MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford Official | Jon Jones Rumors | Fight Announcements | Ep. 446

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

On Episode 446 of Morning Kombat Brian is solo to break down the news that we are finally getting Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford. What are BC's early thoughts? Brian also discusses the rumors that Jon Jones might have a new opponent for August. Is this just a leverage play? BC closes out the show by breaking down some recent fight announcements.  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

Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. Reveille, reveille, dogs. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our life.

This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. Oh, yeah. Can you feel that? I mean, do you hear that?

You hear the sound of my voice? That means it's Friday. You ain't got shit to do. It's time to get a little artsy here. Sorry that I may have pasted my skin with the light white shirt. My wife always tells me to wear dark so that I don't look as pale. But what can you do when you've been blessed with such palety? Hey, my name is Brian Campbell, one half of the most fantastic,

most electrifying combat sports show that they ever created. Yes, you're here inside Morning Combat, Friday, May 26, 2023. Not live at the moment, just stay always, always honest, always up front with the people. It's a holiday weekend. It's a long holiday weekend. We will have a bonus show for you monday uh answering your mail but mailbag questions but uh i pre-recorded this solo show today for you because uh luke thomas a little bit under the weather my normal co-host here every monday wednesday and friday so i wish him well hopefully get some time with the family and this non-combative combat sports weekend yeah we got a little bit of boxing over there overseas.

We got the debut most valuable productions, Jake Paul prospect card on DAZN as well. A couple other things going on, but mostly a time for you to enjoy some time with the family, celebrate those that we've lost on the battlefield. Yes, Memorial Day weekend upon us. But we had to force a show here because not only do we love to give the people at the end of the day what they want, we also came across some big news in the past 24 to 48 hours.

We're going to do that shortly. Thank you so much for joining me here, BC. You can follow us on the social channels below. Please like and subscribe on YouTube to this fantastic show. I do want to thank, I think a milestone. Did we hit like 149,000 YouTube subscribers? Like that's just, that's just you people being awesome. Okay.

So shout out to all of you, whether you're a P1 and you're making fan subs every day, or maybe, you know, long time listener, no time caller. We appreciate you just the same. 150K Mikey Mormal, our CBS producer on the ones and twos,

letting me know, look, that's a big deal. Congratulations to us, but it's you guys that always do this. You get us these awards. You get us these clicks. You put shoes on two keys feet really at the end of the day. Okay. You get us these awards. You get us these clicks. You put shoes on Tukey's feet, really, at the end of the day, okay?

You paid for my kids' braces. Thank you very much for your patronage. I just got off the HQ chair over there at CBS Sports because of the big breaking news in boxing. We'll get to that. But quick housekeeping, of course. Showtime, one of those great labels that pay us. You can get a Showtime.com free 30-day subscription right now

by going to Showtime.com. You can stream Showtime wherever you want, on your phone, tablet, TV, whatever. Watch some boxing, some Bellator, MMA, some of the most fantastic documentaries you've ever seen. Scripted television. I mean, it's just fantastic. It's called Showtime.

Enjoy it. Thank you very much. Pound sand on the back end of that batch. All right. Yeah. Wow. Already loose on turn four. Like, uh, um, Oh, I'm sorry. I promised middle America. I would know I would no longer make Dale senior jokes. So, uh, you know, RIP to the, uh, to the intimidator right

there. Uh, we have merch. I'm not wearing it at the moment, but, um, you know, we got plenty of it. RJ Dunkelmaker has been a big part of this. There's rumors he might return. I don't know. Well, we'll see what happens there. But you can go to morningcombat.store right now and get your hands on just some tremendous T-shirts. And they're very tight on you. And you're going to love the way they feel. Okay?

I guarantee it. Thank you. All right. All the BS, right? We're going to put that in its own box. Step one, open the box. All right. There we go. Let's get to it. All the BS, right? We're going to put that in its own box. Step one, open the box, right? You know, I'm just, all right, there we go.

Let's get to it. Let's get to it on this Friday. I really hope you guys do have a great weekend. Unplug a little bit, you know what I mean? Get together with the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, the friends, and just, you know, be joyous. And if you're not in the States and you're wondering why we're taking this weekend off, we're memorializing those who have been lost in the battlefield. All right, Pat Tillman, I'm looking at you.

Thank you very much. The biggest breaking news, our topic one, we've teased it. We've talked about it. We've debated it. We've frustrated over it. We may have even castrated over it. But it's on. It's here

It's actually going to happen No more Coppinger reports No more debunked Coppinger reports It has been presented by both fighters as facts Saturday, July 29th of this calendar year T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas You see the names at the bottom of the screen Unbeaten welterweight champions

Errol Spence Jr. Terrence Crawford. They're going to crown the first four belt undisputed champion in 147 pound history. They are going to be fighting, not just to keep their unbeaten records alive, not just essentially to put the flag down on top of the mountain that says, this is my welterweight era.

And the post Mayweather Pacquiao, this is my time. I was best in show, right? Same thing we're trying to do up at heavyweight with Fury and Usyk, if they can get their shiat together. These two welterweights finally did. And I'm not telling you that you can't have, I don't want to say negative knee-jerk reactions to this. I mean, it's in-house, by the way, Showtime pay-per-view.

Shout out to Steven Espinosa and company for getting this done. Al Haim and all those on the PBC side. This wasn't easy. This negotiation fell apart last year. We went through a, I guess sad would be the best word. Disappointing, sad. He said, he said, back and forth. But you have to admit something here.

All that shit is water under the bridge. Like, it's gone now. Now we're talking about the fight. But I did want to say, like, boxing hasn't been – this is actually building up to potentially be a very good, if not great, boxing year. You wouldn't know it from the past couple weeks, especially if you were very upset with the Haney Lomachenko scoring, even

though I told you to back off on that, or if you're still lingering from the Roley Romero decision, you know, box, box, you don't get it wrong a lot. They got it wrong for four to five years and not making Spence Crawford until right now. So if you want to do the, I've already lost interest in this. Okay. If you want to do the, Hey, man, aren't they old? Well, look, Spence is 33 years old. Crawford is 35.

The knee-jerk comparison in so many ways is Mayweather Pacquiao. This fight won't do the same business that will do, but you could argue it's just as important to its own era, meaning not just the welterweight history of this era, the current pound-for-pound rankings we could produce. I mean, really, the winner of this is probably going to be the current pound-for-pound rankings we could produce. I mean, really, the winner of this is probably going to be the new pound-for-pound king, as long as there's no controversy in this fight.

So the stakes are so huge that I think a lot of us have gone through this rollercoaster of emotions. We tried to tell ourselves last year that we don't care about this fight anymore. I'm done with it. Spence, go to 154 if you want. And then you started hearing the teasing and the rumors that it might actually happen, and then you got all excited again. The same feelings, the same reasons you did originally. Is it okay to do the whole, man?

I hope this is better late than never. Yeah, you can have those questions. But I think we're going to be fine here. I think we're going to get a great fight. And I think the best news out of what we've heard of the reporting done, and Mike Coppedger was ahead of a lot of these things from ESPN, so let's give him that credit, but they have signed a bilateral rematch clause. Terrence Crawford has signed a, according to Mike Coppinger,

two-fight deal with Al Heyman and the PBC. So all those years we didn't get this fight was understandable if you understand the BS of boxing politics. Two guys on the opposite sides of the street. Crawford used to be with ESPN in top rank. We all know how disastrously that fell apart. Obviously, once Crawford got free a year and a half ago, I wish this fight was made the next day. It wasn't, but I don't think it's too late. And that's not just optimism BC talking. I know they're 33 and 35 and Manny and Floyd were 36 and 34. Was Manny and Floyd too late? Yeah.

Not financially, not in terms of it still being a monster event, the all time biggest fight in the history of combat sports. It's it did the most pay-per-view buys, right? I know Mayweather McGregor came close on a lot of categories. And according to Dana, what edge did in some other financial categories and according to Dana White edged it in some other

financial categories, but this fight isn't that big, but that fight ended up being a little bit too late because if they had fought back in 2011, like they should have or 2012 or insert any other year until finally we got that in 2015, I think it would have been a better fight. I think it would have been more competitive. I don't think it would have ended up being sort of the points battle controlled by Floyd with Manny's injured shoulder, with all that, that went around that. And it wasn't a bad fight in the end.

It just wasn't what you expect in paying a hundred bucks. And if that fight was the only boxing fight you watch in a five-year span, right? You didn't get what you wanted. I don't think there's, I don't think that there's a lot of reason to believe that we won't get what we want here. These fighters are a little bit different than Manny and Floyd. Are they as great historically? No, but we are looking at two all-time greats here. There's so much on the line. There's the

potential, as I mentioned with the rematch calls for not only the potential of two fights this year, if the first one is close and viable and either man, uh, you know, moves to get the rematch. You could also see a trilogy for all we know here. And when you match these two up and the contrast and all that, that we talked about the other day, it's time to come back and be excited again. Nothing in boxing is ever perfect. The journey here was not great. But it's here. We got this. And I'll get to it in a little bit, but I teased it earlier. Boxing does have a chance to really impress you this year overall with the number of events, the big ones that could come through.

And it's been two pretty damn good years of boxing in a row, right? Going against the old every other year plan that we used to see for the last 10, 15 years. I've decided to be really happy about this fight. And I think you should too, because it's fantastic and it's historic in some ways. And let's get into how we found out about this. Now, uh, both fighters were allowed to release on their own terms on social media. Uh, they, they put out tweets, Instagram posts, whatever you want. We got a video from Terrence Crawford announcing it.

T-Mobile Arena, July 29th. Let's hear from Bud Crawford. What's up, everybody? The wait is over. It's game time. Errol Spence, Terrence Crawford, July 29th, Las Vegas, Nevada. Everybody come out, show support, and watch me fry this fish. The fry the fish comment is part of the trash talk back and forth

that led to the fight falling apart last year when Spence has long called himself the big fish, you know, in this division of this era. So good for Bud to come back. You know, again, if you're still lingering from the, man, we should have saw this last year. Why didn't they get it done? It just took time. Bud Crawford needed that one fight in between to make a ton of money apparently against David Evan Eason. And I'm kind of happy in some ways that Spence didn't

rush back and fight Keith Thurman on pay-per-view at 154 in a fight that wouldn't have really meant a lot, especially not with the titles at stake this fight means so much so we're gonna have spence's three world titles against the wbo title of terrence crawford to produce that four belt champion let's go over to spence he didn't put out a video but he put out an interesting scrum of photos on both instagram and twitter first the fight announcement there's the poster there you go right there get yourself fired up second an artist's rendering of what Errol Spence believes is the inevitable outcome of Terrence Crawford. They're down on the canvas. You can make the predictions for however way you are leaning. And then finally talked about the trash talk between them. That's Bo Mag. That's Brian McIntyre. That's Terrence Crawford's trainer. I believe his manager as well with a Cheetos bag backstage. There's some weight jokes built in there. Spence getting after it.

Look, I don't want them to be closer friendly. I want to have, you know, not a forced angry or trash talk filled build, but there's so much at stake here. There really is. I mean, like it was early on in both of their rises and careers as unbeaten champions that, you know, we started to say, man, we've got something super special here. We have the potential to have two all time greats operating in this division at the same time, like we had with Floyd and Manny. What, what hurt it along the way, of course, was, was Crawford was on his own Island over there with top rank. Yes.

Crawford fought career defining names and big wins at one 35, where he was a decorated champion at one 40, where he became the first four belt undisputed champion there. It, the problem was that welterweight in recent years, it just felt like a Bud's crop, but Crawford's career has been on hold, right?

There's there's, you know, I mean, you'll give him respect for winning the title from Jeff Horn at that point who had beaten Manny Pacquiao. But you're not going to get a lot of love for wins over faded Amercon, faded Kell Brook. You know, Mean Machine did drop him, but that wasn't a fight people were clamoring for. Jose Ramirez, the brother of David, was coming off a long layoff, an injury in the bullet in the leg and all that. We didn't get to see Bud against the very best in this division,

yet it had already been pre-established that, like Spence, we're looking at an all-time great. Somebody who's a virtuoso, Bud Crawford, can switch stances at will, can box just as well as he can fight, but has the nasty backbone that he's willing to fight when he needs to. But I think that step down and matchmaking allowed Spence in a lot of ways to catch up as he tried to clean out his division, which was, you know, largely under the PBC banner.

And we got big fights from him in big career defining 147 pound wins from the, the shutout and the, the, the boxing brilliance he put on against Mikey Garcia to the brawl was the high level brawl with Sean Porter that he survived to, you know, taking out Danny Garcia by decision and dominating him. And obviously the early victories at Welterweight, including Kell Brook,

Lamont Peterson, just dominant, you know, a victory there. And I think the Kell Brook is really the defining one in which Spence really met a prime version of Kell. And as we know, persevered through that on the road and won the title.

But to truly put them in the history books, to truly identify whose era this was, you've got to have them fight each other. So 35 and 33 in terms of ages is better than not at all. It is better than late because I think both still have it. And I think ultimately when you look at this style contrast, both are probably going to have the ability to push the other one into a kind of, you know, into the, a kind of breakthrough before, like, I think this is going to be an action fight. I think it's going to be highly skilled.

I think there's going to be elements of chest and adjustments, just like we saw in Haney Lomachenko. But I really believe that at the end of the day, these two are dogs. And it's not that Floyd and Manny weren't, but we know where Floyd was in the second half of his career, high above his natural weight. He always had the hand issues. His ability to stay so dominant and on top later in his career, it needed the adjustment he made in his game from going from pretty boy Floyd to money Mayweather and being more of a pot shotter and controlling the terms of the fight that look at the end of the day, Floyd was in there to collect that huge check and win that fight. I just think the personalities of these two stakes in this one, everything that goes with it, the era that we're in, whereas we talk about it a lot, American fighters just seem to be more willing, these young ones, to go after it, to seek tough matchups,

to let it go more inside the ring like the 80s and early 90s used to. We did have to go through a lot of shit to get here, but this is still, at worst, the first or second best fight you can make in this sport for a reason. Heavyweight division is always up and down it's always you know throughout history it's always up and down but in this modern pay-per-view era of the last 20 to 30 years welterweight has been the sexy money division and you look at the super fights that have defined eras going back to you know uh sugar ray le Leonard rallying to stop Thomas Hearns in 1981.

Two unbeatens in Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya in 1999 and the controversy that came out of the scoring there. And really the stakes in that one, considering that was the first blockbuster pay-per-view not involving heavyweights in boxing history up to that point. I mean, blockbuster pay-per-view, not involving heavyweights in boxing history up to that point. I mean, blockbuster. And then, you know, you look no further, of course, than Pacquiao versus Mayweather back in 2015. I'm ready. I'm fired up. I love the idea that we have a great chance of seeing this again so soon. And, you know, if you read Coppinger's report leading up to this, there's the intention here that the winner would go on, move up to 154 and seek an opportunity there to become an undisputed champion as well. A little bit harder, obviously, because Errol Spence Jr.

is in the same camp as Jermell Charlo, who's currently the undisputed junior welterweight, junior middleweight champion, excuse me, and has pushed off twice now the fight with Tim Zhu due to injuries. That could change if Tim Zhu wins the titles. And obviously we know the trash talking in recent years when Crawford and Spence wasn't happening, but Jermell Charlo and Terrence Crawford have been exchanging beef. So you not only have a great fight to look forward to, the easy potential of a rematch, maybe even a trilogy, and then the potential of the winner moving up.

I mean, maybe the winner moves up to goes to 154 and the loser faces Jaron Buttenis. You never know what's going to happen here, but any bit longer, it was going to be a disaster. Not always there when you call boxing's biggest fights and not even always on time jaw rule, but sometimes, sometimes it just hits the mark at the right time i think we got reason to believe we got reason to be excited here um in so many ways glad it's at t-mobile the big one uh this summer this is gonna be it there's gonna be and what's interesting is that's a big ufc night that's ufc 291 the same night july 29th uh poirier gaethje 2 uh in a loaded card up and down interesting the last time the bmf went up against a big boxing match that was more of a debacle 29th, uh, Poirier Gaethje too, uh, in a loaded card up and down. Interesting.

The last time the BMF went up against a big boxing match, that was more of a debacle in the fall of what was that? 2019, uh, when Canelo Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev sat back on the couches there, as I sat in MGM Grand Garden arena, and we all watched the UFC BMF fight on the big screen. You remember that decision by DAZN? Wow. I don't know what it's going to look like come July 29th when this goes head to head with a very good UFC paper review card in Salt Lake City.

But look, you get a chance to make it. You make the fight. We were talking for a bit in recent weeks about the July 22nd target date. Turns out July 29th is it. So circle your calendars. Get ready. This is it. This is it. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I wanted to extend this talk to, I mean, I know you guys got upset

about with me over the, the Haney Loma reaction. And I, and I, and I, and I always take your criticism seriously, believe me. You know, don't let me be the last to know that I'm the one standing on top of the mountain with the shittiest take. But, you know, I still stand by the reaction to that. It wasn't a perfect fight in terms of the scoring, but it wasn't a robbery. And it's not enough, in my opinion, to take that and loop it with the rolly outcome, which was BS. Let's be honest. Whether Tony Weeks was off, whether Tony Weeks has a loaded envelope in his pocket or whether Tony Weeks was thinking too much about the recent fight.

He didn't stop with Morell in your vicinity that ended in such dangerous health situations. I don't know, but it's not enough, in my opinion, to take those two weeks in a sport that, like, I'll acknowledge, doesn't always get it right. Sometimes rarely gets it right. But why does this sport have such staying power? It's not the sport of kings anymore, right? It's not like number one, you know, in the 1950s, it was horse racing, baseball, and boxing.

And that was it. And people stopped what they were doing and turned on the radio and put their ear to it. Because Joe Louis is sweating and smelling a second time and the winner wins world war two. I mean, you know, there were times where that, but why is boxing still matter though, when it matters because it's fucking great. I mean, it's great. It's great. You build to the big one with two fighters. You get invested in the storyline. You have to see what happens in it. This calendar year still has the opportunity to deliver in huge ways.

And a quick little recap, we've had three major fights so far. We've had the pay-per-view with Caleb Plant and David Benavidez, which was not only a great fight build, but really produced in the outcome, the continuation, further coming events of the potential of Benavidez and Canelo fighting later this year or early next year. Then we get the Tank Davis versus Ryan Garcia fight, which broke a lot of boxing's rules of crossing the street and making a difficult fight. And then, you know, over exceeded from the standpoint of expectations in terms of live gate and pay-per-view. And now we've got this fight. And in between, by the way, we've got Teofimo Lopez and Josh Taylor in June for 140 pound title.

We're hoping we're getting Tim Zou and Jermell Charlo this summer for all four belts. This summer, we are definitely getting the pound for pound king right now in Iowa, in a way, moving up in weight and taking on unbeaten unified champion Stephen Fulton Jr. But what about the other big ones? You're hearing the same rumors I have. I get that we should take nothing, almost nothing that Tyson Fury says as fact. He's all over the place every other day, but he's now posting the daily videos. Yeah, most of them seem to be aimed still at talking trash to Jon Jones and saying,

I'll fight you in a UFC ring. But no, I was kidding. I mean, only with boxing. I'm like, who cares? Get that out of there. But we are seeing recent Tyson Fury videos saying, hey, fight you in a UFC ring. But no, I was kidding. I mean, only with boxing. I'm like, who cares? Get that out of there. But we are seeing recent Tyson Fury videos saying, hey, hey, Usyk, why don't we do it anyway? And Fury's still blaming Usyk, I think, unnecessarily.

Look, I never know with Tyson Fury. Ultimately, is he scared of Usyk? No. Does he want to delay it, though? Did he inquire about attempting to get other people in the ring first including Anthony Joshua maybe even including at some point you know Francis Ngannou or whatever yeah he might have he is an opportunist he does want to make big money I think Tyson Fury knows that he's probably not going to hang around a long time but the fact

that he's getting out on video and bringing this up again, I think is big. Usyk did just have a purse bid for his mandatory fight against Daniel Dubois. A big part of Fury in that video was saying, look, we all know Dubois is not on our level here, Usyk. So let's make this fight. Usyk versus Dubois fight first. We still this calendar year could get a fight that is arguably just as big in terms of the historical senses here. Of two undefeated champions, Tyson Fury with one belt and the lineal crown. And Alexander Usyk, the former undisputed cruiserweight champion with three of four belts. Could you imagine if we add that fight on top of what we already have here? And then you got Canelo coming back this fall,

maybe in a rematch with Dimitri Bivol, which a lot of us don't love or feel is a necessity, but would be an interesting fight, would be a big fight. Or what if Canelo says, you know what, I'm going back to 168 and I'm fighting David Benavidez. All I'm saying is this, you hang around boxing long enough. Yeah. They'll test your patience. It's a sport that's not always connected all the way

business-wise. That's not always connected all the way in terms of making the best long-term decisions. It'll let you down. There'll be a bad scorecard here. There'll be a questionable stoppage there. There'll be more talk about business than what's going on in the ring at times. But we do have not only the most amount of unification, undisputed title fight opportunities that seemingly we've ever had in this four belt era and the willingness and the out in the sanctioning bodies not standing in the

way like they used to which is like if you try to take that four belt fight i'm going to strip you of your title like that like we're not seeing that as much right now and we're also seeing a young generation that wants the freaking smoke and wants it now. And even though in the fallout of all things, Gervonta tank Davis versus Ryan Garcia, the talk was look, Ryan Garcia is going to regroup. He's got a new trainer and Derek James, and he's going to officially move up to one 40 and campaign there.

Um, and then we thought probably we're going to see tank Davis. Rematch Isaac pit bull cruise. And cruz and not you know look the first fight was a last minute change in opponent pitbull cruz pushed him on the scorecards made it a tough fight it was a close decision win i'm not saying we need that rematch right now but for all the talk that that rematch was a slam dunk for next um i'm not sure everybody's been reading all the fine print as close. Can I just drop in another moment of potential inspiration here? Another moment of potential boxing my life around and give us everything we

wanted this year and some bullshit, right? And some absolute bullshit and the kind that questions your own sanity, right? Okay. Yeah, they do that to you. But how about this? Tank Davis is co-trainer. Let me line this up right here. He was talking to BoxingScene.com.

And his name is Kenny Ellis, if you're wondering. The lead trainer, Calvin Ford, of course. They were talking about the kind of fights that we all want next for Tank. They're talking about Devin Haney, and they're talking about Shakur Stevenson. And mind you, Devin Haney officially, yes, is a free agent. There were rumors kicked around in the recent days by Paulie Malignaggi that he was already re-signed to top rank privately before the Loma fight. I've not been able to confirm that.

I've not seen anybody else report that. I'm not accepting that necessarily as fact. I've seen recent interviews with Haney saying, look, the next fight with me will be with a different promoter. We'll see which one. You take a 24-year-old undisputed champion right now as a free agent. You throw him out there knowing that any network or promoter he goes to, we're going to see the potential for blockbuster fights. That's got to get you excited.

But my point is this. I haven't heard members of Tank's camp mention either of these guys' names, Haney or Shakur Stevenson, unless asked. And when they do, it tends to be more of the financial posturing that we see on the pay-per-view side of this game, which is, okay, well, we're the money man, meaning Team Tank. And by the way pay-per-view side of this game, which is, okay, well, we're the money man, meaning team tank. And by the way, tank is the money man in this division, even though respect to Devin Haney as the undisputed champion, you know, that whole idea

of you've got to come to me, meaning you're gonna have to come to my network on my terms. You're probably going to have to take a big pay cut. We're going to have to try to make it as hard for you as possible. And to be fair, they made it hard for Ryan Garcia, but to his credit, he still took the fight. He still made the rehydrated claws weight. He still, everything was fine and he lost the fight. That is what it is. But Ellis Tank's co-trainer,

here's what he said. Here's the quote. Heads Devin, tails Shakur. And he said, it's tails. And here was his message to Shakur Stevenson. Shakur, call your team and tell them you want tank. Whoever is not willing to make it happen.

Get rid of the ass. You, the boss, the fighter is the boss. If Bob Arum, don't want him, want it. Tell him to let you out of the effing contract.

And at the end, Ellis would go on to say, we don't need no more warmups. We want Shakur next. You a champion, right? Come get that work. End quote.

Now look, I'm I've been around boxing long enough to know that there's also posturing and what Ellis is saying right there. It's not going to be easy tomorrow for Shakur Stevenson. If he wanted this and wanted it now, to go call up Bob and Top Rank and ESPN and be like, yeah, I'm going to do what Ryan just did and jump across the street. That's probably not going to happen. It would probably have to be a two-network pay-per-view.

But you got to like that there's conversations like this going on, that they're challenging him, that they're saying we would fight you. Not this, yeah, we'll fight you one day. They're telling we would fight you. Not this, yeah, we'll fight you one day. They're telling him right now. I mean, all right. I mean, you know, they're talking about it. So you're saying there's a chance. These are the developments we need.

All four of those guys, Tank, Ryan, Devin, and Loma. And now let's throw in Shakur for five. They're all going to be needing a second fight this year. Let's see if we can build our own four princes, our own four, five Kings era. Let's see if we can have these guys start to go out of their way to fight each other,

to prove in the ring, who's really the best. Okay. What if this doesn't happen? What if this is just trash talk? And what if Haney does resign with top rank? And what if two out of his next three fights, if he does is a Loma rematch in a Shakur Stevenson showdown and probably a

mandatory in between. My point is, is, is boxing a, a, a trusted mistress. Are them hoes actually loyal? No.

They, you know, they do show up. They do show up when it matters. And if you try sometimes, you get what you need. You know what I mean? You really do. So there's your boy BC back in the optimism chair, the American Alpha optimism chair, telling you that boxing ain't dead.

Boxing ain't broke in the second half of 2023 could be what's that two word term that we'd like to use on this show. Both words begin with the letter B. You know what I'm talking about? Balls, bonanza. That's what 2023 in the sport of boxing has the chance to be still even with that rolly outcome even with the fact that you may have thought hey anyone or loma i thought loma won too but you know i did re-watch that fight by the way closer turned out it was

closer than i thought hey there we go topic number, let's keep it going. John Jones right now. Some interesting rumors over the past couple of days. Before we get into those rumors, you all know we want John Jones versus Francis Ngannou and you all know we're not going to get it, right? You know what I'm saying? We're really, we're really not going to get it unless it's like, you know, down the road and the circumstances of both changed dramatically. But, uh, there's a video that got put out overnight of John Jones and his teammate, the crochet King, right? Maurice green, Maurice green, right? Mikey, Maurice green, right? I always screw that up. Um, they were in the, in the camp there at Jackson weekend in, in, uh, the crochet master also fights for the PFL, by the way. Let's go to this video of Jon Jones and Maurice Green fooling around.

Francis is a pussy and always going to be a pussy. With all that muscle. Laugh it up, Johnny boy. Laugh it up. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is humorous to me at this point like it's one thing when dana because like dana is never gonna i don't want to say forgive might not be the right word but like we've been through the dana and francis stuff enough you guys are

sick of it dana's not gonna bend this is who he is he's gonna posture and always represent the you know the evil empire the the bank the money the the promotion and he's always just gonna probably continue to shit on francis but to see john just pop up and, the promotion. And he's always just going to probably continue to shit on Francis. But to see John just pop up and do this, like, I know he's just kind of stirring the pot, but you know, it is rich when you, when you look back at how much Francis wanted to fight during his last three years with the UFC, where he fought once per year and how much they were freezing it out and how those three years coincide directly with John Jones having already announced after the Dom Reyes fight that he was moving up to heavyweight. So all those big muscles. Yeah,

John, it took you three years to put on all those big muscles. It's just funny that we're seeing this track now. And you know, maybe John was willing in those three, probably was in those three years. Like the thing about John Jones, he's not afraid of anybody. Like that's not what I'm trying to say. So this is probably more on the promotion for not getting this done because they weren't willing to pay John Jones, Deontay Wilder money. And then they weren't willing to pay Francis consistent high level money beyond the 8 million to fight Jones. It does make me laugh though. And John, you know, continues to spike the punch and catapult into the pool and talk this shit. When, Hey John, I remember right after Francis left four months ago

and you praised him. Okay, I do remember that. I do remember that. But a little trash talk back and forth among heavyweight goats, I guess, is interesting. Speaking of heavyweight goats, we all thought based on Dana White comments that we were headed this fall, November, one of the majors in the UFC, Madison Square Garden, right?

And if you're saying, BC, what do you believe are the four majors in UFC right now? International Fight Week. Madison Square Garden in November in New York. The second weekend in December that they usually blow out in Vegas. That big card used to be New Year's Eve weekend before ESPN had them move it earlier because of college football. And then if there's a fourth, I guess you could say there's usually

a March Vegas pay-per-view or an April Brooklyn pay-per-view that tends to be huge. But we thought we were getting Jon Jones, the greatest fighter of all time, versus formerly the greatest heavyweight of all time, Stipe Miocic. And maybe in your opinion, still the greatest heavyweight of all time or greatest UFC heavyweight champion. You know, and Ghanu violently stopped him.

That changed that conversation. I thought Cormier had changed that conversation until Stipe came back and won the last two. The whole point is whether you're like Luke Thomas and don't love Jones, Mia, you know, or you're like me and say, still, still a big fight still matters. Let's do it. I'm not sure it's necessarily going to happen. Now, the first source on this was chill sun.

And, and I think as much as I love chail and we all do uncle chail P he just says shit a lot. Okay. Daniel Cormier, however. Does he just say shit? Well, not really in a, in a, like a, Hey, I don't know what else to say. So I'm going to say this way.

And I'm not saying Steve or Chael's comments aren't rooted to some degree in truth. But DC does say company heavy-handed comments. He's a company man. I mean, look, let's be fair. He is. I love DC, but he's a company man. So he was on his own YouTube channel. And here's the quote talking about the rumors that Jones versus Miocic might be falling apart. He says still nothing. It really just feels like we're going to miss this one too. And that's unfortunate. We just missing Gano versus John Jones, one that we've waited for for a long time. Now we got John Jones talking to Tyson Fury,

which Dana said, we'll make it happen. I mean, yeah, it's not going to happen back to DC, but now we got those guys talking Fury and Jones. And for the record, Fury is in a full on fight,

has no chance against Jon Jones. There's no knock on... Okay, that was... I pulled the wrong quote there. It's clearly... Nobody cares about Jon Jones versus Tyson Fury. It's not going to happen. So let's move that.

But Daniel Cormier had this echoed the same comments that Chael did. That it looks to me or to them as if this fight is falling apart for November and suddenly the idea of Jon Jones versus unbeaten or not unbeaten but versus Sergei Pavlovich um could be soon sooner like August September isish in Australia soon. So here's when you got to certainly identify the sources. Chael sometimes can just say stuff.

Chael is also connected and has been known through the years to share that connectivity aggressively. But DC's on the inside. Is this merely a situation where Stipe, who has always in recent years been, I don't know, frugal, isn't the right word, sharp in terms of a negotiator. Like Stipe has held out until he's gotten what he's wanted. He's taken a year off from fights. I mean, he's really only been fighting once a year in recent years and only seemingly been fighting in big title fights. You know, the trilogy with Cormier

and the two fights with Ngannou, it takes up a lot of time there. But you have to believe Stipe knows his price, knows his history, knows this is probably his last big one unless he beats John, and knows that we're talking about Madison Square Garden and knows that Francis just left for huge money. And that now would be the time to try to argue it. This feels to me, BC,

as if this is the company putting pressure on Stipe. And I hate when they do this dirty BS publicly. If you have to do this privately, if it's part of the negotiation process, if it's part of business to some degree, okay, life is a negotiation. Doing it publicly though, it changes things. It changes the public narratives and perception of things. And that's why it's done on purpose, to put that pressure. Like, oh, Stipe, the bus is passing, the train is passing you by.

Because, look, Stipe's not going to come back and fight Tom Aspinall. He's not going to come back and fight, you know, Marcin Tybura. If he's going to come back, it's going to be Jon Jones for the belt. And even though I don't think ultimately that that fight is like a pay-per-view blockbuster, that fight is a quasi super fight in terms of the historical nature of it. It is. It really is. I get that Steve Bay's older and he's inactive.

And I, you know, I get a lot of that, but we still don't know what John Jones is as a heavyweight. Like stop acting like we do. He sat on gone and front choked him. Like that's what happened. And credit to John. And he did a fat guy dance at the end. He was all happy and front choked him. Like that's what happened. And credit to John. And he did a fat guy dance at the end. He was all happy.

John, you deserve to be happy. We need to stop talking about Tyson Fury. So let's get that out of there. He can go fight. He was like, please get away from us. Can we come through UFC? I don't know the demands here. I don't know the situation,

but this screams to be another one of those situations where we're automatically going to call up the next two potential opponents. We're going to get them to sign on the dotted line. We're going to have it all ready. And we're going to show the world steep pay that you don't want this fight. Is that the circumstance? I feel like it has to be because why would, I mean, it is Pavlovich next in line by his recent performances? Sure, you can make that argument. But as John said himself, I'm only going to take that fight if they make it worthwhile to me. I don't think the UFC is going to go out of their way over a few bucks to skip this Stipe versus John fight. I do believe, as usual, they are trying to narrow down how much they have to

pay without question and aggressively and heavy handedly. If this was the consolation prize, we had to be dealt Jones versus Pavlovich. I get it. That's, that's arguably a better fight than Jones. It doesn't have the historical nature to it, but the unknown factor, the threat to John Joe, I mean, yeah, it's monster. It would be huge. It just feels like fool's gold to me at this point. So, you know, John, we can laugh it up over Francis, but let's make this steep a fight. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right.

Let's go into topic three here on this abbreviated shortened holiday show, just to kind of give you the fix, right? Just to allow you to get it up on your, on your list. Just don't rub that MK bullshit across the gums. How about let's react to some fight announcements. All right. UFC Vegas 74, June 3rd, Jim Miller versus Jared Gordon. Okay. Okay. Where is Jim Miller at in the UFC record book for most wins?

I know him and Arlovsky swap it. They trade it out. Let's see where we're at right now. In terms of the rundown of total fights in UFC history, Jim Miller first place with 41. Arlovsky second with 39. Cerrone and Clay Guida right behind there with 38 and 35 respectively. But total wins as a fighter, interesting now,

because Jim Miller has set himself apart 24 total wins in the octagon in first place a second place tie is with Andre Arlovsky and the retired Donald Cerrone and then you have Damian Maia with 22 at fourth place RDA and John Jones tied with both Poirier and Charles Oliveira with 21 wow okay. Okay. So you have to believe the idea of Jim Miller on top here. You hope Jim Miller, for his sake, can pad this lead if this means a ton to him, if this is that enduring legacy. But interesting to see if he actually does hold on to that because how many more wins does Arlovsky have left?

That's certainly an interesting question. He seems to always be packaging three fight losing streaks with surprising two fight win streaks or three fight win streaks, but then inevitably he'll step up and get knocked out. How many more does he have left? Yeah. Let's see if Jim Miller can pad that, but that group is aging behind him. But think about that RDA, John Jones, Charles Oliver and Dustin Poirier are currently three back of the 24 win. Jim Miller, see if he can continue to extend that. Let's go to June 17th, UFC Vegas 75.

Pat Sabatini versus Lucas Almeida. It's not necessarily moving me. We know Kevin Lee's coming back July 1st against Rinat Fakhreddinov. Fakhreddinov. We talked about that. I'm into that. Jimmy Crute versus Alonzo Mennefield, July 8th, International Fight Week, UFC 290.

Okay. The following week, the UFC Vegas 77, we're getting Terrence McKinney, Nazeem Sadikov. Okay. You know, is the UFC wowing us these months? No. They're not. Let's go over to August 5th. Saeed Nurmagomedov versus Kyler Phillips is interesting.

Same night as Dustin Jacoby versus Kennedy and Zekwu, who is coming on right now. Let that be known. And that same night, this is what's going to get your boy BC fired up because the Tatiana Suarez comeback story is in full effect. Yes, she came back at 125 and had that fairly dominant win across the board. Now she's moving back to the preferred weight class of 115 straw weight, where she is a right now a sneaky title contender. If she can put together some wins, they're giving her a tough one here. Verna, John Dree Roba. And I know I, I, I know I buried put together some wins. They're giving her a tough one here. Verna, John Drie Roba. And I know I,

I, I know I buried that in some regard, but John Drie Roba is on a two fight win streak, fresh off beating Marina Rodriguez, putting herself into sort of quasi contention here. This is going to be the next stop on the journey for Tatiana. Patchy mix is her, her significant other is $1 million richer. Let's see if she can continue on that rise.

She's got to make the weight. But she has come back a physical force in terms of her frame. And the intention seems to be there. I'm very much looking forward to that. Let's go over to Bellator. August 11th, they're going to be back in South Dakota, the home of Logan Storley, former interim welterweight champion.

And how about this? He's going to headline Bellator 298 against Brennan Ward. Ward just scored that big victory over Sabahu Masi via knockout in that all-action affair, which kicked off the Bellator on CBS card earlier this year in the Fedor retirement fight. There were some questions. Could Brennan Ward be fast- fast track to a title shot? He's a former title challenger at middleweight. He's at welterweight here coming off the years of inactivity, drug abuse, all of everything he's been through him against Logan.

Storley is a very, very interesting fight. Storley still hasn't fully raised his striking up to the level where I think it can be five round, a consistent weapon to match the threat of his wrestling, still a little bit deficient in some of those areas. Yet Brandon Ward comes out and forces you to get into a brawl. And that's the only way he knows how it's the only thing he's trying to do, but obviously he's got a wrestling background too, and he's fairly competent on this elite level. So this is going to be an interesting matchup. And you're going to fast forward over to the same, or sorry, the same night, James Gallagher will also return.

He'll be taking on Chris Lencioni. That will be interesting. Some fight announcements there across the board, nothing on the UFC side. I got to say really tickled my pickle as they say. I mean, should they say that? You know, I say that you know i mean you know did you get your money's worth with solo bc on this holiday friday or is this like you know when like it's july 4th and mike and mike goes to like the fifth string backup announcer to fill in you know and you're like oh there's another golic really you know i mean yeah maybe maybe but mikey more mile our producer knew knew that you know this thing might fall flat and we might have flat tire so he has prepared an interesting video that he wants me to react to that's been going

around the internet Michael could you play the bonus video and we'll get some Mikey, don't play with my emotions. Don't you dare. How dare you? Zabit Magomed Sharapov is, I'm getting the feeling like he's itching to come back. I know he's been noncommittal lately about staying away. I know we're seeing more videos like this of him putting the pads back on. I know at one point he was talking about maybe getting into boxing.

Mikey's question to me here on this bonus video is, BC, what would you sacrifice to the MMA gods to seize the beat back in the octagon? Imagine if Zabit could announce tomorrow that he was, like you're saying that video was from the Twitter post. The question was from the Twitter post from MMA Crash. Thank you, MMA Crash, as well, for that question. Like, if you told me that next week he's announced, I'm back.

I will be entering into the UFC featherweight division again. I will be making a run at the title. I am USADA clean, and I'm coming after it. What would BC give up? You know, the thing you got to ask yourself is like, do we really need these extra two fingers? Like this one holds up my wedding ring right here. And then this is the, like the, the horrifically broken pinky from years of playing aggressive

basketball and getting it jammed on the side. You know, remember when Ronnie Glock got injured and he broke his pinky? They're like, we could remove it and you could get back in next week and play. And he's like, yeah, just remove half of my finger. Would I remove this already broken pinky for Zabit to come back at featherweight? And, you know, and you're telling me also that'll fight Brian Ortega in his second fight back. You know, I don't think I need this. I don't really think I need this.

Like, I don't think functionally, you know, can I still operate? Can I still, you know, I mean, am I still the GOAT? Yeah. I think I could do it. Yeah, I'd give up this finger. No, I wouldn't do that. But don't tease me like that, Zabit. You know, look, I get it with Zabit.

We don't know. But, man, was he an intriguing prospect. Man, did he show. I know the Calvin Cater fight. I know the last round. I know. I saw it. I watched it.

Something was unique and special about that dude, though. Maybe it's better. You know, maybe it's better that Kurt Cobain left the world musically than when he did. I mean, no, it's probably not. It's not better, obviously. But just in terms of preserving that prime memory of the music right and allowing after his unfortunate uh suicide to to go the last three albums did we just see like one of the best did we just see like something did we just see the 90s version of the clash you know i mean like did we just see something like that just changed the game

rock wise genre wise well well, we did to some degree. But him walking away or him dying at that point did elevate the legend very rapidly. Same thing happened to Zabit in my mind. That's my featherweight champion. All right. Yeah, this was kind of a weird show. You know, I don't think Luke is going to end up watching McGregor forever.

So why don't we close and talk about this? We tried to make this work, but, you know, then Luke gets sick and, you know, I don't know what's going on anymore. So let's do this. It's on Netflix. It's a four-part documentary series. And it's essentially chronicling the last four fights of the Conor McGregor experience. Numbers two and three against Dustin Poirier, the Cowboy Cerrone comeback that led to the abbreviated, wholesome, fired-up McGregor that he was during the humble, non-trash-talking, bald-headed McGregor. And then, of course, the entire build and run-through of everything that involved UFC

229 and Khabib Nurmagomedov. I had, like a lot of people, low expectations for this. When it hit my, you know, when it hit, I'm sort of like, do we need one? I remember watching that first McGregor documentary that, you know, really chronicled before his UFC stardom, you you know just this regular dude living in this tiny house and his girlfriend there Dee Devlin and you know him looking her in the eyes although they had no money and telling her you know I'm going to be the biggest star in the whole world and then he went out there and did it and it was interesting I met the news of this

arrival as this project this mini-series this documentary as sort of like overkill. Do we need it? You know, no, we didn't need it. Do we want it? That was my question. And I think a lot of you have that same question of like, yeah, I don't want to watch this guy. This guy's, I mean, look, let's be fair. Conor McGregor is definitely overplayed, but a big part of that has been, I think he has, and look, when you're a celebrity and you're inactive and he has been obviously because of the injury, although this seems, I mean, it's going on two years now that he hasn't, they hasn't fought major injury, of course, but you know, during those two years, I don't think McGregor has, um,

been his best advocate from a PR standpoint, right? It's not just the regular public missteps, but just a lot of the videos posting. He always looks drunk and high in these videos. Let's be fair. Let's be very honest and fair. And, you know, I'm not saying he can't get that way. You can go get, you know, we all turn up, right? We all get lit, right? But like, it's been a lot of overexposure.

So I tuned in and watched, you know, and I may have watched from the eighth row, which may have, you know, brought my focus at an intense level. And I may have been, you know, more into the idea of wanting to accept this than normally, but I have to say this across the board as a journey, watching it, you know, is this documentary like as good as like the last stand with Michael Jordan? No, no, no, no,ael jordan no no no no no no no but was it a interesting behind the scenes ride that correctly summed up the narratives heading in and out of each fight with heavy use of mma media saying what we felt at the time luke thomas and i our voices our faces are in there.

There's old school bomb shelter, early morning combat in there, you know, reacting to things. I thought that was well done just going back fight by fight and reliving a lot of the, you know, they,

they, the doc cameras had their own camera on the side of the octagon for each fight. So you're listening to the audio of the call while seeing the the scenes from a new angle was interesting and in the end it's both good and bad but i do think it's worth your time it's a very enjoyable ride and the reason ultimately why it's so good and at times so great is even though it's very narcissistic for, for anyone to essentially hire, you know, a camera crew and just go, just be by my side for four years. Let's do this. Right. You know what I mean? Connor's willingness. I'll get to the bad in a second, but let's start in

the good Connor's willingness to allow us to see such vulnerable moments that you just don't get access to immediately in the locker room after a tough loss, right? Like immediately when he's sitting down after losing to Habib at 229 and maybe some spoiler heavy, if you care about that spoilers now, um, and, you know, kind of crying head in the hands and Dana coming in, trying to console him. And here's the best part of the whole film, you know, Dana trying to be like, oh man, are you okay? I know those guys, you know, Habib's boys jumped in and, and fought you. And you know, it's Connor, the ultimate competitor saying, fuck that that's bollocks. Those are handbags. As, as he said, those are,

you know, that means nothing to me. The essentially saying the only thing that matters is I lost that fight. That stuff was the good stuff. That stuff was the great stuff. Seeing the, the level of injuries he suffered in camps ahead of big fights, which is, you know, it's the same thing. You're going to see the same thing, by the way, June 2nd, when the Andre Ward documentary comes out on Showtime and it's fantastic, but there's some big reveals in there about certain injuries that, you know, Ward just never disclosed. We never knew about the major injuries. There's some of that in here because, you know, to be fair, all big fighters, as we always say, are banged up to some degree entering a big fight, right? I mean, training camp is not easy. To see Conor endure that pain and the uncertainty of the timing of some of these injuries that halted parts of his comeback.

It was interesting. He let us see some very vulnerable sides of him, cutting weight with D. Devlin, with their arms around him, kissing him, trying to help him through and his whole team. Showing some very, just the agony of defeat. Really showing us the agony of defeat and what that looks like. You're not going to get that. You're just not going to get that unless someone's willing to do exactly this and show themselves and be vulnerable. So that's where I actually give Connor a lot of credit. And I think this is a very interesting watch, love him or hate him.

The negative side is obviously the controlled message this is there's this is four episodes essentially four hours of conor mcgregor propaganda they brush on the negative stuff if at all very briefly and they work it into the narrative you know what i mean of him he's just such a competitor that you know the mcgregor the nurmmagomedov rivalry will never fucking end. Right. They don't touch at all. The, this, this, this, you know, the sexual stuff, the, the accusations, the anything should they, I don't know. I mean, this is in the, in, in a way their way of kind of reframing some recent history. The reason why I like elements of that reframing is because it shows who Connor really is at the end of the day.

What made Connor super special? The trash talking and the, and the wit is a big part of it. The mental vision and toughness to stay the course and believe is a big part of it. But the competitor in him is, you know, is second to none, even with, and here's where it comes, even here's with, here's where that competitor message became a little bit contradictive throughout is like every fight they're building toward and remind,

remind yourselves in this four fight stretch kind of lost three of them. And he kind of lost all three badly. And, you know, the one was he did look great against Cowboy, and I do wonder if COVID hadn't hit. Now we know after the fact when Conor and Dana had that war and Conor started sharing the DMs from Twitter, and we know at that point Conor was interested in coming back against Diego Sanchez.

Yeesh. So anytime I tell you, man, COVID robbed us from a real Conor McGregor comeback, it might not actually be true for all I know. But they talk so much about this guy being a competitor, and he is. But then it just leads you to fights in which he lost and lost one-sided, and they're just sort of like, well, here he is. There's the competitor. Some of that's hard to take when you're like, yeah,

I can applaud his toughness and his gameness. But, you know, he's still going out there and gassing or getting injured or, you know, there's still some, you know, the one one of the areas that he was. Pretty clear about was that the build to the Habib fight, he didn't listen to his trainers. He didn't train properly. He was so maniacal and wanted, and this was somewhat of a revelation to see it so deeply explained to you. He so badly wanted to just hurt Habib. He made it so personal that every sparring session was a fight and he was constantly getting banged up. And he seemed to admit that there was a large degree of partying going out at the same time that essentially he tried to do the camp his way and you saw what happened although let's be let's give him a little bit of respect who fought habib better during that end prime run connor he had a better performance of poirier did he had a better performance than gaethje did although gaethje

was one calf kick away from putting Habib in peril. I've heard. So I've heard. Right. But, you know, that played nicely in a storytelling element to then go into the cowboy fight and see this was a period in which he became sort of Connor happy family guy again and nice guy and humble. And I'm, it's not lost on me that during that same time, there was all of those sexual allegations against him, which a lot of people thought he was being suddenly this baby face turned to try to counteract that. But it did seem like there was a period there where he was very happy and, and,

and was no stone unturned in his training again, which wasn't the case for Habib. Why? Because you get to that level of the money he made against Mayweather that it changes you. But then the film also sort of admits a lot of that went away once he got injured after that, once COVID hit, idle hands, and he's back at it. They don't go into detail, but it's clear.

Tequila white light. No, it's clear that, you know, he's proper 12-ing it and other things. But the propaganda is heavy. They play the, you know, at the end of the day connor might actually be a great dad and if he is like that's awesome and i and i hope he is but they go heavy handed on the you know he's mean it's just it's just not you know so in that regard you've got to swim through some of those propagandic icebergs to get to the uh to the broken down titanic of him sitting in the cage uh after the second the third poirier fight the second straight loss.

The leg snaps, and they're not even playing up that, that he's such a gnarly competitor that he got on the mic and is making fun of Poirier's wife. They left out a lot of these important details along the way that make Conor look like the asshole he probably should, to be fair. They even framed the bus attack at ufc 223 against habib and company as just look man you put your hands on my teammate which is funny and ironic because that teammate is the go artem lobov lobov who connor is now ripping constantly on

twitter and you know potentially in a lawsuit with but it's just at the end of the day it's just a lot of like man he's just such just such a competitor. This is who he is. Like that's the message they're trying to portray. They're trying to show you that you may think, you know, him, you may have certain opinions. They might be bad, but here he is. He's just a competitor and he's just a special, unique athlete and personality a once in a lifetime. And that stuff to large degrees is true, but do they do they brush up and clean up some

of those other areas around him and you got to ask yourself if if if showtime came to you if ufc came to you if whoever came to you and said uh you know we want to do a um we want to do a documentary on your life hey bc you're a rising combat sports journalist we want to do a documentary on how you got here well first of all showtime you're a rising combat sports journalist. We want to do a documentary on how you got here. Well, first of all, Showtime, you're already doing those documentaries. They're called the MK documentaries, baby. But second of all, you know, imagine if they were like, hey, BC, we're going to have to show and talk about all that dirt you did. I mean, I don't know if I'm wanting to do that, right?

I get it. But it's Connor controlled. It is entertaining. It's worth your time. It's about three hours and 45 minutes of your life. You can make that decision for yourself. McGregor forever. Yeah, they got the message across

that they were trying to get. It's up to you to figure out the rest of it. That's the best hour I could produce under these circumstances. Okay, Luke Thomas is ill. BC took you home. It's a holiday weekend. There's nothing to talk about,

but we stretched that taffy out as far as we could. I hope you enjoyed it. You can check out all of our fantastic bonus content, by the way, at youtube.com slash morning combat, where we have interviews with the voice of one championship, Brent Stover, also a CBS sports college football and basketball host and announcer.

So check out that. It's a great chat. We've got this RSD, this Room Service Diaries with Ray Longo. You know, I knew it was great. I didn't necessarily know that people were going to be like, that's the best one you guys have ever done. I mean, I had – shout out to my guy, Bogo, Jeff, my man, my best friend from home, my guy.

He was even like, dude, I had, shout out to my guy, Bogo, my Jeff, my man, my best friend from home, my guy. He was even like, dude, I hate, you know, I don't watch MMA. I don't know any of these fighters, but that interview was fantastic. Thank you. Thank you folks for watching that. That's on Ray. Ray fit with us. He fit like a glove with our humor, with our way of getting down. And I'm thankful for that.

I love RSD. I love 2.0. I know you guys love the first, the original version. I know you love when we chop it up and put our jobs on the line and talk about, you know, doing whippets in the back of an Arby's. But 2.0, it's my favorite thing we do. Thank you for watching that and enjoying it. I got a lot of great feedback on that and I really appreciate it because those, you

know, there's something I told Luke when we first started this thing. We didn't have an interview vehicle then. We just had the bomb shelter once a week. I knew something deep inside. A, your boy BC, you may not like me. You may not like my interview style, but I'm different and I get after it. I felt from the beginning that if we mix that with Luke, and if you can get the two of us at once with somebody that it could look and

sound different than anything else in this space, that's what I was going for. And I'm happy to say it's coming together. And I told Luke from day one, MK one day will be known more for these sit down interviews than anything else we do. Maybe that day will come, you know, maybe that day, but it's coming across great. So thank you for patronizing us. Thank you, by the way,

to all the great listeners who have gone over to cameo.com slash Brian Campbell, my only pipes account. And you know, what do you want? You want to, you want to a bar mitzvah greeting. You want a happy birthday. You want me to sing you a song. You want me to give you advice. You want me to do whatever, you know, what do you want? You want to, you want to, uh, a bar mitzvah greeting. You want a happy birthday. You want me to sing you a song. You want me to give you advice. You want me to do whatever, you know, I'm here for you. It's a scam and it's great. And we both, you know, it's an equal opportunity, consensual scam. Unlike most parody, unlike most, um, um, you know, Bernie may have made off type type things. Unlike most Ponzi schemes. You know what I mean?

Unlike most me too situations. This is consensual. Thank you very much. All right. That's the show. That's all I got. You can buy our merch at morning combat.store. Showtime.com.

I'll give you 30 days free. You guys all know that, but here's what I want you to do this weekend. You may be watching the boxing on the zone. It's going to be a good one from the UK. You may be doing a couple other things, but enjoy yourself. Get out there in the nice weather unplug get the wiffle bat out turn on the grill call up the neighbor to come over hang out with the high school friends get

out and press pause on your life and if you're out and if you're in the uk or doha or wherever our international people are do we have anybody from the falkland islands by the way that listens to mk i don't know reach Reach out to me. If you do, if you're out there and you don't do this Memorial day thing, then get out, get some sun and take care of up here. All right, folks. All right. We can get through this. All of us, even you. Okay. Spring follows winter. And right now, spring is beautiful, at least in the East coast. So let's, let's, let's enjoy it together. Have a great weekend and let's come back guns blazing

for this late spring, summer, where combat's going to kick us right in the asshole. And it's going to be fantastic. Steel-toed boot right to the anus. Let's do this together. Crawford versus Spence. Spence versus Crawford. However you have it, it's July 29th.

It's Showtime pay-per-view. You're not going to want to miss that. That's all I got. Mikey Mormel on the ones and twos behind the scenes. Thank you very much. Luke, get well because we need you, brother. All right? And obviously, you know, it goes without saying,

a shout-out to all the divorced moms that are watching MK because BC cares. If don't, nobody else care. We out of here. Thanks guys. Thanks so much. It's great. You know, I gotta, yeah.