MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Edwards-Muhammad, UFC GOAT Debates, Covington-Masvidal, Poirer-Chandler | Luke Thomas' Live Chat, ep. 64

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

On today's podcast, we'll discuss the prevalence of debates happening inside mixed martial arts (MMA) and the UFC about who is the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) in weight classes and why it's happening so much right now with Kamaru Usman and Georges St-Pierre. We'll also talk about the future is for welterweights Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal, Michael Chandler maybe fighting Dustin Poirier, Israel Adesanya leaving middleweight, how Canelo would perform against Floyd Mayweather if today's version fought him and much more. ---------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everybody. What time is it? It is 3.01 p.m. East Coast time right here on, this is Thursday, the 18th of February, 2021. My name is Luke Thomas. I'm from CBS and Showtime. This is my weekly live chat. Let me put this up here very quickly. There we go. Thumbs up. Subscribe, please, if you are so inclined. We'll get to today. Let's see.

I think I saw on the rundown there was some stuff about GOAT debates. There was some stuff about 155, 170. We'll get to this news. They just came out, I should say, a few minutes ago about Leon Edwards' next fight. We have an opponent. We'll react to that. Plus, whatever is on your mind, we'll do that. So without further ado, let's get this party started, shall we?

Alright, and we're back. Let's just make sure everything is running the way it's supposed to be. Yes, it seems that it is. And with that in mind, let's pull up your questions. I always post a thread, usually on the day before, on the community section of the tab of the channel here. So if you go to youtube.com slash morningcombat, you look in the community section, there will typically be a live thread, you know, roughly 20, 24 hours ahead of time where the questions can get asked. And then if you like it, you give it a thumbs up. The ones that get pushed to the top are typically the ones that I will answer. You can only submit three per thread. So there you go. Okay, before we get to these questions, let's just react to this news, because I would imagine it would be on here if it wasn't for the nature of how the questions get asked a little bit ahead of time.

But it is live, so let's give a live reaction to it. I'm sure we'll talk more about this on the regular Morning Combat tomorrow, when we have a little bit more time to digest it and think about it. But if you didn't hear, Leon Edwards, of course you know, was supposed to fight Hamzat Chumaev, I think it was March 16th. Let's see here, just to be sure. And I'll correct that, I'll verify that, I should say, in just a second. But the thing that I do know for sure is that he is going to be fighting Bilal Muhammad. Now that fight is, excuse me, it's going to be March 13th. March 13th at the Apex facility.

That will be headlined by Leon Edwards versus Bilal Muhammad. Now you might recall Bilal Muhammad, he just had a nice win over Diego Lima at UFC 258. He got a three-round decision against him. If you look at the rankings currently, we knew he was going to be bumping on the door, or knocking on the door, I should say, of 170 with that win, it put him at number 13, it looks like. I'm imagining these are updated. I think he was like 15 before, maybe 14, so he bumped up at least one or two spots. So 13 versus three ordinarily would not be a situation that would make necessarily a lot of sense, but I went out there and publicly said I thought this was great matchmaking, and I saw a lot of people being like I went out there and publicly said I thought this was great matchmaking, and I saw a lot of people being like,

huh, how is this great matchmaking? Folks, this is excellent matchmaking. This isn't merely good. This is very, very good matchmaking. Understand something. It's the 18th, so you have less than a month to go. Okay? That could, less than a month to go

for a whole lot of things, including potentially travel, if it's overseas, if it's international, how hard that might be, but that's sort of the least of my concerns. Understand something, that when you're dealing with a last-minute situation or near last-minute, very, very narrow,

one, you're already talking about Leon Edwards. People don't want to fight him. He's very, very good, but he's very much unknown, so there's just not a lot to be gained there. Plus, it's late notice, which means if you're a matchmaker, it's a virtual guarantee your first and second choice for who you think should go up against them

are not going to take it or be ready or whatever. Probably not even your third or fourth choice either. You talk to these guys privately, they have to go very far down the list before they can find someone. Frankly, that they got a ranked guy at all is a semi-miracle. I know you've seen situations where a very high-level fighter has filled in before. Those are the exceptions that prove the rule. It does happen on occasion.

That is true. You know, Chad Mendes filling in for Jose Aldo on last-minute notice. Okay, that's pretty good. But that rarely happens, and the stakes there are much bigger, and it was Conor McGregor. It's just going to be easier to go. You've got an opponent who's very tough, who not a lot of people know. He's highly ranked, so if you beat him and you're Bilal Muhammad,

you have a lot to gain there as well, but suffice to say, I can see why a lot of people might turn it down. I'm going to say it one more time. That they got a ranked guy at all is very, very impressive. More to the point, what I really like about this fight is, obviously, it makes sense for Bilal Muhammad. If you're 13 and you're fighting a guy ranked 3, you're going to jump the rankings in a way that no one else has. The guy's been on an 8-fight win streak or something. 8-1 his last 9. And he's really looking to move forward,

really wanted a ranked opponent. Well, here you go. You got one. He should be close to on weight. He didn't take a ton of damage in the last fight. There's a lot of reasons to like that contest. The leg, I'm a little bit unsure of, but either way, it makes sense for him.

But more to the point, Bilal Muhammad is one of these guys who was always good and used good combined with grinding to get pretty far. But I think to go to the next level that he wants to go to, what I noticed in the Lima fight was he's going from, and these are very loose terms and I don't use these very often, but he's going from something like a grinder to more of an operator. And you might be asking, well, what are the differences between them? An operator is a much more control, has a much more thoughtful game.

It's not just aggression and pace and repetitive contact. It can be repetitive contact, but it's usually a little more strategic, a little more thoughtful. It's just an evidence of the guy's game maturing and his mind getting better and his IQ improving and all those kinds of things. I still think that Edwards, if he is the Edwards that we knew him from, the Dos Anjos or Cerrone fights, I think he wins this.

I think he wins this, no sweat. But I don't know if that's who we got. I don't know if that's who we got. I don't know if it's who we got. So we're going to have to see. And if you're Leon, in addition to getting a paycheck, which you haven't gotten in two years, and staying active, which you haven't had a chance to fight in roughly two years or whatever it's been,

an astronomically long amount of time, in the case of a guy like Bilal Muhammad, he is built to go the distance. He is threatening, but not necessarily in a hugely important firepower kind of way. He's the kind of guy where if you're Leon Edwards, you should be able to execute the kind of game that you have in that space. You should be technically superior to him. So there's a risk either way. Yes, you know, this is far from the way you would look at it if you could pick one versus two or three versus four. But given the circumstances, you like what it offers for both of these fighters. Given the matchup, it's a great chance for someone like Bilal Muhammad to continue that growth as an operator.

And for someone like Leon Edwards, who's been one, I think, for quite some time, it's a chance to show that you're still relevant as a top-tier figure in this division, and it's winnable. It's winnable. Yeah, dude, you gotta like it. You gotta like it. Also, if you're Leon Edwards, I don't think Kamzat Shumayev and Bilal Muhammad have the same styles. I think that's a gross oversimplification. But in terms of how much the takedown features into both of their games, and again, we don't know a whole lot about Kamzat in that sense, but what we do know, it does feature pretty prominently for the most part, Gerald Mearshort fight notwithstanding. He's going to have been ready for the Kamzat side, which means that's going to be something

that's going to translate over probably pretty well to the Bilal Muhammad side. Now, Bilal, I think, is not necessarily the same kind of passer on the floor, doesn't have the same kind of control setups, so he's different in that way, but you're going to get the fight to the floor first. Anyway, for all the ways that this could be something other than what it is, it's a little unfair to call Bilal Muhammad a tune-up fight, especially when a guy like Edwards has been out as long as he's been out. But at the same time, he's not jumping back into the very deep end of the pool. He's jumping into outside of the top ten. To me, that's a decent tradeoff to make to get active, to get back in line,

to continue the win streak that he's been on, that's gone on for several years at this point. There's a lot to like. There's a lot to like. So, you know, when you weigh the factors as they are, you get something pretty special. All right. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Okay. Let's get to your question.

Let's see. Questions. All right, Luke, tell us the Nick Diaz story about who he was supposed to fight that you never told us no uh it's really not that interesting anymore colby covington said he would not fight leon because he quote isn't big enough name but many people in the ufc consider colby as just another very good contender and not a big name. So what does Colby need to do and how far away is he from gaining that big name status? Where does his gimmick hinder him even though his gimmick saved his career and improved his pace substantially? Yeah, your question is a little bit all over the place. You know, I don't think Covington is certainly

on the level of mainstream popularity, but one thing, I've said this a million times, I think it bears repeating, it bears repeating, here's a guy who endeared himself to a certain kind of political identity that has a pretty substantial reach in America. It's got one that walls itself off from the other side and vice versa.

So if you go on these establishment, or I shouldn't say establishment, that's sort of a loaded word, but if you go on these sort of major shows and major platforms that cater to one political tribe, there's a decent chance the other tribe won't see it. And I think that's probably true with the case of Colby. But in terms of the size of the audiences within those specific tribes, it's pretty substantial. He doesn't tweet very much, and when he does, it sometimes makes the news over at ESPN when he's challenging, it's silly, but he's challenging LeBron James or something like that. He's got a level of fame that is specific and limited, but pretty real at the same time.

He's way past Leon. Let's just do a Google Trends search, and I guarantee if you just compare how much their names have been searched, even with all the news breaking around Leon, it'll probably be more of recent, but in general, it would not be all that much. Colby Covington. Let's see. I'm an inspirational artist.. Alright, let's compare that to Leon Edwards. Okay, oops, let me... British Exponential Artist, okay. Now let's compare that over time, past 12 months, let's compare that to the past five

years. Okay, both of them are going to be nothing burgers early on. Now let me see if I can share my screen with you. Oh wait, this is the United States. So why don't we make it global to worldwide phenomenon. It'll change it somewhat. Yeah okay, let me see if I can share my screen with you. Let's see how this would go.

Let's pull that down. Let's try that. Um, you know what? Fuck.'ve got Colby as substantially much more famous and searched than Leon Edwards by a country mile. It's not especially close. Not even a little bit. Colby runs away with it. I know your question wasn't necessarily about how the two compare per se, but just to be clear, when we're talking about not popular and popular, there are levels to this and different designations and whatnot, and Colby is far ahead of many of his contemporaries.

Let it be known. Now, with response to the question, how far away is he from gaining mainstream status? I don't think he's as far as people think, but he's not especially close either. It would require probably becoming champion, beating some big names, having a ton of momentum behind you.

So he's pretty interesting as an attraction for large but selective audiences, not as a general audience fighter. Does his gimmick hinder him? Well, in the sense that it walls him off politically to an extent, but it gave him a big boost in another extent. And again, I do think if you can compound that with winning, even if there were initial silos to what you were doing, you can break some of those down. He's currently in a space where he's going to get popular by what those silos offer.

And he's also going to be limited by what those silos limit at the same time. Until he can really transcend that through competitive experience or some other kind of controversy that raises his profile. But, you know, this idea that his gimmick hurt him is... I saw this too. I saw this about Jorge Masvidal. I think we talked about this in Morning Combat. I saw people being like, oh, Jorge's really damaged his brand. Yeah, with Twitter liberals.

I mean, that's really kind of it. I'm sure there might be some carryover between, uh, Jorge losing and then backing Trump who then had, who technically lost the election. You know, these are not like winning performances or something. So maybe in that sense,

some of his momentum has been slowed or he wasn't able to build on it as in ways that he could have. There's like an opportunity cost involved, but like, do I think his brand is damaged from all of that? No, I do not think his brand is damaged. I think if you got out there and fought someone that people cared about, like a Nate Diaz, and got a big win, even without the big win, I think there would be huge amounts of attention for it.

And if he got the big win, it would be even better. I don't buy that argument even a little bit. Yeah, among a certain segment of the population that didn't want to see him beefing with people on Twitter or something, or hear his political opinions, yeah, he's absolutely eroded whatever good faith he had. And some of that is, in fact, in the media. But for the larger audience, I don't buy that even for two seconds. Luke, do you think we have to calm down with the goat debate? In my opinion, it's a bit ridiculous that after every week, we have a different goat. It's like the NBA and how different generations have their own goats. In 20 years, MMA will have different fighters consider goats themselves.

The problem with what we have right now, this debate happens all the time in cycles. This happened a few years ago, and then a few years ago before that, everyone was like, can we cool it with every week having a goat? Here's, there's basically two problems that are happening at the same time, not problems, two things that are happening at the same time. First, you're watching a lot of old guard, uh, being challenged by new guard achievements. And so as a consequence, there's a question about how you compare them. I don't think that the argument is all that strong, but you can at least see some of that with this GSP versus Usman thing.

You know, how close is Usman? To me, he's not very close, but no one's especially close because you're talking about one of the best fighters of all time, certainly as a welterweight in George St. Pierre. But the seeds of that debate are there because Kamara's achievement is being

measured in different ways. He's got a longer win streak, not as many title defenses, blah, blah, blah. So those things are kind of grinding at each other. And the other part is that MMA is improving so rapidly, and guys are doing so many new things in ways in which you can measure achievement

that it becomes hard to measure against the old guard, and you just wonder if what you're looking at is just novel. There is no historical comparison. What we're doing is we're trying to compare them across what other guys did that in other divisions or something. And so with the speeding up of MMA and how much better it's getting rapidly, plus some of these old guard institutions being challenged,

you're getting a lot of these debates, I think, more than people are ready for them. So my answer to that would be, it would depend on what the situation is. To me, the Kamaru Usman one is very premature, as good as he is, and he is a, you know, I picked him to beat Woodley, and I haven't looked back since, feel pretty good about all of that. He's just a special talent, but but you know, special talent is what it is, but that's still a level below the greatest to ever do it. Yeah, it is. It's not a slight

on Kamaru. It's just the reality of the situation. So there's a, there's a little bit too much of it, but honestly I understand because a lot of these guys are also kind of neck and neck. Like I had this conversation with, with, with Rogan, which was, who's better, Habib or Jones? And of course, some people want to exclude Jones because of the PED stuff. You guys know I don't really give a fuck. But either way, let's assume you were going to have the conversation about those two. They have very different successes. They're not identical.

But how does Habib's dominance translate to, you know, what John has done of late or, you know, Habib never lost a round or maybe he lost a round. He didn't, he lost a round, but he didn't ever get cut or dropped, you know, stuff like that. Everyone's trying to make sense of it because we had never seen anything like that before. So I partly understand it. When you, when you begin to make very specific claims, Kamaru has a better resume than George. That's a very specific claim. I think then you can say, hey, cool it.

But it's like, how do you compare John and Habib? That's just an inevitable conversation people are going to have, whatever side they come down on, because it's just hard to know what the answer is. To what extent can Brian Ortega's success in his most recent fight with Korean Zombie be attributed to the sheer depth and quality of the new weapons he's displayed, as opposed to being a function of the Korean Zombie having essentially prepared for the wrong guy?

I'd say a little bit of the latter, but honestly much more of the former. I really believe it's the wrong guy. I'd say a little bit of the latter, but honestly, much more of the former. I really believe it's the new tools. If they fought again, would you pick zombie? Because that's essentially what you're asking here. It's not directly what you're asking, but another way to word this is, oh, you prepared for the wrong guy. Okay, well, now you can prepare for the right guy. Now, how do you do? Would you still pick Korean Zombie? Because I wouldn't. And I think that's the difference. The difference is that, yeah, there probably is something to be said for that you were expecting one thing and got another, and that's real. But it also seems to me that the ways, the kinds of weapons that Ortega

has, and the ways in which he was implementing them make him, at least in the stand-up certainly, a better fighter. He has more tools and has a way to manage the fight in ways that Korean Zombie doesn't relative to him. If Michael Chandler knocks out Gaethje similarly to how he did Hooker, would you favor him against Poirier? Man, if you can knock out Justin Gaethje with one shot, basically. I mean, at that point, Poirier's a tough fight for him. Poirier's a tough fight for him.

Poirier, if he can last, is a very bad matchup for Michael Chandler Michael Chandler is a bad matchup for just about anybody early you know Patricio Freda notwithstanding but in general he's just fucking shot out of a cannon early if you can withstand that it's not like he's like fades and is a shell of himself later but he's not quite as um the same kind of threat and Poirier man he can pour that shit on later and he's got good boxing he's got quite as the same kind of threat. And Poirier, man, he can pour that shit on later. And he's got good boxing. He's got decent takedown defense. Obviously, he can keep himself safe on the ground.

Yeah, Chandler early, Poirier late in that one. How soon will Gina Carano be dunking on undergrads now that her and Ben Shapiro are working together? How bad is that fucking movie going to be? That they're working on? I think she's producing it or something. Yeah, God, Jesus. What do you want to say about that?

Lord, I think I said enough of it for the most part. I did read what she told to Bari Weiss, who, you know... Bari Weiss's point was simple enough, which was basically that, like, I didn't realize that Gina had posted that roundtable photo that was, like, super anti-Semitic until after the fact. You know, but the thing is, if you just watch... Let me give you a general rule on something. This is true for guys and girls.

If you peruse someone's Instagram account, Twitter's less so about this, but Instagram in particular, and forget that it's political. In fact, imagine that you never see a political opinion expressed, but what they do express is these like pictures of a landscape and they'll put some quote over it about, genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, or hang in there, or love is about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These really vapid, total grasping at even a hint of wisdom and usually falling pretty short of it.

That's supposed to be magnified by the artwork or the picture underneath it. If you see someone posting shit like that on their Instagram account, you know for a fact you do not need to have a conversation with them. They're not especially bright. These are people who guarantee that's what they read because they don't read anything else. Forget books, articles, studies, papers, you know, long lectures, anything that would require any form of actual area edition,

they don't do it. And that's the truth for a guy and a girl. I've seen it a million times. If you see someone out there posting fucking motivational quotes that are just the most vapid vacuous nothing and that's how they like share wisdom and kindness i mean it's nice to share kindness with the world right better than not for the most part okay great that's fine but i'm not going to take you seriously on this i tend to think that she doesn't have a lot of like intuitive curation about like is this you know a good thing to post or not and she just posted it you know her her explanation seemed reasonable enough to barry but the problem with barry weiss is like i mean she's such a fucking completely fucking dishonest figure the guy who uh she forgives

the person who shares the painting but not um uh some political leaders who apologized forever, endorsing the painting of that. Jeremy Corbyn in particular. Like, you know, zero forgiveness for him. Okay, fine. But then total forgiveness for the person who then shared the shit. It's totally dishonest. This is not anything she ever provides for anybody else. You know, she has been absolutely the tip of the spear of cancel culture

when it comes to any pro-Palestinian voices in academia. You know, I can't take her seriously even a little bit, even if I think that like Gina, you know, I don't think she's a bad person or anything like that, but she got out way in front of her fucking skis on this and shared some pretty reprehensible shit along the way. You know, and if you did read that, I think it was a variety magazine or Hollywood reporter. Someone did a behind the scenes. Look like I had the, what was the easiest thing in the world to predict a Columbus monkey could have gotten it right. She was repeatedly warned about it. Like, this is my part about it. It's like, it's like, dude, people ask me like, do you like

this political candidate or do you like that political candidate? And really, I tell you guys this all the time. I don't, I don't usually think of it in that way. I might think of it in the way of who gets me closer in terms of my policy aims to where I want to go, but I don't have a cult of love or personality with any of them, Bernie or anybody else. Some are much more likely to get my vote, I suppose, than others, but I never think of it as a cult of personality in that way. I don't have a tribal love or a leader adoration that some think that that's what political identity is about. It's tangible goals. That's what I want. I don't want people to die for a lack of health care if at all possible.

I would like to have no more forever wars. And then we can work on everything else from there. These are the things that I care about in sort of broad, very easy to state strokes. And then we'll move into the various situations they're in. I don't like, yes, some candidates are going to get you close. But I don't ever, ever think about who's my guy. That's never what it is. And for people like, you know, this situation and the people who weighed in on it, it seems like that's the default practice. That's the default identity

marker. Gina will be fine, but she was warned fucking repeatedly about this. That movie she makes is going to suck. You know, I just don't get it. And by the way, here's the last thing about this and I'll move on. It's like, oh, I got fired for being a conservative. Well, what, what does that supposed to mean? Like, what does that mean? You got fired for being a conservative. You're telling me that sharing a round table with dudes with hook noses who are, uh, taking all the world's money. This is what it means to be a conservative? Oh, I didn't know it was anti-Semitic. Okay, all right, you didn't know.

What else is there? Oh, I expressed concern about election integrity. Yeah, in the dumbest way possible, which there's virtually zero evidence for. No, there's zero evidence for anything at scale, individual malfeasance notwithstanding. So what else is it? And then you go and it's just that you know i'm

anti-mask yeah you routinely took i mean listen the movie studio doesn't want bad press about them and you routinely took not even mainstream opinions you took like out there fucking wacko to an extent supporting q anon shit yeah i would imagine a movie studio doesn't want that kind of press around them. Oh, that's what I get for being conservative. That's what it means to be conservative? To express wink, wink, nudge, nudge support for QAnon and anti-mask bullshit and phony claims about election integrity

that you don't even begin to understand? Nate Quarry shared with her the evidence that both the Justice Department and Trump's own team that he formed to look into election integrity found none. His own Justice Department and his own working group that he established found out. He sent that to her and she blocked him. And she blocked him. This is not an especially bright person. This is not an especially thoughtful person. I don't think she's a bad person, but This is not an especially bright person. This is not an especially thoughtful person.

I don't think she's a bad person, but this is not an especially thoughtful person. And if that's what it means to get banned for your views, you deserve to be banned for your views. Your views are really, really fucking reprehensible. And not even banned. Just not allowed to be on Star Wars. That's it. Just not allowed to be. She didn't get her Twitter account taken down.

I'm not calling for her Twitter account to get taken down. But you deserve to lose some shit because of that. Sorry. Of course an employer has a right to be like, you're fucking completely whacked out and you're bringing bad business to us. That's the free market, folks. Well, welcome to the other end of it.

You didn't get fired because you endorsed a heritage foundation study on why Mitt Romney's childcare plan is bad for government spending. You didn't, you didn't get fired because you expressed, um, second amendment support in places that have restrictive gun laws. You didn't get fired because you expressed pro-life views about states

where there might be higher rates of abortion than others. You didn't get fired for advancing energy deregulation. You didn't get fired for any of these things that would be like hallmark policy technocratic views of what it means to be conservative. You got fired because you endorsed the flotsam and jetsam of conspiracy theory that you kind of wrapped up in a bow of like, here's me being right wing.

You're low information conspiracy either in or adjacent dog shit views. Yeah, a movie studio is not going to want to have to deal with the bullshit you bring by doing that. Of course they're not. Hope you're doing well. What would you say in terms of recommending buying to fully enjoy a fight within reason and in terms of money? Saludos desde Argentina. Vivan los culasos. Latinos. Yeah.

Latinos, I guess. My recommendation is if you're looking to get a decent amount of... If you're looking to get bang for your buck, and this can be a little bit hard to do depending on where the camera guy is standing. It's a little bit of a roll of the dice on this one. But what I always recommend is try to think not, if you can get like floor, here's the thing. If you're going to get floor seats, get floors as close as possible. If you're going to spend that money, spend it the right way.

Because if you're floor in the middle or the back, you have to imagine everyone in front of you is going to be VIP. They're going to be coming and going and standing when they feel like it. And no one involved in the promotion is going to ask them to take a seat. I know that from personal experience. Okay. I had to sit behind Ken Shamrock's friends or family and they stood up in front of me the entire time. And I nearly got into, I got into a shouting match with a guy about it. So it's, trust me, that's, it's always that way. So if you're going to be on the floor, you got to be close. And if you're not going to be close, then don't be on the floor. So if you're not going to do that, you got to be in the seats, which you got to be close. And if you're not going to be close, then don't be on the floor. So if you're not going to do that, you've got to be in the seats.

What you want to be is not too high. You want to be, usually there's like tiers. You want to be first tier of the bull, and you want to be middle of that, middle to like slightly under the middle of that tier. Why? Because that would put your eyes a little bit higher than the actual foot placement of the fighters. It would put it towards the top of the cage, which gives you just a little bit of an angle to look down.

You're far enough away where you're still not too far, but you're far enough away for the price point to be relaxed. You have a good eye level. And assuming you don't have a cameraman that's in your way at all times, what you'll usually get is a nice, especially if it's the UFC octagon, a little bit harder to do with Bellator because the sides begin to blur on the round cage. But for the UFC, they have panels, right? They have these eight panels that make up the octagon. If you can get situated right where the panel sits, it's a really great

window into the fight. Oh, I got a little bit of blood here. I got extra work done on my arm, so it's not quite done yet. You can see the plastic here. I got the Saniderm on it. I'll take that off on Saturday. Take that off on Saturday. I know this probably is not true now, but did you ever believe that Colby and Masvidal

were faking their beef so when they do fight, they'd both get a better fight deal? Seems very odd the way they fell out initially after so many years of being friends. Did I ever believe? Maybe very early I entertained the idea that I couldn't rule it out,

but I pretty much took it seriously from the get-go. If Ben Shapiro offered you six figures to be in his show with Gina, are you taking it? Ooh, now that's a good question. Do they have six figures to pay me? I don't think so. Did you guys hear how much Gina was making?

Fucking idiot. She was making, they don't know, but it was between $ and 50 000 an episode on the mandalorian dank ferric uh anyway if ben shapiro uh it would depend on the role i'm not above taking some money it would depend i mean if i'm like you know oh you look your role is your role is to blow every guy here well you know i might, it might be acting, but I'm not necessarily, uh, that's not my wheelhouse. Uh, but if the role is like, you know, I will pay you to be, you know, the number three, you know, I don't know. You're not the star. We're not the co-stars, something, something

less than that, or something. It just wasn't controversial or something. Yeah, sure, I'd take his fucking money. Are you kidding? I'm trying to get a gym built in my backyard. If Ben Shapiro's going to pay me six figures to do something like that, yeah, I'd take his stupid-ass money. If Adesanya leaves 185, could Usman beat Whitaker for the belt? And would Rob be the Nigerian, or would Rob be the... Could Usman beat Whitaker for the belt?

That's an interesting one. Because Usman, I think, would be decently sized, especially for this fight, at middleweight. I don't think he'd be that small. He'd be small against certain guys, but not necessarily against Whitaker. And then Whitaker's got interesting style because Whitaker blitzes all the time, right? But he blitzes at angles and weird setups. And so that would create close contact at times.

He does most of his best work, although not entirely, with his hands. But again, there's noteworthy exceptions. Which would make interesting opportunities for Kamaru. But at the same time, he could stick and move. I think Rob could beat him, but I think Kamaru's very competitive in that one. I'd probably slightly favor Rob, but Kamaru's interesting.

Do you think a modern-day Canelo could have beat the Floyd who fought him? Yeah. He's so much better now. So much better now. He's got a brilliant footwork. He had a good chin before, and Floyd's not really the one to test it. Just worth pointing out, he's got a rock chin. He's got incredible combos, huge power.

He's got great head movement. Canelo is amazing, and I think that the size, I mean, he's beaten guys up to 168 now. I think the size and the power punching against Floyd would have been way too much for him. Yeah. Now, not the one then. By the way, this goes back to like, this is why I don't understand the Jones-Izzy thing from some people.

Like, I get that it looks bad for Adesanya in the following way, which is, oh, John called you out. You didn't go up. He leaves and then you go up. But to me, there's a couple of factors that have to be weighed there. First of all, he only goes up to that weight class at the UFC's invite. Like, they have to tell him he can do that.

I guarantee what they said was, we'd love for you to fight Blachowicz. He was like, alright. I mean, was he planning on that? Was that the goal all along? To fight Jan Blachowicz? You know, maybe the 205 title, but not him and not then. I think he probably had some other ideas and they came to him maybe even early on saying, hey, we're kind of thinking about going this direction. And he took it. But more to the point, that's not even really the issue.

The issue is, dude, when you fight a guy matters. I got a couple different computer systems working at the same time here. When you fight a guy matters, completely matters. So both of them are playing a bit of a game there. Israel might like his chances to win, but is hedging them a little bit because he just wants to get a little bit better at his ground game. He knows he's made tremendous progress, wants to be a little bit further along, maybe put on a little bit of weight so that by the time that they fight, he would have that readiness. John wants to take advantage of it now, but they're playing the same game, which is I want to fight you at a specific time, convenient to my chances and interests. They're both doing it.

John is trying to get him early and Izzy's trying to get him a little bit late. It's the same game. Like the idea that, and by the way, John never moved up. He spent year after year, after year, after year in that weight class, all that time he could have gone up. He never did, which is fine. Of course he does not have to. This is not me attacking him. I don't have any reason. He can do what he wants with his career. I'm just pointing out, taking sides in the debate that John had the willingness to fight Izzy now and Izzy didn't is the same game twisted either way. He's not ready. I want to get him before he's ready. That could be interpreted as cowardly. Or, other way,

I'm not quite ready for him, I'm going to delay it a little bit. That could easily be interpreted as cowardly the same way. It's however you want to look at it. To me, it's just two guys responding to their natural incentives. Of course, John is going to want to get Izzy when Izzy maybe isn't the right size and hasn't fully developed his game, just like Mayweather did with Canelo. And to me, it makes all the sense in the world that someone like Adesanya would look at the lesson from Canelo versus Mayweather and say, it will pay to wait.

I will get the last laugh if I do that versus jumping. But how can you take sides in that? That's the part I don't understand. It's the exact same game. And for someone who didn't move up all this time, until basically the division more or less kind of seems like caught up with him, I mean, you know, what do you want me to say? You want me to take a side in that?

I don't take a side in that. It's fine. Guys can go do what they want to do, but, you know, oh, it's Adesanya's fault. Is it? Is it? What do you believe is the best way to beat Usman? Is it by trying to knock him out early? Like Burns did?

Or is it trying to break him for five rounds And overwhelm him with volume like Colby? Both won rounds in and had some success But eventually lost I definitely feel like you gotta got to take him early. You've got to sting him early, for sure. And some of the things I thought Burns did pretty well, or at least there were some things I liked that he did.

For example, I didn't see any breakdowns about it, but they may have included it. There's a couple times where Usman would get tagged, and then especially early, like first maybe round, and then first part of the second round, something like that, where Camaro would link up with and make contact with Burns and then try and push him against the fence. And what Burns would do is fire an underhook or something

and then trip or try to kick out the post of Usman, and Usman would be forced to react to it. Now, that trip was not going to work. It was never about putting Usman on the deck, because that was not going to happen. But if I could get Usman to stop so that he could catch himself on the metaphorical skateboard, so to speak, that's a second for me to disengage and then get back to center.

That was really important. I actually thought that he did a pretty good job for the most part. I mean, it was a losing effort, but I did think there were real moments where you could tell where are two scenarios that are probably not great places to fight Kamaru Usman. One is if you are touching the fence and the other one is if you're constantly on the backup. Now you can back up a little bit, of course, some, but you would have to have moments where you were backing him up. And I thought to to that extent, you know, Burns still lost, but I thought he did some of those things in an appropriate kind of way. So, to me, that's the first thing you have to do,

is you need to be circling, have good movement, you need to get your back off the fence, and to the extent possible, you've got to get him backing up and thinking and reacting. Easier said than done. He has a nice long reach, 75-inch jab. The other part to me is that you've got to really get after him early, as I mentioned. So really taking it to him. Now, you need to be there late, but to me, if you don't get him out early

and he's going to be hard to get out, you've got to be prepared for a slog. But I don't want to try and beat Kamaru late. I would rather try and beat Kamaru early and then hang on. Now, I wouldn't try to coast. What I'm saying is, knowing in that fourth and fifth round, he's going to bring a storm. He's going to bring a storm. It's just the inevitability.

And so, to me, trying to win early is going to be much easier when he's still making adjustments. He may not know what to expect from you. That is going to be much easier when he's still making adjustments. He may not know what to expect from you. That is going to be your best moment. But if he gets settled and he gets going, you can survive. Chances are you'll actually last the round, especially if it's on the ground. But you're not going to win. So win early if you can.

And the last thing I would say is I really believe it's going to take someone who's got really deft movement. Volkanovski is a bad matchup for everyone of course he's only 145 pounds but what he does to freeze and confuse people while he moves and sets up and then sets up camouflage and then deception and sleight of hand and blah blah blah that would give him a lot of problems and then combine that with a low calf kick where you could do it um could you know fainting him into having his hands up going low mixing, mixing it up, side to side. I think that's a nice way to be able to land on him early, to score and win rounds, and then have a really disciplined approach for all 25 minutes.

How come MMA champions don't walk to the ring with their belts? Seems like they should be able to. And it's done in boxing per wrestling. I think UFC doesn't allow them to. Other, I think you can in Bellator, but I gotta double check. Is it bad management on Mads Vidal's team to request a rematch with Ousmane? Why would that be bad management?

I know he wants the title, but would it be advisable to test himself against the Colby and assess how good his grappling and wrestling skills are even in Edwards? Why the fuck would he fight them? Dude, why would you test yourself against somebody who's capable of beating you? That's not much of a test. And if you don't have to test yourself and you can get right back to the title, what does it matter? Oh, well, if you fought Colby, you'd have better experience to fight Usman.

Yeah, Usman's also going to have a lot of information. Assuming you even win that fight, which is no gimme. Now Usman has all this information about how wrestling setups, which particular ones he could use to lay into you. That sounds like a terrible idea. You mean I can get a title shot without having to do anything else to get...

I mean, Jorge Masvidal has been fighting for 16 fucking years. Either he's going to be ready or he's not. Yes, needs a better camp. Okay, fine. But in general, in terms of overall skill development, either it's there or it's not, you don't need a test.

If you're his team. Now, if you are an individual impartial observer and you say, hey, I think Jorge needs to have one more fight before we can give him a title shot, before having a title shot is justified, yes, of course, absolutely. But if you're his management and you can just get a rematch. Without having to do anything else. Yeah. Do it.

This game is. This game is brutal. And it's difficult. And that guy spent a long time in the trenches. You know. I can completely understand. If he was like. I'm not fucking.

I'm not. If I don't have to fight Colby. I'm not doing it. And fighting Edwards, I mean, that's a tough fight. And if you win, it gets you nothing in terms of name value, which is what he's using to make money. No, bad idea. After the pandemic, your three favorite live acts put together a return to normalcy tour. Irrespective of genre, who's playing at that show boy that's great man i had tickets my wife got me tickets for my birthday um this past august which of course

that didn't happen they postponed it to the following august we'll see if it ends up happening is um was uh rage against the machine and um with run the jewels it was gonna be the capital one arena downtown we still have tickets because apparently they're still going to try and do it in August. Rage is one of the better bands I've seen live. Who else is good that I've seen live? Saw Vinny Paz live. Well, Army of the Pharaohs, technically. Who's good?

Man, you know, it's not my favorite live act by a million miles, but who's just fucking really good live was Down with Phil Anselmo as their front man. Boy, they were good. I don't fucking, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a ton of acts as distinct from live acts as my favorite. But I would love to see, I'd love to see Cannibal Corpse again,

obviously, that show is punishing. I would love to see, I would love to see Vinny Paz again, for sure. I'd love to see Rage. I'd love to see Deftones. Some other live acts I could enjoy. Yeah, stuff like that.

But, you know, I also saw, you know, I'm going to say their names like all American, but you guys know Rodrigo and Gabriela? I think they're like brother, sister, or even friend or whatever their relationship with the two. I think they're Mexicans and they play like guitar music together. They're fucking incredible. I saw them. I saw... What's his name?

Is it Jose Rodriguez? No, that's not his name. The dude who makes like... kind of like weepy songs, so to speak. Not exactly. Hold on. I'll tell you his name. Jose Gonzalez. I saw him you his name. Jose Gonzalez.

I saw him. He was pretty incredible. So I'll see just about anything. True or false, Dana is going to get himself and or the UFC in hot water now that ESPN is having to weigh in on the Gina shit. No. ESPN is going to do, if anything, they're going to protect him.

ESPN is not in any way, shape, or form any kind of check on the power of the UFC. If anything, they are essentially there to whitewash anything UFC does wrong. It's the exact opposite. Will there ever be a death in the UFC from weight cutting or fighting? Statistically, there probably will be at some point. What's your reasoning for not wanting to be included in Bellator's new ranking system?

Well, it's not exactly what I said. What I said was I was not a participant. If I was asked, I would not have said yes. I was not asked. They did not ask me. My understanding is they went to CBS and said, we need one person. And I guess they gave, uh, Bellator Brian and Brian said he'd be okay with it. Um, if they had asked me, they did not. But if they had asked me, I probably would have, no, I definitely would have said no. I don't believe, because I think I could have been in the UFCs, but I think that my idea is that I don't think a media person should be weighing in on a promotions ranking system, personally. Brian seems to have a different set of opinions.

Okay, that's fine. Whatever. I mean, reasonable people can disagree. But yeah, I just don't think it's, I don't think, that's not within my, you guys know I don't like the idea that I call what I do journalism. I don't think it is. I think that's not an accurate term. But whether it is or it isn't, I don't feel comfortable. I understand why the promotion wants to do it, but I don't feel comfortable, in the case of Bellator or UFC, but I don't feel comfortable having that kind of matchmaking say,

and I don't think it's appropriate to have that kind of matchmaking say if you're media over a fighter's career in that direct kind of hand-in-hand way with the promotion. You're working with the promotion to affect matchmaking in a direct way. I just don't agree with it. Why are the UFC moving away from Covington-Masvidal fight when it seems like the vast majority of fans want to see it? I don't think UFC is necessarily moving away from it in that way.

They can't make them take certain opportunities. If the UFC wants to... Oh, my daughter's awake. If the UFC wants to make it happen, they're going to try. But both guys want title shots. Covington would take the Masvidal fight because I think he likes his chances and it'd be good for him. Jesus Christ.

Hang on. She woke up from her nap. But Masvidal would just rather get a title shot. And if he can get it, why wouldn't you take it? So. Where do you think AJ McKee would fit in with the UFC elites? Well, I'm going to decline to answer that only in the following way. He's pretty much top 15, no doubt about it.

Probably top 10. But he's still young, and I want to see how he grows into these, if he wins, these next two fights because either he's going to fight Pitbull or he's going to fight Emmanuel Sanchez. I should say next fight to see where that goes. I'd be curious to see what happens. If he fights Pitbull and even if he loses, puts out a super strong account of himself, you're top five material at that point. If you can beat Pitbull, I mean, forget it. What do you think about the idea of making women's featherweight like heavyweight,

with a max of 155? I think it will help pool the scarce talent that is in the larger weight classes and present more interesting matchups. I don't know how many extra women you'd be adding by doing that. Oh, this is interesting. I don't have a whole lot of fully formed thoughts on it, so I'll just give you a real basics, but I'll leave your thoughts on the Facebook and Australia situation. Are you guys paying attention to the nuclear option

that Facebook just launched in Australia? Here's the deal. Basically, the government wants to charge and Rupert Murdoch and Google already worked out something independently, but the government basically

wants to say through law that Facebook should pay for the news that they feature, essentially. That if you get onto Facebook and you see articles, not so much that one that people may have linked in their feed, although that's part of it, but sort of as a news service,

anything that comes up there, that they should be paid for that. And Facebook said, absolutely not. We are not a publisher. We are merely a curator of what is already out there. So we're not going to pay you a fucking dime. And obviously that would cut into their market pretty substantially as well. They make money off the ads from the content there, from those pages, so you get the idea. So what they did was the nuclear option.

There are no news feeds, no news in anyone's feed in Australia. More than that, you can't even link an article to anyone else. You can't manually put it in there and worse it actually got rid of things like hospitals nonprofits NGOs some government offices like they really just I mean they hollowed it out to the point where you can like talk to other people you know about what you ate for lunch and that's really about it I tend to think that is a bad way for Facebook to handle this. I mean, okay, so why is this bad? One, the rest of the world is watching.

How is Facebook going to handle this? And what they're basically saying is, you know, unless we will operate with a skeleton, barely recognizable service. Uh, if we, if we, that's our only option in a place rather than pay a fucking dime for the market that we have shattered, understand something like why is digital media in trouble? Because the overwhelming number of ad rev dollars goes to Facebook and Google for things that used to be essentially paid for on the news, either the ad space on the newspaper itself or in classifieds or whatever. They've taken that away a substantial portion. And it has, to me me ruined journalism more importantly everyone wants like people to ask Dana White tough questions but no one ever seems to realize that the people who

employ the people who ask Dana White questions they don't give a fuck if there's any tough questions that are asked they don't care what they care about is to what extent can we create content that is super monetizable because they don't have any other way meaningfully to sell ads against that content in a way that they once may have been able to. Digital media is sort of a new frontier where it's sort of accepting of the new realities from other platforms. But you get the idea. The news is now designed in a way to maximize ad rev. Now, not every article all the time, but there's a heavy, heavy bias in that direction. And so a big reason for that in the digital space is because

Google and Facebook have just eaten it up through their monopolistic practices. There are people who are trying to begin to address these issues and they don't really know what to do. Asking Facebook to pay for it was one of the answers. You saw Facebook's response. But the reason why I think this might actually fail them is because what if they just sort of offered no entry into the market whatsoever, or they broke them up or more to the point, you're telling, you're telling other sovereign nations that, um, short of the force of law, you, you're not going to give up this market position, right? And if you break up Facebook, you'd pull apart WhatsApp, you'd pull apart Instagram. Um, who knows if they would separate different parts of Facebook

from other parts of itself to make it a little bit easier for, you know, create less barriers to entry for other players in the space. I don't know. But this heavy-handed approach, they're trying to show that they have all the leverage there and in individual circumstances, although Australia is a large country, they might. But to me, it is signaling to other regulators, if you want to rein in Facebook's practices, they're not going to do it on their own, and they're not going to do it without force

of law. So you better make sure that the law is on your side, period. And they might want to break them up for more than ways to help media. They're breaking it up as ways to say that speech is being censored and blah, blah, blah. So I tend to think this won't last in Australia. I don't know what will solve the impasse, but if I was at Facebook and showing this kind of a heavy hand, I'd be worried. It's like, really, this is the answer you're going to give us? Okay. Duly noted. I believe a key part of Fedor Emelianenko's wins were when he was aggressive or dictating the pace. One could say that applies to many, if not all, fighters when they win. But I feel with Fedor, whenever he had a lot of resistance from opponents, he lost to them and had a tough time.

I'm not quite sure how to put that. What are your thoughts? Also, I believe that Fedor wasn't best at or struggled against wrestlers. There's some thoughts on that, although he did pretty well with some of them. Also, my mom likes it when you bring on your daughter. Yes. Me too, although she was howling. That's true for a lot of fighters. Being aggressive, getting someone to react to that, that puts them on a defensive mindset. Their offense will often be better than their defense. It's a good way to win. Having a strong pace is important, but that's not the totality of his winning.

There's been times where other guys kind of dictated a lot of the engagement and he would still be able to win or, you know, in the Fujita fight where he got rocked and could come back. Yes, it is a big part of why he won it's an oversimplification to be like oh if he couldn't be aggressive or dictate the pace he couldn't win not quite true how do you think Izzy versus Usman would go I think that might be a tough fight for Izzy

I think Usman's a problem let's see. What do you think of the new Gojira track? I heard a little bit of it. It sounds okay. It doesn't do a whole lot for me, but... What's your favorite show of all time? Favorite show of all time. Well, I'm not the best to answer this, because when I grew up, my mom didn't let us have HBO or MTV or anything like that, which kind of carried on through most of my life up until I was like 30. It's not quite true, but suffice to say, I have seen Seinfeld now,

but I didn't see it until after the fact. Breaking Bad I caught by like the fourth season. So Breaking Bad has been the one that I enjoyed the most, but you know, you guys are going to kill me for this. I've never seen The Sopranos. I mean, I've seen the individual episodes here or there, but like beginning to end, I never watched it. I never watched, was it Maidmen? I never watched it. I saw Walking Dead, you know, was fine for like a couple of seasons and then it just got fucking stupid. And everyone like oh the graphic novel's better i'm not reading a graphic novel sorry um i'm trying to get some other ones that would be pretty good probably breaking bad is my answer but that's not me

saying it's the best just the best one that i've seen Yeah, can you remember why Michael Bisping's first title defense was against Dan Henderson? Because they wanted to make that fight in England. That's why. Dan didn't deserve it, but they wanted to make a rematch. And I forget exactly what was happening with Romero at the time. But they just went around it. I even called him Michael Bisbee's radio show when he was on Sirius XM at the time and I gave him a little bit of shit for it. In the end, it's fine. It is what it is. He won. It was actually a good fight in the end, but the answer should

have been Romero. I just don't know why they... I can't remember exactly why they didn't... He partly was injured or something. I'm a fan of Faraz and respect his intellect both inside MMA and out, but is he overrated as a coach? No, he is not. Aside from GSP and Rory, have there ever been any high-level, highly successful UFC fighters under his tutelage? Well, first of all, if you've got two, that's pretty good, but there's been a lot level, highly successful UFC fighters under his tutelage?

Well, first of all, if you've got two, that's pretty good. But there's been a lot that have trained with him that have done really well under his tutelage. Ryan Hall speaks super highly of him. Who's another one? Tom Breeze, I think kind of didn't work out, but I have to look at all the fighters under his roster, but he's done a lot for a lot of people. Will we be able to find out pay-per-view buys anymore since ESPN now means that the buy remains

sales up to $500K, so we won't know if Usman Burns did $50K or $450K. Yeah, pretty much. They usually will tell Sports Business Journal what the500K, so we won't know if Usman Burns did $50K or $450K. Yeah, pretty much. They usually will tell Sports Business Journal what the numbers are. So if they come out with it, fine. But otherwise, yeah, you're stuck. Getting emotional with MMA. Hey, Luke, I think you might have talked about this in the past,

but I can't remember if you did. I was wondering if you've ever gotten emotional watching MMA outcome of a fight, post-fight, blah, blah, blah, to the point of choking up for a moment. Yeah, a little bit. Personally speaking, Darren Elkins beating Mirsad Bektic at UFC 209 in 2017 in his post-fight interview where even Rogan was choking up. Not in that sense. Jose Aldo beating Jeremy Stevens, breaking into tears,

Habib beating Gaethje, starting the mourning process for his father. No, not in that sense. But, like, who was the guy? He got cut already. I feel bad for him. But Junior Albini, when he was talking about getting the win bonus because his daughter's only toys were used shampoo bottles. You know, you're talking about a level of poverty that is, uh, you know, what you, I mean,

what you have is what you can hold in your hand at that point. You're that poor, you know? Um, and he was going to use the money to get her proper toys. Yeah. That one got me a little bit. I think that was even before I had a kid or like right, right at the same time. this is a decent question do you think kamara usman's increased focus on his striking could eventually be his downfall obviously he is a solid striker but not necessarily great like wonderboy or edwards or mass at all level i don't think that's unfair. The most notable example of a wrestler falling in love with striking would probably be DC. He got good enough at striking that it would carry him very far in itself, but then, once he ran into Stipe, a better striker overall in my opinion, he was able to catch him in his first fight, but then in the two, he dominated

the first two rounds, and wrestling gassed out. Then in the three, it seems like he didn't want to invest in wrestling for too much of a fear of getting tired. Since striking overall requires less energy and stamina than wrestling, could you see a similar fate for Usman down the line? He's going to have to fade physically for that to be true.

Which is to say, remember, Kamaru's better in the fifth than he is in the first. He's a strong performer late. So in that sense, where you have to ration your offense to get the most out of yourself, no. However, if he gets overconfident in how valuable his striking is, yes, that could be a problem. But when the guy strikes, he lands 1.5 knockdowns per 15 minutes. I mean, he puts people down. He hits

hard. So yes, I think there could be an overconfidence issue maybe if it goes one direction, but not in the same way where you're like, man, I'm going to get tired. What do I do with my offense here for 25 minutes? That's not a calculation he has to worry about. My take, this person writes, champs should fight whomever the UFC puts in front of them. The BS of champs stating who they will fight or not, who deserves it more, is just so off-putting. Get to champ level, your job is to defend, not to pick and choose who you want to fight or who you think is deserving yeah yes and no i look it's complicated to an extent how do you want a champion's career to go

do you want them to take nothing but vanity fights probably not but the other question is do you want them to take nothing but the guy who is the number one ranked contender at all times? And the answer might be no there. The rankings are a great, listen, I've been saying this part too all of today's show, but I treat the matchmaker model like democracy. Who was it? Was it Churchill who said this? I couldn't remember. But it's the worst form of of matchmaking to paraphrase uh except for all the others you you want to be in a system where if someone is not necessarily popular they can still find a way to get a shot against the very best of their division that's only right and if you are a

champion you have to defend that belt sometimes against people who you don't think are worthy or not popular or whatever. However, you probably want to introduce enough flexibility into the system where they don't have to have that dictum hanging over their head every single fight. If there's a way you can finagle on occasion or make a fight that the fans just really want to see, there's probably a good reason to do that for the sport's longevity, for business sake, for currying a larger fan base. Sometimes you sacrifice the integrity of the matchmaking system for the benefit of the larger system. And how you do that, admittedly, can go awry very quickly. Very quickly.

But still, I think that's probably better than any kind of strict, this is who you're going to fight, eat shit, you know. I thought I saw Benil Dariush punch the canvas in his last fight. Does that happen often? Not often, but it can. Could you injure your hand that way? Fuck yeah, you can injure your hand that way. You absolutely can break your shit doing that very easily.

Luke, do you think there is any merit at all to the Blackbees saying he's going to wrestle Blades and take him down? It seems ridiculous, but with Derrick Lewis, you just never know. Maybe a little bit, but he's going to get tired doing that, so not much. Maybe a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Rush Limbaugh. How much did you hear him on the radio in Georgia? My mom was a fan of his, believe it or not, for a time.

But that was in like the early 90s. You know, 92 or something. 91. And then after that, not much. He was pretty easy to tune out if you don't go looking for him. Do you like the idea of Covington versus McGregor? No.

No, I don't. That's a terrible fight for Conor and sort of nonsensical for the options that Covington really has. Are you as tired as I am of people calling out St. Pierre? Yes. Fuck yes.

He's fought once in eight years. Is it a time people started campaigning for fights between fighters in their respective primes? Yes. Yes. Again, people are going to respond to rational incentives in their in their jobs and in this job if you can get an easy win i'm not saying saint beer's easy but let's say for the sake of argument he's totally washed and uh and you can beat him you get a lot of money for it you get a lot of attention it wouldn't be get a lot of attention. It wouldn't be too hard.

Yeah, I mean, in that sense, you know, and even if he has a difficult fight, there's just a lot of attention and hoopla that comes with fighting a guy like St. Pierre. Okay, so we all get that, right? So the game is going to make it so that these guys who are clearly, you know, either fully out of the sport or basically out of the sport,

it's still going to be, they're going to be ghosts in the fucking house because of these other considerations. But there's a bigger factor here beyond that. To me, it's like, um, dude,

St. Pierre is still kind of the king of this division a little bit. And the reason why is because one, he fought recently enough where, um, you know, it's, it's within memory of the fan base that's been developed

since the mcgregor rousey era right they were all witness to it so they got to see some of that and partly like dude no one ever took the belt from him he handed it back and then was this sort of shadowy figure over time and because of this sort of habib stuff and him kind of being out there and still doing interviews and blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, he's still casting a long shadow over 170 pounds. He's still the standard bearer for excellence at that weight class.

He's still the standard bearer for big money in that weight class. He is still, it's weird to say because you're right, he hasn't fought but once in eight years, but he's still kind of the relevant figure there. And's just bizarre it's because dude no one has supplanted him not just that he's not he's not like a distant memory you know if he had retired in 2004 i don't think we'd be having these conversations you know i really don't it's the fact that he

retired you know 15 or so years later whatever it it was. 2019, did he retire in 2019? I can't remember anymore, 2020. But it's because he's still there. He's just visible enough, and he's still the guy from a marketing perspective and a measurement of excellence perspective that no one has moved him out of the way as the paradigm so maybe if kamaru keeps going we can do that and then if someone beats kamaru then they become that

but there's never been that handoff no one ever took it from saint pierre and so you add that factor into the to the that he's still around he He fought reasonably close enough to be remembered by today's fan base. Yeah, I can understand it. It sucks. I'm so fucking tired of it, but I sort of get it. Can you make sure the live chat uploads to Apple Podcasts, please? It does.

It's on the Morning Combat section. Would you want to see Wonderboy versus Nate Diaz? No. No, that's a terrible fight for Nate. I don't want to see fights where it's obviously terrible for one person. That's a terrible fight for Nate. I don't want to see fights where it's obviously terrible for one person. That's a terrible fight for Nate, who's flat-footed. Oh, man. That would be a mess.

Did you see Big Francis on the JRE? I did see that he was on there. I've not heard it yet, but I heard it. It was really interesting. Andrew Cuomo. What a fucking... Oh, that guy. He's a piece of work, isn't he? He's the worst.

He might be the worst governor in America. He's bad. He's very bad. Views on Darren Till. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which prospect do you peg to be the next big star in MMA? Ooh. Prospect.

The one I've got my eye on, and it's hard to tell. It's really hard to tell because you just don't know how they're going to develop. But if he can really turn the corner, Armin Saryukian is interesting. He's talented. He's very, very, very, very talented. So we'll see what he can do. Westside barbell. I'm going to side barbell. I don't use conjugate method.

Luke, do you watch much of Dan Hardy's analysis and breakdowns? And if so, what do you think of it? In my opinion, this is very nice of you to say. You and Dan are my favorite to watch any breakdowns of techniques, blah, blah, blah. Again, I will watch it, but I try to watch it well after the fact so that I don't take anything from it, either advertently, well, certainly not advertently, but then even inadvertently.

I don't want to have... I kind of feel like if you're going to research something, it benefits to go to some source material. But if you're going to research something, it benefits to go to some source material. But if you're going to do a report on something, and that's how I treat some of the stuff that I do. Not like reporting as a news story, but like reporting in the sense of I develop what I believe is a comprehensive view of things.

I want to share that with you. I don't mind going to some source material to refresh my memory about stuff, but I don't want to get just someone else's full-on opinion about it who has keen insight, which Dan does, because it will just color the way that I see it and I won't have... Here's one truth about being an analyst. You get better like anything the more you do it. As good as Dan is, he's better now than he was before. He was always good,

but he's better now because he has so much practice with it on his own channel, I feel like. So yes, I will watch them, but like for the 258 one, I won't watch that for six months. And then I'll go back and take a look at it. Do I film? I tried to film in four. Someone's asked me, do you film a 4k or 1080?

I tried to film in 4k. It's just too much work with the files. I don't like it. I wish I could do it, but it just, it's so time consuming. Fuck that. All right, let's do one more of these. Was there a plan for morning combat to have a presence at the UFC press conferences? You've alluded to MK being more than the podcast Which is awesome Yeah, the podcast is just one part of it Just wondering if UFC press conferences

Was a part of that plan Or not, given how you really feel about them Their sort of lack of genuine interactions Well, not in the way that you saw us do this one For Bellator In fact, I don't know if we'll ever do that again. So not in that. I mean, understand the promotion and show.

Like if you work for Showtime, there's going to be benefits that come with that, which is if you have requests for fighters, they're going to be able to fulfill it for the Bellator side pretty easily, right? They'll just go to promotion and be like, hey, these are our shows. We want them on our shows. Bellator is just going to say yes for the most part. Again, there'll be exceptions here or there. i don't know that we could do that even with cbs doing that at uh with ufc would they accommodate somebody who's not a brand partner in that way i

i don't know um but do we want to be there for big fights yeah absolutely um we what we want to do is if the show gets big enough and i don't I personally don't feel like it's there yet but I think it's got the potential is if the show gets big enough I want to do live shows with an audience that's what Brian wants to do that too we want to do live shows with an audience and

I think that's the ticket on location at Fight Week maybe have a guest maybe not, I don't know, we'll see how it goes but Um, but that's what I want to do. That's what I really, really want to do. I want to be there for big fights, have a post for like a post fight show. I'd love to have an audience for a post fight show. It's like, watch the fights with a, with a group, right? Let's watch the fights with a group, you know, and then a private, you know, let's say the 50 people, 60 people watch it all together.

And then we go live with the audience reaction. Then we can take questions from the audience. I think that'd be fucking killer, killer, but you know, we got to do that first. So we'll see how it goes. All right. Um, let's do this. Let's call it a day. Put this on here. Subscribe. Yes. Thumbs up on the video. Subscribe to the channel. We'll be back tomorrow.

We'll be back tomorrow with episode three this week. The Friday show. Me, Brian Campbell. Morningcombat at gmail.com if you have any questions. And if you want to shoot me an email, you can. LukeThomasNews at gmail.com.