Oliveira or fought Islam for the first time and it was viable? It could have been, but I just didn't think we would be here having this conversation.

But if you look at the rankings, Islam's the champion, Charles Oliver number one, they're rematching in October. Poirier at number two just lost. Gaethje at three. Then you've got Darius at four, just lost. Chandler at five, not only lost, but is trying to fight USADA coming up. Fazeev at six, just

lost to Gaethje. And then you have Gamrat at seven and Saryukin at eight. Two two young guys for the future but both have had recent losses and some hangers on like rda and dan hooker after that at nine and ten i don't think there's an argument against this that the winner here and let you know this kind of pushes the whole volkanovski islam rematch thing back a little bit obviously ufc can do whatever they want, but now you got another viable guy here. And Luke, does it matter though? Here's the key question. Does it matter who wins that matchup

to be able to open the door here for Gaethje to get the next shot after October? See, that's the part I don't know. And it kind of leads us into this Conor McGregor question because that's the other part that's looming here, right? I mean, the question I asked you to start was, did he earn a title shot? My answer is yes, yes, he did.

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Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. The credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. But the question is, is that really what's going to happen given how things are shaking out? And I don't have a good answer for it. Islam has got this fight coming up in October. We'll see how things go. But you would imagine if he wins, they're going to want to run Volk. And if he doesn't win,

they might do a trilogy with Charles. So that's going to be taken up some time. So it just seems like the Conor equation, by virtue of like how big a fight it would be. And of course, you know, a BMF, are you talking about doing it for the BMF Conor versus Gaethje?

That's what you're talking about. Honestly, I didn't even give two fucking thoughts to it. I mean, the BMF title, again, it sounds like I'm hating on it. I'm really not.

It just doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't mean anything, you know? Like, I have so much respect for Poirier and Gaethje that, like, them putting a belt on it, it's like, if it makes them feel better and it gets them pay-per-view points, dude, do more of it. But it doesn't do anything for me. But the thing I was going to say was, you know what really stood out to me, man? Really stood out to me about all of this was that connor was the one fishing for the fight rather than guys fishing for him yeah now connor knows that he's the biggest fight like he that's that part is still you know the equation hasn't flipped but he used to have to

never say anything and now you can see him planting seeds getting agitated on social media trying to like coax guys into it who Who do you like in that contest? Conor McGregor or Justin Gaethje? This version of Justin Gaethje. Dude, Justin Gaethje, every version at this point. I mean, I don't know if I'd pick Conor unless it was 2016, Luke. So, I mean, I probably would have still picked Conor in 2017 and 18, but we're just so far past that.

It's like, yeah, Conornor you have a fight against the other ultimate fighter coach first so i guess we're not doing that because connor won't get involved in usada this year so look does the fact that this was for the bmf even though it it's weird this fight was more about gaethje reinserting himself at the top in the conversation of the title path and not really about the bmf and does it carry over i mean, even Masvidal putting the belt around Gaethje's waist didn't have this pro wrestling drama moment that we thought. Gaethje was asked about that at the post-race press conference fighting Conor and he was like,

I've turned that guy, that guy's turned me down six times already and normally you have to lose to fight him next, so I'm not sure. They could go that way, Luke, if Charlie Ol olives wins the title back and they do the trilogy or if like you mentioned volk does get inserted back into the conversation i guess in theory the bmf title being present if they want to reactivate it does make the idea of gaethje and connor more viable but i don't know my question is short of

adding more losses in the cage, which would devalue Conor's brand considerably, like how much more can Conor do to devalue his brand on his own, Luke? He's doing a lot of it and not fighting Chandler right now because he's not getting into a drug test in any form of timing, even though the UFC committed with the tough show. Why should he be rewarded at this point? You know, if this was Conor in 2017, it's still all bets are off, right? He gets to break the rules. Conor in 2023, after two stoppage losses to Poirier and a long time out of the cage with

nothing but continued bad headlines, why, why the hell would that short of money? Why the hell would they reward that by saying, well, you know what, Justin Gaethje, instead of that title shot, sorry Chandler, stay back over there. We're going to do Conor for the BMF. Like that's as gimmicky as you can gimmicky get for the sake of being gimmicky at this point. You know what I'm saying?

But here's the problem. It's like, okay, but here's the problem, right? So we got Charlie Olives and we got Makachev coming up, right? Great fight. Not hating on it at all. Some people like it more than others, but we like it on this show. Okay. So in either case, doesn't matter who the winner is,

in either case, you have a problem for Justin Gaethje. Because if you look at his two losses, one was to Khabib Nurmagomedov, who Islam can fight, you know, reasonably similar to. And you have Charlie Olives, who was the other guy in the fight, who already beat him. In other words, yes, Charlie Olives knocked him down and took his back, but Nurmagomedov was able to take him down

and take his back. Why couldn't Makachev do that and or Charlie Olives do it again? You have a bad matchup for you, so it's like, is that really the best use? I mean, I know Justin probably wants one of those, but I don't think you're just going to,

you're not going to get, your likelihood of getting the Justin Gaethje experience goes up if you fight Conor McGregor. It goes down when you fight someone like an Oliveira or a Makachev who can just neutralize the one real big remaining weakness that he has in his game that only special grappler types

can really take advantage of. So for that reason, that's why it's not so much. We're trying to downgrade you. It's like, how do we get the best out of this experience? You probably in all likelihood get the best out of putting Justin up against Connor,

someone who's not going to try and wrestle, fuck him, try to take his back. He's going to stand with him for better or for worse. He's going to stand with him. And you're probably going to get a stoppage in that contest, one direction or the other. What's what's going to stand with him. For better or for worse, he's going to stand with him, and you're probably going to get a stoppage in that contest one direction or the other. What's not to like about that?

You're cashing him out, first of all, but number two, I know your answer is going to be UFC doesn't care. That's how they're going to justify it. But literally, how would you justify not making the Chandler fight when everybody knows the Conor Chandler fight is only not happening because of Conor's reluctance or refusal to undergo drug testing so how are you going to justify a old switcheroo and just go no no no connor won't drug test for chandler but he will for gaethje here we go how do you justify that

i mean does it no but isn't that weird like like look here's the deal i used to believe in the ghost of connor i used to in the ghost of connor i used to protect the ghost of connor we you and i used to say you know what eff it connor still got one big win in him he'll still surprise you with a quick left cross and it's possible but he's a caricature now of himself do you know the level connor should be fighting against right now i'm gonna be very honest with you nate trilogy let's bring masvidal out of retirement because they're probably similar now or even if robbie lawler wants to do it again let's do connor and robbie at welterweight that's the level connor is at now in my mind tell me i'm wrong tell me i'm

wrong i know his brand cannot say you're wrong but i have not i cannot say you're wrong because i don't know i genuinely don't know my hunch is that's a little on the harsh side um but you know to your i saw you, I saw someone tweeting about this and it brings up basically what you're thinking, which is Connor hasn't done something like, okay, yes, he made a bunch of money, you know, and not just fighting, but through the whiskey business and everything else. And God bless him. Like he's entitled to all that money. I don't have any issue with a single penny of it and nor nor how he spends it. Not my business. But in terms of like professional accomplishment inside the cage or the ring, he hasn't given his fans anything to cheer about in a long time. And that's true. It's true. He

hasn't really given them much to look back on this in the last few years to be like, wow, remember that glory like Bud is going to surf off what he did on Saturday for a long time, but we're feeling it fresh on a Monday. Like, when was the last time a McGregor fan felt like this, you know, in real time? It's been a while. It's been a while for that. And so there's just a certain amount of negativity that is surrounding him, and I think you're feeling some of that, not on a personal level, but like a professionally frustrating level, and I get that as well.

I still think it would be foolish. I mean, I've underestimated Conor so many times that I really don't want it would be foolish I mean I've underestimated Connor so many times that I really don't want to do it if I don't have to so I would say that like to me his decline he's 35 now right like his decline is baked in he's not going to be the same guy nor I don't know I think we should expect him to be I just feel like if you're trying again if you're trying to get the most out of the Justin and Connor experience at this time dude that's a fun-ass fight I do think either guy can win it and if Connor wins it that would be in my mind suffice to say it would be the the fulfillment of that one last win kind of expectation that you and

I had I would consider beating Justin Gaethje this year or next year an elite win even again even with the idea that if you are the all-time greatest salesman in UFC history which Connor is you get special privileges yes you can't do that now you can't you can't screw Chandler over you can't just dust why not why can't you do it why can't you do it who is who is really gonna say and this is the only thing that matters not okay this is the only thing that matters to the process I should say who is the customer that says you know what i'm not going to buy this conor mcgregor pay-per-view because it was supposed to be chandler and out of principle i'm going to ride with him and say this is unfair i'm not buying

this not a fucking customer it's really lame at this point it would put a bad taste in the mouth luke like who i mean where's dana where was dana in salt lake city where the hell is dana is he at a craps table with a millennial right now luke drinking dad seltzer where is he do you think there's do you think it's a 99.9 or 100 chance he was watching spence crawford oh 100 maybe he maybe even been at the fight probably in like some box somewhere with uh warren buffett or whatever for all i know but i mean look here's the deal we never needed you more dana what's going on at 135 in the women's what's going on at 205 who the hell's fighting for a title what's going on anywhere but the damn slap show up let's go okay let me ask you about dustin poirier too because i mean what a guy had the war hat on like

marvin haggler and at the press conference was like, I've already won, you know, in my life, and if you go out there and you win like a man, you got to lose like a man. Dustin Poirier always says the right things. What a pro. We're lucky to have him. I will say this. He will be 35 soon as well.

But more than that, BC, he's taken a lot of damage over the years. Now, he has proven to be surprisingly durable. And I don't think the fact that he got knocked out from the head kick, even though he had a hand up, is proof that he's not durable. But again, add in all that previous damage, plus he just got head kick KO'd, now I am starting to be a little bit concerned about how much damage he's taken. Do you share some of my apprehensions?

Yes. Yes, I do. I don't think he's done, but I think if you hear his quotes closely afterwards, he basically admitted that he's done fighting contenders. He said he was offered Benil Darius before that, the last fight when, when Darius was defeated, but kind of was like, no, no. And if that's basically a number one contenders fight. So if you're turning that down, it means you're pretty much done, which is not a, I don't say that negatively. When you get to this point in your career where your name is huge, you can still make super fun fights. You get in that Rich Franklin portion at the end of his career, when you float around divisions and you just make big fights against other big names.

If Masvidal wasn't retired, Luke, I would say, you know what, as a stay busy, get well, do something like that. That's the level where he's at now. But the question is, who are the suitors? Can you give me two or three potential poirier fights next using that idea of name versus name let's make a fun action fight let's make it a pay-per-view co-main event who are the people you would want to see this guy get some final paydays against and and you know have some fun on his way out diaz for sure. He'll be back. I'm, I'm,

I'm, I feel pretty confident in that. He'll be back. Um, certainly Connor, you could do it again. I don't think a fourth fight in any way would be, uh,

a sales failure. Um, Colby, you could do as well. You could do a Colby fight. That was something they were interested in doing. Uh, and there's probably a couple of other ones along the way but i think those are your standout ones our producers

reminded me that jorge and dustin are teammates but like yeah yeah i get that i was talking more about the idea of we who are the jorge's that he's going to fight you named his jorge would be colby it would be colby yeah i don't i don't know if i'm really moved by any of those but hey if we showed up to a pay-per-view and it was Dustin versus Colby in the co-main, I could get down with it. Yeah, for sure. I'd be down.

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. I'd be down for Dustin versus Nate Diaz. I'd be okay with that. I would favor Dustin, but I'd be okay with that. They almost fought, remember? They were supposed to fight previously, and then the whole thing blew up.

But, you know, we would be there. All right, BC, with that in mind, let's talk about topic about topic number three if we can let's go to the co-main so alex pareda scores a close decision split decision win over jan blachowicz and appears to be now in line for a title shot which to my understanding bc the ufc made explicit on friday based on what you saw at this fight against jan Blachowicz, by the way, tell me how you scored it, but in addition to tell me how you scored it, based on the performance,

do you really believe he can win a title in this weight class? I do. I do believe he can. I wouldn't favor him against any of those elites, but he obviously has the power where he's in any fight. And I scored this two rounds to one for him, giving him round three, which was that swing bout, all three judges,

one of them giving it to Jan, two of them giving it to potato. But look, what I talked about in the post fight show late Saturday was just how impressed I am with not just the evolution of his grappling defense, which ended up being a key factor in rounds two and three. Yes. Jan got that late takedown around three with 30 seconds to go but was unable to turn that into any level of offense but it was

the added weight which i talked about coming in will the added weight make him super dangerous like more in a lot of categories we didn't see the added weight and not having to cut down necessarily help him in striking although his control of the striking around two is what set him in the direction to win it. I think it helped him in the gas tank because the grappling exchange that they had for five minutes over the first round added with the failed attempts of Jan to bring down Alex in the second round ultimately gassed Jan out. Jan had the right game plan. In fact, he was so deliberate off the opening bell, he shot in for a takedown and that one takedown was the whole

first round but Luke even with Pereira carrying Jan's weight on him in the first round dude he was the fresher fighter late which is why I thought he won it I thought it was a smart survive in advance win against a guy in Jan who was there to survive in advance and not really mix it up I'm happy with that. My only question here is, did you think he deserved to win? And what the hell does the future of this division look like? What are we actually doing here, Luke? Because as we were recording this, we do have breaking news.

In Abu Dhabi, Magomed Agolayev will be taking on Johnny Walker. So we're getting some answers for the larger picture. Where do you stand after this performance? So let me tell you how I scored it. I don't understand the controversy on this one really at all. I got to be honest. So first round, clearly to Blachowicz, right? Easy, easy round to score.

No problem. Second round, I agree, is a little bit more difficult because there was a lot of positional grappling that they ended up doing. But to me, it's just, and you know me know me man i'm one of these guys who think the judges and the criteria have over corrected against positional grappling and even i can say i just didn't see enough to me blachowicz is starting to look his age which you know we know that the guys at light heavyweight can go a little longer than you know you could at 135 but nevertheless the and you're like oh it was the altitude right but it's the altitude plus the age like you know you should be, all those factors can combine for a performance where you're fatiguing relatively early. And Daniel Cormier, I thought, was right, which was that, like, this is not naturally how he fights.

Like, shot right out the gate, let's go grappling. That's not usually what he does. He kind of crescendos. Anyway, so first round, easy for him. Second round, I thought, once the the grappling had stopped there wasn't a whole lot to it and on the feet Pineda was clearly landing the heavier strikes and then you saw that in round three as well and there was a late takedown but he didn't do shit with it to me it's like yeah Pineda easily won the third round probably won the second I can understand there's

some debate about that and then lost the first, but I just saw it second, third rounds, no problem. I didn't really understand why there was a whole lot of question. And to answer the question that I asked you, which was, do I think he can win a title? Fuck yeah, I think he can win a title. Absolutely, dude. You're so right. He was much fresher down the stretch. And this was the guy who's been in a different weight class this whole time. And this was his first one up in MMA and all that kind of stuff. I was really wondering how he was going to look. He looked great. And by the way, this is the other part of it too. So calm, so calm. Didn't panic when his back got taken, didn't make stupid decisions. Obviously there's a skill deficit, but he didn't compound his

problems by, you know, trying to spaz out of shit. Like he was calmly thinking, waiting, I'll get my turn. It'll be okay. And sure enough, he did. He knows if this goes on just enough feet on the time on the feet, I'm going to win even against a guy like Blachowicz. And he was right. He was absolutely right. And he was giving the guy business up until that late takedown in the third anyway. And so, um, I, I absolutely think he can win a title now if it's on khali and then a wrestling you know obviously i don't think that's going to be his best way to win so what i am saying bc is i don't think he's a lock necessarily to win 205 but i think it should be him versus the winner of on khali and walker i can't imagine who else it would be i know year

he's coming back but we haven't heard of he's not booked for anything. Well, because Yuri gave up the title without losing it, and because Jamal Hill shared that Dana promised him a title shot as soon as he's healthy, I feel like the lack of announcement on here and now finding out that Ankalayev is fighting Johnny Walker, my personal opinion is that they're waiting for Yuri to come back and he'll get the immediate shot. And on paper, Luke, that's an absolute banger, so everybody would understand it.

But the whole idea is now did Poiton in his first fight against a defending champ, you know, get sorry, a former champion at 205. Did he teach us that he's a threat here? Yes. Because think about it. Blachowicz completely targeted the gaping hole in Pineda's game. And he filled that hole, not perfectly, but filled it enough through his work with glover it is remarkable what alex potato is doing in such short time transitioning from kickboxing to mma now in a second division but there's a major curveball here luke that i want to bring up even though i think it's likely that potato fights for the title next i prefer i think it's more likely perhotska than the winner of Johnny Walker and Ankalayev.

Did you hear what Poiton said at the post-fight press conference? They asked about Izzy and they said, do you believe if you capture the light heavyweight championship that Izzy would follow you to 205 and we can do a MMA trilogy there for the title? That's the scenario I've been bringing up for weeks. Poiton said, said no i want that fight at 185 i'm willing to go back down and wait and the reasoning he said is because they already have two fights at middleweight in mma and it's split so that rivalry can only be settled at

middleweight luke thomas your thoughts on that curveball fuck all that i ain't interested 205 205 he here's the thing dude i don't i know what i know everyone says this that's the same Your thoughts on that curveball? Fuck all that. I ain't interested. 2-0-5. 2-0-5. Here's the thing, dude. I know why everyone says this. It's the same reason, like, Connor wanted the Nate rematch at 170 because the first one was short notice and it was opponent change and blah, but we all know the story. So they had to do it at 170, the whole, you know, salad, not steak bit.

Or steak, not salad. But either way, based on what he looked like this time and at altitude and given his age so potato is currently 36 right given all those factors i have no interest seeing him back at 185 personally that's just me talking i know he's got his own worldview you may have a different view as well i'm sick of hard way cut after the spence fight exactly yes you know yes i'm in complete agreement i don't want to see these guys fuck themselves over just to like prove a point no no put yourselves in the best position to do what you do great and he is great make no mistake about it is he too obviously as a champion uh but

do it do it in a place where it's new it it's fresh, it's different, it's better in many ways, probably. I don't know what kind of fight you're going to get. It always depends, but he looked... This, to me, was convincing enough to believe, not that he is the best 205-er in the game right now. I don't know that. He could be, but I don't know that. But I do know that on the right night, I think he can beat any of these other 205-ers in that division.

That part, I am pretty confident about. And so, for that reason, let's have him stay here, spend your time here, do this, and let's see what happens from there. By the way, BC, I just want to point this out. This is this fucking guy's UFC run. In his, what was it, fourth fight ever, whatever it was, he fights Andreas Mikhailidis, stops him in round two, beats Bruno Silva, beats Sean Strickland. So three fights in in he gets a title

shot and then fourth fight he becomes champion loses in his fifth and his sixth fight basically wins a number one contender fight this dude in like seven maybe eight ufc fights is gonna have potentially two titles that's like couture shit and like you know after he retired and came back or whatever like crazy crazy span not only is a run. Not only is Poiton insanely special and you brought up that calmness, same thing I was just talking about with Terrence Crawford, we got to give a lot of credit to Glover and what he's building there in Connecticut.

Glover's a man. Like I know it takes, you need world-class fighters. He does have some good fighters in there. Wellington, Turman, now he's got what's left of Dominic Reyes. Hopefully they can turn that around. But like the Glover effect on, on Pineda's transition has been monumental.

You actually, you watched it in this fight against Jan. You could actually see that effect play out, Luke. If, if this man Poiton can fix this wrestling hole and granted, if he fights Prohotska for the 205 belt, wrestling won't be an issue. But if he has really fixed that hole, with that, with that counter striking with that left hook dude he can beat anybody especially with this division being wide open dude he could

beat anybody in this division now again i don't think i'd favor him against prohotsko or definitely not on kalayev but he's a major factor and this is a hell of a story this whole career and what he's done in short time to turn it around i give give him a lot of credit. So much credit. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. All right. Topic number four, BC, we stay with UFC two 91,

but I'm going to ask the question as follows. And there's a couple of these names. I know you're going to bring up, but I'm just going to ask the question as it stands, give me somebody else for reasons, good or bad who stood out at UFC two 91, which by the way, as an overall card,

great card. It really was. It lived up to expectations. I went ham on Derek Lewis, Luke, in terms of the job-saving performance in so many ways. But I want to bring up Kevin Holland, Luke. That was such a great performance against Michael Chiesa. And even though Holland talked afterwards about,

hey guys, I only came down to 170, where he's now four and two overall, because I was chasing the BMF. I'd rather go up to 85. I argued on the post-fight show, Luke, that if his goal now with a full-time wrestling coach for the first time is to completely round out that side of him and maybe going back up to middleweight

gives him more gas tank for that, then I'm not against it. But with Chiesa coming off the long layoff and right away trying to use that perceived advantage on the ground, the takedown defense of Holland was fantastic. He dominated the striking when they had it there. And then for him to submit a guy who's known for being great on the ground.

And I know that this exact submission, the DARS KS has been got twice already in the UFC with that, including once by Masvidal like a decade ago. This was a man performance. This was the performance we've been waiting for. I don't like that I called Kevin Holland the new cowboy. I don't want him to be that wildcard journeyman who will fight anybody on any day. And maybe if you roll the dice on the right day, he could beat you.

He's too talented at age 30 not to figure it out. Him going out of his way to hire a full-time wrestling coach to spend the money to make a big-time camp. This is the payoff. Dude, he's absolutely a viable contender in two divisions if he stays on this path and goes down this road i was very happy to see him level up with this performance i'm so glad you said that too it's like dude kevin holland's real good man he's real good and the more he invests in trying to be well-rounded, the more it's like, you can quite obviously see it, not just because he is getting more well-rounded, but because it just all the pieces, it's more than the sum of its parts. It all works together in this like really elevating

way. And you're like, wow, dude, Kevin Holland can really do some shit. I'm with you completely. I don't have any interest for his own sake in him going back to 185. Certainly not right now. Now at 30 years of age, that's one question. 35 will be another one. But right now, no, I don't have any interest in him going back there. I want to see what he can do at 170, 100%. This was fantastic on his part. Presence of mind, great skill, great finishing.

He always has courage under fire. There's a lot to like about Kevin Holland's game. And we said it before, if he wants to play that Cowboy game, he always has courage under fire. You know, there's a lot to like about Kevin Holland's game. And we said it before, if he wants to play that cowboy game, he can play it. I think he'll overall diminish what he could do, but it's his choice to make. I just hope he reflects on what he's like, dude, he's, he's got real ability. If he really, if he wants to be the kind of fighter who pushes himself to see just how far it could go, I think he can go very far. I just don't know what he wants for himself.

I want to get to Derek Lewis in a second, but I want you to give the people what they want. Do you know what the people want? They want you to pull your pants down and talk about Gabriel Bonfim and tell us how viable through one UFC fight this guy may or may not eventually be to the title at welterweight.

Fantastic guillotine. He got the body lock takedown transition right into what's called leg drag where their shoulders go one way and then their legs go the other so they go the opposite directions it's sort of like there's the body lock and then he goes into leg drag right from there and then you eventually see his opponent try and shoot an underhook which bonfim lets him have and then in transition before he can ever get anything established he sits the guillotine and then of course, before he can ever get anything established, he sits the guillotine. And then, of course, the best way to see when an arm in guillotine is working is when the arm choking buries the elbow below the line of sight, which is exactly what you saw there.

Fantastic. Listen, the UFC is deep, especially in some of the lighter divisions. So I don't know how far he can go, but I can tell you in terms of Brazilian, any prospect, but certainly Brazilian prospects. Yes, this is a gentleman. You would be very wise to keep your eye on. He can do a lot of different things. He is battle tested,

even though he is relatively new to the UFC, plenty of skill, plenty of striking ability. And as you saw there, plenty of well-rounded ability on top of it. You make a mistake with him early. Those bomb fiend brothers are going You make a mistake with him early, those Bomb Fiend brothers are going to make you pay, him in particular.

Okay, so I'm not going to put the stamp on him, but I did get Chimaev and Bo Nickel feels. I did get that feeling that something very special. I'm not quite there yet. I'm not quite there yet. So I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I haven't been moved to that part yet but what you know if you're if you're in ufc fights doing the kinds of like i mean when that opponent shot the underhook and moved to turn up bonfim already knew what he was going to do he

already knew like the the the decision making was automatic that's what you want to see from these guys you want to see that they've got their blueprint for their offense, not just memorized, but muscle memorized. Like it's just part of who they are. And he had that. That's like a great sign for his future. But, dude, you know, there's a ways to go. So we'll see.

Okay, let's talk about Derek Lewis. First of all, what a fucking guy. Shows up on Friday with abs, number one. Can you believe it, right? Shows up with abs, just the best. Then does, the bell rings, comes out, you can see it here, jumping switch knee, the whole bit. The Lima poor bastard goes flying backwards.

And then, I mean, dude, listen, let me ask you a question, BC. And I'm being dead serious. I'm going to give you a billion dollars no matter what. Would you rather be knocked out on the feet or ground and pounded by Derek Lewis? Give me getting knocked out on the feet 10 times out of 10. What a fucking terrifying process to be underneath him. So this is what happens when he takes his profession super seriously and gets into great shape now look i always feel like he's better than this level of heavyweight no no you know no meant disrespected

dilemma who had won what did he win coming in luke he was on a nice streak four or five coming in but it was against two or three whatever i don't know it was against that second and third tier the reality is that derrick lewis should have done this under any circumstance. But I have been honest in saying that I felt like he has self imploded a lot. And when you add that to not being in an elite shape, I think injuries come. Look, he had a reason to do this and that was to save his job.

And we didn't necessarily know that he was in the last fight of his contract until he announced that afterwards. But he also said in the post-fight press conference, like, when they asked him, they're like, okay, so you're going to have abs every fight now? And he's like, yeah, I don't know. That was not a great sign to me, even though he jokes a lot. And number two, he also said, yeah, I'm not looking to become a free agent. I really like the UFC. I really like it here.

I really like Nabi. I mean, look, I love Nabi, too. She's a fantastic PR help and a great lady but um there is this other thing going on and that's francis to the pfl and pay-per-view and a lot of millions is derrick lewis like holding his cards back or does he not realize the moment here because what he did was save his job and show us that if he wants to even at 38 he can still be an attraction and a dangerous as shit out for any heavyweight in the world that is still true he reminded us of that okay the other losses i feel like he wasn't taken seriously he got caught he was in bad shape he imploded all of that together

he fought good guys too. He fought good guys. Dude, he may have a chance to make more money in one night in the PFL against Francis on pay-per-view in a rematch of one of the worst fights in MMA history than he has made in his entire career. Now, I don't expect him at a UFC press conference to be like, yeah, call me Don Davis. Let's find out. But he should F around and find out, right? So here's what you have to weigh if you're derrick lewis i think you have a choice you can stay with ufc you probably will get a bump in pay by the way remember like huge bump the ufc is gonna and they probably have matching

rights and everything else like this idea that he's just gonna walk even though he just fought one time like it's automatic is not automatic although i don't know exactly what's in his contract he might be able to a little bit more easily than some but you know my guess is if one time, like it's automatic, is not automatic. Although I don't know exactly what's in his contract. He might be able to a little bit more easily than some. But, you know, my guess is if you're the UFC, you don't want to give any oxygen to Francis at all. So they're going to give him a bump in pay. That's the first thing I think is going to happen.

You're like, well, maybe I'm not getting everything I would get at PFL, but I'm still with UFC. I get a lot more money. I'm pretty good, right? And he's also made, you know, given where he was in life, formerly in prison, he's done pretty well for himself. Here's the other thing you have to consider, BC. If you leave UFC and you go and fight Francis, you might make two million, maybe in the end, closer to three, you know, something like that.

Oh, so this is not Ingano Fury money is what you're saying. It's not that. It's definitely not Ingano Fury money. And more to the point, the UFC might blackballball you you just have you have to like at least consider that they're not going to let you go get a bunch of money and then come back now you might say well bj penn left for k1 and they invited him back that's true or randy couture left and then he came back and then that's true there's a lot of guys who did that in previous eras but it's an era when they were they needed as much of that star talent as

possible and pen champion couture champion different ball game my point being is if you're derrick lewis and you go and take that check with francis it might be the last big check you ever get in the business and so i don't know if he wants that rather than saying, I like to take my chances with a smoother path for a longer time with UFC. That's true. It's just weird for him to come out and almost be like, yeah, I'm, I'm resigning. I love these people. I mean, well, that's great, but you're right.

He will make, actually, he will make more money over the long haul if he resigns with UFC, gets another four or five fights. He could. So here's the key question at 38. Do you believe he will get in this level of shape again on a consistent basis? And two, if he does, he said it when they asked him.

John Morgan, I believe, asked him afterwards, like, are you eyeing another title run? And he said, yes. Is that possible, Luke Thomas? Yes. Yes. Based on what I saw here, yes. Yes, it is. And also, I loved his game plan. Like,

yo, bro, we're heavyweights. I'm not going to fucking jab you for 15 minutes. Like, no. We're just going to get this over with. And he wasn't afraid of contact either, you know? There was a lot to like about that from Derek Lewis. But not just the gimmick side where he takes his pants off and does, you know, him and Johnny Walker, boy, they just can't stop gyrating their hips. But the professionalism side, too. Good game plan. They were in good shape. You know, and he was terrifying.

He did really great Derrick Lewis things. Yes, I absolutely believe he could do that again, for sure. So this is what he's up against. Is big money with Francis and then maybe ostracism? Or less money but more stability i don't know because you would cynically say why would the ufc allow him to fight out his contract if he's one of the rare viable potential opponents for francis that people might buy even though the first fight sucked i think people realize that derrick had a really bad back francis was kind of all messed up mentally and in a fight with the UFC during that time and kind of was in like that.

Well, should I go out there and just pour myself out again? Or should I try to be more calculated than it messed up? It was a horrible night, but I don't think that would hold back the rematch. But do you believe UFC allowed him to do that because he was on a fight, fight, losing skid? And this would have been, you know, disastrous if he went out there and lost again. It wouldn't have mattered if he did. They could just cut him, and you can't sell that fight with Francis.

They put him on the prelims for a reason. You know what I mean? They put him on the prelims for a reason. They were hedging. That wasn't the main card, dude. No, that wasn't the main card. That was on the pay-per-view card. I thought it was the prelims.

No, it ended up getting the pay-per-view. Because Wonderboy got pulled. That's right. I apologize because of the Wonderboy one boy one got pulled okay so let me take that back immediately dead wrong they had initially scheduled him to be on the prelims and i think that is them kind of like signaling where they had thought that this process might go through all of this so yeah they're saying future prelim fair enough fair enough it was the main event of the prelims but nevertheless the prelims just the same so i don't know what he's gonna do but everyone being like oh he can just go fight francis yes he probably could he probably could but as the economist will tell you there is no such thing as a free lunch so we'll see what kind of baggage

ultimately comes with that bc also um before we move on to the rest of the stuff that happened in mma action over the weekend, what do you want to say about Tony Ferguson, BC? Now, afterwards, he says he's not going to retire despite six in a row being finished in four of them. And then on top of it, BC, he says, well, I got poked in the eye. Now, here's my view. You tell me where you're at. But my view is I am not in any way going to declare that the poke die didn't make a difference or or that it didn't impact his ability to fight to his best that's really not what i'm saying at all rather even if it hadn't happened i still don't think he wins where are you i got a lot of flack

for this from my take on saturday now this was a 1 30 a.m take luke after i got up at 5 30 to drive my kids home from camp. And that was eight straight hours of driving. And I'm just a gross piece of crap by the time I turned into a pumpkin. But I expected the absolute worst. Now, by the way, I scored an okay bet win with him passing out with seconds to go in this fight. So there was some solace there for me. But I expected this to be disastrous.

It wasn't. I feel like whatever Tony went did to get back to the drawing board and try to just rebuild, rejuvenate. It almost won me over. Like he came out with a good game plan. Now granted, this is a better idea of matchmaking to the level he's actually at than most of his recent fights,

but he was in this fight and he fought well and i know he got finished again and i know this is six in a row but i actually exited this going you know what i'm not trying to run him out of the door to save his life like him really yeah and people hate me i think you might have to run him out of the door to save his life well in general yes but in the shortest of short terms i feel like he still showed resistance in there he still showed definitely he was tough he had a good first round before the eye poke luke if it's if he wants to live in this world that like matt brown and and and um jim miller live in where it's clear that they are past their prime but could they play the role if they are willing to of kind of elite name gatekeeper there's still something in that tank luke he showed us

again six and i mean who can survive six i don't know what you're looking at bro i mean again i want to be clear i want to be clear i expected the worst i expected the worst okay he wasn't that bad he wasn't that bad he wasn't that bad he came in listen he definitely came in with more fighting spirit and i think that's what you picked up on and i agree he had a modello beforehand is that what you're saying i forgot that was part of the thing i didn't mean to take it and that's such a ham-handed way but listen bc let me tell you where I'm at. Again, I want to be clear. That eye poke could not have been easy and Tony is going to make injuries look like not injuries because he's so fucking tough, right? But I'm sure it was bad. I'm sure it was bad. But let me give you an example.

On the ground, right, you had Bobby Green on his knees with an upright torso, kind of like hitting him with his hammer-fisted ground and pound. Dude, if someone's doing that, you've got to go control their posture. You've got to underhook both sides, attach yourself to them. You've got to grab a wrist. You've got to overhook. You've got to do something.

And he wasn't even making grips. And you don't have to have great vision to make grips you kind of have to just sit up and then begin to fight a little bit again easier said than done i understand but like he didn't do that and this went on in different ways like he was shot for like an eminari roll and like with with the worst setup ever and it ended up completely backfiring and he was never he was able to regard a little bit, but that was it. I don't mean to tug on Superman's cape here, but you're expecting jiu-jitsu reactions out of a spin-jitsu master here, Luke.

Yeah, maybe so. But what I did want to say was those aren't reactions that are, again, I'm sure getting poked in the eye is going to be distracting and make all of that more difficult to do the natural things that you would want to do. But at the same time, dude,

it looked to me like his body just isn't cooperating with his mind anymore. That he had a style of grappling, for example, that relied on a few different things being in place. And all of the beatings he's taken, and the beating he took in this fight, or at least the damage anyway, I should say is a better way to put it, ultimately his body won't respond the way it has to to make that style work so while I can grant

that he came in there with a real competitive spirit that I respect and you know and who doesn't love Tony Ferguson my god everyone loves Tony Ferguson but if your body's not cooperating in the way that your mind needs it to or I should say if your body's not cooperating the way it needs it to and not in conjunction with your mind, dude, you're going to get fucking hurt out there. You're going to get hurt out there bad. Tell me who you think he can reliably beat on this roster at 155 at this point. Reliably is an interesting offering of a word.

I don't know if I can compete with that, but I will say he can fight other old names and he can fight guys on the way up if he wanted to, but he has lost six in a row. So there is a point of no return. Are we there? It'd be safer for him if we were,

but I can't lie. I got to tell you my, my real white belt feelings, Luke. I, I felt like he showed us that he's not necessarily done. Like he forced Bobby green to fight a really smart game plan, which is just move behind that jab.

Now the jab was popping and Tony's defense was Rocky Balboa-like to that jab. But I don't know, Luke, maybe I'm, you know, I'm also crazy too. So I just, I felt like I was being so overly careful and protective and harsh against Tony because I just didn't want to see another absolute beatdown of him just taking punishment. And had life he had life Luke but where is it also Jake Matthews getting back or I should say staying in the win column Yordosh Medich uh great win for him over Matthew Semelsberger and then Miranda Maverick oh hold that hold that third round yeah yeah hold Luke. Okay, all right. Last but not least, BC,

last but not least for topic number five, we do have a few other bits from the MMA universe to talk about very quickly, including Bellator versus Ryzen 2. So BC, I'm not sure where you want to go from this, what you think the key takeaway is.

Probably going to be Patrycki Pitbull scoring a TKO victory over Roberto Satoshi, basically via a leg kick or calf kick in the third round, drills him, he can't take it anymore. He falls, they wave it off. But Satoshi was coming in on late notice. So it's a nice win for Pitbull. Definitely one of the better names, I feel like.

I just don't know how much you can learn about it, you know? No, not a ton, but he did what he had to do. Remember, he had lost the title in dominant fashion in Nurmagomedov. Then we start this tournament. AJ McKee's out of the tournament. D'Souza came in, which was good, but I thought it was a nice survive in advance.

Excuse me for that mid belch. For Patrycki, the surprising part was Patricio Luke when they got rid of the Bellator cage and then brought in the ring. And dude, they're calling this, I saw some people on social media calling this the biggest upset in Ryze in history. That can't be true, right? What's the guy's name? Chihiro Suzuki. They fought at a catch weight here of one 54 dude. He came in, brought war to pit bull and

stopped him. Patricio that's two losses in a row. Who would have thought? Yeah. You know, here's the thing for folks who don't realize he's over 35 now, again, we're talking to the guy at, you know, one 45, one 35 or one 45, one 55, whatever you want to the guy at 145, 135, or 145, 155, whatever you want to even say at this point. He's kind of all over the place. But came in on short notice about a week. He didn't look like this, what do you want to say, vulnerable against Pettis. But Pettis isn't this kind of puncher anyway.

And the short notice plus the age, you know, he's kind of getting, here, hooking with a hooker. This wild oh what a shot that is yeah i mean his defense was terrible in this fight it was absolutely terrible and he paid for it you know so to me it's like the decline of patricio is upon us um all right yeah we're gonna get to the to the sabatello fight and have you seen this shit but uh here's the unfortunate reality, Luke. I like that Bellator opened up a flyweight division. They have Kyoji Horiguchi. They did the inaugural title fight with Makoto Takahashi,

and 25 seconds in, it wasn't a kick to the stick like we normally see in Bellator that ruined good fights. Luke, it was an eye poke. Like, Bellator couldn't get out of its own way i feel bad this should have been something and it was he gets eye poked right from the word go basically and the whole shit is off and all together this was a actually a fun card i know it it was really rough competing against ufc 291 and spence crawford but like this was actually a fun card with big finishes one archuleta wins the uh inaugural rising um i'm not inaugural the vacant rising bantamweight championship first american to win a rising title yeah yeah the same one that horiguchi formerly had so this was a cool

interesting card rough to see that for horiguchi the instant eye poke damn yeah there's no denying that but um what are you going to say? What are you going to say? I mean. How many trees do you think Archuleta is going to smoke on his family's property there in California after this victory? Enough to send, you know, air pollutant wild. You know how those wildfires in Canada were like fucking up New York City and Detroit even here? Oh, yeah.

It'll be like that. It's like all the neighboring towns in California are just going to get weather advisories by virtue of the clouds we never talk about that archuleta comes out to that song mary jane that was in half baked mary jane that's his walkout song dude that's his walkout song that's so freaking cool man yeah so anyway bellator versus ryzen 2 went very much under the radar but um and it's terrible that pitbull lost, but Petricky moves on. Again, we kind of said it on Friday. The only thing that really hurts for me is not that Petricky is moving on and that's bad.

It's fine. The loss of AJ McKee. Yeah. That is a fucking terrible thing. Let's address this. We didn't even address this when we announced it late last week. This kills what this tournament, I believe, was created for, the potential of an AJ McKee, Usman Nurmagomedov final.

Right, that was the whole shit. For the million, for the lightweight title, new division for AJ. I had been saying for a year that the hardcore MMA fan inside of me, if he's in there. Oh, he's still there. Look, he's there. That guy wanted that fight more than more than you know globally that's one of the fights i wanted the most i think that's the best bellator fight you

can make and yeah we don't get it now not under this sorry maybe we get it later maybe we get we still might get it i mean it could be the whole thing that they just you know there's any kind of delay in the tournament and they need an opponent for usman they can just gift him a title shot you know it's not like out of the question or anything. Or we could do it in the smart cage, potentially. We could do it in the smart, the Ask Jeeves cage. It's what PFL asked me. They're like, can you please call it the Ask Jeeves cage?

And I was like, yes, yes, I can. So as a favor to them, I'm doing that here on the air. You know what I'm saying? That's obviously a thing that happened, you know? So, okay. All right, two hours of analysis, or about an hour and 40 because we rambled for a little while but let's get on to the next part of the show it's where you guys

get to ask us questions it's time for dms for dogs yeah he friggin haw all right uh i don't have them on my screen so just throw them up on the tv there boys i'm gonna read them off the old thing all right from j j ash ag jch ag jay jack hagerty but it's spelled weird thoughts on wonder boy not getting his show money can i explain this one bc yeah i gotta take a whiz can you explain it look go ahead please glad perfect timing so let me explain to the folks how this works now i have not seen wonder boys existing contract but over the years i have seen many ufc contracts for fighters of different levels some that have pay-per points, some that don't. The language I'm about to tell you doesn't change no matter what. I should say it doesn't change. Yeah, it doesn't change at all. So we always talk about

in the media or the fans or the industry really as there's show money and then there's win money. You show up, you get money, you win, you get a little bit extra. That is not how UFC contracts work. They do split it, but that's not how they define it. UFC contracts are written as you get a certain purse for your bout. And then if you win, you get a win bonus. So they don't have show and win. They have purse and bonus. That's how it works with them. And the key is, again, in certain cases, if you win, it's automatically triggered that you would get the bonus. But the purse, the base pay,

so let's say it's 10 and 10, the purse isn't automatically triggered for you to get paid until bout completion. That is what the contract stipulates. It stipulates that in order to get your purse, you have to have bout completion. That is what the contract stipulates. It stipulates that in order to get your purse, you have to have bout completion. And he didn't complete his bout, so therefore contractually he doesn't get it.

But BC, the real story to me is not that the UFC was in keeping with their contractual language. The UFC is usually really good about that. They stay in compliance with what the industry demands of them from what I have typically seen. Rather, it's this. Wonderboy was able to say no to Pereira because he can afford to. That's why. He has the money sitting at home from all of his whatever he does to be able to be like, this is not worth it for me. I'm financially stable. I don't have to. And so

that's the first part of the story. The second part of the story is why didn't the UFC pay him? Well, they obviously could. They made $387 million in profit last year. They have more than enough money to pay him a million times over. It's so they can send a message to the next guy. If you don't fight, you're not going to get paid. And the next guy may not have the same kind of financial stability that a guy like wonder boy has it felt gross luke it felt a little bit gross i get it i get what you're saying i get the promotion has its right you the fight didn't happen you had a chance for the fight to happen and you said no but it but like so he has to eat it for that training camp

hey fighters hey fighters keep being mad at mma media for talking about mma fighter pay in public So he has to eat it for that training camp. Hey, fighters. Hey, fighters. Keep being mad at MMA media for talking about MMA fighter pay in public because that's real smart when you do that. So smart. So smart to get mad at us for bringing up these issues because I'm sure that will work out to your benefit long term, right? Because Wonderboy has been only anything a soldier for the company. For sure, they're going to just reward him over time because of his tenure and his status.

Oh, they won't? I'm getting word they won't, actually. All right, yeah, keep being mad at us for that. I'm sure that's smart. All right, next. Leo the Lion Levy. Prime for prime, how does Mayweather versus Crawford go? Hey, I saw something that, shouts to Andreas Hale.

I saw him this weekend. Great guy. He was making a point and saying that, like, if you look at some of the names that Mayweather beat, now he's got some big names on there, like Chico Corrales. But when he beat Chico, at that time, he wasn't another pound-for-pound guy. What ended up happening is Crawford beating Spence Spence is

I mean I don't know what he'll be today but on Friday he was a top five pound for pound guy and Crawford fucking thumped him that is um that's right that's really Chico was Chico Kraus was a slugger and feared and there were more media than not that were picking him to beat Mayweather in that fight but it turned out he the weight cut was also really bad for him in that fight he needed to move up and then Floyd just doused him in gasoline and put him on fire but Luke this is the interesting spin-off convo here for me because look Floyd handled his business against every type of fighter but there was this belief because Floyd had more control over his matchmaking than anybody had known up to that point, with the exception of Sugar Ray Leonard, that he was purposely avoiding certain guys with hand and foot speed or he was waiting out guys, which to some degree did happen.

When Floyd says he's TBE, to remind people, it's the whole package. It's the money, the business, the everything. Floyd had a perfect game in his career. But Luke, when we always say historically, who are the welterweights that would have given Floyd tons of problems? The name we always bring up right away, along with Sugar Ray Leonard, is hitman Tommy Hearns, who had the boxing ability and ridiculously long arms and crushing power to go with that speed in the land i mean just had everything where i don't care who you talk to whatever historian you want to bring up people

will tell you that fight's a problem for floyd um i'm here to tell you that welterweight prime for prime proffert could be a problem for floyd no i'm'm not saying slam dunk automatically, oh, he washes Floyd. No, Floyd is Floyd for a great reason. He might be the smartest combat sports athlete I have ever seen, Floyd Mayweather. It almost goes without saying, right? He might be the greatest defensive boxer since Willie Pepp, which is ridiculous. You know what I mean? Yeah, this version of crawford from saturday night

he's an absolute problem for welterweight floyd mayweather there's no question about it luke zero question yeah i mean i i never thought i would see another fighter who i thought you know obviously in a relatively close weight class this wouldn't be in the same but you know i mean like you know around the same neighborhood of weight that i thought oh that guy could that guy could beat mayweather. But Crawford, I mean, I'm not declaring it to you because who the hell knows, but like- Yeah, we'd have to see it, but- We'd have to see it, but like, do I think he could?

Yes, I think he could. I absolutely think he could. Damn, man. And the reason why I bring up the Hearns thing is because Crawford's long. He's huge. For as huge as we talked about Spence being, Crawford looked as big in there. And then

you saw the showcase of he can do Floyd things in terms of his defense and IQ, but at welterweight specifically, he's got way more firepower than Floyd. Floyd in the lower weight classes was a killer. When he was pretty boy Floyd, he

would search and destroy you. I giveyd a lot of credit for persevering in the second half of his career with those legitimate hand issues uh but you know the welterweight floyd was a pot shotter and a defensive wizard crawford's trouble crawford's big time trouble for him who was the guy that he did was it chop chop he did it too he's like stop crying and fucking fight and then he just demolished him yeah then he demolished him yeah yeah dude old pretty boy floyd was i mean he was he was a force to be reckoned with too make no mistake about it all right i mean he was pound for pound king at like age 21 pretty boy floyd okay ring magazine fighter of the year at age 20 like you know yeah it's

ridiculous yeah it's ridiculous all right next from jimmy re Reed. Luke, back on the Miranda Maverick hype train. I mean, listen, she opened the card at the lowest prelim spot you can get, but it was a nice win. It was a good arm bar. I thought overall she didn't look overwhelmed. She looked ready for the opportunity in general. There's still some things I think that need to be worked on, but here's what I'll say, BC. Definitely a must win I don't know but a big win a big win

stopped the bleeding so to speak and uh really showed like why we had some hype to begin with like there's parts of her game that are very formidable and her submission game is one of them good win she needed it she strategically admitted that she took this fight last minute because of the style difference on the ground. It was a really good win and she looked really good. And actually I thought she looked like a badass coming out in those aviator shades, like for an image.

I was like, man, that's pretty cool. But Luke, she greatly exposed a, a, a really bad part of a catch a wearer's game that, that needs to be addressed if she wants to compete continuously at this

level. So it was advantageous, but look, did you see that weird? I don't bring this up to be weird or gross and you can make BC comments all you want, but did you see catch where it got her arm caught in Miranda Maverick's fighting bra?

And they actually had to halt the action to avoid a major, you know, and we have seen very quick major wardrobe malfunctions in the past in which referees had to jump in and help. I'm just wondering if you ever see a future where almost exclusively female fighters go away from wearing the, the sports bra look, because I've yet to see a fighter strategically attempt to expose the other person's wardrobe in an effort to change their defense so they can land a big shot like when you think we'll ever see that and that'll be the turning point because i've definitely

seen in the men's game where guys will pull on the shorts when they're going for a takedown they can't get to stop the guy from scrambling like i've 100 seen that i've never seen someone like pulling another guy's cup or anything i'm just wondering if we ever do see it because you know obviously if somebody had a really bad wardrobe malfunction on in front of this many people it would be very embarrassing and it wouldn't be what this sport is all about but like even ronda and the carmouche fight had to constantly adjust and it was almost like this is that was rebot gear that's not the venom gear and the rebot gear was janky but uh daddy janky but um i just wondering if we're ever leading up to a moment where someone tries to use that as strategy, Luke,

and then we end up getting... BC's like, listen, I'm just here to see some titties. I mean, that's just the opposite. And then suddenly everybody's showing up in full Roxanne Montefiore, which is like sweatpants with sleeves. Have you ever watched a fight at a strip club? No, but I did watch that Patriots playoff game in Tom Brady's first year in the snow. Remember that one? Was it against Pittsburgh or was it the Raiders?

You know that one in the snow? Yeah, that was the one with the Ford momentum thing or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. You're right. That was the Raiders. The tuck rule. Yeah, I was watching different kind of tucks going on there, Luke. That was a wild time.

I've done it. I've actually watched fights at a strip club. It's stupid, though. It actually ended up backfiring because, you know, if I'm watching a fight, I kind of want to be invested in the fight. But then when there's like all this, what do you call it? Distraction to the side of you. Yeah.

It doesn't make for an appealing experience it's counterintuitive luke because you know i'm already rock hard with emotion watching these fights i mean i've got a phoner luke i don't want to send the wrong message to the wrong dancer you know plus plus those places luke i only funnily share these stories because i was once a wild man, but those places are disgusting, Luke. Come on. That's the dark arts of life right there. Oh, I've eaten at strip clubs. I'm trifling. I'm trifling.

Lunch with a view, Luke? Is that what you're going after there? No, no. Like the buffets at strip clubs? I've had them. I've had them. I've done that. Not proud of it.

Not proud of it. Been a long time. Actually, I'm trying to think, when was the last time I went to a strip club? I don't think I've been into a strip club at least since before 2010. As a hashtag girl, dad, you and the late RIP Kobe Bryant. I hope you never step foot in one again. Okay. Yeah, me too.

Me too. All right. Next. Is Mikey really telling us which strip club has the best seafood here in the comments? I know. Our producer is literally messaging us right now being like, like dude i know all of the best seafood in strip clubs in south florida i'm like mikey you need to get professional help okay uh from traveling craft enthusiast what do you think about the bmf belt winner nominating the next person to fight for it

instead of the promotion setting up future matchups yeah i don't give a fuck about any of that shit to be honest with you sorry dude the only problem with all these things going head to head saturday night was i was really excited about justin dustin too as would everybody else and i got myself caught up into the romanticism if there is any of the bmf title and there was a head kick knockout yet because spence had just ended, you know, 15 minutes before I w it was almost like I was out of awe. I was out of pop. I had used it all up, Luke on that incredible Crawford Spence performance. It was almost like too much. It was almost too much Saturday night where I don't even feel like I gave that moment, the moment it deserved to Justin Landon, that head kick in BMF and Masvidal's there with the title.

It was just sort of like. It was hard to cut. It was too much. Yeah, I don't like it when they compete with each other either. It sounds fun and like in theory. And then it ends up just like one ends up trampling the other, whichever direction it goes, you know? Yeah, it's like watching a fight at a strip club. Yeah, all right.

It's like watching a fight at a strip club. It's like I love that there are fist fights, but also there's that. So, okay. Next big daddy round tree says, can you shed some light on why boxers are able to wear costumes into the ring up until the opening bell?

But MMA fighters, at least in the UFC have to be in uniform and can't even fist bump their cornerman on the way to the cage. Guys, it's because the power structure in boxing makes it so that boxers, basically not just elite ones, but even low-level ones, have significantly more rights and control over every part of the problem. Let me tell you one thing. An A-side boxer is so powerful,

not only can they get a cut, like Floyd used to get a cut of concessions. Floyd used to get a cut of the gate. Floyd used to be able to set the prices of the merchandise in the arena. That's the control he had. Right, right. Also, they can end up having an influence

on who commentates on the fight, who ends up working the broadcast, where the broadcast positions end up being versus where vip seating is like they have vastly more power because of the regulations in place in the industry and ultimately how it works ufc fighters do not have any of these protections and therefore do not have any of these powers it's quite straightforward i would like to see the ufc embrace more of the pride showman mentality.

Would you like when we see Anthony Joshua entering a stadium with his AJ initials on fire? And you know, like I like that that's WrestleMania type pop in circumstance. I love that. Can we have that? Dana White has been very clear that he doesn't like any of this stuff. And I would just love to see him sit down and tell the audience,

you tell the audience how Bud Crawford walking out with Eminem with the fishnet. And by the way, the fishnet was like built into his trunks as well, which was super cool. It was so fucking awesome. But I'm saying like carrying the fishnet, having Eminem out there. You tell me and you tell the audience, make the case that that in general makes fighting worse or made that night not what it could be. It's just absurd on its face. What they want is control. And when they can control it,

they can then sell ads against it. Have you seen how the octagon is now just completely littered with ads in every way? That's not a bug. That's a feature. I mean, it's there for a purpose. All of this is designed for their aesthetic, for their purposes. Dana doesn't like pomp and circumstance.

But to me, BC, and I know you agree, sometimes it doesn't work. That's true. It doesn't work every time. But fighters showing their personality through showmanship is almost always going to be worth it. Oh, it elevates the sport. Yeah. But key question to this,

do you think Bud coming out and banging in fishnets means he's the greatest fighter of all time to do that? Or is that still De La Hoya? Poor De La Hoya, man. I mean, I just can't even beat him up anymore, you know? Hey, you know what? I didn't see it, but everyone told me over the weekend that that HBO documentary documentary on was actually pretty good i saw it two weeks ago

what'd you think i didn't like it okay so no it was produced by ac slater and i think marky marky mark luke yeah it's not it's not badly produced it's not as if it doesn't have big reveals in it it does there are some actually some pretty damn big reveals in there, but you have to understand I'm an Oscar super fan who also has been there every step of the way as both journalist and fan through all of his public missteps post-career. And even with everything I just said, it was too safe.

There were major things they avoided to altogether. Yeah. You get the inside story of the fish and the tech. They even the russian stripper that put him in in them yeah you get some big reveals about his family history and all of that but they didn't even touch the whole richard schaefer pbc thing how about how all that fell apart oscar went a separate way all right yet they didn't they barely wait hold on hold on hold on what about the part about oscar's like fucked up like like upbringing? I heard that part was pretty good.

There's a big reveal involving his relationship with his mother. His brother, Joel, plays a big role in sort of helping paint how rough childhood they had in East LA with two very unloving parents and how that fueled a lot of Oscar's wanting and yearning. But I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm too close to it. I'm too much of an Oscar super fan. There wasn't a lot of detail put into the coverage of the fights. I'm, but I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm too close to it.

I'm too much of an Oscar super fan. There wasn't a lot of detail put into the coverage of the fights. I'm not, I don't know. I don't know. You see, I'm not even doing a bit. I just got an email from the UFC. You know, the UFC like has like a media distribution list power slap for while we're, while we're sitting here talking about like their great

pay-per-view of the weekend. And obviously the great, uh, boxing pay-per-view over the weekend and obviously the great boxing pay-per-view over the weekend, I get an email for PowerSlapp. I've literally emailed them very calmly and professionally and been like, can you please, if you'd be so kind, remove me from any distribution list related to anything related to PowerSlapp. They just utterly ignored it and are still sending me PowerSlapp shit. Better get ready.

This is what I mean, guys. I'm literally trying to not have it in my life. I'm literally trying, and they won in my life i'm literally trying and they won't let me they won't let me maybe you are a rumble sports subscriber and you just won't admit it publicly you know what i might as well just get involved at this point do we have any other left or is that the last question i think that's the last question okay bc you're up my friend yeah we close with my feces um i scoured the globe for the uh highs and lows the good the bad the ugly over the past weekend from combat sports and beyond and there was a

lot of combat sports this one's called have you seen this shit man i need to get it done oh god yeah i'm going today it's damn true ufc 291 from salt lake city luke Lake City Luke Derek Lewis won the whole night of all of his post-fight antics and there have been so many dude this was the best can we just relive this please yeah I mean are you kidding me Luke the DX chop that was me after prom bro Luke I had a theory late Saturday that this was very calculated to save his job, not just to score the big knockout, but to show that he's still that fun-loving fan favorite.

It did seem like it was purposeful. Do you agree with that? I think he felt a little relief too, maybe. I do agree that maybe he had planned it, but I also just feel like he was he seemed so happy good for him too right but like he seemed so happy i love the guy i love the love the guy he's hard he's hard to dislike by the way yeah met kate abdo you got the chance to work with her for the tank and ryan fight i got my first chance uh she's very different

than derrick lewis but the one thing that might unite them is she is also very hard to dislike shots to kate abdo, a consummate pro. I'll tell you, you know what stands out to me about not having worked with her a couple times? Like Bud, very, very calm. Yes. Like, very calm. You know, she just carries it very evenly.

And it allows the conversations to flow so freely. And she's very good, as you see if you watch her soccer show luke on paramount plus she's very good at floating with like bad humor and and and you know the light moments but i gotta tell you i don't know if i could tell the story on air but we did uh we did fighter meetings and um stephen nelson who was one of bud's uh likemates. He fought in the prelims. We called his fights, so-called Stephen Nelson. And he had a big gap in his career, and we were asking him about it, and he was like, you know, there was the pandemic and injuries and blah, blah, blah.

Everyone took a little bit of time off one way or the other. And he's like, you know, but I use the time wisely. He's learning how to fly a plane. He's almost got his license. He went skydiving. he went to a bunch of stuff including not limited to stand up comedy and then Kate Abdo was like oh tell us a joke and I was like Kate

don't do that don't do that because I know where this is going to go and then sure enough I won't say I'll tell you what he said but in the middle of the call he goes well I'll tell you the joke but you know it's not PC and I was like, oh, fuck. Okay, here we go.

This is going to go poorly. And it didn't go poorly, but she's a trooper. She's a trooper. All right. All right. You and Ariel also had a nice reunion, Luke. Congratulations.

Yeah, people seem to like that, I guess. But he was great. He was easy to work with too, you know? Absolutely. He brings a lot of fun to the broadcast. Let's go back into the cage here at 291, Luke. Herb Dean's power slide to try to save Dustin Poirier. Nobody's talking about this, dude.

This is refereeing at the highest level. Watch this. Oh, yeah. He comes in just, whop, there it is. Yeah, dude, that's me trying to get a seat on Southwest. You know what I'm saying? Just like running onto the fucking plane. I'm like, no, I got A5 player.

I got A5. The difference is you'd be crop dusting everybody there. Hopefully he didn't drop a... He probably was farting the whole time. Dropped an SBD right on top. Big John would have done that if it was Tokyo Luke. Big John would have done that. You better believe that.

All right. Hey, we had a mini real versus real moment here post-fight. Here are Justin and Dustin. Let's listen in after their contest. Thank you, man. I didn't see it. I didn't see it.

Congrats, man. I'm proud of you. You both did. Have a great night, man. Yeah, congrats, man. Let's hang out. Yeah, for sure. Whip your ping pong.

Luke, they're going to hang out afterwards. I'd like to be a part of that trio, right? Just be three warriors just bro-ing out, you know? I got to tell you, man, in all my years covering fight sports, I think that Machida kind of got it. GSP, too. These guys who embodied the martial arts spirit, they got labeled as these pros of the game quite fairly. But you don't see the same

martial arts kind of demeanor from him. He's still a prize fighter. He's still rough around the edges in that way. And yet, when you look at what he does with the Good Fight Foundation, when you look at the sportsmanship that he treats his peers with colby notwithstanding for different reasons dude he's the best that we got in the game for this kind of stuff yeah the best that we got in the game we're lucky to have him and i i don't know something about it the wholesome nature of two warriors like goddian ward right becoming best friends afterwards i love to see that i really do when you when you have that exchange in the fighting surface and you leave a piece of yourself in there with another man or woman luke the idea that you're linked for life after that i love that thing uh the coldest picture of the week though courtesy of bobby green

here is el kakui walking in and luke that's not 50 cent with the chest protector there that's bobby green with the ski mask outside of the port-a-john. Look at that cold stare. Yeah, bro. That is so awesome. Looking like with the balaclava like he's about to go rob a bank. Hell yeah, dude. Count me in. Speaking of Green, he did not fear Tony

at all in this fight, despite Ferguson saying that in the press conference. Let's look in on the stare down the head. Close. What fear do you see? despite Ferguson saying that in the press conference, let's look in on the stare down they had. Let's get close. What fear do you see? What fear do you see? It's going down, Tom. What the fuck do you mean?

Ain't no fear. Ain't no fear. Look, I like when people get invited to the press conference who don't normally go there, and then they spice it up. I thought Bobby Green did that by spinning the chair around and coming in there with the catcher's chest protector on. I loved it. I loved the whole thing.

Yeah, he was ready to catch some fastballs and some two-seamers. Yes. Other than that, it was great. At the post-fight press conference, Kevin Holland delivered the most inappropriate line of the week. Let's listen in. I shouldn't say this. I wish some of you women would plug your ears usually there's not women back here so i'm sorry guys ahead of time but it's like having sex every day of the week and

then fucking a virgin you know it's like he's been gone way too long that shit was way too tight he couldn't handle it once again sorry ladies it's just a weird analogy i wasn't expecting it um makes sense though right it does yeah uh you know your wrestling looks impeccable it almost looks like you've learned how to defend takedowns too well what he's talking about right there luke but uh yeah that was a little cringeworthy in 2023 but it happened it did happen there you go only at mma events only when or when adrian broner's talking in boxing that's it yes uh it's time for spence crawford from las vegas we mentioned that m&m walkout was incredible here's a quick taste of it along with bud talking afterwards of how it happened make some noise for the next undisputed welterweight champion of the world,

Derrick Bud Crawford! How did you pull off getting Eminem to walk you out tonight? I don't know. It was just I throw a rock in a haystack and he replied. And, you know, I told him to pull up and he was like, I'm there. Are you one of my favorite fighters? And, you know, that that show, you know, a lot of support for me. And that show where what level I'm at in the boxing world. Look, that's like the definition of real recognizing real.

That happened in like 24 hour notice that bud gave an interview said if i could have anybody walk me out would be eminem eminem responded on social media and then got on a plane and showed up that's awesome dude by the way i heard that there was another name that they wanted to also get him to walk out with uh eminem they weren't able to get it uh but the the thing that stood out to me bc was with with that, with the hype of the fight, with that, then what he did in the fight. Dude, Bud Crawford is going to be a much bigger star going forward than he ever has been.

He took a major, major step up. Good for him. Do you downgrade that performance at all because Eminem didn't sing? He just came out and announced Bud and then walked into the ring? No. I thought it was so much better. Okay, so the best scenario would be where they actually do it. But for whatever reason, the people who run these events,

the live event producers, they never let the talent do it. So they always have to kind of just like, you know, pretend like they're rapping, which sucks. I hate that. And instead, he gave the introduction, let the music show, and then was kind of stone-faced while Bud was stone-faced. I actually thought it worked completely. Two thumbs up.

And listen, Eminem's new music to me sounds like dad rap. There's some exception to that not being true, but his older stuff works better for me. I like Any Man from Ruckus' Soundbombing album, but this was a home run. I mean, this was a home run in every way. Bud Crawford and Eminem nailed it. Perfect job.

I want to shout him out because I know he watches the show and we love him. Big E from the WWE. Do you remember when he walked out Sean Porter? Andreas Hale actually put that up behind the scenes and did the whole, you know, the whole thing, the whole spiel. It was fantastic as well. I love that stuff. Luke, Bud got to last laugh. Laugh last.

Excuse me. But so did Bomack. all them fat jokes all week. I actually popped huge for watching this play out in the locker room afterwards. What? What? What? What? I told you, man.

Hell yeah. Now fuck you motherfuckers, man. Fuck them. They mad. They mad. They mad. They gonna- hell yeah now fuck you motherfuckers man fuck them they mad they mad dude I love that video have a day dude literally for folks who don't follow Errol Spence

on social media like leading up to this fight he would just post pictures like real photos of Bomack eating Cheetos and then call him names they called him fat on stage like they were just constantly drilling this guy and then for bud to do that when they've had this long partnership dude good for bomack dude seriously good for both i seriously love to see that after everything they've gone through people did doubt them and and i doubted him i doubted him

good good for bomack he has every right on a day like that talk your shit Bomek you earned it but there was like pure joy though right there that came out and and you know that's fueled by a lot uh he wasn't the only one who laughed last Tim Bradley the great ESPN announcer and hall of fame boxer I don't know if you remember this he's been on the bud train from like day one about his greatness Tim Bradley posted this video after the victory. Doubt me again. Doubt me again. Yep.

All the hate. Everything y'all said about me. Yeah. What did I say? What did I say? Told you. The greatest. The greatest.

The greatest. I know what I'm talking about. All you haters out there. I told you. Good for Tim Bradley. Because I've seen Tim Bradley get killed in a million different directions. I think some of it is deserved.

A lot of it is not. And he has dealt with a lot of shit. Good for Tim Bradley as well. Absolutely. You saw the pure emotion here. And Luke, we mentioned your reunion with Ariel Helwani, two of the biggest MMA broadcasters and journalists of all time let's listen in on this uh diving through some hip

terms like two old bastards let's listen why is his nickname so cold because the kids say that he is so cold that everything he does and i think that's a good thing right that's what i'm told unless you're his opponent well it's interesting because like they say, it's lit, which would be fire. Okay, Ariel. Here they're saying cold because he's good, so I'm not sure. It's sort of like the hair. The duality, the cold and the fire. What do you guys think?

It's bussin' for real, for real. Now you can shoot me. Is that the same as Riz? I was told Riz is something. I don't know what that is. Let me just tell you, I'm uninterested in the life and language of teenagers. Can I just be honest about that? There's like a whole new vocabulary now. It's crazy.

It's like a whole dictionary of words that I don't know what they mean. Listen, listen. We have two hours to fill. It ain't all going to be with great analysis, okay? That was so cringy of two old guys trying to figure out what word matches up with what else. Yeah, that was great.

I loved it. All right, let's go to Bellator versus Ryzen 2 from Tokyo. Magomed Magomedov had a really big comeback win here against Danny Sabatello. Luke, what do you think about Tiger's submission lock in here? Dude, Danny Sabatello really needs to figure this shit out tiger submission lock in here dude danny sabatello really needs to figure this shit out man the guy's positional control is great uh but the problem has been there's not enough ground and pound and then the other obviously his hand is trapped here even

though he's using it to pull down the other problem the other problem is that dude there's just not he just he's using it to walk into too much stuff that doesn't need to be there um he's really got to get that under control because there's others. If you weaponized what he's got the right way, it's extremely formidable. He hasn't figured that part out yet. I think this loss and obviously the one before this, the Stotts will put him in, it should put him on a better path. Fellas in the back, we can skip over the Patricio Pitbull upset knockout loss.

We played that earlier. So can we fast forward to our KOs of the week? And Luke, sometimes the KOs come in the game. Sometimes we're talking about practice. Oh! Thank you very much. Padwork gone wrong. Or gone right.

Maybe this guy banged his sister. You don't know. Okay, okay, Luke. Another nominee for KO of the week comes in this kickboxing match. God damn. Just get the fuck out of here, bitch. Here, go get my car. Go pick me up in my car.

And when you pee, you pee with the seat down and you sit down. You wipe sitting down like a real man would all right don't do anything else look mike tyson had the greatest social clip of the week here that has got to light up your fancy he took out the old weed gun yes i wish with this weed gun he'd come to my house and do a drive-by shooting i really do i mean doesn't that waste a lot of it though who i mean shut the fuck up brian can't waste it in my face please look at mike turning the gun on himself you gotta love that wow yes by the way if anyone knows where to get this gun someone tell showtime so they can buy us one for our studio please please do all right time for your t-shirts of the week, Luke.

Look, this lady just loves her American lager, and I'm not saying anything different to her. If you like my mountains, you'll love my... Oh, you do. You just know she's got the worst tattoos in America. Oh, yes. You just know. Shout out to my favorite Instagram channel, Ad Hoagie Farts, for this one. But is it better than this T-shirt, Luke?

Let me pee. Okay. All right. I mean, did this guy lose a bet, or is he just a complete fucking idiot? I really can't tell. I don't know, but he may have gotten this show canceled. Time for some dicks in the wild, Luke.

You got to love them. Grandma makes the birthday cake for the grandson here. But hey, Grammy. Grammy, we're having some issues. Look at the toothpick holding up that sad hog. Look at the unit on that guy. Wow. All right.

Hey, it's always time for real recognizing real in these parts. Did you see Michael Chandler and the snake? No, not. I don't mean TJ Dillashaw. Look, this one. Why is he messing with that snake? Just leave it alone. Oh, it gets worse. Michael! Michael, just knock it off! He's gonna pick it up get the fuck out of here get what the fuck dude you know a guy is from Tennessee and or Australia when they're doing this shit yeah well look he is not here

for a long time I just wanted to remind you of that let this let this be a reminder fucking snake go bro let that fucking snake go yeah bro. Let that fucking snake go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Knock it off. No lightweights were harmed in the filming of this clip, though, Luke, luckily. Let's keep the real theme going. Here's Jon Bones Jones and, you guessed it, Luke, at Zuck.

What is going on here, Luke? This dude is so desperate to wash not even not even johnny bones but zuck is so desperate to launder his image by getting fighters to be his friends amazing oh yeah is that at meta headquarters luke i don't know i don't care i absolutely don't care okay our final recollection here of real coming together luke did you see this bromance between mike perry and yoel romero first they were playing soccer now they're traveling to uh the middle east together luke this is somebody get a reality show together pronto with these two are you in dude i saw that they swam in the dead sea first of all i have also swam in the dead sea it's a pretty incredible experience but more to that point if they're not filming this and putting it on

social media, what is even the point? Oh my God, put a camera on these two. I agree with that. I believe they were with the Kawa bros out there and visiting the ruins in Jordan and all that. Is that right? That's right, right? What's that place with that hidden city? Is that Jordan? Yes.

More or less, yes. Luke, Magic Johnson and company are the new owners of the Commanders. What do you think of their new logo? that jordan yes well yeah i mean yeah more or less yes okay more or less uh luke magic johnson and company are the new owners of the commanders what do you think of their new logo i've seen this i've seen this as native american guy wore the caucasians t-shirt i think it's funny didn't bother me at all all right uh time for ball breakers of the week let's go to one championship here this is some serious gnp luke oh damn right yo just yo yo you ain't never gonna have kids after this battle uh this next man attempted a guinness book of world records to break the most amount of pbc pipes with his ball bag luke let's see if he achieved can't believe he's white bc it seems so out of character for him yeah there he goes um i'm not sure if this next guy is related to him but have you ever

thought about jumping off of a three-story building and hitting the ground without getting injured, Luke? Dude, these crackers. I mean... He lived to tell about it. The entire premise of this is to fall through a tree to slowly break your fall so that by the time you get to the ground, it hurts but is otherwise not cataclysmic. Oh, dude, right on the crotch, though.

That fence right on the pole. First of all, they should allow guys to do this on the condition that they get a vasectomy first cataclysmic. Oh, and, uh, though that fence, that's, that's, first of all, they should allow guys to do this on the condition that they get a vasectomy first. So they cannot impregnate anyone. No, look,

this is the vasectomy. There you go. There you go. Fair enough. Well played. Well played. All right, let's go over to the carnival for your slam dunk of the week.

How many times have you wanted to do this in your life i mean it's the only way to beat that thing to do it's an asshole thing to do to the poor people just working they're trying to do their jobs but that is hilarious because those hoops are always rigged the balls are too big for the whole look you know what i'm talking about right oh yeah i know all right uh let's go to beard oh no first we go to the dojo let's go dong it in the dojo i don't know what this video is i forgot you tell me oh he's just like doing the whole death touch thing and now they're just touching tips so is the tip of his penwa reducing this guy to nothing yeah so this is how bc and i met it looked just like this we just touched tips all right i'm already sick of that video uh let's keep it going here let's go over to a

beer tober fest watch this waiter pull off the impossible uh-oh oh dude you're getting fired like a bitch for that yeah spoiler alert he didn't pull it off, Luke. He pulled it off the tray. That's what he did. That guy will not. Wow, look at that. Wow. All right. Hey, you know what my favorite time is.

It's time to rate that tat, Luke. Let's go over to this fish tit tat. Not a great tattoo. Not a great tattoo. Would you say that's about as useful as tits on a bowl, Luke? I've never known what that has meant. Have you? Well, the idea would be that you don't need to use them, right?

You're not going to actually milk anything with them. In this particular case, yeah, this one is a mess. That one's beat up. The line work is trash. It's not good. Our final tattoo is pretty extreme. You tell me if you like this. You can't unmount and do what's already been

mountain done uh actually that's a very good tattoo that's a very good tattoo that's uh this this is what you would call like it's like a version of american traditional aesthetic but it's a little bit new school uh but um it's well done it's i mean i wouldn't get it but it's well done it is well done is that a trash panda what kind of animal it's i mean i wouldn't get it but it's well done it is well done is that a trash panda what kind of animal is that i think i'm not exactly sure what the fuck that is but maybe like a possum could be right yeah time for some good street fights you put a lot of white dudes around a pool luke somebody's gonna throw a punch but watch this double leg that really stole the show nothing a double leg couldn't figure out check this out

okay so they start swinging like bitches oh big spear right there oh yeah dude what do you think they're fighting over this is that's really okay what white guy is gonna fight chicks and no spears luke probably there are no chicks there look it's nothing but dudes it's nothing but dudes wow wow all right our final street fight of the week comes from this deck hockey game i used to play deck hockey in waterbury connecticut a lot of fights luke a lot of fights i love hockey fights oh shit oh they went to work on each other yeah they did with the stick yeah yeah but you know what if you get pushed it's kind of a dick move to throw the stick so he kind of had it coming you know what i'm saying yeah like i feel like if someone shoves you it's okay to shove them back if you get hit you can hit back

but then when you start resorting to the high sticking that's when that's when the problems start look bc's feces isn't all fails sometimes we highlight wholesome wins how about mkp1 chef kaz earning his purple belt in jiu-jitsu you into this hey that's great that's legit now he doesn't have the weird shit hanging off of his body but um that's a legit achievement they don't hand those out you got to earn it he tied it like a bit like a weirdo but it's okay um that's now look he did offer his services in vegas for you cook meals uh you know puff the bag whatever you need down there i don't really drink anymore i don't gamble ever i don't go to vegas to hang out and socialize i go to vegas to do work and order uber eats in my room that's what i do

uh chef cast did have that idea for that reality show where he cooks his dinner and then we all have sex look i was a little bit but it was a little bit bold but you know it was it was uh yeah there you go right there we love you chef cast thank you very much all right luke this was you unfortunately after asking your dad to watch our cbssn mk takeover episode on thursday sorry about that luke sorry about that yeah oh that is sick by the way i sent him a picture of dad my i told my dad i got home yesterday because he did he did want to know about the travel and then i sent him a picture of like all of us on the stage and like the spence cropper thing at the weigh-ins and just no comment just no comment come on dad come on all right finally luke your best fails of the week let's go to the white guy on the boat it's always gonna end great we love that

yeah fuck you yo eat that shit how's who's your orthodontist the fucking motor you know what i mean yeah you better call g Louganis, Luke. Yeah, that's great. This is the first and last mountain bike drop for this kid. Let's check in on this. Oh. Oh, he just is going to go face first, huh? Yup.

You fucking idiot. You fucking idiot. A, you need a little bit more speed, and B, you got to pull up. You don't just run the shit forward you moron and finally our biggest fail of the week goes to this birthday celebration gone wrong luke is this how they do it in columbia or what not that i've seen okay okay uh they can stop now okay all right all. I like how this party is like, we're just going to spray you with things that are flammable and then just light it on fire.

No, this was not R. Kelly's birthday party, Luke, because he's in the can, but it did have similar endings there. That's the shit of the week. Wow. Two and a half hours, Luke? I don't know. This might be the best show in combat sports history.

It might be. It might just be. It might just be. Hey hey one more time to everyone thank you so much for making last week and then the weekend such a uh gotta tell you folks i mean you know we haven't talked to everyone but from what we understand on the cbs side they were very happy with the two-hour show that bc and i did um to get you guys ready for spence crawford. You know, MK on Friday was tough for me. I'm not going to lie. That was a little bit tough.

But Kate Abdo watched it. She actually was like talking about it with me. I couldn't believe it. She watched what? MK on Friday? Friday's MK. Wow. All right.

Shout out to Kate. Yeah. She was referencing things and she was like asking me about certain things in the show. So that was pretty cool. Dude, did you talk to her about her boxing? She trains with Malik Scott. Yeah, we did. She told us she would take an opponent.

She would take an opponent. Well, I don't know if you know this, Luke, but Showtime's Courtney Magg, one of our favorite people in the world, she boxes. I don't know who's better because I've never seen Kate Abdo, but Kate Abdo, she'll knuckle you into the ground if you let her. Matchup Monday, there you go. But, no, I just want to say I want to thank Showtime for the opportunity to go and cover a fight like that.

And, again, one more time to everybody who paid attention last week. You know, whether you watched the Spence Dissected preview, whether you watched any of the MKs, whether you supported us on CBS, whether you watched the live stream, send a nice note note whatever you did to help us and help the show we felt it we saw it thank you guys thank you thank you thank you really really cool what a weekend man i'm exhausted i dude when that alarm went off this morning man i'm told you earlier i was fucking dying i did not want to get up i didn't i didn't sleep at all last week um but it was vacation it's gonna feel good luke i mean people people grown at our us taking two vacations a year but you know we do

have wives and kids and family so i'll be gone in a couple weeks you'll be gone the week after right yeah more or less there's a little bit of overlap but not much um all right i don't think i'm leaving till the 13th there's a the showtime is coming toC. on the 12th for one of the Russell brothers. I'm going to be there for that. Oxon Hill, Maryland. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I used to live in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

I got robbed in Oxon Hill, Maryland. So there you're going to go. Well, Luke, if people enjoyed this combat sports weekend and they say, well, what's next? What is next when you look to the future, next couple months? I mean, we got Charlo Canelo. So Charlo Canelo at the end of September. That'll be a big one.

October. Obviously, dude, Corey Sanhagen fights this upcoming weekend. That's going to be great. Can't wait to see him lock it down with Rob Font. That'll be a lot of fun. John Jones, not too far. It's not that way. The rest of the summer is not necessarily that great,

but the late fall, early winter. Again, remember, so we're going to get haney and pro gray on the same day we get fury and in ghanu and one will be earlier so they don't have to overlap that's going to be a big day october 28th shoot i'm saying so like october november is going to be kind of big i don't know how big august is going to be but the rest of it's going to be pretty cool and then of course as i mentioned september oh if we could ufc most yeah i was gonna say ufc doing the show in vegas on the 16th like it's gonna be good it's gonna be good okay

okay um we'll have some fill-in guests luke we'll have some great content in august but we're gonna take a step away and uh then we'll come back banging this fall it's gonna be a big one i think we got morel benavidez this fall we got a lot of good stuff coming across box and mma indeed all right well i gotta tell you i can't even complain anymore i got the fight that i wanted and it delivered more than i ever ever ever thought possible i truly mean that that fight delivered in ways i did not imagine it could and um fuck dude that was great oh yeah we didn't even we didn't even answer this question who's boxing's new paw for paw number one i mean it's mean, it's... It's Bud Crawford. It's Bud Crawford. Dude, he annihilated Errol Spence,

a top five pound-for-pound guy. Stephen Fulton is very good, and I respect him, but he ain't that. And that one was at least, you know, I mean, in a way, put him away quicker, but that was at least, you know, semi... Not competitive, but... No, it wasn't.

You know, there are reasonable amounts of punching that was done by Cool Boy Steph. No, no, no, no, no. It's Bud Crawford. It's Bud Crawford. That's the best boxer I've seen in a long, long time, man. He is the definition of special. Indeed, Luke Thomas.

Please, everybody, check out the dissected Luke Thomas breaking down. Yeah, right now, what Bud did well. We got video rights, Luke, so that's even better on dissecting. Yeah, that's the way it works. So I'm so glad we have it, and it's up right now. Please go check it out, youtube.com slash morningcombat. And check out BC's post-fight show if you haven't. I did a post-fight show for Spence and Crawford.

I'm going to take the day off tomorrow with my daughter and just hang out with her i'm not gonna answer emails i'm not gonna do calls i'm not gonna do shit tomorrow except hang out with my my kid and my family which i think is long overdue but uh dude i love this fucking show i loved last weekend i needed a little uh boost a morale boost like the fight game it kind of brought me down a little bit not down but like i don't know you get old and crusty and and it's hard to feel those other things again. Dude, I got hit with a tidal wave over the weekend. It was like a B-12 shot to the buttocks, right? Like my guy, Sahada, used to take.

Yeah. It was like that IV that I didn't get, but the one you recommended on Friday's show that I should have gotten, you know, the hangover. All right. Well, reminder, Showbox, the new generation, is back this Friday, Methlehem, Pennsylvania. Your boy BC will be there. We got plenty on beaten fighters. It'd be fun, fun and games. Do not miss that.

You can stream Showtime for free right now. 30 days free by going to Showtime.com. Uh, yeah, that's it. That's all I got. I don't have anything else for you. So thanks to Mikey more mile. One of the best producers that, uh, we're just so lucky to have them. Thanks to everyone at Showtime.

Courtney, Matt Snyder did a phenomenal job this week. Shouts to the Malka crew who were out in Vegas who kept everything working the way that it was supposed to. Literally, literally, literally could not have done it without you. What a team effort. Thanks to everyone who watched one more time. For Brian Campbell, I'm Luke Thomas. We appreciate you guys.

We'll see you on Wednesday. Until then, may all of your gains be loyal.